Be A Gatekeeper of Your Marriage

I actually prepared a sermon, or was preparing a sermon this week to give, and it was a very broad subject. But as I worked on it, it got bigger and bigger, so I had to narrow it down and narrow it down. But I think it's something that's really important that we need to think about because of the changes that's happening in our world.

If you lived in an ancient city back during the biblical times, the security of that city, whether it survived or not, was based upon its walls. Its walls and the men manning the walls. It protected them from wild animals, but mainly it protected them from other armies.

Either city-states that were close by, or other nations, or from marauders, especially in the Middle East. You had just nomadic tribes that would maraud, and they would come in, sort of like the Vikings, hit and run. So even many of the small cities had some kind of walls. And the most vulnerable place in the city wall, what would you think? What's the most vulnerable place in the city wall?

The gate.

I mean, if you break down the gate, you don't have to worry about the walls, you just flood through the gate, right? And it's interesting that when you look at, in the Scriptures, there's, in the Old Testament, there's benches of gatekeepers. A gatekeeper was an actual position. It was armed men who were trained who opened and closed the gates.

And they were constantly on the lookout to see what was out there, because there were people on the walls, too. And they were also watching the people coming in and out. And they were the gatekeepers. And they locked the gates, opened the gates. Nobody else could do it except the gatekeepers. And it's interesting that when you start looking at the instructions, as they built the temple, there were gatekeepers in the temple.

There were Levites, as people would come up to the temple, and they entered into gates into the outer court. There were gatekeepers who opened and closed those gates. And they were responsible for opening them up every morning, and they were responsible for closing them every night. And nobody else could open or close those gates. They also had another job. If we go to 2 Chronicles 23. 2 Chronicles 23.

And let's start at verse 18.

Also Jehoiada appointed the oversight of the house of the Lord to the hand of the priest, the Levites, whom David had assigned to the house of the Lord, to offer the burnt offerings of the Lord, as is written in the law of Moses, with rejoicing and with singing, as was established by David. So David had established the Levitical priesthood on how they would work in the temple. Of course, Solomon built it. And there were singers, and there were people who did chopping of wood. There were people who offered sacrifices. It was very organized. Verse 19.

So in the temple, there were gatekeepers. And if someone came up to the gatekeeper, came into that outer court that was unclean in any way, it was their job to keep them from coming in. No, you can't come in here. Whatever reason. Maybe they had leprosy or whatever. Whatever reason it was that they were unclean, they could not come into the temple.

This was an important assignment. Now, I'm going to use this analogy for something that's in our lives today. Because we have a challenge that's going to face the church. We're going to have a lot of challenges, Mr. Corbin was talking about, you know, the way the world is changing. We're going to have a lot of challenges over the next couple of years. We've been through some of the easy part. It's going to get hard. Challenges on what we...we're going to be faced with things we've never faced. And how to deal with these things.

One of the things...challenges we're going to face, we have to be very careful about, is the challenge of antagonistic attacks on the concept of marriage.

You know, I mentioned a while back in a sermon a couple weeks before the feast, I just briefly mentioned the idea of the family privilege.

And some psychologists came up with that years ago. I kept finding it in different blogs and articles. They kept thinking, what is this? So I went back and found the original writings that this came...comes from. And the idea is family privilege is that any marriage where a man and woman are committed to each other for a lifetime, and they produce children, the children tend to have a better home. So therefore, they tend to get a better education. They tend to...not in all cases, but, you know, just statistically, they will tend to have better jobs. And if there are generations of people who have marriages like that, families like that, they tend to acquire wealth and property and pass that on.

So the only way to make this even, to make everybody equal, is destroy the nuclear family. Family privilege. There should be no privileges for people who stay together and raise children in that environment.

Now that's a crazy idea. She wrote that book at least 15, 20 years ago. It is now popping up all over the place. Family privilege. We have to do away with the concept of the nuclear family because it creates a privileged people. It has nothing to do with race. It's the idea of the family. And she gives the example in how she was married at one time, she left that relationship, and now she's living with a man who has a daughter.

They're never going to get married. They don't see any purpose in it. They want to be able to leave the relationship whenever they want. He has a daughter, which is a nice girl, but it's not hers. She's not the mother to that child. She doesn't want that daughter thinking she's a mother. They're just live-ins. And so therefore you should be able to create a family out of anything. Two men should be able to marry as a family and go adopt a child. That's a family.

And any nuclear family that rejects that is creating a privileged family because those children will have a better life. I was shocked at the argument. We can't give those children a better life. We have to give them everybody the same life. So this idea is growing. And so that the nuclear family is going to become under an attack in the next few years. And we see that happening over and over again already politically in this country.

You are going to have to become the keepers of the gates of your marriages. All of us. We have to become the keepers of the gates because there is an attack on the institution of marriage. In order to protect it, you and I have to protect our marriages. Now this started out as a sermon on protecting family. I never got past the first three points.

There were seven points, so we're not going to do all seven points. I was talking a lot about children protecting children because children are being taught in schools about why it's good to have two mommies. It's good, you see. Just because you have a mommy and daddy, that doesn't mean you have a better family. To say it's better is family privilege. And of course, once again, even the psychologist admitted that families that stay together and raise children tend to have better... do children have a better life? Unless it's a totally dysfunctional family.

So the solution is to make everybody dysfunctional. We make everybody dysfunctional, and it's fair. We're going to look at three gates. Three gates that Satan will attack over and over and over again. They're not new. He's been attacking these marriage gates to try to get into the village, into the town. He's been attacking these gates all along. So we have to be very aware of this because these are subtle attacks that Satan does. The first gate that you're going to have to guard... Oh, okay, he's going to tell me how to get along better with my mate or whatnot.

The first gate you have to guard is your own mind. The first gate that all of us have to guard in reference to our marriage... That's specifically what we're going to talk about here. Just marriage is our minds. Let's go to Psalm 141. I'm going to read this from the Jewish Publications Society Translation.

This is an interesting psalm. It's laid in the book of Psalms. According to the Septuagint, and once again, I can't say that we know that it's absolutely true, but according to the Septuagint, which was written back hundreds of years before Christ, it's a Greek translation of the Old Testament, there's a little note that says that this psalm was actually written by David before he became king. And while Saul was chasing him to kill him.

We don't know the reason, but that very well could be the reason. It makes sense when you read what he talks about here. David is struggling with his mind. Look what it says. I call you, O Lord, hasten to me. Give ear to my cry when I call you. Take my prayers and offering of incense, and I have raised hands as an evening sacrifice. O Lord, set a guard over my mouth, a watch at the door of my lips. This is the translation, the Jewish publication, society translation, I think is so interesting.

Verse 4, let my mind not turn to an evil thing. Don't let my thoughts become evil because of the stress I'm under. He was under enormous stress. We're going to face a lot of stress. I don't think we're going to be stressed 24 hours a day, although there won't come out in the future we may be stressed 24 hours a day. But the stress is going to continue, and I don't care who the president is. The stress is going to continue as society continues to tear itself apart and moves farther and farther away from any biblical premises. He says, let my mind not turn to an evil thing, to practice deeds of wickedness with men who are evil doers.

Let me not feast on their dainties. Don't even let me eat with these people because I will become like them, he says. Let the righteous man strike me in loyalty. Let him reprove me. Let my head not refuse such choice oils. He even goes on, he says, send righteous people into my life to correct me.

Send righteous people into my life to show me what I'm wrong. David here realized that the biggest battle he was facing wasn't Saul. The biggest battle was his own mind. The greatest danger to the stability of our marriages is controlling our own minds, especially controlling our emotions, because it is in our thoughts and our emotions that Satan attacks over and over and over again. It's easier to get on the walls when an army comes up, shut the gates down, prepare for a siege, and fight off the army. It's hard when we open the gates ourselves.

We open the gates with our thoughts and emotions in our own marriages. Let's go to 2 Corinthians 10.

We use these verses here in many different ways. I'm just using it in terms of marriage today. You can apply these. These verses get read in sermons and sermonettes locally probably two or three times a year.

2 Corinthians 10, verse 3.

Paul writes, For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.

It is not physical people who are necessarily going to break down the gates to your life.

It's Satan.

Satan uses other people. He uses society.

But the greatest danger we face is in here.

It's when he manipulates our thoughts to drive our emotions. He manipulates our thoughts to drive our emotions. We're in a war with Satan, and we forget that. We begin to trust our own thoughts and our emotions too much.

He says, For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God, for pulling down strongholds. In other words, the weapons, the ability to fight back, must come from God. And that, if you get nothing out of this sermon, go home realizing if your marriage survives, it's because you will get strength from God. Or if your marriage gets better, if you have a bad marriage, it's because you get strength from God. If you have a good marriage, it will get better because of strength from God.

Because we're not fighting another person.

We're fighting an enemy we can't see.

And he'll walk right through the gate. We're the gatekeepers of our own minds.

And we'll let him walk right through there.

That's what David understood. He wrote in Psalm 141.

He says, Casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Every thought. Now, I don't know. Every time I read that, I get a little uncomfortable because I have not brought every thought into the obedience of Christ.

If I get a couple, I'm doing good.

He said, in order to guard our gates in this warfare that we're fighting, we have to bring every thought into obedience to Christ.

You know what that means? We have to be able to recognize whether our thoughts are from God or not. We have to be able to recognize whether our thoughts are good or evil.

And here's the great problem we have.

You and I automatically believe whatever we think is right. We automatically believe everything we feel is right.

I've done hundreds of marriage councils.

And you hear the same things over and over again.

And sometimes I'll say, Kim and I have done the same thing here. Okay. You're both looking at this different view... from different viewpoints, and you both automatically think you're right. Why? Because it originated in you, right? If it originates inside of you, it's got to be right.

That's just the way we are. It originates in us, it's got to be right. And we feel it's right.

And it's so hard to argue a feeling.

It's so much easier to argue some biblical point, right? I'll get out the Bible and say, well, here's what God says here about clean and unclean meats.

It is really, really difficult to argue with someone's feelings. How can I argue with my feelings? That's how I feel.

And that's one of the gates we leave wide open.

I feel it, I think it, therefore I'm right.

We have to be in this Bible all the time, and we have to be submitting to what it says. And we're going to talk about some things that we have to submit to in our marriages as husbands and wives.

Things that are pretty tough, but those are God's thoughts.

And many times we will have our first reaction to God's instructions about anything will be to reject it.

Either reject it or resist it. We're not going to reject it, but we're resistant.

That's our first reaction. Why? Well, because that doesn't originate within us. We have a different viewpoint of how things work.

But when they come from God, there's a point where we have to willingly submit. We have to shut that gate sometimes and say, no, I can't feel that way.

Or if I feel that way, I can't stay that way. There's times when we have to shut the gate and say, those thoughts don't come in. You are the gatekeeper of your mind.

And your mind's going to come under enormous attack. Not over whether you should keep the Sabbath or not, but other issues.

One of them is family.

The reason I started putting this together was for a different reason. I wanted to talk about how we need to work on our families to be strong. Work with our kids and our grandkids because family is going to be coming under attack. And here we've just come back from getting a little view of the kingdom of God and how we need that. When families are going to be strong, we need to be looking at that. But I couldn't get past these first few points. If we as husbands and wives aren't strong together, how are we going to make the rest of the family strong?

Or how are we going to be an example to other members of our family who are married or younger?

If you're an older couple. What I'm talking about here, things like adultery or pornography, we're just talking about the emotions that cause us to have frustration and anger towards our mate. The emotions and thoughts that they're mean. They're being ugly to me. And, you know, let's face it, we are mean to each other sometimes. I won't ask for a show of hands. Because you're pretty honest people, so everybody's handling them. Sometimes we're mean to each other. Sometimes we're too tough on each other. Sometimes we're just plain selfish. But somehow we have to work through that to build strength in the relationship. And in doing so, we learn how to be less selfish.

Remember, the gatekeepers had to keep anything that was unclean from coming into the temple. You are the temple of God. If we have God's Spirit, we're the temple of God. We are to keep. We are to guard this gate that unclean things don't come in. Every time we allow certain emotions, thoughts to come into our minds, and we dwell on them, and we have this animosity or hatred towards our mate, anger towards our mate, it affects everything in our lives because the gate's open.

And pretty soon it's not just our mate. It's everything else we're upset with. I mean, that'll just spill over to everything else because we left the gate open. So that's the first gate. Now, that's two sermons in itself. But you and I have to learn to keep the gate of anger and animosity of despising our mate. We have to keep that gate closed.

We have to keep it closed and work out whatever the issue is. Now, having said that, let me deal with an issue, a gate, that sometimes is opened and we don't even realize we've done it. And that is that we can't try to force our mate, our spouse, to fulfill our every emotional need. I've seen wonderful Christians who obey God and they struggle in their marriage because and let's face it, I mean, if you think about it, somebody the difficulties you've had in marriage is because you have an emotional need and the other person is supposed to help you and they're not helping you.

We all bring, we all get married for a lot of reasons. And one of the reasons is you somehow emotionally help me. So we get married because the other person gives us emotional support, emotional understanding, emotional caring. That's why we get married. For one of the reasons. We're incomplete. But what happens when that other person isn't giving you what you need? Well, then we have marriage problems. Here's what we have to be careful about. It's sometimes we become such a deep well of need, there's no person on earth you could have married to fill that up.

Because there are certain core emotional needs we have that only God can fill. And you expect your husband or your wife to fill what only God can fill. You have just started down the road of a horrible marriage. Because they can't do it no matter how hard they try. Your husband, your wife can't fulfill what only God can fulfill. And I've seen people destroy their marriages because they expect the other person to do something that they can't do.

It's only when actually we are close to God and having God fulfill what He fulfills in us that we actually begin to have very happy marriages. What we were receiving from God, what we need from God, we're much stronger not only to deal with marriage issues, we're actually much stronger to give what the other person needs. So if you have two people that are very close to God and God is filling them with what they need, they are going to be much more apt and able to help each other. Because their strength is coming from God. Remember what I started with? I started with David in Psalm 141 asking God to do this, asking God to protect the gate of His mind, asking God to give Him this stability.

Now there's just three things I wrote down. I had more, but three things I want to talk about that we all need in marriage. Man, woman, we all have this need in marriage. But we also have this need from God in these same ways. And we can't confuse the two.

We can't do our own relationships by putting something on the other person that only God can do. The first thing I want to talk about is acceptance. We all need acceptance. One of the reasons you marry someone is they accept you. And they realize you're not perfect. And they like you.

Many people love each other, but they don't like each other. That's a sad thing.

But when someone likes you, you have a friendship with someone, they like you, they accept you. They don't even know something terrible about you, but they accept you.

We marry because we need acceptance.

But your spouse cannot fulfill the need for acceptance that can only come from God because it requires God's forgiveness to be accepted by him.

So if we don't experience God's forgiveness and acceptance, the Bible calls justification.

If we have not experienced God's forgiveness and acceptance, and you keep demanding acceptance in your marriage, you will fight over it and fight over it and fight over it until you probably destroy your relationship.

Because the mate can't forgive you of your sins and accept you the way God accepts you.

They can only accept you the way husbands and wives are supposed to accept each other, which is wonderful.

To go through life without the acceptance of my wife would have been a horrible life.

But I can't expect her to accept me and deal with that core, basic, human need crying out for acceptance from God.

Let's go to Colossians 1.

That's why these gates...we have to understand we're fighting the wrong battles here. Many times in marriage, we're fighting the wrong battles.

We have to get right with God in a relationship, not just knowledge. We have lots of knowledge to not have a right relationship with God. But to have a right relationship with God, that gives us something to work with and to actually build a happy marriage.

Colossians 1.

Colossians 1.21.

And you who are once alienated and enemies in your mind...and I want to talk about the gates to your mountain here.

The gateway...you are the guard of that gate.

And you once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works. Yet now he is reconciled in the body of his flesh through death... this is Christ, of course...to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight. If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, that are not moved away from the hope of the gospel in which you have heard.

What a remarkable set of statements there.

Paul says, look what Christ has done, what God has done for you through Christ. So why? So that you can be reconciled. You can be accepted by him.

We say, yeah, but I've got lots of sins. Well, yeah, he says you have to stay steadfast. But you know, God...he doesn't accept us and say, I don't care, keep your sins. He accepts us and says, boy, do we have a lot of work to do. Those are two different things. Unfortunately, in modern Christianity, somebody would think, well, he accepts me just the way I am so I can stay the way I am. No, he accepts us and then says, let's get to work.

God is positive about the work he wants to do in you. He's not looking at us and saying, I really should just throw you away. That's not how he looks at us. He looks at us and says, I can change you. I can make you what I created you to be. He created us. We're all messed up. He can make us into what he wants us to be if we'll just let him do it. That's acceptance. That's real acceptance.

When we understand this acceptance, we can go to God in our marriage issues and pour them out before God. We can go to God and ask God to forgive us and correct us for our marriage issues, how we're contributing. We have a whole different viewpoint. I can go to God because I know he accepts me and he knows where I'm wrong here. Remember David saying, send me righteous people to correct me. Well, you can just go to God and say, I need help here. Or, my mate needs help. They need help desperately.

I'm here to intercede for them, just like Christ is interceding for me. So we don't think of ourselves as interceding for our husband or wife, do we? We go intercede for them, just like Christ intercedes for us. But they did this to me. They yelled at me. They did this to me. They were mean to me. True. Go intercede for them. But they were wrong. Exactly. Who intercedes for you when you're wrong?

Who intercedes for you when you're wrong? See, there's someone interceding for you every time you're wrong. We have to go intercede for each other. Close this gate. Close this gate. We can't. We can't. Remove the issues between us as husband and wife. Because it's part of our relationship with God, because all marriage is a three-way agreement.

So we intercede for them. But it's not easy with acceptance. Think of Adam and Eve. We look at Eve and we say, you know, she was deceived by Satan. That's true. And we wonder why Adam went along. Because he wasn't deceived. Adam knew this was wrong. I want you to think about Adam for a minute. God made him alone for a reason and then made him feel what it was like to be alone. Remember? He finally says to God, there's nobody for me.

Can you imagine being the only man on the face of the earth? You're it! There is nobody like you. And God says, okay, I'm going to make a helper for you. She's going to be like you but different than you, and she's going to be your helper. And he introduced Eve. And all that loneliness, all that emotional issues that Adam had from being alone, because there's no sin yet, was healed by her.

Let me... She could talk. I named all the animals. Let me tell you what their names are. Let me show you around. Come here. I mean, God's already shown me everything. I can now show you. Think about what it's like to not be alone for the first time in your very short life, when you understood loneliness.

And now, she's had an experience you haven't had, and you're going to lose her. You're going to lose her. You know, gentlemen, this is why sometimes we aren't the leaders in our families. We should be. We're afraid of losing her. Oh, she's not going to leave you. But she's not going to be close to you. And so we don't lead the way we should, because we're afraid of the loneliness, because we need them that much.

I mean, we're made as our helper, and in that fear, we actually drive them away. That's why we as men, when we do what God tells us to do, and our wife says no, we have to say, yes. See, Adam couldn't do it. And you know, I've seen all the people say, well, that's because, you know, she was naked, and he was, no, that's that. It was, I'm not alone anymore. I am someone that's the perfect helper for me. This is the greatest thing God ever came up with. And he was afraid of losing that.

And sometimes we won't lead, because we're afraid of losing it. And then we lose their respect. Now, that doesn't mean we're to be hard and harsh. I mean, most of the time, I want my wife to be happy, and it has nothing to do with God's way. Whatever she wants, she can have. I really don't care. You know? But you know, at times, men, we have to do what's right, even if she doesn't understand it. Now, there's times my wife was doing what's right, and I haven't understood it, and I've had to be humbled by that.

But I'm just talking about her acceptance. Adam's need for the emotional acceptance of his wife was more important than his acceptance from God. Understand what happened here. And you and I can't make that mistake. We can never let our emotions drive us to go against God because of our wives or our children. Now, we have to be real careful, because we can be real harsh if we're not careful.

We're not God. We have to understand that. The second thing is security. Husbands and wives get married for security. I think sometimes wives more than men. They want the security to be able to say, okay, now I can live a life. I have somebody to team up with here, and we can work together, and we can make this life work, because I don't want to be trying to navigate through life by myself. Security is very important. With children, security is really important. The development of children doesn't depend on how much money you have.

It doesn't think what we think a lot of times. Child development depends a lot on security that mom and dad give them. Or even if it's a single parent, the mom or dad gives them. There's a security in who they are, that they can stand on their own two feet, that they're going to make it.

When a couple come together, and they have that security, that we're going to work this out together no matter what, it's amazing what can happen. But you can't trust, you can trust each other. You can expect everybody, the other person, to supply your security. I mean, I've known people where the husband and wife got ill, and they were filled with bitterness because I'm not secure anymore.

I lost one of our incomes, and now I'm bitter, like the person did it on purpose. Hebrews 13. Ultimately, our security comes from God. The more secure we are in God, the more security we will bring each other. The more we will encourage each other to look towards God. Hebrews 13, verse 5. Let your conduct be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have. So he's telling Christians, don't just spend your whole life getting stuff. That's not what life is about.

For he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. That's a promise from God. Now, there's times it feels like he's left you, and there's times he feels like he's forsaken you, and I am so glad I have a wife in those times because she'll remind me he has not. No, he hasn't. But then he says, this is what Paul writes, verse 6. So we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, I will not fear, what can man do to me? That's actually a quote from Psalm 27.

Actually, Psalm 27 is where they think it's from the Septuagint. Septuagint says it's written when he was fleeing from Saul, not Psalm 141. But they're in the same situation. He was being chased by people. Bad things were happening.

He goes back to David, pulls it out, and says, David came to the conclusion, the Lord is my helper, what can a man do to me? And why could he come to that conclusion? Because God had made promises to him. God had never promised him that he would never get sick. God had never promised him that he would live to be 120. God had promised him he was going to be king. So God had promised him. So Saul could hunt him down all he wanted, and he was filled with fear and anxiety because of it, but he also had a security with God, because God is going to let me be king, so he's not going to kill me. That didn't mean he didn't feel fear and anxiety at times. It meant he had a security that came from God. The more you and your spouse's security comes from God, the more you will be secure with each other.

And then the last thing is identity. You know, being a husband or wife, being a parent, is part of your identity.

We all have identities. I am a baby boomer, white male, husband, and father. I can make a whole list of what my sort of identity is. These things all sort of mix together. First of all, our identity should be Christian. That should be at the top, by the way. But we have all these things that are identities, and they all come together.

Sometimes a couple can put so much energy, so much pressure on the relationship, that their only identity is as husband or wife. They have no life outside of that. Now, I'm not saying that we should separate, you know, I'm going to go on vacation for two weeks to leave you behind. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that our identity as husband or wife, that's all there is in life. You know what that means? It means we've made our marriage the center of our lives. And that's a good way to hurt your marriage. You really want to hurt your children's development? Make your children the center of your life. Make your children the center of your life, and you will basically raise self as children.

God has to be the center. And that means our identity. 1 John 3. Scripture was read all the time. 1 John chapter 3. When we see ourselves this way, we must see our spouse this way too. Verse 1. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God. Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God. And it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. But we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in himself purifies himself just as He is pure, just as Christ is pure.

If you see yourself as a daughter of God, or son of God, and I stress daughter and son, sometimes women will say when they go to God, their relationship with Him is partly as a woman. And they need to be seen as a daughter. He sees you that way. They say we are all sons, because sometimes they skew how God is relating to us. He relates to you who you are. The question is, do we see ourselves? Is that our prime motivation in everything we do?

I am a son of God. I am a daughter of God. I am a child of God. That is our prime. That's the top of the list of identities. And of course, husband and wife is under there. It's not on top of it. Which means that if I am a son of God, my wife is a daughter of God. And she must be treated as a daughter of God. And wives, your husband is a son of God. And he must be treated as a son of God. Do we have our identity straight? Do we have our identity straight in how we act with each other? How we see each other? How we appreciate each other?

How much of our frustration and animosity towards each other would change? If you really saw that person and said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, that's God's child. I'm mad at her. He may be wrong. He may need some correction. You may need to go tell him, I love you, honey, but you're wrong. But if you see him as a son of God, not as the man who, I have to wash his dirty, stinky clothes, the man who used to be so nice to me, and now he shows up at the dinner table, and a t-shirt, shorts, and here I am all dressed up for him.

Well, you know, then you need to go tell him. But is he a son of God? How we would treat each other all the time would change if we really looked at each other as children. God! 1 Peter 3.

I want to read 1 Peter 3. This is read in so many marriage sermons, but I want to read it with the thought of seeing each other as the children of God. 1 Peter 3. And as I go through this, many times when I read this in the sermon, someone comes up really upset over it. What are we saying here? Is this what? Well, let's look at what it says. This is one of the gates we have to close. The gate to our mind has to be, what is my thought and what is God's thought.

And this is God's thoughts. Wives, likewise, be submissive to your own husbands, that even if some of them do not obey the word, they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives. When they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. So here's even telling women who happen to have husbands that aren't in the church, and saying, you may win them over.

Now, the only way you can do that if you're a man or a woman, the only way you can do that is your identity, first of all, has to be a child of God. That's it. Because you're dealing with somebody who doesn't know they're a child of God. So they're going to have a whole different set of values on how they deal with certain things sometimes. Do not let your adornment be merely outward. Arranging of the hair, wearing gold, or put on fine apparel. He doesn't say you shouldn't wear a jewel or you wear nice clothes.

He's saying that can't be the focus, merely outward. Don't let your focus just be outside. Rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of the gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.

So that's what wives bring. They're supposed to bring this gentleness and this kindness that tames, to a certain degree, the savage man. For in this manner and forward times, the holy women who trusted in God, who trusted in God. This is based in faith. If you don't see yourself as a daughter of God, you can't do this. This is his point. Only women who trusted in God can do this, because where does their acceptance come from?

Where does their security come from? It has to come from God to be able to do this. Because is your husband always worthy of this? No. That's not the issue. Because even in the context, he says, some of you are really dealing with hard issues because you're dealing with a man who's not even converted. He says, for in this manner, the former times, the holy women who trusted in God, also adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands. As Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose daughters you are if you do good, and are not afraid with any terror.

Now, I'm not saying you should go call your husband Lord. He's making a point here. The point is, is that Sarah, and you know, you look at Sarah. Sarah was a strong woman. There's a lot of strong women in the Bible. There's a lot of women in the Bible used by God to do amazing things. That's not the point here. The point is marriage. And the point is how women are supposed to approach their husbands. And I know, I know that's hard.

And I know some of you are saying, yeah, but he doesn't deserve it. Or, yeah, but you don't know my husband. And I'm saying, lock the gate. Be a gatekeeper and do what the Word tells us to do. And God will bless you. Now, guys, it's like, oh, good. Six verses for them. There's only one verse for us. That's because it will take you 30 years to figure out how to do this one verse.

Husbands, likewise dwell with them with understanding. Okay, guys, we have to strive to understand. Acceptance, security, the very things we're talking about that God gives us, we're actually supposed to give each other in the ways that we can. Identity, yes, I know who she is. She is a remarkable person. Why? Giving honor to the wife, giving honor to the wife.

We are to honor our lives. Well, she needs to be submissive to me. True! She needs to be kind and gentle with me. True! Well, when she does that, I'll honor her. I'm sorry these aren't attached to what I'll do this if this condition is met. That's not what it says. This is what we agreed to do when we marry. That's what we agreed to do. So we have to understand. We have to give honor as to the weaker vessel. That just means physically weaker because the next statement shows that they're not weaker mentally. They're not weaker spiritually. And as being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers may not be hindered.

Heirs together. The point he's making here is you have to understand who you are as a son of God, and you have to understand who she is as a daughter of God because you are heirs together. You can't say you're not spiritually equal to me.

Because if you do, your prayers will be hindered. Understand, gentlemen, what God tells us is we don't do our part. He doesn't listen to us. That worries me sometimes. We don't do our part.

No, son. I put you in charge. Go fix it. You really want leadership? Go fix it. Go lead. How many times are we afraid to lead? But she won't like me. No. Over time, she won't appreciate you. She may not at first. She may not. Especially if you haven't been leading right. Boy, yeah. Aren't you glad you don't hear too many sermons about marriage because they're so hard? There's an attack on marriage happening. There is a frontal attack on marriage happening. The last point I was going to make, I won't go into it real deeply here because it's really a whole sermon in itself.

That third gate, as we have to keep that gate shut, is the willingness to forgive. We can't open up the gate to animosity and despising our mate and putting down our mate and thinking about it, laying there half the night thinking about how badly she treated me or how badly he treated me. You have to deal with the issues, is what I'm saying. I mean, I might say you ignore the issues, but we can't open the gate up and be just overwhelmed with the emotions caused by maybe something the other person did in the way they treated you or talked about you or said something public.

I say, oh, I wish you wouldn't have said that about me.

My wife, everyone else, will say, I said something in public, and I'll think, why did it mean that? She said, yeah, but women would have taken it that way. Oh, well, and of course, she was hurt by it because other women would have thought it was a put-down or something. I didn't think that way.

Of course, I can say almost anything to a man.

He'll just come back with a comeback, right? I mean, it's not quite the same.

It's not quite the same.

Once you've opened that gate to allow yourself to be washed over with frustration— sure, we're going to be frustrated, but when you allow yourself to be washed over with the disappointment, bitterness sets in, and there's no greater enemy to a happy marriage than bitterness.

Those hurts have to be dealt with, and we have to forgive.

Ephesians 4—and I'm just going to do this last scripture because, once again, this is a whole— I thought about just doing the two gates, but this was on my mind when I was putting this together— that we have to forgive. And there's some verses here that we will apply to each other, but don't apply to our mates.

Many times we don't.

I actually know some people that have done this in their marriage. I haven't always done this, but the older I get, the more I try because it's so smart. I mean, it keeps you from being angry or upset or frustrated, and of course the other person doesn't even know you're feeling that way, right? Half the time. Paul says in verse 26 of Ephesians 4, In other words, when we hold anger, the gate is open. When we hold anger, the gate is open and the enemy is coming in. Because one thing we know about Satan, he is an angry being, and he's attracted to anger, and he likes anger, and he wants you and I to be angry all the time.

So we have the gates wide open, the city is being taken because we opened the gate.

And I know people who made a pact in their marriage and did it for years and years and years, they would not go to sleep until the argument had ended, and they were no longer angry. And they said they'd stay up half the night when they were younger. Then they learned just to say, it's not that important. I'm sorry to hug each other. We'll work out the details tomorrow.

And suddenly they weren't angry anymore. They worked out the details. You know, they didn't let it go. They worked them out, but they just refused to even go to bed angry.

He goes on, he says in verse 29, Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. Could you imagine if every time we said something to our husband or wife, we tried to do it for their good to impart grace, favor to them?

Now, I mean, you know, that doesn't mean, oh, I wish you wouldn't have left the dishes in the sink. You could at least rinse them off. Oh, yeah, I should have done that. That's not what this talk about. Those little things.

I get that sometimes.

You should at least rinse them off. Oh, well, get me those. Go get me the paint scraper, because it's on there now, and I can't get it off.

But the idea that what we want to say to our husband or wife benefits them, it's good for them. It's a favor to them.

I've read, or not surveyed, but research done by a marriage counselor who said, he found a couple traits in really happy marriages, and he said one of them was, for every negative comment made, there were five positive comments made. For every negative comment, one of them said to the other, because there's times you have to say negative comments. There's times you say negative comment because, you know, you're not feeling well, and the person's just being rude, and you make a negative comment. But for every one of those, there were five positives. He said that was the average. He actually did all this research on what people said to each other, and he said that makes a huge difference. And that's what it's saying here.

It says, how many good things do we say to each other?

And do not grieve. Remember, we read this in terms of how we treat each other as Christians. How do you treat your wife and your husband?

Because we can grieve the Holy Spirit. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all, all, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you.

You with all malice. And if that doesn't apply to marriage, if we can't do it on our marriages, we can't do it with anybody else either.

We have to rig this of our marriages.

And how do we get the strength to do that? And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God and Christ forgave you.

We go back to God to receive His forgiveness, and there's something about forgiveness that's amazing. It gives us the power to turn around and forgive somebody else. You can only forgive somebody else, really, when you receive forgiveness from God.

And you turn around and give that to them.

We go ask forgiveness from God, but we don't want to forgive, you know, our wife, because she burned a meat bone.

And I mean, that's silly, but you know, sometimes we're angry over silly things.

We don't want to forgive over silly things.

The enemy is storming the walls of marriage.

It's one of the things that there is a literal attempt that's going to intensify over the next few years to destroy it, the whole concept of marriage.

When you have 32 or whatever it is, different sexes, that's changing the concept of marriage, isn't it?

And now, I forget who the politician was. I don't remember their names much anymore. They're just a blur.

I was saying that children, little children, should be able to determine what sex they are.

That destroys marriage, doesn't it? I mean, that's a meaningless statement.

Okay. What sex am I?

I'm a donkey. There you go. That's what I am.

How can they stop me? Sex. Donkey.

I mean, what can you stop? How can they stop you? After a while. Nothing means anything.

Because it's a destruction, a hatred of nuclear family, of marriage, of raising children in that environment.

And Satan's behind it, but those assaults we can see. Okay? We can see those assaults. We can stand up. We can get angry.

Well, you know, that's not going to hurt my marriage. But Satan's got a much more subtle way of attacking us because we leave the gates open.

We leave the gates open.

And you, every man, every woman who's married, you are the gatekeeper of your mind.

And in these three ways, Satan comes through those gates because we leave them open.

Defend the gates. Guard your minds.

Don't try to force your spouse into supplying every emotional need because it's not possible.

Be willing to forgive.

And understand that the only way, the strength that you can have to do this and the way that the Scripture says is we have to be right with God.

Because it is God that gives us the understanding, the strength, the power to love each other at that level because it's the kind of love that He gives us.