We need information about what marriage is so we can have application regarding what marriage does.  We need the 4‑1‑1 on marriage.  That’s why I want to teach this stuff to you.  And if you’re thinking about marriage and thinking it’s a layup or or just kind of walking down the prim rose path, hey today hopefully you woke up and smelled the coffee. Because God’s message to you might be just don’t get married.  Don’t get married if you’re not willing to work.

So we need knowledge about what marriage is so we can have application regarding what marriage does.  And next time I’m going to talk about this:  “Just Stay Married.”  That’s next week.

Illus: You know, when I thought about this message, the work ethic of marriage, I thought about a young couple who has been actively serving at Fellowship Church for 12 years.  In fact, the wife in this Christian marriage has been a part of our leadership team, the core of Fellowship Church for a long, long time.  And in many ways this lady embodies Fellowship.  And as I have looked at this marriage up close and personal over the years I have seen the almost insurmountable odds that they have faced in this marriage.  Huge dysfunction in their family, this young lady battling through substance abuse, dealing with infertility and so many other things.  And from the outside looking in our culture would say, “They will never make it.  He is this former football star; she is the beauty queen.  They’re not going to make it.  Look at their family of origin.  They can’t break the cycle of dysfunction, not when you have substance and infertility and all the stresses and strains and she’s involved in the ministry.  Their marriage is not going to make it.”

So women are smarter than we are.  We have to accept that.  However, God has leveled the playing field when it comes to intelligence.  You see, he has given women emotion and so often the emotions can cloud the logic.  So it sort of evens the playing field, guys.  It is okay to laugh.

Women, though, have a hard time saying, “I’m sorry.  I was wrong.  Will you forgive me?”

What do women say? “I’m just not there yet, honey.  I just don’t feel it yet.  Just let me have my space.  I want to see some change before you come and say I’m sorry, will you forgive me.” Is that right?  Ladies, come on now.  Take a look at Jesus.  What if he would have held grudges?  What if he would have said, “I’m just going to wait.”  What if he would have said, “I just don’t feel like it.”

I’m telling you, reconciliation, that’s where it is at.  Every marriage has the same struggles.  All the marital issues, I don’t care if you’re Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie; they have the same struggles we do.  All marital conflict revolves and is resolved around PMS—power, money and sex.  You thought I was going to say something else.  All the fights are about power, money and sex.  You know that.

Successful marriages are the ones who negotiate through that. And the reason we can negotiate through that and go to a holy ‘notha level is because we have received the ministry of reconciliation and we’re living it out.

How do you spell work?  Worship.  How do you spell work?  Order.  How do you spell work?  Reconciliation.  How do you spell work?  Knowledge.

That’s what’s so awesome about it.  No matter what you’ve done, no matter where you are, you can have victory, too.  And that’s the hope and the confidence that we have of walking in purity. Because as we walk in purity, God will bless us like we have never experienced before.  It’s a choice.  I have to say this: it’s up to you and me.  We either drink toilet water, we’re either animals, dogs in heat. Or we drink the living water of Jesus.  We realize who we are and whose we are.  We realize that we’re the sons and daughters of the living Lord.  And that is some awesome news.

Illus: People ask me all the time, Ed tell me about the long range plans of Fellowship Church.  Tell me about your dreams and your vision of Fellowship Church.  I have been asked that question a squillion times and I love to respond by saying “I’ve never had any long term goals or plans at Fellowship Church.”  We just have not ever done that.  Pretty much God has shown us where he is working, where he is dream, where he is going, where this vessel is heading and we’ve just stuck to it and the rest is his story, or you might say history.  Because we never thought about having a tract of land here in Grapevine years ago.  We never said yeah, let’s have 1,100 acres in east Texas and build this phenomenal camp or let’s have a church in Miami.  They just happened.  We’re just rolling with it.  We’re along with the cruise.  We’re on the vessel.  God’s the captain and we’re just along for the ride.  The ride is not a passive ride.  The ride starts with God and it ends with God.  It’s not about me.  It’s not about you.  It’s about God.

Because next Sunday the title of my talk ‑‑ this is highly controversial but it’s very biblical – the title of my talk is Seven Days of Sex.  If you’re married, I’m going to challenge you ‑‑ I can’t make you, but I’m going to challenge you ‑‑ to have sex with your spouse for seven straight days beginning next Sunday.  Now, for Lisa and I it’s just a normal week.  You know I’m kidding.  But we’re going to talk about that. But don’t jump to conclusions before you hear what I’m going to talk about that.  So singles, make sure that you’re here as well, because it is going to be a very, very interesting talk as we talk about seven days of sex.

You know, everybody is whining about the economy and about the world.  Let’s move from whining to whoopee.  That’s what we’re going to do next time.

But you know what, God has given me the ability to leverage lust and leverage desire for greatness.  I don’t bat a thousand every time.  Don’t sit there and think, “Ed is the ultimate.  He’s perfect.”

No, we’re all fellow strugglers. But I’m telling you, if God can give me the strength, which he has done and which he is doing and which he will do, he can do it for anybody here.  Because in that situation ‑‑ and that could have easily gone to lust ‑‑ I had an opportunity to go to Lust Vegas. But because of this place of grace that God let me to; because of the covenant I’ve made with my eyes and my brain; because I realize what’s at stake, I had victory over that and you can have victory, too.

We’re trying to do our own deal. And what happens is, we drop the umbrella and we begin to walk on the ledge and the edge of compromise. We began to say, “I know what’s best for me. I know how to do life. I know how to relate to members of the opposite sex.”

And then one day we’re attracted to someone—maybe around the office, or in the neighborhood, or around the apartment complex. Attraction is not bad. We’re going to be attracted to the members of the opposite sex. Even when you’re married, you’ll think, “Wow, man he’s handsome.” Or, “Whoa! Look at that girl!” That’s not what will mess you up.

What messes you up is the second look and the third look and then the fourth look. And we convince ourselves, “Man, there’s no way I could ever sleep in the wrong bed! I mean, yeah, I’ve dropped the umbrella. But there’s no way I would ever cheat on my spouse. I mean, it’s not going to happen to me.” And we believe this stuff.

But John 8:44 says that Satan, the evil one, is the father of lies. It says, when he talks, he speaks in his native language. And we’ve all believed those lies before, haven’t we? He’s an incredible liar. He’ll just lie, lie, and lie.

And Satan begins to lie to us and say to us, “Just look at this person. I mean, nothing’s wrong with just looking. Come on, you can just look.”

And then we began to say to ourselves, “You know, there’s no way I could end up in the wrong bed, so I’ll just talk just kind of talk with this person and develop a friendship with this person.”

Think about pornography.  If I get into porn I don’t have to work on a relationship called marriage.  I can just close the door, hop online and see all of this elicit stuff.  It is lazy.  Also it will lead to loneliness.  It always leads to isolation.  So what do we do?  We have to be intentional.  We have to get up and commit to purity.  We have to drag lust into the light, because when lust is drug into the light it loses most of its luster.  Instead of isolation we have to move to community within the church. Because the church is the only entity that has living water on tap.  We have to be in accountability.  We have to talk about these things, because if we keep secrets as someone told me just a couple days ago about lust, our secrets will keep us.

And the enemy says, “You’re the only one that struggles with this.  You’re the only lady.  If people knew what you dealt with, if people knew where you went and website’s you frequented and what relationship you’re thinking about are involved in, they wouldn’t believe it.”

That’s a lie from the pit of hell.  Call Satan a liar.  Drag it out into the light.  Move toward community.  Drink the living water.

Next time, I’m going to talk to those of us who are married about the role that we play in lust.  I’m going to talk to singles, as I always do.  We can’t forget the singles.  Half of our church happens to be single adults.  But I am going to talk directly to those of us who are married and I want you to prepare for what I’m going to talk to you about next Sunday.

What did I do with the beautiful girl?  I made a covenant with my eyes.  I took my sunglasses off.  I wanted Lisa to see my eyes.  I wanted this young lady to see my eyes.  I looked at her in the eyes.  Obviously, I saw that she was beautiful.  I felt the tug, the pull toward the toilet.  But I thought to myself, “You know what, my body is God’s.  My body is Lisa’s.  I’m not going down this path. Yes, it could quench my thirst for that sexual hit, but I will become sick.  And eventually destruction is in the cards.”  And I have to ask you, have you made a covenant with your eyes and your mind?  Because those who are obsessed with lust started out recreationally and accidentally and then you’re hooked into it.  So those who are obsessed with it, and we have many now who are addicted to it, it’s not like it just happened.  No, we have made the choice to go there.

But I have to ask you, how’s it working for you?  How is lust working for you emotionally, ladies?  How is it working for you, physically or mentally, guys?  How is it working for you?  It is really satisfying you?  Is it really giving you that real quench, that real satisfaction?  It always says “More and more and more toilet water and more toilet water.”  We have to mobilize our eyes and our brains, because sex is between the ears before it’s between the legs.  It is mental before it’s in a genital.  We also have to realize something; we have to realize that we are made in God’s image and that we’re not animals.  We have to realize this.  We have to realize where lust leads.  Lust is all about laziness.

He’s tried to get near us through that Bible study, through maybe a church service, through a song, through an event, through something good, through a tragedy, whatever. But if we’ve kept him at a distance, he will simply look at you and say, “You know what? You kept me at a distance throughout your life. You’ll have a greater measure of this in eternity.”

“Most people,” Jesus is saying here, “who think they’re a believer aren’t really a believer. They’re not really followers of Christ.”

Only those—read about it in the Scriptures—who produce fruit, who build their lives on the solid foundation are.. Because Jesus goes on to say that a bad tree doesn’t produce good fruit. A good tree produces good fruit. Matthew 7:16:  “By their fruit you will recognize them.”

Then he talks about homebuilding. He said, “Those who build their house on the rock, when the rogue winds strike, when the storms hit, the house doesn’t move. Yet, those who build their house on the sand, the rogue winds strike, the storms hit, they’re gone.”

It’s all about destruction. Most people who think they’re believers aren’t.

“Now, wait a minute, Ed. Are you trying to get me to doubt my salvation? Come on. Are you trying to get me to doubt whether I’m a Christian or not?”

No way. I am challenging you to take inventory, to take stock in your life. Because we’re saved by faith alone, but faith that saves is never alone.

Well, let me just stop and ask you this question. Okay, you call yourself a Christ-follower, a relic. And yet going to church is hell for you? If going to church is hell for you and you call yourself a Christ-follower, then heaven will be hell for you.

No, a yoke is something else.  A yoke is a wooden device that you yoke two animals to of equal strength, animals that are like one another like a couple of cows or a couple of donkeys or some oxen.  If they are equally yoked and obviously the yoke is tethered to a plow, you’re going to be able to plow in a straight line.  You’re going to be able to go from infancy to adolescence, from adolescence to maturity.  Because this whole Christianity sport is a one another thing.

So it says, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers for what do righteousness and wickedness have in common or what fellowship can light have with darkness?”

Now spiritual teenagers think about this and say, “I’m single and this verse just chopped off about 2/3 of the potential candidates that I could date and marry.  I don’t dig this.  I like kind of vacillating between the infancy, the pacifier stage, and the adolescence stage.  I don’t really like that.”

And some who are married are like, “Whoa, I don’t want my closest friends, my closest marital friends to be people who have the same divine denominator as me.  I mean, I want to have a little fun, a little party, do a little this and do a little that.”

And it is tough.  I mean, there is a relational cost because you’re going to have fewer friends and you’re going to have fewer dates.  This verse does not say, because I know what you’re thinking, I should cut off everybody in my life who does not know Christ.  No. The Bible calls us to be salt and light and leaven.  The Bible calls us to penetrate a darkened world, to build relationships with people who are far away from God without compromise.