Covenant Principles in Marriage | Part 2
This episode continues to explore the profound meaning of living in covenant by emphasizing that marriage is not merely a partnership, but a sacred unbreakable covenant union designed to flourish in unity and love. Throughout the teaching, the Woods provide practical insights and encouragement, equipping listeners with the tools needed to navigate the challenges of married life with faith and conviction.
Order WHAT IS MARRIAGE? & TIME FOR THREE books by Sam & Debbie Wood: https://familyfortress.org/store
Checkout our daily couples devotional podcast TIME FOR THREE: https://time-for-three.captivate.fm/listen
Paul's prayers mentioned in this episode are found in Ephesians 1 & 3, and Colossians 1.
Website: https://familyfortress.org/
Transcript
Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.
Host:It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.
Host:Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.
Host:And now, here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.
Sam Wood:As much as ever, in the time that we're living in today, we need to appropriate the spiritual weapons that God has given to us.
Sam Wood:And I'll mention them very quickly this morning.
Sam Wood:One of them is what Debbie said a while ago is prayer.
Sam Wood:And do we pray?
Sam Wood:Are we praying for our wife?
Sam Wood:Are we praying for a husband?
Sam Wood:Are we praying for our children daily?
Sam Wood:Debbie can tell you, every day I get up in the morning, we pray together for our family.
Sam Wood:A hedge of protection around our family and our children, our grandchildren, our ministry.
Sam Wood:Because we know that we're in a war.
Sam Wood:We know that we have an enemy.
Sam Wood:We know that he wants to do everything he can to distract us so that he can destroy us.
Debbie:You know, when wives come to me and there's problems in the family, there's problems with their husband, there's problems with the kids, it doesn't matter.
Debbie:I direct them always to these three prayers in Ephesians and Colossians.
Debbie:And it's like.
Debbie:And I tell them with all your heart, just claim these and speak them out loud.
Debbie:And put your husband's name in that prayer.
Debbie:Put each one of your children's name in that prayer.
Debbie:And it's like you are praying the power of God right into their lives.
Debbie:Because sometimes we don't know what to pray.
Debbie:We're so confused with what's going on.
Debbie:We don't know what to pray.
Debbie:But this shows you this is the heart of God for the people that he cares about, the people that belong to Him.
Debbie:So I just really believe that if you pray these things into the lives of the people that you love, it will help them to know that they belong to God and that they belong to you.
Sam Wood:Let me just mention a word about these three prayers too.
Sam Wood:And because I think it's significant, if you go back and study these prayers that Paul and every one of Paul's prayers, he isn't praying that they'll be delivered from their circumstances.
Sam Wood:He isn't praying they'll be delivered from their trials and persecution.
Sam Wood:You know what he's praying?
Sam Wood:He's praying that they will know God, that they will come into a deeper relationship with God.
Sam Wood:Because he knows if they understand their position in Christ, if they understand that they can know God in this way, it doesn't matter what comes their way, they'll be okay.
Sam Wood:And so these prayers are powerful that we pray into the lives of each other as a husband and wife.
Sam Wood:Look at this statistic up on the screen here.
Sam Wood:And it says born again Christians who marry in the church after having received premarital counseling and attend church regularly and pray together, experience only one divorce in how many?
Sam Wood:39,000 marriages.
Sam Wood:And that's, that's unbelievable.
Sam Wood:Amen.
Sam Wood:That tells you the power of what we're talking about here this morning.
Sam Wood:The power of prayer, the power of coming together as a family in the church.
Sam Wood:And the power even before you get married, if you're single here today, to making sure you lay a Christ centered foundation for you married before you get married.
Sam Wood:Now let's look at a second weapon, and that's the precepts and promises of God's Word.
Sam Wood:And the precepts and promises of God's word stabilizes the home.
Sam Wood:And the first thing that we would ask a couple, if they come for counseling, the first thing I'm going to ask this husband, the first thing I'm going to ask this wife is tell me about your time in the Word of God.
Sam Wood:Tell me about your quiet time with God.
Sam Wood:Are you having a quiet time with God?
Sam Wood:What do you think their answer is?
Sam Wood:If they're there for counseling?
Sam Wood:No, a lot of them is what is a quiet time?
Sam Wood:Or I used to do that, or sometimes I do that.
Sam Wood:You'd be amazed at how many, hey, listen, I've mentored some young men that go to Bible college and stressed, even after they got married, the importance of daily being in the Word of God.
Sam Wood:Check back with them several months after they're married and they're not doing it, they're not consistently doing it.
Sam Wood:I want to tell you this needs to be a priority in your life.
Sam Wood:The Word of God is a living word and it's sacred.
Sam Wood:It's a power of God.
Sam Wood:We need to make sure this stays in our heart and mind continually.
Sam Wood:It stays in our home.
Sam Wood:So I ask you this morning, do you have a daily time in the Word of God?
Sam Wood:Then I'd ask you as a couple, do you have a daily time as a couple in the Word of God?
Sam Wood:And again, we stress these things.
Sam Wood:I know I've stressed them in this church before, but I'm reminding you how important this is really in the day and time that we live in right now.
Sam Wood:The third weapon is the power of the Holy Spirit.
Sam Wood:The power of the Holy Spirit.
Sam Wood:You know, Francis Chan, if you're familiar with Francis Chan wrote a book entitled, titled the Forgotten God.
Sam Wood:And the forgotten God that he's talking about is the Holy Spirit.
Sam Wood:He says, we have forgotten that the need to be filled with the Holy Spirit in our churches.
Sam Wood:And folks, listen to me.
Sam Wood:I can't stress how much that we need to be filled daily with the Holy Spirit of God.
Sam Wood:We need the anointing of God upon what we do.
Sam Wood:The Bible says in Ephesians 5:18, Be not drunk with wine, wherein it is excess.
Sam Wood:That word excess means you will squander your life away the way a drunk does, but be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Sam Wood:Galatians says to be filled with the Spirit or to walk in the Spirit so that you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
Sam Wood:This is so important.
Sam Wood:Every morning I ask God, I say, God, today, fill me afresh with your spirit.
Sam Wood:God, help me to have the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon my life.
Sam Wood:And I believe when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, listen, the increase in love for him, it bears fruit in our love relationship with each other.
Sam Wood:It bears the fruits of the Spirit in how we treat each other in our marriage, how we treat each other in our family, how we treat each other in the church body.
Sam Wood:Listen, worship.
Sam Wood:When we worship God and often say every counseling problem is a worship problem.
Sam Wood:And I believe it is.
Sam Wood:We're not.
Sam Wood:We're worshiping something else besides God.
Sam Wood:But worship means to meditate on the character of God, to meditate on the attributes of God, who wrote this Bible, who wrote these scriptures here that we hold in our hand, and then we exalt him and we surrender ourselves, as your pastor said to him, as Lord of our life.
Debbie:You know, in doing all that, we're saying, I belong to you, God, I'm yours, and I know you're the one that's going to take care of me.
Debbie:And it's part of this belonging.
Debbie:And you know, Sam mentioned all of these weapons, and that's what Jonathan and David were exchanging, weapons.
Debbie:And we want to remind you, when we come, we bring weapons with us for you all.
Debbie:They're out there on that table and there are resources that will help challenge you or strengthen you and give you understanding to appropriate these weapons.
Debbie:And so we just want to remind you to take advantage of those.
Sam Wood:And let me just add, if you're here today and you say, I'd like to get one of those weapons, one of those books out there, and you don't have money.
Sam Wood:We don't turn anybody away because they don't have money.
Sam Wood:You just Let us know, we'll give it to you, because God will take care of that.
Sam Wood:And we know that now, Jonathan and David, we see them symbolizing, that is entering into covenant by taking on a new identity and by exchanging, we might say, these weapons that we've just talked about.
Sam Wood:But thirdly, and lastly, covenant partners exchange weaknesses for strengths.
Sam Wood:They exchange weaknesses for strengths.
Sam Wood:When.
Sam Wood:When a Christian enters covenant with Jesus, he's able to exchange his sin and inabilities for Christ's righteousness.
Sam Wood:Christ, strengths.
Sam Wood:When I am weak, he is strong.
Sam Wood:When we're faced with difficulties, we're not alone because we belong to God.
Sam Wood:We have the Holy Spirit of God within us all the time.
Sam Wood:Similarly, in marriage, and I love this, Debbie alluded to this a while ago.
Sam Wood:Covenant allows you and your spouse the opportunity to strategically coordinate your strengths and weaknesses for the benefit of the whole, the benefit of the marriage, and the benefit of the family.
Sam Wood:Listen, the old saying, opposites attract is true.
Sam Wood:Debbie is much stronger in a lot of areas than I am.
Sam Wood:I'm stronger in some areas than she is.
Sam Wood:I love the verses in Ecclesiastes, chapter 4 and verse 9 through 11.
Sam Wood:It says two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil.
Sam Wood:For if they fail or fall, excuse me.
Sam Wood:One will lift up his fellow, but woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up again.
Sam Wood:If two lie together, they keep warm.
Sam Wood:But how can one keep warm alone?
Sam Wood:And again, when I'm discouraged, I'm thankful that I have a wife who will encourage me.
Debbie:You know, this is my favorite.
Debbie:Do you see on there when it says, and if two lie together, they keep warm.
Debbie:How can one keep warm alone?
Debbie:Let me tell you, when I am cold at night, my feet are like popsicles.
Sam Wood:Amen.
Debbie:And I can't even sleep there.
Debbie:So cold.
Debbie:And so I like to snuggle up that that's being.
Debbie:That's belonging to each other, you know.
Sam Wood:And my personality is.
Sam Wood:I'm pretty much a.
Sam Wood:I'm kind of type A.
Sam Wood:I'm a decision maker somewhat, but I don't like to handle the tedious details like a finances.
Sam Wood:So Debbie handles all of that, thank God, and takes care of all of that for us individually and for the ministry together.
Debbie:And.
Debbie:But you know, if the car breaks down, listen, I am clueless.
Debbie:If I went to a mechanic, he could convince me to get a new engine when all I needed was a water pump.
Debbie:So you know what?
Debbie:I let Sam handle all of that stuff because he understands machines and God.
Sam Wood:Has made us different.
Sam Wood:Regardless.
Sam Wood:Listen, regardless of what our culture says, God made man and woman different.
Sam Wood:And that's one of the reasons we need each other so much.
Sam Wood:Two are better than one.
Sam Wood:We're a team.
Sam Wood:We coordinate our gifts, our weaknesses, our strengths with each other.
Sam Wood:And many.
Sam Wood:I see so many marriage couples and married couples and married partners that allow their differences to become a point of division instead of mobilizing those differences to strengthen their marriage and to strengthen their relationship.
Sam Wood:You know, recognizing strengths in our physical abilities, personality and special talents allows couple to function as the partners that God made them to be.
Sam Wood:To pull in the same direction together.
Sam Wood:And that's so important.
Sam Wood:To accept new identities, to exchange strength and weaknesses, to avoid conflict by joining forces against the true enemies of marriage requires God's supernatural love within us.
Sam Wood:That's the only way we can do it without it concern for self, self absorption.
Sam Wood:I'll be listen so focused on me.
Sam Wood:I call it meism in marriage.
Sam Wood:It'll interrupt this covenant mindset that we're talking about because I'll be consumed with myself.
Sam Wood:Throughout the Old Testament, God demonstrates his covenant love to his people using a Hebrew word, the Hebrew word chesed.
Sam Wood:And let me give you a definition of this.
Sam Wood:I love this.
Sam Wood:It says chesed is God's loving kindness.
Sam Wood:The consistent, ever faithful, relentless, constantly pursuing, lavish look at these words.
Sam Wood:Extravagant, unrestrained, one way love of God.
Sam Wood:It's often translated as covenant love.
Sam Wood:You'll see it in the Psalms as loving kindness, mercy, steadfast love, loyal love, devotion, commitment or reliability.
Sam Wood:However, hesed has a much narrower definition than the English term love conveys.
Sam Wood:In the Hebrew Scriptures, ased refers to a sort of love that has been promised and is owed.
Sam Wood:Covenant love.
Sam Wood:Covenant love is the love God promised to give to his covenant people and to which they in turn were to respond in kind, loving God with all their hearts, with all their minds and with all their strength.
Debbie:This definition means so much to me.
Debbie:I've got it on my phone just so I'll make sure that I read it regularly.
Debbie:Because what I've found that I'm a type of person that I can real easily sink into all of my inabilities and my inadequacy and gets defeated really quickly.
Debbie:But if I can read that definition, definition, if I can realize that God's love, to me, it's relentless, it pursues me, it comes after me and when I think of all the greatness of that and the consistency of that, it fills a need in my heart so much that I want to give that out And I can give to Sam in the relationship, instead of just sucking the life out of him, I can give to him in the relationship.
Debbie:Now, I love how Paul Miller, he describes how we can actually allow this hesed love, God's covenant love, to function in ourselves, to be expressed in relationships.
Debbie:Hesed love combines commitment with sacrifice.
Debbie:Hesed is a one way love.
Debbie:I don't have to have it back.
Debbie:It's one way love without an exit strategy.
Debbie:I love that when you love with hesed love, you bind yourself to the object of your love no matter what the response is.
Debbie:So if the object of your love snaps at you, you still love that person.
Debbie:If you've had an argument with your spouse in which you were slighted or not heard, you refuse to retaliate through silence or withholding your affection.
Debbie:Your response to the other person is entirely independent of how that person has treated you.
Debbie:Hesed is a stubborn love.
Debbie:You're committed to love and care for that person.
Sam Wood:And I love that.
Sam Wood:A love without an exit strategy isn't that awesome?
Sam Wood:Aren't you glad that God doesn't have an exit strategy for us?
Sam Wood:I mean, we walk all over his love all the time and praise God that we are, we are secure in his hand.
Sam Wood:And that's a wonderful thing that we are.
Sam Wood:In a covenant relationship, the good of the relationship takes priority over the individual needs of those who are in the relationship.
Sam Wood:The relationship itself is more important than the individual needs of each person within that relationship.
Sam Wood:Now, in the ancient covenant, we see this in David and Jonathan, they exchanged garments, they exchanged belts, they exchanged weapons.
Sam Wood:But normally they didn't show it in this passage here.
Sam Wood:But what they would do when they finished doing this in this ancient Jewish covenant is at this time they would have something called a walk into death.
Sam Wood:And that is, they would take an animal and literally cut that animal in half.
Sam Wood:And they would take the bloody halves and they would lay them to the side and they, in a figure 8, would walk around these bloody halves, stand between them, and they would point to heaven and say, God, do so to me, amor, if I break this covenant.
Sam Wood:What they're saying to God is, God, this covenant is so serious.
Sam Wood:God, this covenant is so sacred that if we break this covenant, just as we have shed this animal's blood, you shed our blood.
Sam Wood:This was serious to enter into a covenant relationship and in marriage in the United States of America up to the last 70 years, it was something serious and sacred in America.
Sam Wood:But unfortunately, anymore, it's not necessarily that way.
Sam Wood:After they finished this walk unto Death.
Sam Wood:Then they would take something and they would actually slit their wrist a little bit, make a little cut on their wrist.
Sam Wood:They would intermingle their blood.
Sam Wood:How many of you have ever played cowboys and Indians?
Sam Wood:When I was a little boy, we would try to do that.
Sam Wood:I didn't know what it was about, but we would take ketchup and I would put it on my hands and we would become blood brothers.
Sam Wood:We were practicing the ancient ritual of covenant, not knowing it, but this was what they would do.
Sam Wood:And this dramatic event not only pictured the great sacrificial expense of entering into covenant, but vividly portrayed the great expectation that the covenant would be forever binding.
Sam Wood:In the wedding ceremony, we stand in the presence of God and we proclaim vows to each other with a great expectation of faithfully loving that person.
Sam Wood:We're entering into marriage forever, regardless of our feelings, regardless of the circumstances that we face.
Sam Wood:You remember your wedding vows.
Sam Wood:They go something like this, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, till death do we part.
Sam Wood:Listen, that's total commitment.
Sam Wood:That's saying we are totally committed to each other.
Sam Wood:And wedding vows are not only a declaration of present love, but also a mutually binding promise of future love.
Sam Wood:In fact, Studies reveal that 2/3 of unhappy marriages will become happy within five years if people stay married and do not get divorced.
Sam Wood:If they'll just stick at it, if they won't quit, if they'll keep trying.
Sam Wood:Like ancient covenants, marriage vows are legally binding.
Sam Wood:They keep each spouse from exiting the marriage too quickly.
Sam Wood:Tim Keller and I love this.
Sam Wood:He says this.
Sam Wood:In any relationship, there'll be frightening spells in which your feelings of love seem to dry up.
Sam Wood:I think anybody married here today will say, sometimes I can relate to that.
Sam Wood:And when that happens, you must remember that the essence of marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love.
Sam Wood:So in times, these times, you do acts of love despite your feelings, you must stick to your commitment.
Sam Wood:To act and serve in love, even when.
Sam Wood:No, especially when you don't feel much delight and attraction to your spouse.
Sam Wood:What do we do when our feelings or circumstances change?
Sam Wood:Is crucial?
Sam Wood:It's critical to the survival of our marriage relationship.
Sam Wood:What should we do when the unexpected storms of life come into our marriage, come into our family, and they will come.
Sam Wood:When there's sickness, when there's financial challenges and there's other problems that blindside our marriage relationships, we remind ourselves of the supernatural covenant love, the said love that God demonstrates in the relationship to us through the person of Jesus Christ.
Sam Wood:In Romans, chapter 8 and verse 35 through 39 some of my favorite verses in the Bible, Paul said, who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Sam Wood:Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine, or nakedness or peril or sword?
Sam Wood:As it is written, for thy sake we were killed all the day long we were counted as sheep for the slaughter.
Sam Wood:Nay, in all these things we're more than conquerors through him that loved us.
Sam Wood:For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor debt, or any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Sam Wood:Every Christian husband and wife can appropriate this same supernatural covenant love in their marriage and say these words, and I'm just paraphrasing here, for I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come shall be able to separate our covenant love as a husband and wife which is rooted in Jesus Christ.
Sam Wood:And praise God, he has given us that kind of love, that supernatural love that we can build our marriages and build our life, build our families upon.
Host:Thank you for joining the Fortifying youg Family podcast, and if you feel encouraged by today's teaching, give us a follow so we can invite you back and share us on your socials so more marriages and families can be strengthened and fortified through the truths of God's Word.
Host:Remember, fortifying your family starts with a strong belief in God's Word.
