Christ Church Leavenworth
Song of Solomon 2:15
7/19/26
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OT READING: Proverbs 27:1-18
NT READING: Matthew 5:21-32
Do the Dishes
READING OF THE TEXT
Our text this morning is Song of Solomon 2:15 these are the words of God:
“Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.”
The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.
PRAYER
Our Father and our God, we come before You this morning through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. Thank You for Your Word. Help us to hold it in high and reverent esteem this morning, persuaded that by it we live and not by bread alone. We ask these things in Jesus’ Name, amen.
INTRODUCTION
Imagine with me two homes. They are in the same neighborhood with the same blueprint. Each house is occupied by the same number of people: a husband, a wife, and three children. Life happens in both houses; and because of their similarities, it produces roughly the same amount of mess in each: clothes are worn, meals are made, toys are played with, dishes are dirtied, grass grows, and toilets are flushed.
Now imagine that one of these homes has an overgrown yard, a sink full of dishes, a hamper full of dirty laundry, and toys all over the floor. The other household, however, has freshly mown grass, a clean sink, clean dishes in the cupboard, clean laundry in the dressers, and a clean floor. What is the difference? The difference in these two homes is not the rate at which things are getting dirty, the difference is the rate at which things are getting cleaned. In both homes dirty clothes end up in the hamper, but in one they also get laundered and folded. In both homes dishes get used, but in one they are washed and put away after meals. In both houses the kids play with toys, but in one they are cleaned up before dinner. Even though they generate the same amount of mess, they look, feel, and smell very differently. Life is messy and how you deal with that fact, or in some cases, how you don’t, can make it even messier.
The same thing is true of marriage. If you see two marriages and one is happy and pleasant and the other is not, the difference is not that the one has sin in it and the other one doesn’t, the difference is that the one has dealt with its sins and the other one hasn’t. The difference is not that there is no sin in the happy home, the difference is that there is no sin in it anymore. Why? Have the people in that marriage stopped sinning? No. They still sin, but they deal with it… daily. In other words, they do the spiritual dishes. Ephesians 4:32 says it this way, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.” That is how you address the messes as they happen: you forgive others as you have been forgiven by God in Christ. A house where sin is regularly shoved into the closet or under the bed will eventually begin to stink, but a house where sin is dealt with in Christ’s name will smell like fresh bread baking in the oven.
So, why doesn’t everyone just do that? Doing one night’s worth of dishes tonight is easier than doing two night’s worth tomorrow, right? Sure, but you know what’s even easier? Not doing the dishes… at least at first. But life still happens and things add up and eventually you have a sink full of dirty dishes that is threatening to invade the countertop. As hard as it was to do dishes last night, it is that much harder now that another day’s worth of dishes have been added to them. Not to mention that they are literally harder to do now that the gunk has had some time to harden. If you don’t rinse oatmeal off day one, you might as well throw the plate away. They should build houses out of old oatmeal. The same can be said for ketchup. It rinses off with some water now, but later it will require some muscle.
The same is true of sin. It is hard to repent when you’ve done something wrong and it is hard to forgive when you’ve been hurt, but it is much harder to repent once you’ve allowed that sin to harden and it’s a lot harder to forgive when you’ve allowed a crust to form over your heart. Life is made up of little things and they all add up. What we call a long day is usually just a lot of short trials added together. And that is why long days call for short accounts. Those little things, if left unresolved, can become a big deal. And that is where our text comes in.
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT
Everything has its problems. If you are single, you have the kind of problems single people have and if you are married, you have the kind of problems married people have. In our text, foxes are the problem. If you have a garden, you will have foxes and the more fruitful the garden, the more critters you will have to contend with. Now, you can either watch them destroy your garden or you can deal with them. It is the same with marriage. If you have a fruitful marriage, you will have sins that try to sneak in and wreck it and the more fruitful the marriage, the more attractive it will be to poachers. Keep in mind: the foxes are the problem, not the fruit. And sometimes, it’s the little ones that end up causing some of the biggest problems.
The good news is that little foxes cannot do as much damage as the big ones and they are much easier to stamp out. The problem with little foxes is that they are much harder to catch and easier to take less seriously. It’s just a little fox. It’s actually kinda cute. Can we keep it? What should we name it? But if you cater to them simply because they are little, they will end up devouring your entire garden. Over time they will only grow bigger and stronger with every bite, and if you wait too long, they will grow too strong for you. This is the same when it comes to sin. The time to deal with little sins is when they are little. Their size makes it easy for them to sneak in, but it makes it easier for you to deal with them. Consider James 1:15-16 “Desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. Do not be deceived.” Little sins are not little evils. They are just as evil as the big ones, they just lack the ability to do as much damage as they would like to. Sins are evil from the moment of conception. They are wicked even when they don’t seem like that big of a deal. When they are that little, they cannot be seen by others and the one who has them might not even notice them. But eventually, they develop into something no one can ignore.
A woman who is 3 weeks pregnant might not even know it herself, and a woman who is 2 months pregnant might be the only one who knows, but a woman who is 9 months pregnant cannot hide it from anyone. The same is true of sin. Once conceived, it will grow in secret, but it won’t stay a secret forever. It will eventually be born and when it grows up, it will kill you. “Do not be deceived.” Your sins will slay you the first chance they get. You cannot domesticate your disobedience. There are no tame sins. So, as John Owen once put it, you must “be killing sin or it will be killing you.” That means catching the little foxes and tossing them out of your garden before they become big foxes. Repent of your little sins and walk away from them before they get strong enough to destroy your life. Weeds will grow. Foxes will come. Rabbits will get in. And if you do not deal with them, you will be one of those unfortunate souls who used to have a garden. So, put up fences, pull up weeds, and spray for bugs. What a good gardener would do for his garden, you must do for your marriage. Let’s change the metaphor for a moment.
CHANGING THE METAPHOR
Consider Ecclesiastes 10:18 “Through sloth the roof sinks in, and through indolence the house leaks.” Laziness leads to the roof caving in and indifference leads to leaks. When a roof caves in, it appears to happen all at once. It was there a second ago and now it’s all over the floor. Anyone can see that. But what they don’t see is the years of neglect that led to that final collapse. Anything that can be put off, often is, unless someone takes the initiative. You don’t have to change the oil in your car this afternoon, for example, but if you put it off long enough, you will have to replace the engine. You don’t have to get a new roof on your home this afternoon, but if you neglect it long enough you will have water in your house. Many emergencies were actually years in the making. In other words, they were avoidable, but no one took the initiative to avoid them because they weren’t demanding anyone’s immediate attention. It reminds me of something one of Hemingway’s characters said after being asked how he went bankrupt. His response was, “Two ways: Gradually, then suddenly.” That is how it often happens.
Clutter builds up over time. Remember our two households from before. Both were making messes at the same rate, but only one was addressing them as they came up. As a result, one of them was slowly falling apart and the other was thriving. The condition of the one was deteriorating over time and someday, someone is going to look around and ask, “How did we get here” I’ll tell you how: gradually and then suddenly. It added up and then all of a sudden it was too much. That is what can happen in a home where disrespect, neglect, unforgiveness, unkindness, selfish ambition, and bitterness have been accumulating. Every unforgiven sin is like another dirty dish in the sink. If that is your home, you are in a rough spot, but even still, you are not yet without hope. Your house has not been condemned yet. So, confess your sins, forgive your spouse, grab a sponge, and get to work. Start with the dishes on top and work your way down. You don’t have to do the dishes at the bottom of the pile yet. You can only do what you can do, but you must do what only you can do. There is no such thing as cruise control Christianity and there is no such thing as a set it and forget it marriage. Some assembly is required.
To repurpose one of Chesterton’s observations, “Can you hate your marriage enough to want to change it and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?” Some people hate the state of their marriage, but do not love it enough to change it, and so they seek a divorce. Some love their marriage, but do not hate their sins enough, so nothing changes. So, can you hate its faults and love it enough to fix them? Can you hate the sins that come against it, even if they are your own? If your marriage feels like a sink full of dishes, you need to hate the habits that led to that enough to change them and you need to love your marriage enough to start doing the dishes. All spouses have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No marriage is perfect. But if that is the case, you’d expect all married people to be miserable, right? But look around, some aren’t. Why? The grace of God? Sure, but not if by that you mean something like “They got lucky.” No, it really is the grace of God, but the grace of God is the hard and humbling work of getting into the habit of confessing our sins and forgiving the sins of others, just as God in Christ has done for us. So, if you want that, but you don’t know where to start, what should you do? That is where our NT reading from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount comes in.
SHORT ACCOUNTS FROM THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
In :21-26 Jesus is clear: our disposition to God is connected to our disposition to men. So much so, in fact, that if you are bowing before God in prayer and realize, at that moment, that you owe someone an apology, you should stop what you are praying, get up, and go to that person in order to ask them for forgiveness. If you are not already in the habit of doing that, someone else is in the habit of giving you more grace than you realize… and much more than you deserve. Understand how important this is: obedience is better than sacrifice. God wants you to get right with those you have wronged before you give Him anything. He doesn’t need what you are trying to give nearly as much as your neighbor needs that apology or as much as you need to learn to humble yourself.
And notice that there is an urgency to this. “Come to terms with your accuser” How? “Quickly” Not when you get around to it or when you feel like it, but right now, this very instant. If anyone has an accusation against you, go to them and come to terms with them right now. Do not allow any accusation against you to linger. If you were in the wrong, you are in debt. You owe them an apology. Do not force them to extend a line of credit to you for another day. Pay what you owe and say, “I’m sorry.” In other words, keep short accounts. Do not let debts go long unpaid and do not refuse someone who is attempting to pay you what they owe. Ask for forgiveness as quickly as you are able and accept an apology as soon as it is offered. Make a habit of addressing things in real time and do not put them off until later. It will never be convenient to have an uncomfortable conversation and apologies are always inconvenient. But it doesn’t get any more comfortable later. In fact, it usually gets worse. So, pay what you owe as soon as you owe it. Consider Proverbs 3:27 “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.” Is an apology a good thing? Yes? Is it owed to someone you have wronged? Yes. Is it within your power to say, “Sorry.” Yes. So, pay what you owe. Do not withhold a good apology from one to whom it is due.
Ok, but how many times do I have to do that? As often as you need to dingdong. And if you are on the other end of the equation, the answer is the same. How often do you need to forgive someone? As often as they ask. Consider Matthew 18:21-22 “Then Peter came up and said, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times.’” Phew, dodged a bullet there, right? Wrong! Let the Man finish. As He was saying, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.’” What? That’s way more! Peter thought he was being generous by offering to forgive his brother up to seven times, but Jesus turns it around and condemns him for his stinginess. Here’s the point: in Christ, there is more forgiveness than there are sins… thanks be to God! And we need to learn to imitate that reality.
Now, if being sinned against seventy-seven times by the same person in the same way seems hard to imagine, you’re probably not married and you definitely do not have kids. When we’re upset, we’re tempted to say things like, “You always…” which is more than seventy-seven. But what if instead of exaggerating, you’ve actually been counting… and this is the seventy-eighth time, are you now justified in being upset? Maybe, a little; but are you justified in withholding forgiveness if they say they’re sorry again? No. How many times have you sinned against God? And how many times has He forgiven you? Go and forgive one another like that.
What is more likely? Someone saying the same hurtful thing to you seventy-seven times or someone saying something so hurtful that you remember it seventy-seven times. They only said it once, but it left a mark… a mark you remember often and still think about it a lot. So, what should you do? Forgive them… again. Each and every time you remember it, you need to remind yourself that you have already forgiven them. You must resist the temptation to make them apologize to you again. Instead, you must force yourself to forgive them… again. Your unforgiving heart is your problem, not theirs. Your bitterness is your fault.
Where short accounts are not kept, long days will follow and that can lead to a longing for a change. And that is the next thing Jesus addresses in :27-30. When you are discontent with your spouse, you will be tempted to look lustfully for another. You might wonder if it would be easier to end your marriage than it would be to try to mend it. Rather than apologize to your spouse, you might look for someone you haven’t wronged yet and instead of paying what you owe, you might look for someone you don’t owe anything to… yet.
And that is why you have to take this business of short account more seriously. You need to get radical. If your right eye is always critical, you need to cut it out. If your right hand is always clenched in a fist, you need to cut it off. If your right way of thinking is leading to bitterness in your heart, you need to take those thoughts captive and force them to obey Christ. It is better for you to lose an argument and save your marriage than it is to win the fight and lose your spouse. Strictly speaking, there is no winning against your spouse. A loss for one of you is a loss for both of you. Your team doesn’t get any points when you dunk on your own basket. And if you make a habit out of embarrassing your teammate, you won’t have a team left, and that is where Jesus goes next.
:31-32 Divorce only looks attractive after things have gotten ugly. But even then, it is NOT an easy out. It is more than paperwork. As painful as gouging an eye out is, it can be survived and as hard as losing a hand off would be, you could learn to live without it, but a divorce is a death. It is not a surgery, it is an autopsy. Divorce is more like a murder than a mutilation and that is why this is urgent. You must be more willing to lose a limb than you are to lose your life. You must be more willing to cut yourself off from things today than you are to kill your marriage tomorrow.
WISDOM FOR WEDDINGS
And that leads us to our OT reading. Let’s walk through Pr 27:1-18 and apply it to our topic du jour. :1 Do not put off until tomorrow what you know should be done today. Do not presume upon the patience of your spouse. If you owe an apology now, give it now. Do not boast about how humble and repentant you will be tomorrow, be humble and repentant right now. :2 Also, do not boast about how reasonable you’re being, that’s not a reasonable thing to do. Be reasonable and allow your spouse to praise you for it. Do not spend a lot of time giving yourself credit for all that you do. Instead, spend more time thinking about all that your spouse does. And then make sure you are recognizing and honoring them for it. Do this often and it will lighten the mood of the home. :3-4 Holding grudges, however, will make everything feel heavier. Every little thing will be a big deal. So, if you have an issue with your spouse, either bring it to them or let it go, but whatever you do, don’t sit on it. If it’s big enough to bring up, bring it up. If it’s small enough to let go, let it go. But do not add it to an ongoing list of wrongs.
And while you’re at it, ditch that list. “Love keeps no records of wrongs” (1 Cor 13:5). If you come to me with a long list of everything your spouse has done wrong, I know at least one thing to put on the list of things you’ve done wrong. The sins of others do not justify our own. If they did, Jesus died for no reason. We wouldn’t need to look to the cross, we could just look to the list of all the times we’ve been wronged. Instead of a cross necklace, we could keep a list of complaints on a chain around our necks. If that sounds ridiculous, it is because it is. So, if you’re doing that, knock it off. We are not justified by being victims. We are justified by confessing our offenses and forgiving those who’ve offended us.
:5-6 An open rebuke is better than hidden love, but a hidden rebuke is worse than either. A hard word can sting and a good word that is withheld can hurt, but a constant grumbling under the breath is unbearable. Either let it be known or let it go. And expect the same treatment in return believing that it is better to feel stupid about being bad than it is to feel good about being stupid. But rebukes require relational bank. Giving a rebuke is like writing a check. If you have bank with someone, you can make a withdrawal every once in a while; but if you don’t have money in the relational bank, your relationship will not be able to clear the check. Relational bank is built up over time through consistent, kind, and encouraging words that serve as deposits. Someone who regularly invests in you can say hard things to you without bankrupting the relationship. But keep in mind, flattery is fiat. Do not try to steer your spouse with fake praise. Make your corrections and your kisses count. Your spouse is not your opponent.
:7 When you are satisfied at home, you can say, “No” to other offers, even if they are attractive. Just as the one who is full after dinner can say, “No, thanks!” to dessert, the one who is happy with his marriage can say, “No, thanks!” to all that devil’s food cake that shows up on his phone. But the one who is desperate cannot say, “No.” Just as a hungry person might be willing to eat bitter herbs in order to avoid starving to death, a discontent person might be willing to drink poison to quench his thirst. And so, :8, it is good for a man to spend more time at home with his wife. If he is always out with the guys or in the garage, he is in danger. A marriage is more than having a cute roommate who can cook. If you don’t like being home, work on making it somewhere you want to be. And you can’t do that from somewhere else. As Martin Luther once said, “Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.” That is the goal.
:9 Just as a nice bouquet adorns a room, so good advice adorns a good friendship. Blessed is the man who finds a wife who is also his friend. After all, there is only so much febreeze can do. It can make a stinky situation more tolerable, but it does not flush the toilet. Better to have a friend who helps you deal with the problem than one who merely tries to make it sound better. :10 So, do not take your spouse for granted. Once upon a time, they loved you enough to say, “I do,” and you loved them enough to say it back. Don’t let your “I do” become an “I did.” Pick up your “I do” daily and say, “Yes,” to your spouse again. Do not depend on the title of “husband” or “wife” to do all the work for you. A close friend is better than a distant spouse, but best of all is a spouse who is a close friend. So, how are things going at home? Good question. If you have kids, ask them. :11 Wisdom is justified by her children. What do your kids think of your marriage? Do they like what they see? Do you want your kids to someday have a marriage like you have right now? :12 If not, what are you going to do about that? If you see danger coming, what can you do to prevent it? Are there sins you need to confess? Habits you need to break? Are there words you need to start saying? Like “Sorry” and “ Good job.” The simple sees all of this and does nothing about it and he suffers for it… and his marriage suffers for it… and his children suffer for it. You cannot be in a covenant and keep things to yourself. I don’t just mean that you shouldn’t do that, I mean you CAN’T. Your decisions affect others.
:13 Anyone who looks for security outside of a covenant is asking to lose his shirt. If you put your trust in strangers instead of your spouse, you are begging for trouble. And if anyone outside the covenant is trying to convince you to put more trust in them than in the one you vowed to trust, that person is an adulterer. They are attempting to separate what God has joined together. :14 So, work harder to understand your spouse than you do to understand yourself. You cannot bless them without getting to know them. Just because you like early mornings doesn’t mean they do. It doesn’t matter what you call it, they will call it a curse. You can say, “I was just trying to be nice” all you like, but if they do not like what you’re doing, it isn’t nice to keep doing it. So be considerate and do unto your spouse what you would have them do unto you. That means taking the time to figure out what they like and then doing that for them, whether you feel like it or not. After all, Isn’t that what you wish they would do for you?
:15 There is a big difference between a lawn sprinkler and a leaky faucet. Both involve water, but one grows grass and the other grows tiresome. Ladies, nagging your husband is not the way to help him grow. You can call it fertilizer all you like, but its only resemblance is the smell. :16 And that’s because a nag is impossible to satisfy. Once you address one of her concerns, another one is locked and loaded. A nag never runs out of ammo. Trying to satisfy her is like trying to hold the wind in your hands or like trying to pick up spilled water with your fingers. So, do not nag.
:17 Instead, be helpful. Iron sharpens iron because they are the same. When you presume to be better than your spouse, you can cut them, but you cannot sharpen them. So, do not come in on your high horse looking to help; instead, come alongside them. If you do that, you will both grow sharper together. And lastly, :18, if you take all of this to heart and invest in your marriage, you will enjoy its fruit. As Ephesians 5:28 reminds us, “He who loves his wife loves himself.” Because you and your spouse are one, a win for them is a win for you. Looking to their interests is looking to your own. So, tend to your own fig tree and you will eat its fruit. Mind thine own beeswax and you will find more honey at home.
CONCLUSION
So, let’s end where we began. If you have a sink full of dishes waiting for you at home and you’re wondering what difference cleaning one cup will make, keep this in mind: there will always be dishes. The question is not IF there will be dishes, but HOW many and WHAT will be stuck to them? You can control some of that by what you serve, but you cannot get away from it altogether. If you think you can ever do the dishes so well that they never have to be done ever again, you don’t understand how life works. Life is messy. Do the dishes. In a similar fashion, if your goal is to repent of sin so well one big and heartfelt time that you never have to do it again, you do not understand how sin works. As Luther’s first of The 95 Theses reminds us, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” So, if something gets knocked over, pick it up. If something spills, clean it up. If something breaks, sweep it up. If you lose your temper, confess it. If you get impatient, admit it. If you get grouchy, own it and don’t get even grouchier if we all notice. You’re not as good at hiding your moods as you think you are. Just admit it and move on. Moods do not go by making excuses, they go by kicking. So, have some faith and get to work: the dishes are not going to do themselves.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, help us to be kind and compassionate to one another and to forgive one another just as You have forgiven us in Christ. Bless our marriages and help them to be faithful pictures of the Gospel. Let grace reign in our hearts and in our homes on earth as it does in Heaven. We ask these things in Jesus’ name and we offer up the words of the prayer He taught us to pray singing…
