day no. 17,464: the golden rule of marriage (sermon outline)

Christ Church Leavenworth

Matthew 7:12

8/30/26

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OT READING: Leviticus 19:35-37

NT READING: Matthew 7:1-14

The Golden Rule of Marriage

READING OF THE TEXT

Our text this morning is Matthew 7:12, these are the words of God

“Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

May God bless the reading of His Word, let’s pray.

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

One of the earliest lessons we all learned was some version of the Golden Rule. It may have been framed in the negative, as in, “How would you like it if someone did that to you?” or it may have been stated in the positive, as in, “Treat people the way you want to be treated.” But either way, you came into contact with this teaching which, like the ocean, is shallow enough in some places for a child to play in it, yet deep enough in other places for an adult to drown in it. So, let’s dive in.

Do you wish others were more patient with you? Then be more patient with them. Do you wish others would pay more attention to you? Then pay more attention to other people. Do you wish others thought more about your needs than their own? Then think about the needs of others more than you think about your own. This is the teaching of all the Law and the Prophets. Now, the Law and the Prophets say a lot of things about a lot of things, so this isn’t the only lesson you can learn from them, but it is the one thing every thing they say is aimed at – e.g., if you learn from the Law that marriage is between one man and one woman for one lifetime, that is good, but if you do not treat your spouse the way you would like to be treated, what good is it? All the rules are measured by the Golden Ruler. So, when Jesus says that the Golden Rule is the Law and the Prophets, He is not dismissing their details; rather, He is highlighting the principle behind every detail. 

PRINCIPALS BEFORE PRACTICALS

And this is not the only time He did that. In Matthew 22:36 Jesus was asked which of the commandments was the greatest. Keep in mind that the Old Testament contained roughly 613 commandments, 248 of which were of the positive “do this” variety and 365 of which were of the negative “don’t do that” variety, which works out to about a don’t a day. That is a lot of do’s and don’t’s, so which is the greatest? This is how Jesus responded in :37-40, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Love God and love your neighbor is a perfect summary of the Old Testament. We know this because Jesus was perfect and that is how He summarized it. So, putting it all together, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is loving your neighbor as yourself and all of this ought to be born out of a love for God.

Please note the order: “love your neighbor as yourself,” follows “love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” It follows necessarily and chronologically. Just as works must follow faith, loving your neighbor must follow loving God. If your love for God is not followed by a love for your neighbor as yourself, it is not the love of God. That is not the golden rule, that is fool’s gold. It may look like it has some value, but it doesn’t. It looks good on a necklace, but it doesn’t spend in Heaven.

Consider 1 Jn 4:20 “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” So, the biggest problem with saying that you love God and not following that with a love is that it is a lie... you don’t actually love God. You might think that you do, but you don’t. You might know that you are lying or you might be lying to yourself. But loving your neighbor as yourself must follow a love of God: by necessity and in that order. You cannot truly love your neighbor without loving God first and you cannot truly love God without loving your neighbor next.

So, it is not just a matter of having them both, it is a matter of having them in the right order. You cannot order your affections whichever way you like. “Inordinate affection” is a sin, and we are commanded to put to death in Colossians 3:5. When our affections are out of order, even if they are all good, the result is sin. They do more harm than good when they are out of order. If you love your neighbor first, you will, as a consequence, hate God… and your neighbor as it turns out. You end up saying things like “love is love.” Now, that might sound like a nice thing to say, until you consider it from God’s point of view. God, who is Love, hates counterfeits. Flying trans flags outside your church, ordaining perverts as pastors inside them, and passing measures that approve of gender-affirming care for the sexually confused are all the result of putting a neighbor before God. But enough about the PCUSA. Love is not love. God is love. And when you do not begin with Him, you end in celebrating sin. But when you begin with Him, you know how to truly love your neighbor.. and then you end up actually doing it.

THE GOLDEN RULE’S NEIGHBORS

This is where our NT reading is instructive. The Golden Rule was not uttered in isolation. It was said in the context of the Sermon on the Mount which itself is a part of the greater ministry of Jesus, about which John says the number of books that could be written is inestimable. Furthermore, if the Golden Rule is a faithful summation of the entire Old Testament, as Jesus said it was, then it certainly can serve as a golden ruler to faithfully measure the verses that surround it.

So, let’s walk through Mt 7:1-14, beginning with :1-2. “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” We should not judge others in a way that we would not like ourselves to be judged. This is the Golden Rule in its legal form: judge others the way you would like to be judged because the way you measure others will be the way you are measured. Elsewhere, Jesus goes on to say that even the way you forgive others is the way you will be forgiven. We reiterate this point every week when we sing the Lord’s Prayer. “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Think about what you are saying. “God, forgive me the way I forgive others.” So, what are you asking God to do if you are not forgiving others? That’s right. You are asking Him NOT to forgive you. The forgiveness you give is the forgiveness you receive. So, the stingy should expect to come up short and the generous should expect to get more than enough. The hard to impress should not expect God to be easily impressed by how hard they were to impress, but those who cover the sins of others should expect to have their own covered. For better or for worse, “the measure you use will be measured to you.”

EQUAL WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

This ties into our OT reading from Leviticus 19:35-36a “You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin: I am the Lord.” This idea is not a one verse wonder, it is all over the place – e.g. Deuteronomy 25:13-16 “You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God.” Proverbs 11:1 “A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.” Proverbs 20:10 “Unequal weights and unequal measures are both alike an abomination to the LORD.” Proverbs 20:23 “Unequal weights are an abomination to the LORD, and false scales are not good.” Ezekiel 45:10 “You shall have just balances, a just ephah, and a just bath.” Micah 6:11 “Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and a bag of deceitful weights?” God’s love of equal weights and measures is all over the Scriptures. That is why the Lord hates it when someone puts their thumb on the scale and that is why the measure you use will be used to measure you. Do not, like Belshazzar, be found wanting by your own balances.

This is why the phrase, “by what standard?” is such an important rejoinder to remember. It destroys the false idol of false balances. A false balance either treats a lie as the truth or it treats the truth as a lie. And so, you must always, at every turn and in every situation, resist the temptation to put your thumb on the scale. If the sheer number of warnings about it are any indication, this is a temptation that can happen to anyone at any time in any number of scenarios. So, start by being willing to concede the point as a possibility. Is it possible that you have been putting your thumb on the scale? Yes. OK, so how would you know if you have been doing that? Return to the standard. Study it. Meditate on it. Pray about it. And if you’re ready to get real, ask those around you. Ask them if they see any logs in your eye? Ask them to check for specks and then brace yourself for some honest feedback. As I said, concede the point in principle. Do not ask it rhetorically, like, “I don’t have any specks in my eyes, do I?” That begs a certain kind of answer. That is not the question of someone who really wants to know the answer. So, if you ask, then ask, and make sure you’re ready to listen …and then take notes.

BACK TO THE GOLDEN RULE’S NEIGHBORS

That gets us back to :3-5 of Mt 7, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.” The liberal impulse is to say, “Just let bygones by bygones.” But that just leaves specks, logs, and bygones in everyone’s eyes which is more like blindness than enlightenment. Ignoring everyone’s sin leads to a world full of people who cannot see very well. So, we must resist this temptation while also being on guard against the legalistic impulse to look for specks and logs where there are none.

Would you rather look good because you can’t see very well or would like to see well enough to work on how bad you look? We all should want our neighbors to have bright, clear eyes. Even if that means they see our flaws more clearly. The problem is not that you notice other people’s specks, the problem is being more concerned with their specks than you are with your logs. If you don’t like people raising their voices at the dinner table, it hardly serves your purposes to shout that at everybody at the dinner table. If you don’t like it when people blow things out of proportion, it hardly makes your point to blow up about how EVERYONE is ALWAYS doing that. A little speck in your eye can seriously blur your vision and one of the most common specks we all have is that of trying to zoom in on the specks of others. A good way then to make sure everyone gets the specks out of their own eyes is to regularly ask others about yours. This creates an environment where the standard is wanting all the specks removed, not wanting to find more specks to point out.

If you had something in your teeth, would you want to know? Now, you might be embarrassed if someone had to tell you that and you may have preferred to discover that fact on your own, but even if you had, you would wonder how long it’s been there and who had all seen it in the meantime. You need to be the kind of person who thanks people for pointing out the food in your teeth. That is a good way to love your neighbor because it makes it easy for them to talk to you when they see something else that is off. They know that you are more committed to being corrected than you are to feeling like you are correct.

:6 “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” You cannot treat a dog like a person. I know this is controversial for some reason in our day and age, but it bears repeating: you do not love a dog by treating it like a person. You love a dog by treating it according to its nature. Dogs do not by nature appreciate holy things. A dog does not value the waters of baptism anymore than the water in your toilet. It’s not a bad dog for not doing that, however, it’s just a dog. The same can be said for pigs. What do pigs want? Food. So, if you throw a pearl before a pig, don’t expect them to say, “Thank you!” It might sniff at it, but it probably won’t eat it. It might by accident if it lands in the pile of slop, but it won’t eat it on purpose. Why? Pigs don’t value pearls, they value food. Now, you could argue that a pearl could be traded for food and you’d be right, but you’d only say that because you’re not a pig. That is why you thought of that and the pig is off in the mud somewhere. So, what does any of this have to do with the Golden Rule? Good question. It has to do with recognizing the frame of the one with whom you are dealing. Ignoring someone’s frame is a great way to NOT love your neighbor.

THE GOLDEN RULE OF MARRIAGE

Here is where the rubber will begin to meet the road for most of us this morning. Let’s start with you, husbands. You do not love your wife as yourself by treating her like a dude. You cannot simply say, “Well, this is what I would want, so, I will do that for her.” Some things do not translate – e.g. guys often bond by calling each other names and making fun of each other… I would not recommend doing that with your wife. She is not a bro… and praise God for that, right? I am guessing some of your favorite things about her are things that make her different from you. That said, some of the times we are most frustrated with her are those times when she is not reacting the way we would or the way a man would. But you did not marry a man, you married a woman. So, you cannot criticize her for being different from you when the whole reason you married her is because she is different from you. Yes, that means sometimes you won’t understand what she meant, but that just means you need to pay better attention in class.

Look at 1 Peter 3:7 “Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” Men, your wife may be difficult to understand sometimes, but you are the one responsible for doing the hard work of learning how to translate her into a language you can understand. The good news is that the Bible has much to say about women in general, so that is enough to help you get started, but the difficulty is that every woman is unique and speaks her own dialect, so you cannot simply copy and paste everything across the board. You will have to study your own wife by living with her in an understanding way. You do not want her to be easier to understand, like a guy. In your more frustrated moments, you might think that would make things easier, but in those moments, you aren’t thinking about how homosexual that is. You want your wife to be more like a guy? No, you don’t. And if you do, shame on you. Repent. Be a man and learn how to love a lady. Stop being lazy.

Your wife is the weaker vessel. Why are you trying to make her do all the heavy lifting? Pull your weight. Her being the weaker vessel is not a statement of value, it is a statement of fact. And if it were a statement of value, it would actually run the other direction. After all, which is weaker: plastic tupperware or fine china? But which of those is more valuable? So, being weaker does not mean being less valuable and in many cases, it actually means being more valuable. But in any case, it certainly means that you treat them differently. 

You can toss your tupperware in the sink, but you can’t do that with your china. Unless you want to be somebody who used to have nice plates. You might display your china on an open shelf, but you wouldn’t do that with your tupperware. Unless you want to be somebody who used to have friends. Here is where loving your neighbor as yourself requires more wisdom than the equality cult requires. They would have us set our dinner tables with tupperware and keep our leftovers on fine china in the fridge, but that is not what the Golden Rule requires. It does not mean that everyone should be treated the same, it means that everyone should be treated according to their frame. This is not just essential for her sake, it is for yours as well. Note what Peter points out here: “your wife is an heir with you of the grace of life,” and if you fail to treat her as such, “your prayers will be hindered.” If you ignore your wife, God will ignore you. D.L. Moody once said it this way, “If a man doesn’t treat his wife right, I don’t want to hear him talk about Christianity.” And neither does God. Get your house in order, men.

Ok, wives, your turn: 1 Peter 3:1-6 “Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.” Ladies, when something is off, I know you want to talk about it, but what is the first thing Peter says to do? Be quiet. That isn’t to say that you should never talk to your husband or express your concerns to him. On the contrary, it is to say that you should not so flood the market with your words, that you run down their value. What does Peter say? If you have a problem with your husband, what is the first and best way to win him over? With a strong argument? No, with a gentle spirit. Again, this is not God telling you that you cannot or should not express your concerns to your husband, it is Him saying that there is a better way of doing it. If God was trying to give you a cheat code for communicating with your husband, would you want it? Then stop arguing with the Word of God and listen to Him if you want your husband to listen to you. You want to start with words when you should begin with your demeanor. 

So, do you have something that you think he needs to hear? Do not think of him like one of your girlfriends or get frustrated with him when he doesn’t act like one. You did not marry a pair of ears, you married a man. He has ears, of course, and he should take the time to use them, but you can make it easier or harder for him to want to listen to you based on the way you behave. If you are not pleasant to be around, you are easier to ignore. If you need a hug, stop acting like a porcupine.

If you want to be looked at, you spend a lot of time in front of the mirror; but if you want to be listened to, you should spend more time in the Word. Don’t get me wrong, husbands like looking at their wives and we appreciate the effort you put in, don’t stop doing that. Peter is not saying that beauty is of no value, but he is saying that the packaging should match the product. Do not invest all of your energy into advertising, make sure you are investing in the substance. Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but the hidden beauty of the heart is imperishable. A gentle and quiet spirit is easier for a man to hear than an abrasive and loud one, even if it is all dolled up. Loud women are harder to hear. As Chesterton once noted, "When a woman puts up her fists to a man she is putting herself in the only posture in which he is not afraid of her." Raising your voice does not give you an advantage, it exposes your weakness. The St. Bernard is not afraid of the toy poodle, especially when it barks at him. But no good man wants to fight a woman. He wants to fight for her, not against her. So, if she harangues him with her temper or her tears, he might give in, but not because he heard her, but because he didn’t want to listen to her anymore.

So, ladies, do you want to get your way or do you want your concerns to be heard? If you want to love your neighbor, you will need to be like the holy women of old and dress like they did, not according to the latest fashions, but according to good ol’ fashioned submission. Sarah called Abraham, “Lord.” Not all caps LORD, as in God, but lowercase lord, as in, “master.” Men run on respect. Of course, they need to be loved, but if you try to treat them like a woman and love them into listening, they won’t hear you. If you want a man to listen to you, respect him with your conduct and respect him with your responses to his words and you will gain an audience with him. But if you plow forward doing unto him exactly as you would be done by, he will not hear you and you will feel like he’s not listening and both of you will be frustrated. He is not your girlfriend. He is your husband.

Now, ladies, if all of this sounds scary, it’s because it is. Peter points that out, but don’t be afraid of doing things God’s way. Do not treat your husband like a woman or resent him for not being more like a woman when it comes to listening. Resist the temptation to mother him or to manipulate him to where you think he should be. Winning him over without words is not Peter’s way of endorsing the use of the silent treatment. Winning him without a word is Peter’s way of saying, “Be so kind to him that he wants to rise to the challenge of deserving such a woman.” 

If you want others to take your frame into account, guess what? You’re going to have to take other people’s frames into account. After all, that is how God is with you. He remembers your frame. He knows, better than anybody, that you are nothing but dust, and yet He does not treat you like dirt. Thanks be to God! He also does not treat you like an off the rack person. No, He considers your frame and how it was hand-tailored for you. Now, go and do that for others. Consider their common frame as a fellow image-bearer and their unique frame as a child of God. They have sins that are common to all men (1 Cor 10:13) and they have besetting sins that are unique to their frame (Acts 17:26), just like you. Remember that. This is not a command to treat everyone the same. On the contrary, it is a command to treat everyone with equity, which is not the same at all.

ASK OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM ASK YOU

:7-8 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” If someone wanted something from you, what would you want them to do? Ask, right? You wouldn’t want them to steal it from you and you wouldn’t want them to be mad at you for not giving them something they never asked you for. If you love someone, you want to do nice things for them. Finding out what they like is not a burden, it is a blessing. When someone is special to you, you like finding out what is special to them. So, give that gift to others. Ask them for what you want. Do not make them guess. Those who ask, after all, get an answer. Those who seek find something out. Those who knock have found the door. So, answer others as you would like to be answered and be as easy to figure out as you would like others to be. You cannot withhold yourself and then be shocked that you feel like others are holding out on you.

:9-11 “Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” Some of you don’t want to ask for bread because you’re worried you might get a stone in return. But maybe that’s because you’ve been giving stones to others who have been asking you for bread. You know that if others treated you as you’ve been treating them, you would be in bad shape. So, if you’ve been giving serpents to those who have been asking for fish, knock it off. If others are trying to get you to understand them and instead of trying to understand, you have tried to make them feel bad for wanting to be understood, you have been giving stones and serpents to those who were simply asking for bread and fish. You have been multiplying the wrong things and the only miracle in it is that anyone is still willing to put up with you. Loving your neighbor as yourself is not simply doing the things you like, it is considering what they like and then doing those things, even when they aren’t your favorite things to do.

:12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” In the Devil’s Dictionary, the ol’ reprobate, Ambrose Bierce, defined the “selfish” as follows: “selfish, adj. devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.” In other words, the selfish look only to their own interests and are not at all interested in the interests of others. Everyone is selfish to a certain degree, but those we call “selfish” ignore that. The Biblical solution to avoiding this is showing other people how to think of someone other than themselves. To break the cycle, someone has to go first and Christians are called to lead the way. Everyone wants to do the easy thing, but Christians are called to do hard things, not simply because they are hard, but because they lead to glory.

:13-14 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” Are you sometimes hard to love? Sure. And in those moments, what do you want others to do? Remind you how hard it is to love you? Make you wonder if you are worth all the trouble? No! You want them to do the hard work of giving you the benefit of the doubt and the even harder work of believing the best about you even when you’re at your worst. So, go and do that for others. You can’t do the bare minimum for others and then expect them to go the extra mile for you.

As you contemplate how to put all of this into practice, remember Jesus. He forgave those who wronged Him and died for those who killed Him; He was loyal to those who betrayed Him, and loved those who despised Him. He is our neighbor, our brother, our Lord, and our Savior. He is our King and He is kind. So, go and be kind to one another, just as God in Christ has been kind to you.

The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of our God remains forever. And this word is the good news that has been preached to you.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. Help us to love others as You have loved us. Give us grace as we give grace to others and build us up into the image of Your Son as we offer up the words of the prayer He taught us to pray singing…

day no. 17,437: from within and from without

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” — Walt Kelly’s comic strip Pogo

If we are going to triumph over our enemies out there, we must first triumph over our enemies within. Traitors and haters in the camp must be addressed before we can successfully repel our invaders. The sin within did not invade us, it is native. It is more legit than an anchor baby. It was born of the blood and soil of its host. Your sins are truly yours. They have your last name and they share your DNA. If you do not deal with those, you will not be able to righteously deal with those who have invaded your world. 

“A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.” — C.S. Lewis, The Problem if Pain

If you assume that other men from other places or from other races are bad, but fail to see that natives are as well, you will never build anything that can survive. You cannot win a war against reality. If you do not accept your own depravity, you will not be able to defend yourself against another's hostility.

"One last point. Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not when you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

If we are blind to how bad we are it is a sign of how truly bad things are for us. But when we begin to acknowledge and accept and take responsibility for the wickedness within, we will know that we are on the right path toward dealing with the wickedness that is coming at us from without.

"A civilization is not destroyed by wicked men; it is destroyed by weak men who cannot defend what is good.” — G. K. Chesterton

Men who do not acknowledge their own weakness are too weak to resist the strong temptation of becoming like our enemies. Weakness is worse than wickedness. Good men who are not good at being men are no better in the long run than wicked men for they will one day be just as wicked as their current enemies. Wickedness, for all its faults, never skips leg day. It is always raring to go and it keeps its eye on the prize. Goodness, for all it virtues, sometimes gets soft. It prefers peace to war and so it sometimes forgets that it is in war. Wickedness never forgets.

“Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.” — G.K. Chesterton

Society's are smashed from without because they have gone soft from within. Men who ignore their own evil are hardly equipped to defeat the evils of others. Men who are regularly conquered by their own lusts will not be able to conquer men motivated by their respective lusts.

They end up with rosters rounded out by round men who cannot rise up to defend their people. Civilization, if it is not in shape, will be overcome by barbarism. You cannot be in good shape without first acknowledging how bad of shape your are within.

“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.” — Thomas Sowell

If you are not yourself civilized, you are merely one barbarian meeting another in battle. Civilization requires civilized men. Those men are not soft because they admit defeat before God, rather they are empowered by the Spirit of God in destroying evil strongholds within and without.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

If you have lost on the battleground of imagination, you will lose on the battleground of infiltration. You cannot defend the world from demons without when you are defeated by your demons within.

day no. 17,436: do the dishes (sermon outline)

Christ Church Leavenworth

Song of Solomon 2:15

7/19/26

…

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…