Transcript
Ecclesiastes 4:9.
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Now back to our familiar text in Genesis chapter 3. And we want to begin reading at verse 16 of Genesis chapter 3.
Genesis 3:16.
To the woman He said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.
Then to Adam He said, Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.
Of all the movies that I saw when I was a little boy growing up, I guess none of them impressed me more than Walt Disney’s famous animated movie called Snow White. Probably most of you know that Snow White lived out in a forest in a house that was owned by seven dwarfs. And you may be surprised to discover this, but at an early stage of my childhood, I had rubber figures of all seven of the dwarfs and even a rubber figure of Snow White, which was less durable and lasted less long than the other figures.
To this day I can give you the names of the seven dwarfs in correct order. Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Bashful and Dopey. And of course every day they walked and kind of marched to work. Doc was always in the front, and Dopey came up through the rear. And of course they sang that delightful song, Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it is off to work we go, Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho.
And they went to work. And every evening they came marching back in the same order with Doc in front and Dopey behind. And this time of course they sang, Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it is home from work we go.
All the time they were out working during the day, Snow White was back at the house alone. And she daydreamed about her future. And who could ever forget that beautiful song. If you wish upon a star, it makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires can come to you.
And she wished upon a star. Of course what she was wishing for was a gallant, handsome prince who would come into her life and sweep her off her feet and carry her away so that she and he could live happily ever after.
She also sang the song to remember, Someday my prince will come, Someday my prince will come, and then the skies will all be blue.
Now you know what happened. She of course ate of a poison apple and she went into a death-like coma from which the seven dwarfs could not rouse her. But finally one day her prince came. And there she was. And when he kissed her and she came to life again, she woke up from her coma. And he took her on his horse and they rode away to live happily ever after.
And I would like to suggest that the story of Snow White is probably a good example of what we could call the fairy tale version of marriage.
Now when I was a little boy it was still possible to dream about a fairy tale marriage. Remember that in those days, people didn’t divorce as frequently as they do today. The latest figures that I understand are that in a given year about fifty percent of the marriages will end in divorce.
But when I was a little boy, people stayed together and divorce was kind of a stigma. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising in my days to have somebody in the neighborhood say, You see so and so over there. He or she is divorced! And so people stayed together.
And you could, as a little boy, imagine that, especially if you lived in a home where the marriage was happy, you could imagine that someday a beautiful princess would come into your life. She would be madly sweet and agreeable. You would get married and live happily ever after.
Now things have changed. Back in my days Ronald Reagan could have never been elected President because he had divorced and remarried. Back in my day, Bob Dole could not have run for President because he also, as I understand, left his first wife and married Liddy.
Of course things have not gotten any better since then. And now we have immorality in the White House. And if the polls are to be believed, a lot of people don’t think that makes any big difference.
So things have changed a lot. If it is really true that fifty percent of the marriages collapse, that means approximately fifty percent of the kids who grow up in America come from broken homes. It is very, very hard to have ideas about marriage if you come out of a home where the marriage has already been unhappy.
So I would say that already the nature of reality is such that not too many people actually dream about fairy tale marriages.
Even after I got a little bit older, I realized that a fairy tale would not even necessarily describe the marriages of people who stayed together. A lot of times people stay together who are in very unhappy marriages, very little love, very little fellowship. They are staying together because society expected it or because of the children or something like that.
And I want to suggest to you this morning that from one point of view, and at least it is good, most of us have left behind the idealism and the fantasy that sometimes comes to us when we are young and we are looking forward to marriage. And we realize that there is no more fairy tale.
Did you know that there has only been one real fairy tale marriage in the whole history of the world? That fairy tale marriage occurred in the Garden of Eden and went on as long as the man and the woman obeyed God and did not fall into sin.
Stop and think about it for a moment if you will. The only two people that were in the garden were Adam and Eve. And they saw each other all the time.
Now, I have heard, and I don’t know this from first hand folks, but rumors have reached me that sometimes for example, when the man retires and he is around the house all the time, then the woman wishes that he were back at work. Because having the guy around the house is a little bit much. And it interferes maybe with what the wife used to be doing when she was by herself for a large part of the day.
But think of it. They were the only two people there. They could thoroughly enjoy each other’s company. They never had an argument. Neither one of them was ever selfish. They never got mad and fought. Eve never threw pears at Adam. And Adam never threw oranges at Eve. It was perfect. It was wonderful, until sin came.
And by this time, invariably in the story, Satan deceives the woman into eating then the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She immediately goes to her husband and he willingly eats along with her.
Then when God comes into the garden, they both kind of hide from Him. And when they can’t hide anymore, the man, you will remember, quickly passes the buck to his wife. And the wife quickly passes it onto the serpent. And that leaves God to address all three of the parties.
First of all, He has words of condemnation for the serpent, which we won’t go over this afternoon because I wasn’t planning to dwell on them. And then He has words directed to Eve and words directed to Adam.
And there is a way of looking at what He says to Eve and Adam that we could say that what God is really telling Adam and Eve is this. There is no more fairy tale. The fairy tale is over.
And I would just like to pause here to say, The fairy tale is over, when it comes to marriage.
Now you are probably sitting there thinking, Zane tell me something I didn’t know. You know, this is not exactly a hot news flash. And if I ever thought that marriage was a fairy tale, you are probably thinking I discovered in the first week of marriage that there was no fairy tale. This is a real person that I was living with. And the romance kind of simmered out of sight. And then we settled down to reality.
All pretty much to the good, because as a matter of fact it is very important for us to realize what marriage actually is and what it can be in a world that is now filled with sin, suffering and death.
Did you notice what God says to Eve? God says, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you shall bring forth children.
Now, I think almost everybody would agree that one of the high points of any marriage is the birth of children. If there is any time when the parents are happiest, it is when the child is born. And yet, as this makes clear even in the process of giving birth to that child who is a delight to the parents who get it. And in pain you shall bring forth children.
There is more than that. He says, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. I don’t know how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden before they sinned. I doubt very much it was a very short time. I can’t imagine them just being living there a few days for example and then coming into sin.
They may have lived there for many months. They may have even lived there for years. But one thing that we notice was that apparently as long as they were in the garden, Eve never got pregnant. She never produced an offspring.
But remember that in that state of affairs, they were conditioned and programmed to live forever. There was no hurry about giving birth to children. And probably the reproductive system was much, much slower because it was a change to the existence of people who potentially could live forever.
But now of course, sin has entered the world and death has entered the world. And the lifespan has dramatically shortened. And God says, I will multiply your conception. I think this implies that the process of conception and birth is speeded up for the woman. So that in as far as her few best child bearing years, she may bear a number of children.
But notice that He says that, I will multiply your conception. He also says, I will multiply your sorrow and your conception.
Now one of the things that we all love about mothers, I’m sure, is their maternal instincts. Every one of us, I suspect without exception, loved our mother. One of the reasons we loved our mother was that because she loved us so manifestly, so tenderly. She was nurturing. She was caring. She was sympathetic. She felt everything that we felt. And that is wonderful.
But it is also a source of suffering. Yes, the birth of a child is a wonderful and joyful event. But then the life of a child may be something quite different. What happens if the child gets sick? What happens if the child contracts an incurable disease? What happens if the child has an accident that leaves him debilitated? What happens if the child himself grows up and has an unhappy life?
Who is it that has the most sorrow over that? I think it is without question the mother. I will multiply your sorrow and your conception.
I think I learned this best in my own experience when David passed away. And I went home to be with my parents. Both of my parents were grieved at the passing of David. Nobody expected the youngest member of the family to be the first to go. And my father obviously was deeply grieved.
But I very soon learned that my mother grieved in a very definite and specific way. And I think that it is fair to say it hurt her more to lose David than it hurt my dad, as much as it hurt my dad.
I never forget something that my mother told me on that occasion. Remember the story where Mary takes the infant Jesus into the temple to be circumcised. And the elderly man Simeon takes the child Jesus into his arms. And one of the things he says to Mary was, This Child is destined for the rise and fall of many. Yes, and a sword shall pierce your own heart also.
And of course Simeon had reference to the fact that Mary would have to watch her own Son die. And it would be like a sword driven through her heart.
I remember my mother saying to me, You know. She said, I now understand what Mary felt when Jesus died. It is like a sword going through you. I knew what she was saying. But I knew there was a depth of experience there, a depth of sorrow there, that I couldn’t enter into. No man probably can enter into it because the woman carries this child to birth, nurtures it and cares for it. And the death of a child is like a sword passing through the heart of a woman.
So the reality of it is that even though there is a wonderful and marvelous joy related to the bearing of children, there are many joys associated with the rearing of children and the future lives of children. There is nevertheless the solemn and serious reminder that as pregnancies are multiplied for the woman, so also are the sorrows multiplied.
Then did you notice what God says to Adam? He says, Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
Remember that before the fall, Adam was a gardener. That was his occupation. He worked in a perfect world where, you know, I assume the fruit trees grew quite naturally. There was no problem in having to fertilize anything and no problem probably with having to prune the weeds.
While talking to us this morning, if I may say so, Adam had the softest job in human history. He probably could go somewhere and say, I don’t feel like pruning anything in the garden at this point. Besides it doesn’t need pruning. I don’t feel like checking out the trees. I checked them out yesterday. And they don’t need checking out. And there is nothing to check out.
And he had it perfect. The fairy tale is over. You, as the husband, will have to work. And the ground from which you will have to grow your food will no longer cooperate with you. In toil you shall produce fruit from the ground.
Not only that, says God, The ground is either going to produce thorns and thistles. As you work with the ground, the thorns and thistles are going to cut you and gash you. You will bleed in the work that you do. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread all the days of your life until you return to the dust from which you were taken.
Now maybe I am giving away a men’s club secret here, but hopefully the men will not mock me afterwards if I do this. When men get together to talk and to share their complaints with each other, you know what their chief complaint normally is? Relax ladies, it is not you. Of course there are things at home that they do complain about. But get a typical group of men together, you know what they are going to complain about? Their jobs.
My, the hours on my job are absolutely inhuman. I have to get up at two o’clock a.m. and I get out at five o’clock a.m. The boss that I work for is dreadful. I mean he is so demanding and he never appreciates anything. My paycheck was so pitiful compared to the work that I do. You ought to see the people that I work with. Arnie is a person that sits next to me and I cannot stand that person. I don’t know why they don’t fire him.
And on and on it goes. Why? Because as far as work is concerned, we are not in Eden anymore. We are in a fallen world, in a world that is marred by death and sin.
Well, I don’t know how much you know about my dad’s career as a worker. But he quit school. He never finished high school because he came from a large family. And he had to work to help the family support itself.
He started out at a relatively low level. When I first became conscious of such things as work, he was working for the war department, which is today called the defense department. He had entered it probably at the clerical level or something like that.
But my father worked himself up the chain. Eventually he was invited to move from the Baltimore area to the Chambersburg area and to become the head of personnel at the Letterkenny Army ordnance depot. He was the chief of personnel.
Later on he was promoted to what amounted to the executive assistant of the commanding officer of the depot. Or to put it another way, my father was the top civilian of that depot and also the best paid civilian. He was a success in his career.
By the way, I found out through many sources that he was greatly admired for his integrity. He was an honest man. If somebody didn’t like him and my dad knew that he didn’t like him, my dad would bend over backwards to be fair with that guy.
We used to kid my father and we said, You know dad, if we had to work for you it would be better to be your enemy than be your friend. You would treat us better. So my dad was a very successful person in his career.
But you know what I never heard him say? I was thinking about this while preparing for this message. I don’t ever remember hearing him say this, I love my work. I like what I am doing. Never once did I recall hearing him say that.
What I can recall is all the times that he brought a whole stack of papers home from work. See he dealt with people during the day but had no time to do paperwork. Had to do it at night and sometimes very late into the night.
And then you talk about working with people. If you are head of personnel, believe me all of these big problems in personnel come in your direction. And on top of that the people that work under you are not always angels. And you have to worry about how they are performing their job.
When he became an executive assistant to the commanding officer, he had the misfortune of running up against the army system of putting a colonel in command of the depot for a couple of years and putting another colonel in for a couple of years and then another colonel.
Once or twice he got a nice colonel. Other times he got really mean army men, hard to work with. And my dad usually wound up winning the respect of the commanding officer.
I remember one in particular that he would come home telling us about Colonel Coffee. I guess that he was described as black coffee, bitter coffee. He had a hard time working with Colonel Coffee at first. Later Colonel Coffee came to respect my dad’s integrity and work ethic and they became friends.
So even though he enjoyed his success, he never once said, I like my work. He retired at fifty-five, which is one of the perks of government service. You don’t have to wait till you’re sixty-five. He retired at fifty-five, the earliest possible moment I might add. He retired with a very nice pension.
But don’t you see that my dad’s experience is an experience that is typical of so many men. Yes, we have to work. Yes, we have to sustain our family. But it is hard work. And it is not manually hard work, but it is hard work emotionally sometimes. Then there are all the thorns and thistles you know that jam your energies at work. That make it so very, very difficult.
Well, you say, all you have told us so far is how hard it is for the woman and how hard it is for the man. The woman whose focus is on her children and the man whose focus is on his work. It is hard and there is no fairy tale existence anymore.
You say, why does God make it like that? Is God just mad at everybody because of what Adam and Eve did and He says, alright I want everybody to have a hard time. I am just going to see to it that women have a hard time and men have a hard time.
Well, I don’t think that’s the reason for it at all. Which brings me back to Snow White. Has it ever occurred to you that Walt Disney never made Snow White 2? Never made Snow White 2.
You know why? It wouldn’t make a good movie. I mean can you imagine what Snow White 2 would have been like? Here are Snow White and the charming prince. And they live in this wonderful palace. And they can wake anytime they want to. And the servants take care of everything.
And they go downstairs. And the servants have breakfast on the table. Course if they have a child, it is a perfect child and grows up and behaves and obeys his parents. And they have nothing better to do at night than stroll their lovely gardens under the light of the moon and enjoy their marriage together.
It would make a terrible movie. Dullsville, USA! Boring! Boring!
You know that the nature of human beings is such that if we didn’t have any problems, if we didn’t have any troubles, if everything were smooth, we would soon get bored. And that would only be the best of it. Because you see, when people don’t have problems and people don’t have troubles, they also deteriorate as people and become lazy. They become self-indulgent. They become selfish.
We are all those things anyway kind of by nature. But having everything go our way all the time would make us even worse than that.
I think it is obvious, isn’t it? That now that we are sinners who live in a fallen world of sin, that it would really be good for us not to have problems. It would really be good for us to have marriages that were absolutely perfect from day one to the end of the line.
In fact, you remember what James said in the first chapter of James. He says, Count it all joy when you fall into various troubles, knowing that the trial of your faith works patience. But let patience and endurance have its perfect work, so that you may be complete, not lacking in anything.
One of the major reasons that God gives to us a life and a marriage experience that is not absolutely free from suffering and hardship, from woes and sorrows, is because if we will respond to these things in a biblical way, if we respond to them in faith toward God, it can make us a better person. It can make you a better husband if you are a man. It can make you a better wife if you are a woman.
Well you say, That is true of everybody so what advantage does the married person have? I mean Zane, you are single and you have troubles too, so you know you just double your trouble if you get married. I’m talking as if another bachelor would talk you know.
No, that is not the case. Actually, it is much better to be married. One of the things that we learn from the passage that we read in Ecclesiastes is that two are better than one. Two are better than one.
You see that in this wicked world of toil and suffering and sorrow, two are always better than one. One of the reasons that the writer of Ecclesiastes gives us for that is because they have a good reward for their labor.
You know, if I work hard and produce something and bring it home, who is there to appreciate it but me? If I get a raise in salary, who enjoys the benefits of my salary? Me. And it is much happier to be able to share the fruits and rewards of labor with somebody else who is your partner in life.
And then the writer of Ecclesiastes says, For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls. Now things happen, don’t they? Sometimes we get really big falls in our lives. If we have a partner there who can pick us up, encourage us, get us back on the way, that is a wonderful, wonderful blessing to have.
And then he says, Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one be warm alone? Yup, you turn up the heat is what you do in the apartment. But you never get rid of, shall we call it, the coldness of being alone.
It is a wonderful blessing and privilege to have somebody there who is your life mate. Who makes your life warmer. Who makes your life more pleasant because they are there. If two lie down together, they will keep warm.
And then finally the writer of Ecclesiastes says, Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. Both husband and wife sometimes find not only problems confronting them, but people confronting them.
When your husband finds this absolutely impossible boss that he has to face every day of his life and he comes home. And how wonderful it is to have a sympathetic ear from his wife. And she supports him. She encourages him. She says, Keep at it. He’s wrong. You are doing the best you can.
Same thing with the wife. She runs into problems with other people. And the husband can do the same thing for her.
So you see what I am saying here is that because we do live in a fallen world, a world of sin and sorrow and suffering and death, marriage is a wonderful, wonderful privilege. And I want you to understand that. I don’t have it myself. I think that’s been God’s will for me. But I certainly recommend and commend marriage because the advantages are tremendous.
Provided that, are you listening? Provided that they are partners who fill the role of the partner. That both partners stand together and share the fruits of their labor together. That one partner is there to pick the other partner up when the partner falls. That both partners are there to keep their hearts warm with intimacy and closeness. That both partners are there to combat the outside opposition and the troubles that arise.
You know that over the years I talked to a lot of couples who are having marital problems. And as somebody says in the movie Gone with the Wind, when I listen to them, I’m shocked, shocked, shocked.
You know why? Because usually the partner is telling me all the things that are not done for them by their partner. Both partners do that. He or she, they are interchangeable here, does or does not, did or did not, etc., etc., etc.
How much better it would be, wouldn’t it? You ask this type of question. How much better it would be if both partners were focused on not what my partner is doing for me, but what I am contributing to the partnership.
You know, if we would only take a truly unselfish view of our marriage, I am convinced that fifty percent to seventy-five percent of all problems that exist in marriage would resolve themselves just because the partners learn to be supportive and unselfish.
I am going to close with a story about my mother and dad. If I get a little emotional, I might. Just bear with me. I’ll recover and live on.
But as you all know, in the closing years of my dad’s life, he was very, very, very infirm. He was, I think, legally blind. He virtually could not do a single thing by himself. He had to get up at night and go to the bathroom numerous times as old people often do. And my mother had to get up with him every time and go to the bathroom with him.
My mother told me in one of my visits up there. She said, It wasn’t long and we lived together. And my father would say, You have a real crock for a husband. But my mother didn’t look at it that way. She didn’t look at it that way at all.
In fact, in one of the most moving things she ever said to me, I think it was probably on my last visit to see her. She said, I know that Z. C., that is what she called my father. I know Z. C. is happy now. These large problems that I have, for his sake I didn’t want him to be back here. She said if it was only up to me I would have him back just the way he was.
Because she had centered her life on supporting him in the declining years of his health. And she was amazing. And another thing that I remember, we were sitting in the living room. I think this was on the last occasion. And she said to me, she said, Zane, I did my best to take care of Z. C., but I don’t think I did a good job.
And I said to my mother, I think you did a wonderful job. I am proud of you. I think those years were the finest years of your career as a wife. I don’t remember exactly what she said to me, but she said something like, Thank you.
My mother lived to support my father. If it were the other way around, my dad would have done exactly the same thing. He would have been there for her and supported her. That is the way marriage really ought to be.
Remember what Jack Kennedy said in his inaugural address. He said, Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
So I would like to send every married person home from this meeting. And the first chance that you get to be alone, I would like you to ask yourself not, What your spouse can do for you? But, What you can do for your spouse?