Hey gang, thanks for coming back to read the second instalment. This series will run until the end of the month and there is a certain dynamic present in the services that is lost here in print, however, we will continue to run the notes!
We learned last week that the Gospel is relational and not merely positional we also learned that the first step to wrecking our lives is to reject the Gospel. In doing so we no longer see sin as sin, ourselves as sinners or Jesus as the savior and I’m sure I don’t have to tell the lot of you in here what kind of havoc that reeks in a life.
So then,I want to talk to you about wrecking your relationships with others, I had intended on focusing solely on marriage, but there are several people I’m addressing that are past that season or not quite into that season in their lives—but to be sure all of the overall principals set forth here apply to marriage as well as any other relationships.
However, let’s glance quickly at institute of marriage and lay some ground work to consider and discuss briefly how to wreck a marriage and then we’ll move onto relationships in general. Your marriage is the most important relationship besides your relationship with Jesus Christ. So then it is something to be worked, something to be celebrated, something to be cherished and something to be nurtured. A good solid marriage is a gospel grounded marriage .Look at
Eph 5:22-33 (not all of it is posted here for the sake of space)
"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word"
Now most men leap when that first verse is read and most women cringe. However, if you keep reading you see the gravity of the passage as a whole. Thinking back to the first lesson we said, and will continue to stress, that the Gospel is relational and influences and touches every single area of our lives.
When it comes to marriage the Lord has saw fit to make it a cosmic drama that illustrates Christ’s love for His church. Man, you get the honor of playing the part of Jesus in this drama. The woman plays the part of the church and as such we should act accordingly. When we remember that our married life is playing out the drama of Christ and the church we’ll be more aware of the Gospel as well as the mandates of how we ought to treat one another. A few weeks back I mentioned that the man is like a cast iron skillet and the women is like fenton glass. Peter reminds us that if we’re not walking right with the wife God has given us then it will hinder our prayers. So, keep that in mind.
The whole of the law of God hangs on 2 hinges, this is what Jesus told us. Love the Lord and love your neighbor as yourself. Needless to say relationships are important. The bible has many illustrations of how relationships are supposed to work—and we don’t really have the time to get into a whole lot of them, however we can see it exemplified in David and Jonathan, Elijah and Elisha, Jesus and his disciple and Paul and Timothy and Titus.
The first step to wrecking your life is to reject the Gospel—the first step to wrecking relationships is to make it all about you. Be someone who doesn’t listen, someone who is inconsiderate, unforgivning, bitter and full of complaining. Make sure the only reason that the relationship exists is so that rather than giving and gaining you simply “get”. Remember Love lives to give and lust lives to get. There are essentially 3 types of relationships;
Those who enjoy your passion.
Those who drain your passion
Those who feed your passion.
So what we need to do first is simply make the whole relationship about what we can get from the other person. Be fake, superficial, and disingenuous. Get your sense of personal identity through your material possessions rather than from Christ. Simply forsake biblical principles of friendship and the process of building relational equity and make the entire relationship about you.
Prov 19:4
Wealth makes many friends,
But the poor is separated from his friend.
This of course can play out in a variety of ways from never listening or supporting to ditching them when they hit the skids. I know it sounds silly but I have seen that particular proverb play out in all kinds of everyday situations.
Another quick way to wreck relationships is to feed your friends weakness or find someone to feed yours.
Prov 27:17
As iron sharpens iron,
So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.
Eph 4:29-31
Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Rather than spending your time discussing the word of God, His faithfulness, their future, God’s ability to bring them through anything etc. Take time and encourage them to do the opposite of all these things. Let conversations focus around the past, what type of person they used to be and basically just lament over the fact that you wish that you could go back to “the good old days”. What this does is acts as a repellent to those that are truly following Christ. Discussing the past in a favorable way, complaining, being critical, justifying sin---all of this is something that will feed weakness and in the end destroy the friend and eventually the friendship.
How so? Well, the influence that you have with them, the relational equity, will be seized upon and rather than God molding them you being to mold them. I’ve seen this several times in marriages where the husband or vice versa complains that the spouse is not the person they married. Case in point they are not and it is sometimes due to the steady diet that the other one feeds them—if they were to look close they would see their own finger prints all over their mate.
To feed your weakness hook yourself to unbelievers, hypocrites or “religious” folks all the time. Now I know this one tends to get a little dicey. There is of course nothing wrong with having unbelievers as friends how else would we ever win them. The problem comes when your only friends are nonbelievers.
2 Cor 6:14-16
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God.
Notice here that it is not simply talking about marriage. It is relationships in general. I’ve found more often than not this ploy is not meant to ruin relationships between people exclusively but rather to wreck your relationship with God. This is someone feeding YOUR weakness.
It’s something that needs to be prayfully considered. I’m not suggesting that we cut off all relationships with unbelievers, as Paul said, to do so means that we would have to leave the world. What I am suggesting is that you keep your relationship with God at the forefront and keep in mind that the Gospel is relational and then ask how it is affecting the other person. Because if I am not influencing them—they are influencing me.
1 Cor 15:33-34
Do not be decieved: "Bad company corrupts good character." Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God — I say this to your shame.
Your relationship with God is the most important thing in the world. The Gospel has saved your life, you need to be cautious about spending all your time with those that mock what you cherish by the way they live. It’s important to note that this can also lead to compromise. It might start small like a word or a song or a movie etc. Yet it has the capacity to build to something greater. Since they are a friend they will most often cover such offenses but they will do more harm than you realize.
However it is often the claim of someone, especially in the area of dating, that the reason they’re hooked is so that they can win them. More often than not though you get sucked into a life of compromise to get them “won”---if indeed they do get won through compromise then we have won them to a compromised Gospel. A compromised Gospel is no gospel at all. To all my single friends, if Jesus can take the cross, defeat death and conquer the grave I believe he is well able to bring a good, Godly mate into your life—wait on Him.
Now some of you might have balked at that. That’s okay, I didn’t say it the word says it. So you want to make the whole relationship about you, you want to feed weaknesses and have weaknesses fed and compromise.
The last way to wreck relationships I want to touch on is pride. Yup! Satan’s great sin will wreck relationships. Make everything about you, feed each other’s weaknesses and be proud. Pride takes on many forms. Being arrogant, being haughty, begin stiff necked and many other ways. The word of God is clear here. Submission is the order of the day and really the grounds for all good relationships.
You see Love in its lowest form is submission. You can submit to someone without loving them---people do it all day at work. However you will never truly love someone until you let pride die and submit to them.
Eph 5:20-21
giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God.
Concerning this verse Wuest states:
“The Spirit-filled life should express itself by “submitting" The simple verb “tassœ” had a military meaning behind it basically, "to draw up in order of battle, to form, array, marshall" both troops or ships. It speaks of soldiers marshalled in military order under a commanding officer. Thus, it speaks of the subjection of one individual under or to another. The prefixed preposition hupo means "under." Hupotassœ in classical Greek meant, "to subject, make subject." In N.T. Greek, it means, "to arrange under, to subordinate, put in subjection or "to subject one's self to, to obey."
Subjecting one's self to another is the opposite of self assertion, the opposite of an independent, despotic spirit. It is the desire to get along with one another, being satisfied with less than one's due, a sweet reasonableness of attitude.
Husbands submit to the Lord.
Wives submit to husbands.
Children submit to the parents.
Younger submit yourselves to the older.
Everyone submit to the ordnances of the land.
Workers submit to bosses
Church submit to spiritual authority.
In short we are to maintain a humility that considers others. An attitude of loving concern for one another essentially strips authority of its "rights" and also strips submission of its humiliation. When talking about “submission” as the antithesis of pride it boils down to humility.
True friendship and true marriage comes under the person and lifts them up so that they might be the best that they can be. True humility comes in knowing that God would have no problem doing anything without me, but I would not be able to do anything without God. As such if we truly want to wreck a relationship be proud.
Demand your rights.
Be unforgiving
Refuse to take responsibility for your actions
Disreguard personal integrity
Be bitter
Follow these steps and I can assure you you’ll be someone even you don’t like. So if you wanna wreck your relationships; reject the gospel, make it all about you, feed your weaknesses, compromise and be proud.
Join us next week we’re going to talk about that oh so sticky subject of money.
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