Voice of the Nazarene 2-9-25

Voice of the Nazarene 2-9-25

Transcript

Unknown: 0:01

Coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene. A week by week. Venture into the Word of God sponsored by the Bucyrus, Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our Pastor Reverend Ray LaSalle, and the voice of the Nazarene.

Pastor Ray LaSalle: 0:14

I'm reading to you from Matthew chapter 19, verse four, here's the nitty gritty. And he answered and said unto them, Have you not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his

wife: 0:39

and shall twain shall be one flesh? I believe that staying together matters. If you don't catch all of the message just right and hit you just a little bit wrong, I want you to never forget those three words, staying together matters. And I know we all come from different backgrounds. Some come from backgrounds that are so liberal, nothing matters. And some of us have Pharisaical backgrounds, and it's all black and white, and there's no give. But I want you to know that out of grace, sometimes I think God is represented so wrong. But I want to say staying together matters. One lady walked into the house, and she said to her husband, said, pack your bags. And he smiled and said, pack my bags. She said, Yes, pack your bags. I won the lottery. Oh, he said, baby. He said, Should I pack for warm weather or pack for cold weather. No, she said, pack everything you're leaving. Couple were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. They'd gone out and they'd eaten together, and on the way home, passing a street light, she looked over and saw a tear glinting in his eye and starting down his cheek, and she said, Honey, are you feeling sentimental because of our 50th wedding anniversary? And it was quiet for a moment. He burst out into a sob, and he said, No, I was thinking about 50 years ago when your father had a shotgun on me and said he would have been thrown in prison for 50 years if I didn't marry you. And he said I was thinking tomorrow I would have been a free man. Now I don't know about this thing about being free, but seems like sometimes marriage starts out as the ideal, and the years pass and it becomes an ordeal, and somewhere along the way, people start looking for a new deal. Somebody said marriage is a three ring circus, an engagement ring and a wedding ring and then the suffering. I don't know about all that, but I do know the divorce rate in America is somewhere between 40 and 50%. So I did just a little research knowing I was coming into the service, and the result is I noticed that the divorce rate dropped 18% between 2008 and 2016, so I begin to research why. And the background was the millennials. They really take a rap the millennials. I mean, some of us in our generation, we just beat the millennials half to death. But millennials have a stronger connection and commitment to marriage than many other generations. For one, they date a whole lot longer. They get married a lot later, and most of them have their career track already set before they get married. But from 1990 to 2015 the divorce rate doubled with those from 50 to 64 years of age, but it tripled at 65 years of age and older. I think Ben Franklin said it best. Facts can be stubborn things. Somebody else said, Don't confuse me with facts, I've already got my mind made up. Well, here's what I want to say. I want to make several observations, and then I want to give you some things I hope from out of my pastor's heart, I hope can be a blessing and a help. And I want the message to be balanced this morning. I want to say, first and foremost, I'm not putting anybody down. I think that guilt is the lowest form of motivation. I wouldn't belittle anybody. Fact of the matter if I'm motivated, I want to motivate from grace and not from guilt. Just want to touch on what God's Word teaches. And the first thing I want you to understand is that God hates divorce. You say, Pastor, why do you say that God hates divorce because he said that over here in Malachi, chapter two, verse 16, God hates putting away our he hates divorce. Now, our marriage may start out in heaven, but many times it gets marred by hell. Why does God hate divorce, Pastor? Well, there are many reasons, but one of the reasons, I believe, is because God doesn't want his people to be hurt. God is a loving God, and God loves you enough that he doesn't want you to go through all of the hurt and the disappointment and the grief of divorce. Now think about this. The subject that I'm addressing is the very subject that Jesus Christ, while on earth in shoe leather, addressed two different times. There, in Matthew chapter 19 and in Mark chapter 10, he addresses this issue of divorce. And if you read real closely into the chapter, you'll notice that he says three words, suffer little children, knowing how hurtful divorce is. God not wanting any of us to be hurt. He says about children, and I want to tell you something. It doesn't matter how young the children are or if they're adults, never underestimate the effect of divorce. I grew up in that kind of a home. You never quite ever get away from the hurt. God doesn't want men and women and boys and girls to be hurt. He's that kind of a god. The second thing I want to say is that God loves divorcees. According to Romans, 8:38, if you'll read it, he's saying that there is nothing that can separate us from God. You will find it pretty hard pressed to prove that divorce is the unpardonable sin. You say, Pastor, I've been through a divorce. What about me? God loves you. Well, I've been divorced twice. Just going to tell you, God still loves you, but you don't understand, I've been divorced three times. Now I'm trying to come to church. I'm here to tell you that God loves you. God loves us even in our brokenness. You say, Well, Pastor, you don't know the grounds. I don't even care about the grounds. You know the guy that went to the attorney and talked about a divorce? He said, You got grounds? He said, Yeah, 40 acres. What's your wife done to ya? He said she beats me up. He said she beats you up. Yes, she gets up before I do. Then you can go on and on with the story, but I really don't care about the grounds. This is what I know. God forgives people. I don't care what background. I don't care where you've been. I don't care what church, what theology you picked up along the way, in what college. God still loves people. And I'm very hard pressed to buy into the concept that if your life has been messed up by divorce, that God is going to punish you forever, and that God can never use you again. My little mother, she had raised two daughters, and by the time I came along, I was just a kid, when both of them had married, just left, my brother and I and mom married a man by the name of LaSalle, who had been married before. My brother was six and I was three. It's been more than 20 years ago. Don't miss the humor. And I watched as they had gotten married before they were converted. And they were married, and they got into revival, and they got saved. And I watched them back of those days when people were pretty hard on this thing about divorce. I mean, you can never be a member of some of the even Nazarene churches. You can sit on the back seat and pay your tithe. You can show up, but you don't ever come on the platform. You see, God only forgives some folk some sins, and other folk, they can't get forgiven as much. So you gotta go back and find out what they've done. So you know how far you can be forgiven or can't be, little sarcasm. Anybody mad at me? I hope not. I'm not here to belittle and I'm not here to be harsh on any one element. But I watched as a boy, my parents being ostracized, being preached at. I watched them being gossiped about. I saw that they went through and they were excluded. I attended bible school with another boy from the same city I was from, and the school was 70 miles away. We stayed in the dorm, and he said to me, your dad's been married before, hadn't he? He said, You know, if your mom and dad don't separate, they're both going to go to hell. And I swallowed a little hard and never said anything. Was all I could do to keep back the tears, because I'd watched the pressure put on mom and dad, and they would sit down and talk about separating, and I'd wondered when I'd go to school when I came home, would I have a mom and a dad there? Would I have a home. If dad leaves, can mama make it? What are we going to do? And we lived under that kind of pressure. It's kind of ironic, this guy could out preach me by 20 miles, way more gifted, had the looks, had the brains. He hit the big time and hit the big camps. He's still preaching. He's into his third marriage now. You know what goes around always comes around. I'm not knocking him, I'm not criticizing, I'm just saying, but the man that married my mother said to me, I believe God's hands on your life, son. People will never allow me to preach, but I believe that God's put his call on your life. And if you go to college and study for ministry, I'll pay the bill. I'll work extra jobs. We'll do without I'll wear my suits longer, and I'll drive a used car. And you know, the only reason I'm in the ministries because of that man. The only reason I'm preaching today is because of that man. The only reason I'm pastoring here at BNC is because of a man that had been married before, but he believed in me and God kept the home together. I believe staying together matters. Here's the third thing I want to say, there are biblical grounds for divorce. Adultery is a biblical grounds, according to Matthew chapter 19, look at verse nine. I'm not making all this up. Part of it's true, okay. Sometimes I wonder about abandonment. Somebody walks off and they leave you and they never come back. You have to go through the rest of your life. Are you trying to is there any mercy? Does God have any mercy? I'm just asking if you read in both of those two chapters, it's brought up about Moses because he said the hardness of your hearts, God allowed Moses to grant him a bill of divorcement. Do you know why those men, by the time their wives, had had about six or seven kids, and they're 40 years of age and they're out of shape, those hard hearted men would put their wives out and go get em a young, 20 year old, and God in mercy knew the law said that they could no longer marry. That woman couldn't marry. She's got kids to raise. She couldn't get a job, It was illegal for the Jewish woman to get a job. The only thing she could do was to sell her body as a prostitute. And God in mercy told Moses, I'm not allowing that hard hearted man to treat that woman that way. She doesn't have to become a prostitute give him a bill of divorcement. I know nobody preaches this. It's right there in front of you. Just study the Scripture. You making excuses, no I'm absolutely not making any excuses that you ought to go out now and get a divorce. I'm saying staying together matters, is what I'm saying. And incidentally, if you want to study about it, God experienced divorce. God went through divorce. I've never heard anybody ever mention it from the pulpit, but you read Jeremiah chapter three and look at verse eight. God said, Israel committed adultery. He said, I'm putting her away and giving her a bill of divorce. Read it, I'm not making this up. And then he turned around and married a gentile bride, and you and I are a part of that gentile bride. You better be glad that he found us and included us. Some of us needed to get in on some forgiveness. Sometimes abuse is biblical grounds for separation. I don't know if that would lead to divorce. I'm not going to make excuse. I'm just saying I don't believe any woman ought to be beat up and and knocked down and blacked eyes and loosened teeth, and ought to put up with it for years, but I'll move along while we're shouting happy. Number four, the perfect will of God is for marriage to last. That's what I'm pushing for. God permits divorce under certain criteria, but God never commands divorce. There's 100% possibility that your marriage can make it if you'll do it God's way. You say, but Pastor, I'm into my second marriage. I'm into my third marriage. Okay, here's what I found work from here on to make it the best that you can. But what about my first and second marriage? What about them? I don't know. I just know I can't resaw sawdust, I can't unring a bell. I can't put an egg back into a shell. I'm saying make it the best. Work at it to be the best you can from here on. Jesus never condemned the little woman that had been married to five husbands only you're shacking up with the guy you're with now you need to get your life straightened out. Just a little thought while I'm moving along, but I want to give you some warning signs, indicators that your family, your marriage, could be in trouble. If I mention a couple and they affect you, don't throw in the towel. Just look it over. But there's a whole bunch of them that affect you. It might be that you would want to take warning and get some help. And here's the very first thing I want to mention, lack of pre marriage preparation. Son said to his dad, Dad, I hear that men in other parts of the world never knew their wife till they got married, he said, Son, that's true in America also. Zoom there it went. Let me tell you something, when I got married in 1974 to my first wife who died, better put that in there. I didn't get any marriage counseling. We never even heard of it much back then it was sink or swim and we swam and sank. Do you realize that for young couples, your chances for your marriage to be a success is 30 times greater if you'll get pre marital counseling? Here's what I understand all of us married strangers. You say, Well, I dated, baloney. It's a whole difference between dating for a long time and being married to somebody. And you find what their breath really smells like in their body odor and their attitude. Yeah, you dated. Okay, here's the second thing I want to mention, coming from a broken home, another warning sign. Every time you divorce, there's a 10% greater chance that the next relationship will end in divorce. Children from broken homes have a greater probability of getting a divorce in their life than those that came from homes that didn't experience divorce. Pastor, you're describing me, here's what I think. Why don't somebody decide we're going to break the chain? Why don't somebody say we're going to break the curse, we're not just going to keep allowing divorce to happen all down through the family tree. We're going to stop it right here and now. Good preaching. You deserve the best. Now, here's the third one, cohabitation. People that cohabitate say they want to give it a try and see how it works. Well, there's a 70% chance of divorce if you've tried that route and then got married, 70% chance of divorce. And if you're cohabitating with a man, there's four times greater chance that he'll be unfaithful than if you were married to the man. And if you're a woman cohabitating with a man, there's a 8% chance the woman will be unfaithful to the man. She's not married to him. We think it helps marriage, but it actually hurts marriage. And I know we do it for different reasons. A woman will do it to secure the man and a man will do it to get the benefits without being accountable or committed. Women can stop that problem dead in their tracks. Well, I love you. Well, if you love me, take me to a marriage altar, we can stop it. Little ironic, pastor, I'm in that situation right now. Well, you can deal with it if you want to. Here's a fourth thing, a weak spiritual foundation. You can't be the husband and wife that you need to be if you don't have the relationship with God that you need. I'm talking about your acceptance of you, your security, your identity, your your purpose, and if you don't find it in Christ, you'll be trying to find your identity or your purpose or your security in a mate, and it's not there. A fifth thing is poor relational support. Proverbs, 13:20, He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. Now, First, Corinthians 14:33 says, Don't be fooled by those who say such things. For bad company, corrupts good character. It's a proven fact that people who have a marriage that lasts associate with people that have a poor opinion of divorce. You say, Well, Pastor, I'm struggling in my relationship right now. We're struggling. Well, it's not time to hang around somebody that's a man hater then. And if you're struggling in your relationship, don't hang around somebody that's a woman hater. If you're struggling in your relationship right now, your marriage right now, the answer is not in happy hour. You see the sign over in Crestline about happy hour. It said from four to seven. They don't even know how long an hour is. So if you're struggling, the answer's not in a strip bar, and if you're just, can I just be real frank with you? Three of you said yes. Their name is Frank. You'd do a whole lot better exercising running down the highway than you would going to some of these gyms, where they dress worse than people in underwear. Well, moving along, don't leave your notes up here anymore, this could get me into some trouble. Winners associate with winners. Losers associate with losers. And many times, when we're struggling with divorce, we hunt up somebody that just went through one you don't need any tips from somebody that's been divorced so many times they've got rice marks on their face. Chronic criticism is the sixth,

Proverbs, 18: 22:54

21, Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. Now most people know that little verse, first part, life and death and the power of the tongue, but they fail to notice the very next verse, verse 22, Who so findeth the wife, findeth a good thing. So he's talking about death and life and the power of the tongue, and then he moves right into a relationship with your wife. Do you know how God created the world? He created it with words. And your world will be created by your words. If you want a good world to live in, your words will make a difference. You want to poor one just sarcastically say little cutting things your words will create your world. And when we worship over there in Psalm 100 verse four, it said that we enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise, thanksgiving and praise. So when we come toward God, we bring our thanksgiving and we bring our praise, and it opens the heart of God to us. Did you know what? When you bring affirmation to your mate, it opens their spirit to you, and when you bring criticism, it closes down their spirit. Fact of the matter, Jimmy Evans said, for every one criticism, there needs to be at least seven affirmations. We have to earn the right through praise to correct an individual. Hey, it's a proven fact that an overweight woman will live longer than a husband that keeps mentioning it. All people respond to raises of praises. Everyone does. Everyone wants to be affirmed. And a nagging wife is like a continual raindrop, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, and nagging never changes. Zig Ziglar said about his wife Jean. He said, I wish I was younger. She said, Well, honey, why do you wish you were younger so I could be married to you longer? Bet you he had a good evening. What about unresolved conflict?

Ephesians, 4: 25:27

26, be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down on your wrath. Don't go to bed upset with one another. Why not? Because verse 27 says you're giving place to the devil. You're allowing the devil to have a foothold. You give the devil a stronghold, and the devil is going to work on that from here on. Some of us just desperately need to grow up, don't we? Don't criticize one another, don't attack one another. Do you know there's no problem so big that it can't be solved? There's only people who are too little to solve big problems. And then there's the blame transfer. This has been going on since the eons of time. God showed up Adam, where art thou and and he looks them over. What in the world is going on? You sinned? And Adam said, Yeah, but it was that woman you gave me. She said it was the serpent, and the snake didn't have a leg to stand on. Zoom, there it went again. Instead of blaming him or her, look in the mirror and fix you. What about shoppers mentality? Well, we're married now, but you better stay in shape. You better stay in shape. We're married, but you better keep me in the lifestyle that I'm accustomed to. We're married but you need to meet all of my needs. Yeah, you're married. You got a shoppers mentality. You're still shopping. And let me just tell you something. There's no blue light specials. You've had it. Well, I want the one God has for me. You got him, Matilda, you got him, Henry, you got the one that God gave to you. Now what are you going to do with making the marriage work? That's what I'm talking about. I don't care if it's a hunk or a chunk. You got him. I don't care if it's Wonder Woman or if you wonder if it is a woman, you got her. Adrian Rogers said, when you get on the marital plane, you throw away the parachute. I'll give you a last one. I think I'm going to quit. I wish now I hadn't got started. A secular view of marriage. 45% of the people of America say they expected to get a divorce. That's scary to me. Is marriage a big deal, Pastor? I think so. It's a big deal that we're committed to one another. No, no, no, it's even a bigger deal that you made a vow before God, government had nothing to do with it. I don't know how they got their hands on it anyhow, this was a God thing. Before God, we make a vow, committing one to the other, but before God. Now, according to Matthew chapter seven, verses 24 through 27 there are two houses being built. One house is built on the sand. Have you ever gone down to the beach and nobody's around and it's the warm and you lay down on the sand, and man, sand is so comfortable. It just feels so right. How can it feel so right and be so wrong sometimes? And not only is it coverable, it's conformable. You can lay down in the sand, just move a little bit, and it just begins to fit you. And if we're not careful, we go through life and we want to get comfortable when we start believing what we want to believe and start what we feel good. But then there's the rock, and the rock is uncomfortable. You know, the real definition of commitment to marriage? Is being willing to be unhappy sometimes and not throwing in the towel. And I don't care whether it's built on the rock or built on the sand. What you'd better worry about, there's a storm coming to your family, and then you'll wish you to build on the rock and not on shifting sands. The storm's going to come, and your only survival is if you build upon a rock, a rock of commitment, one to the other, and before God. Staying together really matters. And you can go home and you can look one another in the eye and said, we're the ones that are going to make it. And from here on, it's kind of like the preacher preaching about tithing. Everybody loves to hear a sermon on tithing. Preacher walked off the platform, and he got right down on the front seat, and he pointed at a guy by the name of Bob. He said, Bob, do you pay your tithe? And his face got red. He said, From now on. And from now on, we can make this thing of marriage work better than it's ever worked. From now on.

Unknown: 31:19

Thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene. Visit us every Sunday at 9am with BNC's Pastor, Ray LaSalle, for more information regarding BNC, visit Bucyrus nazarene.org.