The part of the chapter that I'd like to focus on in this passage is, beginning in verse
number 21, where the Lord said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see
that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand.
But I will harden his heart, and he shall not let the people go.
And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn.
And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me.
And if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.
Then it came to pass, by the way, in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to
kill him.
Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at
his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.
So he let him go.
Then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.
Now I preached this morning about marriage, and I want to preach a continuation of that
tonight.
I'm not going to re-preach this morning's sermon, but I want to show you several examples
from the Bible of marriages that had strife, or bad marriages in the Bible, or I guess
the modern word would be dysfunctional marriages in the Bible.
And this is the first one that I thought of was Moses and Zipporah, and I'm going to go
through several.
But just to hit the key points from this morning's sermon, in case you weren't here, I don't
want to re-preach the sermon, but we went through all the New Testament, major passages
on husbands and wives, the part in Ephesians chapter 5, where God commands husbands to
love their wives, to forgive them, to not be bitter against them, to nourish them, cherish
them, provide for them, care for them.
We looked at all the passages in the New Testament that taught wives to obey their husbands,
to submit to their husbands, to be reverent and respectful toward their husband.
And then we talked about how husbands are supposed to rule their house, and rule over
their family, and that that means also that they're supposed to care for and take care
of the family.
And so, you know, we're into all that.
I'm not going to re-preach all that.
But as we look at these examples tonight, I want you to be thinking, you know, we should
be people that don't just mindlessly hear preaching, okay, this is what I'm supposed
to do.
You know, when you read the Bible, you should meditate upon the Word of God day and night,
the Bible says.
Not only should we read the Bible, but we should let these sayings sink down into our
prayers, we should meditate upon it, and we should think.
Now let me say this, oftentimes the Bible makes clear statements.
Everything we looked at this morning was a clear statement, where the Bible was just
telling us, this is the way things are, this is the way things are not supposed to be.
But not only does the Bible contain statements, it also contains stories, doesn't it?
And often when you're reading a story in the Bible, God does not always explicitly tell
us what his opinion is about the story.
For example, people in the Bible do something, it doesn't mean that it's right.
For example, there are people in the Bible who have multiple wives, that doesn't mean
that it's right.
Because if we look at every single clear statement in the Bible, where Jesus or any of the prophets
or any of the apostles make it a clear statement, he says it's one man, one woman, he says it's
the two of them that join and become one flesh, and he even says that he shall not multiply
wives in the book of Deuteronomy.
And so every statement that God makes is always against polygamy, but are there stories in
the Bible where people practice polygamy?
And does God specifically every time say now, just to remind you again, marriage is supposed
to be between one man and one woman.
He doesn't always say that, he expects you to know that.
So when you're reading the Bible and you see people steal or lie or commit adultery or
kill or have multiple wives or make mistakes, you know, what we need to do as we read and
study the Bible is let the clear statements of the Bible interpret the story.
You know, use all the clear statements and all the knowledge that we have to look at
a story and say, okay, here's what's going on in this story.
Here's who was right, here's who was wrong, here's a mistake that people made.
Because the Bible doesn't always, now sometimes we'll read the story, like for example with
David, where he commits adultery with Bathsheba.
And then at the end of the story it tells us, but the thing that David did displeased
not the Lord.
Now whether he'd said that or not, we would have known that anyway, right?
Because we already know that adultery and murder are wrong.
That's why he doesn't always put that in there.
So a lot of times when we're reading stories in the Bible, we need to think about the story
we're reading in light of scripture.
So with all the information that you learned in this morning's sermon, all those clear
statements, let's look at these stories about people who had a dysfunctional marriage, people
who had marital strife or any kind of a fighting between husband and wife that we see in the
Bible, and let's see if we can apply those principles and figure out what went wrong.
You know, what's the problem here?
Why did these marriages end up like this?
Okay, the first one is Moses and Zipporah.
Let's look at the first scripture on this subject.
Go back to Exodus chapter 2.
You're in Exodus 4, just go back one page to Exodus chapter 2.
And when you see where this marriage began, let me just quickly tell you the story.
If you remember, Moses was a little baby when he was put into the Nile River in a little
basket because the Egyptians were trying to kill all the male children of the Hebrews.
They wanted them all dead.
And so, because they were multiplying too fast, they were trying to do a little population
reduction, you know, population control.
So they wanted to murder these children of the Hebrews.
So Moses, because his parents loved him and they wanted to keep him safe, they hid him
for three months.
But after three months they just couldn't hide him anymore, he was making too much noise.
They put him in a basket, they put him in the Nile River, and then his sister Miriam
watched to see what would become of the child.
Pharaoh's daughter finds the child, adopts him as her own son.
And then Miriam, Moses' sister, came and said, should I find a Hebrew woman for you to nurse
the child for you?
And Pharaoh's daughter says, yes, why don't you do that?
That's a great idea.
So of course, who do you think she goes and grabs?
Moses' mother.
And says, okay, this mother's going to nurse.
So Moses was taken care of, and here's what was told unto Moses' mother, take this child
and nurse it for me and I will give thee thy wages.
So she actually took the child home with her, nursed it, and it's her own child.
And then at the end of that time, she brings it back and delivers it unto Pharaoh's daughter,
and he becomes her son.
Now, the average child nurses until it's about one or two years old.
So this is a really early, and these days, pretty much nobody nurses their child when
it's two.
But I'm saying like turning two is pretty much a threshold right there, okay?
So probably a one year old, maybe two, but somehow they must have had a profound influence
on that child.
And you know, it's amazing how much little babies and children are absorbing that we
take for granted.
You know, we think, oh, they're so young, they don't understand church, they don't hear
the preaching, they don't know what's going on, but you know what, they're absorbing more
than you think.
And so that child was had by his parents, they only had a short time with him.
I'm sure that they sang him spiritual songs, I'm sure that they spoke unto him the Word
of God, because when he became 40 years of age, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's
daughter and he went to dwell amongst the Hebrews.
And he rejected all the learning that he'd been taught in the Egyptian world and went
back to and reverted back to the godliness that was imparted unto him when he was just
a tiny little child being nursed in his mother's arms.
So he grew up and he became a man of God, and of course he had a problem with his temper
because he was out in the city and he saw that one of his Hebrew brethren was being
assaulted by one of the Egyptians.
And so Moses, in anger, he looks this way, looks that way, and kills the guy with his
bare hands.
So Moses was a tough guy.
But he made quick work of this guy and then he buried him in the sand and he didn't think
anybody knew.
He thought nobody saw, he thought nobody was around.
Well the next day he sees a couple of Egyptians striving with one another, and I'm going way
too long into this story but it's a really good story.
And plus I've got to correct that movie you watched, you need to get the real Bible version
of the story.
So anyway, he sees two Egyptians, or I'm sorry two Hebrews fighting with each other, and
he says to one of them, you know, wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?
He's saying, you know, hey, why are you hitting your brother?
What's the problem?
Well, you know, why don't we settle this some other way?
And they said, you know, who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?
Wilt thou kill me as thou killed the Egyptian yesterday?
And he's like, whoa, how do you know about that?
Everybody must know about that.
And yeah, everybody did know, somehow it got around that he had slain this Egyptian so
then Pharaoh wanted to kill Moses because Moses' goal was to be a deliverer of the children
of Israel.
If you read Act 7, that's clear.
He was going to deliver them.
He was going to rise up and judge them.
So what happened is he flees out into the desert and when he's out in the desert, he
ends a well of water in the land of Midian and there were people there that were striving
over the well and he helps out some women that have gone there to draw water.
He protects them and shields them so that they can get their water without any harassment
and without being pushed to the back of the line.
And so when he does that, he ends up, you know, getting to know their dad and their
dad welcomes him into his home and his name is Jethro and he ends up taking one of this
man's daughters unto wife.
Now that just brings you up to speed in the story.
Exodus chapter 2 verse 21 says, and Moses was content to dwell with the man, that's
the man Jethro, or Reul as his name is also called, and he gave Moses, Zipporah, his daughter.
Now go to Exodus 4.
So far in the story everything looks good because this man was a godly man, he seems
to have believed in the Lord, he seems to be a really good guy from every story we read
about Jethro.
And so he marries one of this man's daughters, everything seems great.
But when we get to chapter 4 we see this strife between the two.
And look what the strife is over.
And this is a story that I've almost never heard preached on because it's kind of an
odd story, but it says in verse 24, it came to pass by the way in the inn that the Lord
met him and sought to kill him.
So the question is, who did the Lord meet and who was the Lord trying to kill?
Well what happened was the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush in chapters 3 and
4.
And he gives Moses instructions that he's going to go into the land of Egypt, he's going
to confront Pharaoh, he's going to say to him, thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews,
let my people go, and he's going to bring the children of Israel out of the land of
Egypt.
We're talking about millions of people.
He's going to free millions of slaves that are in Egypt.
Well apparently on his way to go do that, so he's heading into Egypt to go do that,
he's got his wife with him, and in the inn, an inn is what?
A hotel.
So he stops at the hotel, he's stopping at the inn along the way, and it says that the
Lord met him and sought to kill him, and you think to yourself, why is the Lord coming
to kill Moses when he just called Moses to do this great work and he's sending him down
to do it?
Obviously Moses is in some kind of disobedience.
Moses is doing something wrong.
Well in the next verses it becomes apparent what that something was.
It says in verse 24, it says, it came to pass by the way in the inn that the Lord met him
and sought to kill him.
Then Zipporah, that's his wife, took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son
and cast it at his feet and said, surely a bloody husband art thou to me.
So he let him go.
So the Lord's trying to kill Moses in the inn.
Because of this issue of the circumcision, Zipporah ends up circumcising the child, and
because she circumcises the child, cuts off the foreskin, throws it at his feet in anger,
throws it at Moses' feet, and basically rebukes Moses and says, a bloody husband thou art
unto me.
Look at verse 26, so he let him go, meaning the Lord let Moses go.
And then she said, a bloody husband thou art because of the circumcision.
So it's kind of an odd story, but we need to stop and think about what's going on here.
When did God command circumcision?
Now there's nothing in the story of the burning bush where God told Moses, hey you need to
get circumcised, you need to circumcise your children.
But this is something that was given unto Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
They've all been circumcised, and the children of Israel have all been circumcised up to
this point.
Now that's proven by the fact that when you go to the book of Joshua, and it talks about
them coming into the land of Israel and crossing the Jordan River, it says that all the children
of Israel who left Egypt were all circumcised.
They were all circumcised.
That shows that the children of Israel have constantly circumcised their children.
But for some reason Moses did not circumcise his son when Moses' son was born.
And it's really obvious what the reason was that he didn't circumcise when you look at
the story.
Why?
Because his wife did not want the child to be circumcised.
Obviously his wife Zipporah is refusing to allow her son to be circumcised.
She's of the Midianites.
That's not their custom.
It's not something they do.
And so basically she had been told by Moses, clearly if you read the story you can read
between the lines, obviously Moses had said to circumcise the child, otherwise she wouldn't
be blaming it on Moses when she finally does it.
But when she finally circumcised the child, she calls him a bloody husband, throws, I
mean you don't want your wife, I mean look, you want to talk about fighting, you want
to talk about a dysfunctional marriage.
You know when your wife's throwing a bloody foreskin at your feet, you know, and rebuking
That's a bad fight.
That's a big fight.
That's pretty bad.
So why did she do it?
She's blaming him, she's taking it out on him, but really is Moses the one who initiated
circumcision?
Is this his idea?
Is this his commandment?
No.
It's God's commandment.
Now Moses did not circumcise his son.
Who's God coming to kill, Zipporah?
So who's God?
Think about this story because this is a fascinating story.
Who is God going to punish and judge?
Right.
Because God's holding Moses responsible, but who's the one who didn't want to circumcise
the child?
Zipporah.
Who did want to circumcise the child?
Moses wanted to circumcise the child, Zipporah didn't, and what happened?
He didn't get circumcised.
And who's God mad at?
Okay, so we can learn a lot about marriage from this, can't we?
We can learn, number one, that God holds the husband responsible to lead.
And you say, well, but my wife won't follow.
My wife just, she just doesn't want to get on board.
But you know what though?
It's the husband that's responsible to lead that home.
Now obviously what should have happened, if we study the whole Bible and apply all the
principles we've learned, the husband should have circumcised that child anyway.
Apparently that's what God thought because God's mad at him.
God's going to punish him.
And so that shows that we ought not be ruled by our wives.
The husband is supposed to lead, but with leadership comes responsibility.
Yes it's the husband's, it's his benefit I guess you could call it, that he gets to be
the boss, as people say, but he's also the one who has to take the responsibility when
things go wrong.
You see how that's a two-edged sword?
And so as husbands we need to understand, yes we're the leader, but you know we're responsible
for what goes on in our home.
We can't just shrug our shoulders and say, well I don't know why my teenage daughter
is dressing promiscuously, you know, her mother lets her dress that way.
Well I don't know, you know, I guess the kids are all going to be baptized Catholic because
that's what their mother wants.
As men we're held responsible, we're supposed to lead.
First of all we should be equally yoked with a believing spouse.
If we're equally yoked with a believing spouse and we bring the commandments of God to our
spouse, you know, then our wife will understand, hey this is coming from God, I need to obey
this.
It's not just my husband's whim.
And so here's the command of God and we see a wife in the story here getting angry at
her husband just because he's trying to carry out the command of God, okay.
And so who's to blame in this story?
Well Moses is the one who did wrong.
You say, well she did wrong, but who's responsible according to God?
Who's God going to punish?
Who's God going to judge, okay?
So this is an interesting story where we see, and go to Exodus 18 now, let's continue the
saga of Moses and Zaphora here and their messed up marriage, okay.
First of all, we see a wife that's not obeying her husband, okay, and we also see a husband
who's not taken charge, he's failing to lead.
Because who eventually circumcises the child?
She does.
I mean wouldn't you think when the Lord's coming to kill Moses, at that point he just
says, listen Zaphora, I don't care what you want.
You know, God's commanding us to do this, he's mad, I'm going to do this.
But in the end she's the one who does it.
He never takes the lead.
He never does what needs to be done.
She does it.
Now look if you would at Exodus 18, the next mention of Moses and his wife, and look, we're
looking at every mention of Moses and Zaphora, there's only three mentions.
First we saw them get married, then we saw the strife over the circumcision.
And by the way, just a side note, I do not circumcise my children because we're in the
New Testament and that's a whole other sermon of itself.
But look at Exodus chapter 18 verse 1.
The Bible says, when Jethro the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, so this is his
wife's father, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel's people, and that
the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt, then Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took Zaphora,
Moses' wife, after he had sent her back.
Do you see that?
And it says, and her two sons, of which the name of the one was Gershom, for he said,
I've been an alien in a strange land, and the name of the other was Eliezer, for the
God of my father said he was mine help and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.
And Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses in the wilderness,
where he encamped at the mount of God, and he said unto Moses, I thy father-in-law Jethro,
are come unto thee, and thy wife, and her two sons with her.
And Moses went out to meet his wife, is that what it says?
Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and did obeisance and kissed him.
And they asked each other of their welfare and they came into the tent.
You know, this is not a good sign about Moses' marriage, because first of all, notice, he
sent her back.
She's with him, she went down with him to Egypt, well at some point, we don't know exactly
at what point, he sent her back, he just sent her away.
Obviously things weren't going well because he's trying to deal with taking the children
of Israel out of Egypt.
He had to send her away and just deal with things in Egypt, then her father hears about
the fact that they've come out of Egypt, everything's going good now.
He brings the wife, he brings the two kids, and comes and says, hey Moses, I'm here, I've
got your wife, I've got your two kids, and he brings them and delivers them unto Moses.
You know, first of all, we can see here that Jethro's a good guy, because you know, a lot
of father-in-laws, they would have just said, oh that bloody husband, you need to just stay
with us, you know, we'll take care of you, you know, you're in a bad marriage.
At least Jethro did what every father-in-law should do if their daughter comes home, you
know, with marital problems.
He said, hey, let's go get in the car and let's go back and take you back to your husband.
You know, at least he did the right thing there by delivering Moses, his wife, and children
unto him.
So that was a good thing that he did.
We don't really see anything negative about Jethro in the scripture, he seems like a great
guy.
He brings the wife and children back, but we see here that there's no mention of a happy
reunion, there's no mention of anything positive about the interaction between Moses and Zipporah.
But I'll say this, and go to Job, we're going to look at the next dysfunctional marriage
in the Bible, and you might think of a lot more than what I found, but these are the
ones that I found, okay?
But go to Job, actually Brother Garrett found this one for me.
Go to the book of Job, think about this now, Moses did a great work for God, didn't he?
I mean, would anybody argue with the fact that Moses was a great man, that he was a
godly man, that he was a great leader, you know, as far as leading the people.
You know what that tells me is that, you know what, even the greatest men in the Bible were
not perfect.
Because we can see this was an area in Moses' life where he struggled with his marriage.
But that tells me that, you know what, God can use people that are not perfect to do
a great work for him.
You know, even in spite of his marriage problems and in spite of his weakness in this area,
he's still a great man, he still did a great work for God.
So let that be an encouragement to you, if let's say you have some weaknesses in your
life, you've got some sins in your life that you struggle with, you've got relationships
in your life that aren't going the way they're supposed to go, you've had problems.
You know what, that doesn't mean that you should just throw in the towel and say, you
know what, I can't even get my wife to go along with circumcising my son, I'm a poor
leader here, I'm just going to do nothing for God.
You know what, you should still serve God, because you know what, God is willing to take
your weakness and his strength is made perfect in weakness, and even a person like Samson
who had a lot of weakness made a lot of mistakes, you know God could still use us if we want
to serve him, if we love him, if we want to do something for him.
And you know Moses here, he had a lot of weaknesses, but he was still mightily used by God, and
so let that encourage you that he was able to overcome even marriage problems and things.
But here's another dysfunction within marriage, Job and his wife.
Now we don't really learn a lot about Job's wife, unfortunately Job's wife does not really
go down in history as being a very nice wife, because, yeah exactly, this is the only part
that we really hear about Job's wife.
Now one thing we know is that according to chapter 1, Job had 10 children with his wife.
So Job's been married to his wife for a long time, and they've had 10 children together.
Now it's easy to just read over that, isn't it?
Just oh yeah, he had 10 kids.
But you know what, my wife has had 7 children, and it's quite an ordeal with each one.
And 7 children, I mean going through birth 7 times, first of all there's a danger associated
with childbirth, there's a lot of pain with childbirth, it's a very strenuous experience,
and you know she's given birth to 10 children, and you know the joy that comes, you know
there's all this pain and suffering, and the joy when that child is born and you hold that
child in your arms and you love it so much, and you watch it grow up, and you love it
every day, keep in mind that when we get to Job chapter 2, all we know about Job's wife
is that she's given birth to these 10 children in chapter 1, and then all of them are killed.
Now that's a pretty bad place to be, I mean you know put yourself in those shoes.
You're a woman, you've given birth to 10 children that you love and that you have nursed and
cared for, and have had such a strong effect, and all 10 of them are killed in one day.
I mean it's easy to judge Job's wife, it's easy to attack Job's wife, but wait a minute,
what would you do in that situation?
You don't really know what your attitude would be or how you would feel.
Not only that, but Job has lost all of his wealth, he was a very wealthy man, he lost
everything.
He's lost all of his children, his wife's children, they're all dead.
Then Job in chapter 2, as if that were not enough, because Job had retained his integrity,
it's taken a step further.
Look at verse number 7, so went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, so Satan is
afflicting Job with these afflictions, it says, and smote Job with sore boils from the
sole of his foot unto his crown.
And he took him a potsherd, a potsherd is a piece of a broken pot, to scrape himself
withal and sat down among the ashes.
Now who knows what a boil is?
You know a boil is like an infectious puss feel, I don't want to get too graphic here,
but it's not something that you want to have all over your body from the top of your head
to the bottom of your feet.
So Job's wife sees, we've lost all our money, I mean they had like a perfect life.
Wonderful children, happy life, all the finances, everything going great, they love God, they
love church, they love the Bible, and then they just lose everything.
All children gone, all the money gone, and then the wife looks at her husband and he's
covered in disease and boils from the crown of his head to the top of his feet and he's
in such pain and itching and burning that he's sitting there just scraping himself with
a potsherd just to find some relief.
So keep that in perspective when you read what Job's wife says to him here.
Then said his wife unto him, verse 9, Dost thou still retain thine integrity?
You are still hanging on to your integrity?
What is integrity?
It means you're staying true, you're staying righteous.
She says, Dost thou still retain thine integrity?
Curse God and die.
You know, this is not what you want your wife saying to you obviously.
Curse God and die.
I mean she's basically telling him to die.
I mean that's the last thing you want your wife to tell you, die.
But she tells him, curse God and die.
Look at his response, but he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women
speaketh.
What?
Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil?
In all this Job did not Job sin with his lips.
And then on and on the story goes and of course the great book.
But we see that Job's wife says something very hurtful and hateful to her husband.
I mean that's a hateful thing to say.
Curse God and die.
That's a very mean thing.
You know, I don't think that she was a bad person though.
Because first of all you've got to put yourself in the perspective of what she's going through.
I'm not condoning of her sin.
Obviously she's in sin here.
I'm not condoning it.
I'm just understanding it.
And I'm saying this.
When Job responds he says, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh.
Basically saying, you know what, I know you.
You're not a foolish woman.
This is not the type of thing you would normally say.
This is out of character for you.
You're talking like one of the foolish women would talk.
Basically showing that he does not think that she's one of the foolish women.
And that he has respect for her.
And that he understands the truth that, you know, women or men alike can often in an extreme
situation say something that they don't mean.
You know, when they're in anger, when they're under stress, when they're going through bad
times.
And you know, when you're in a marriage, you're in it for better or for worse.
There are always going to be bad times.
Whether it's the death of a child.
Often the death of a child causes divorce.
Health problems often cause divorce.
Problems with the children often cause divorce.
These are the type of things that can lead to a divorce.
And what we need to understand and learn from this story is that people, when they're going
through really hard times, can often say things that they shouldn't have said.
And say things that they don't really mean, that don't necessarily come from their heart.
They're just under stress.
They're just going through a very difficult time and so they lash out in anger and say
something foolish even though they're not normally a foolish person.
And so Job did the right thing here.
Job, he understood what she's going through.
He calmly told her that what she said was wrong.
He rebuked what she said.
And at the end of the story we know that Job had 10 more children.
And you know, I'm assuming it's with the same wife.
I mean there's no mention of a different wife so I'm going to assume, obviously, I'm not
going to, you know, insert things in the Bible that aren't there.
And so if this is his wife, he had the 10 children with her.
At the end of the story, he has 10 more children with her.
So do you see how they had a continued good and blessed marriage even after this?
You know, some people, if their wife said this to them, they just, it's over.
And then they're just ready to just quit.
Or if their husband said something like this to them, if their husband said this, they
just, I'm going back to dad.
You know, it's all over.
I married the wrong person.
I can never get over it.
Look, bad things might happen in your life and bad things might be said in your marriage,
but that's where forgiveness comes in.
What we learned about this morning, one of the principles that we covered, that's where
being not bitter against them.
You know, Job could have been bitter against his wife and held a grudge and not forgiven,
but you know what?
Because he forgave, because he was patient, because he was not bitter, he ended up continuing
to have a blessed, fruitful marriage with his wife, and he got to have ten children
with his wife, and then he got to enjoy, the Bible says, his grandchildren and so forth,
and that he lived to a good old age, he saw his children's children.
He was blessed because he didn't overreact to something that his wife said.
You know, and so what we need to understand is that people make mistakes, and especially
when we go through a stressful time, we need to be careful not to, first of all, not to
say things like this, but second of all, when we hear things like this, not to just
overreact and just think, oh our marriage is over, that's it.
My husband doesn't love me.
My wife doesn't, now I know my wife doesn't love me, never has loved me, and never will
because she's telling me to curse God and die, even though he already had ten children
with her, he's going to have ten more, and so we need to put the story in perspective
that way.
Let's look at the third dysfunctional marriage in the Bible.
Go to 1 Samuel chapter 18.
So these stories reinforce the principles that we learned this morning.
The first story emphasized what we learned this morning about leadership, ruling your
house, wives obeying their husbands, and so forth.
The second story reinforced what we learned about forgiveness and bitterness and so forth,
what we saw from all those clear New Testament statements, but here's a third marriage in
the Bible that was definitely dysfunctional, and that was David and his wife Michal, M-I-C-H-A-L.
Now this marriage started out as a really good marriage.
Look if you would at 1 Samuel chapter 18 verse 20, and Michal, Saul's daughter, loved David.
That's a good start, right?
And they told Saul, and the thing pleased him, wherefore David arose and went, he and
his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men, and David brought their foreskins
and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son-in-law.
And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.
And Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and that Michal, Saul's daughter, loved
him.
And Saul was yet the more afraid of David, and Saul became David's enemy continually.
So here we see several times here, the Bible, doesn't the Bible just keep repeatedly telling
us that Michal loved David?
No question about it, I mean he repeats that, he emphasizes that again and again in those
four verses.
Now jump over to 1 Samuel chapter 19 verse 10.
So Michal is Saul's daughter.
She loves David.
They get married.
Things are going well.
But if you remember, of course, Saul begins to hate David.
He seeks to kill David because he's jealous of David's battle victories and so forth,
and his popularity amongst the people.
He's afraid that David is going to be his rival for being the next king, and that he'll
take away some of his glory.
So Saul's trying to kill David.
Look what it says in 1 Samuel 19, 10, and Saul sought to smite David even to the wall
with the javelin, but he slipped away out of Saul's presence and he smote the javelin
into the wall, and David fled and escaped that night.
Saul also sent messengers unto David's house to watch him.
So they're basically spying on him and waiting to try to catch him and kill him.
And it says that they sent messengers to David's house to watch him, look at verse
11 part way through, and to slay him in the morning.
So they're saying, you know what, we're going to watch the house all night and in the morning
we're going to kill him.
When he comes out in the morning we're going to jump him and kill him.
And it says this, and Michal, David's wife, told him saying, if thou save not thy life
tonight, tomorrow thou shalt be slain.
She got word of the plot and she warns him, hey, you've got to get out of here or you're
going to be killed.
So Michal, verse 12, let David down through a window and he went and fled and escaped.
So she helps him get out of the house and get away from these guys that are watching
the house.
And Michal took an image and laid it in the bed and put a pillow of goat's hair for his
bolster and covered it with a cloth.
So she basically builds a fake, you know, David in the bed.
You know, did you ever do that when you were a kid?
You know, you're supposed to be in bed, you're going to sneak out, and basically you sneak
out of the house and, you know, you put pillows and everything and you make it look like somebody's
laying there.
And so, you know, they built this little decoy and basically they come in to find him.
It says when Saul sent messengers to take David, verse 14, she said, he's sick.
So she's covering for him.
She let him out the window, she let him get a good escape, and they send messengers.
And she says, no, no, can't you see he's in bed, he's sick.
You know, but it's a decoy, he's really sick.
And Saul sent messengers again to David saying, bring him up to me in the bed that I may slay
him.
Just bring him, bring him, bring the whole bed.
Don't come back empty-handed.
And when the messengers were coming, finally they just burst in, we're bringing him.
We don't care, if we have to drag him on a stretcher, we're bringing him.
And it says when the messengers were coming, behold there was an image in the bed with
a pillow of goat's hair for his bolster.
And Saul said unto Michal, why hast thou deceived me so and sent away mine enemy that he's escaped?
That's a stupid question, it's her husband.
Obviously she loves her husband.
And Michal answered Saul, he said unto me, let me go, why should I kill thee?
Now obviously that's not true, because why would she be covering for him for days and
making him out to be sick.
But she's just saying that now just to calm dad down.
Now I believe that she was right, obviously, to help David escape.
She's protecting innocent life, she was right to do that, based on other clear statements
and principles in the Bible.
I believe she was right to create the decoy, say he's sick, and so forth.
Now she says unto him, well David said, let me go, why should I kill thee?
I think this was a mistake when she lied to her dad here saying, he said unto me, let
me go, why should I kill thee?
And the reason why is because she's not making it clear to her dad that she loves her husband
and that she's loyal to her husband.
She's acting like, well the only reason why I did this was because he threatened to kill
me, that's why I did this.
So because of that, doesn't it sound as if she does not love her husband to her dad?
If she's telling her dad, and this isn't just dad, this is the king of the nation, and she
says to him, well he told me that he was going to kill me if I didn't, that's the only reason
I let him go.
That's what it sounds like.
So I don't have time to go into it for the sake of time.
Go to 2 Samuel chapter 6, it's a really sad story, I don't have time to go into every
detail for the sake of time.
But basically what ends up happening is Saul ends up giving her to another man to be his
wife.
Now that's obviously wicked, that was ungodly.
I mean Michael had already been given to David, David's still alive, and yet Saul takes it
upon himself to give, I mean can you imagine if you were fleeing from the law and all of
a sudden your wife is forced into a marriage with another man while you're gone?
I mean that's a pretty bad situation, that's going to make you pretty angry.
Well that's exactly what happened to David.
Michael was given unto another man.
I mean David's wife, Michael, is given to another man.
Now I don't know if Michael telling this lie at the end of verse 17, saying well the reason
why I did this could have led to that.
That could have been a factor and why something like that would even take place.
I don't know, I'm not going to try to speculate or read into that too much.
But of course when David comes to the kingdom and Saul is dead, he demands his wife to be
given back to him.
He demands for Michael to be given back to him, and his wife is given back to him, because
it was his legitimate wife.
And he had never divorced her or put her away or anything like that, so she is given back
unto him.
Now there comes a time, and of course David at this time had gone into multiple wives.
Now this is a mistake that pretty much every king of Israel made, didn't they?
And the Bible knew, God knew that this was going to happen.
That's why in Deuteronomy when he's giving the commandments of choosing a king, he says
that one of the things that a king should never do is multiply wives.
And that's exactly what Saul did, that's what David did, that's what Solomon did, that's
what Rehoboam did.
You look at all these kings, why?
Because God never designed them to have a king in the first place.
They were supposed to be under the system of the judges.
They complained to God in 1 Samuel 8 and said, give us a king that we may be like unto all
the nations.
And God said that they were in sin and wickedness for desiring a king, and that they should
be content with the system that God had given them, and they should not even have a king
in the first place.
And in Deuteronomy when it gave the specifications for choosing a king, he said, don't have a
king.
You shouldn't have a king.
He said, but, in case you do, it should be X, Y, and Z, it should definitely be not somebody
who multiplies wives X, Y, and Z.
But he said don't do it.
He said it's better not to have a king, let me be your king, I'll be your king.
If you're going to have an earthly king, make sure he's, you know, of your brethren, the
children of Israel, that he's not a foreigner, you know, you don't want Obama to be king,
you know what I mean?
So you know, you've got to make sure it's not a foreigner, and make sure he reads the
Bible every day, make sure he doesn't multiply wives, but of course none of those things
happened because, you know, kings have too much power.
Man is a sinful creature, and when you put man in a position of power like being a king,
he's going to abuse it.
Saul abused it.
Saul was a great guy.
The worst thing that ever happened to Saul was becoming king.
Before that he was a great guy.
David abused his power.
Solomon abused his power.
Rehoboam abused his power.
They all abused their power.
They all took multiple wives.
They all did everything they weren't supposed to do because they can't handle the power.
And look, if you or I were made king tomorrow, we'd mess it up, because we're all sinners.
And that's why God designed a really minimal system of government in the book of Judges,
you know, that we see carried out in the book of Judges.
It was designed in Exodus and Deuteronomy, and that's the system that's the perfect government.
Very limited, not giving anybody power, because you start giving people a bunch of power and
they abuse it.
So we see here that David, at this point in his life, in 2 Samuel 6, and we're going
to start looking at verse 16, at this point in David's life, he's taken on a few multiple
wives.
He's got at least three wives that we know of.
And he actually had more than that, because when we get to the days of Absalom, he had
ten concubines, which are basically tantamount, another wife.
We don't really know where David's at in that progression, but we know that he's already
taken multiple wives at this point, so he's not just married to one woman.
Well look at verse 16.
This is when David brings in the Ark of the Covenant, there's music, there's dancing and
rejoicing.
Well it says in verse 15, so David and all the house of Israel brought up the Ark of
the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the trumpet.
And it's a good thing that's going on.
But as the Ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, Saul's daughter, looked
through a window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised
him in her heart.
Now in this story, I don't believe David was doing anything wrong here.
There's no indication, if we read the whole story in context, compare it with other scriptures,
you know he's excited.
He's leaping, he's dancing, he's rejoicing, woo!
He's happy, and you know what, he's happy for the right reasons.
They're bringing the Ark of the Covenant in.
They're serving the Lord, they're doing what they're supposed to do.
The Levites are carrying it on their shoulders, as is supposed to happen.
You know, everything's going great here.
He's happy, he's having fun, he's having a good time, he's praising the Lord, everything's
great.
But then Michal, while this is happening, she looks down at David out the window and
she despises him in her heart.
Now was she right to despise her husband in her heart?
When the Bible says that wives should reverence their husband, respect their husband, and
obviously David wasn't really doing anything wrong here.
But let's keep going in the story though.
Look at verse 20.
Then David returned to bless his household, and Michal, the daughter of Saul, so she doesn't
just keep this disgust in her heart, this hatred that she has for her husband, she doesn't
keep this in her heart.
It says, then David returned to bless his household and Michal, the daughter of Saul,
came out to meet David.
David's in a great mood, David's really happy.
He's really rejoicing, and then his wife comes to throw a wet blanket on it, right?
And she came out to meet David and said, how glorious was the king of Israel today who
uncovered himself today in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants as one of the vain
fellows shamelessly uncovered himself?
Basically she's saying, you're acting like a child.
You're acting like a fool.
You're acting like these vain fellows who go out to a ball game and get all wild and
drunken or they go out to the karaoke bar and get all drunk and wild or, you know, they
go wherever.
You know, you're like one of these vain fellows.
You just shamelessly, you just act all wild and act all crazy and you just have no dignity.
You're the king of Israel.
Why are you acting like an idiot?
Why are you jumping around?
Are you an idiot?
You know, I'm just trying to bring it into the vernacular.
I mean, what she's saying is pretty harsh, right?
Yeah, you're shamelessly uncovering yourself and basically she's accusing him of, she's
saying, you know, and I think this is the key of why she's really mad.
I think here's the key if we study the story.
In the eyes of the handmaids of his servants.
You see that?
Why bring that up?
That's the key passage.
That's the key phrase.
In the eyes of the handmaids.
She's saying, yeah, you're out there showing off like this vain fellow.
You're out there partying and having fun in front of these handmaids.
That's what it was really about.
And let's keep reading.
It says, and David said unto Michael, this is David's response, it was before the Lord.
He's saying, wait a minute, it wasn't before those handmaids.
It wasn't about impressing the handmaids, it wasn't about partying or being a vain fellow.
He said, actually, I was doing it for the Lord.
You know, I was rejoicing before the Lord.
I was expressing my praise and thanks and gratitude unto the Lord.
It was before the Lord which chose me.
So this is where he, you know, puts in his dig.
You know, she says, well you're like one of these shameless vain fellows.
He says, oh yeah?
Actually it was before the Lord which chose me before thy father.
Burn!
So what I'm saying here, you know, we can see this is a fight.
I mean, it's a dysfunctional marriage.
I'm finding all the fighting in the Bible between husband and wife.
This is what I'm coming up with, okay.
So she said, he said, no, it was before the Lord who chose me before thy father and before
all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the Lord, over Israel, therefore
will I play before the Lord.
Now at this point, you know, David's reaction is pretty reasonable, right?
I mean he hasn't really said anything wrong here, but look what he says next though because
here he takes it to a wrong level.
Look what he says in verse 22, and I will be yet more vile than thus and will be base
in mine own sight.
Now does that sound like a good thing for a husband to be saying to his wife?
See this is where David is in sin here.
We shouldn't say, I'm going to be more vile than this.
I'm going to be base in my own sight.
Even in my own opinion I'm going to be base, he says.
And of the maidservants which thou hast spoken of, of them shall I be had in honor.
Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child until the day of her death.
What does that mean?
Michal the daughter of Saul had no child until the day of her death.
Very simple what that means.
He didn't touch her with a 10 foot pole after this story took place.
So that's a bad marriage right there.
I mean that's like, now look, you know why David, part of the reason why David had the
luxury to just say well hey, if that's how you're going to be, nuts to you.
I'm not going to touch you with a 10 foot pole which is why you're going to remain childless.
That means that they're not doing what married people are supposed to be doing in the bedroom.
And that's why she's childless, because children are a result of that relationship between
husbands and wives.
And so that's what we see here as the result here.
Now on the surface, and I'll be honest with you, the first few times reading my Bible
on the surface here I looked at this story as you know David's in the right here and
Michal's in the wrong, plain and simple.
But you know what, the more I thought about it and the more I studied this over the years
and read this, you know I can see here that David is wrong.
Because the reason why, and I'm not condoning the fact that his wife, you know, despised
him in her heart.
I mean she shouldn't have felt that way.
She shouldn't have had despite for him in her heart.
But let me say this though, why was she mad?
Because she was jealous of the fact that he was garnering attention of other women and
he already had a couple of other wives.
So is her jealousy founded in reality?
Now look, she started out loving him and her love for him turned to disdain.
Her love for him turned to hatred because of jealousy.
Because the Bible talks about the fact that jealousy is like a burning fire, it's like
a vehement flame.
And let me tell you something, jealousy is not a sin.
Never in the Bible is it taught that jealousy is a sin.
Now a lot of people use the word jealousy and what they really mean is envy.
Now envy is a sin.
Envy is when I look at your car and your car is better than my car and I'm quote unquote
jealous of that.
You know, isn't that how people use the word jealous today?
They say like, oh I'm so jealous.
You know women will say, oh I love that outfit, I'm so jealous.
Basically what they mean is I covet what you have, I'm covetous.
But when the Bible says jealous it never means that.
Do you understand that everybody?
Our modern use of the word jealous is not what the Bible means when it says jealous.
Our modern use of jealous is really envy or covetousness.
When the Bible says jealousy it's referring to, for example, a jealous husband or a jealous
wife as we use it today.
That's what the Bible is referring to.
That's why the Bible says that God is a jealous God.
In fact the Lord's name is jealous and the Bible says that he demands all the glory,
all the worship, and he says thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Because he said the Lord thy God is a jealous God.
He demands you to only worship him alone, not someone else.
Well in the Bible, in Numbers chapter 5 is it?
Where it talks about the spirit of jealousy coming upon a man.
This is where a man believes that his wife has been unfaithful to him.
Or jealousy as in I want to keep my wife to myself, or my wife wants to keep me to herself.
Now is that wrong?
It's never wrong in the Bible.
The Bible only speaks positively of jealousy in that sense because of the fact that when
you get married that's the vow that you make, to keep me only unto you so long as we both
shall live.
That's the vow.
So is it wrong for me to expect my wife to keep that vow?
Or is it wrong for my wife to expect me to keep that vow?
No.
Jealousy is a legitimate feeling.
I mean if I saw my wife, even if it wasn't adultery, if my wife is paddling around with
some other guy, going out to lunch with some other guy, hanging on the phone to some other
guy, am I going to be jealous?
If I'm anything like God, if I'm anything like the Bible says I should be, if I'm righteous,
I'm going to be jealous and say no.
You need to be my wife.
You need to put me first.
But it's a two-way street.
What if my wife saw me and I'm hanging on the phone with other women, I'm leaving her
at home and I'm going out to dinner with some other woman, but it's just dinner.
Just talking.
It's not adultery.
But is she going to be jealous?
Because you know why?
If I want to take a woman out to dinner, I need to be taking her out to dinner, not some
other woman.
You see what I'm saying?
So Michal has had very intense love for David.
The Bible is very clear on that.
But that love turns to hatred because of jealousy, because of the fact that he has not been faithful
to her.
He has taken on other wives.
He is showing love and affection for others.
And even here, instead of repentance here, if David said right here, you know what, here's
how David should have reacted.
Obviously she was wrong to despise her husband.
But how he could have reacted is said, you know what, it was before the Lord which chose
me before your father, burn, but you know what, I understand why you're upset because
you know what, I shouldn't be taking on all these other wives and other concubines.
And I'm sorry I did it, you're my original wife, I should have just only been with you
and you know what, I'm not going to diminish, you know it's too late now, I've already married
these other women, I can't fix that, but I'm going to do what the Bible says in Exodus
chapter 21 because the Bible does.
See God always makes allowances for our mistakes.
He says don't have a king, but if you do, X, Y, and Z.
He says don't have two wives, but if you do have a second wife, he gives rules for having
a second wife.
Even though he tells us not to do it, he knows people are going to do it.
And you say nobody does that, well people all over the world, just not in America.
Now thank God that's not a part of our culture, we do everything else weird here, but thank
God we don't do polygamy except Utah, right, or Northern Arizona, the Mormons.
But anyway, the thing is, he could have said you know what, I'm sorry, I did wrong by not
being content here with you and by having these other concubines, and since you're my
original wife, I'm going to do like the Bible says in Exodus 21, and I'm not going to diminish
any of your food or clothing or my duty of marriage toward you.
I'm going to perform that duty of a husband, and I'm going to lie with you as the Bible
commands me to do.
And he could have said, you know what, I see where you're coming from, but you know what,
I just need, I still love you.
But instead his pride kicks in, he loses his temper, and in anger he says, I'm going to
be more vile than you can even imagine.
He's just basically saying, oh yeah, I'll show you, I'll take on more concubines if
that's how it's going to be, and I'm never going to see you again.
So we see here that David is really the one who really did seriously wrong here.
You know, I mean, obviously there's mistakes on both parties.
And again, we're not going to turn there for the sake of time.
First Chronicles 15, 28 and 29 give the same story of her just despising him in her heart
and just looking out the window and having disgust for her husband, which is wrong.
Yet you say, Pastor Anderson, man, this sermon is confusing me, it's just one messed up marriage
to another, I mean, Moses, Job, David, but here's what I take away from this little study
that we did tonight.
You know, we saw some examples of how things can go wrong if we don't follow God's principles.
If we don't put in this morning's sermon into practice, tonight's sermon is where we end
up.
But let me say this, what we can learn from this is that even great people, even godly
men and godly women, I think both Job and his wife were godly, I think Moses was godly,
I don't know about Zipporah so much, I don't know, I don't know.
You know, I believe that both David and Michal were godly people in the beginning and they
loved each other.
You know what this tells me?
It tells me that it's possible for even godly, righteous Christians to go wrong in their
marriage, doesn't it?
I mean if Moses' marriage can go wrong, if David's marriage can go wrong, if Job can
go through a little rough patch in his marriage, that tells me that no one is immune from this.
Because probably nobody in this room is better than Moses and David and Job.
I mean these are great men, but yet even they could make these mistakes.
You know what that tells me?
We need to take heed to what the Bible teaches about marriage and we better follow God's
commandments on marriage and we better study Ephesians 5 and study Colossians 3 and study
1 Timothy and Titus and learn this and you know we better take heed unto our marriage
before we get to this point.
Because you know what, if these great people can have these kind of marriage problems,
that tells me we need to make it a priority to have a marriage that is pleasing in the
eyes of God.
And you know, don't follow the world's counsel and the world's methods.
Follow God's methods.
These people, none of them, except Job, none of those other two examples were following
God's principles in their life.
That's why they had a problem.
Job did follow it, that's why his scenario had a happy ending, the other two had a bad
ending.
So when we look at this, we need to understand that if these great men could have these kind
of serious marriage problems, that should tell me, you know what, we need to take heed
unto this area.
And you say, why are you preaching this, Pastor Anderson, are you having marriage problems?
No, my marriage is great.
My marriage is doing great right now, I can honestly say.
See that laugh?
You can tell.
But anyway, you know, my marriage is doing great, but let me tell you this though.
Let me tell you this though.
You don't just preach sermons when things are going wrong.
You preach sermons so that things don't go wrong.
You know, it's like, it's like that old stupid corny commercial that was on in the 80s when
I was a kid.
You know, about the guys using the dandruff shampoo.
And they're like, but you don't have dandruff, and he's like, exactly.
You know?
And what he's saying is, I use this, that's why I don't have dandruff.
I'm not going to wait until I have dandruff.
I'm not going to wait until my shoulders are covered in white flakes and say, hmm, maybe
it's time to buy Head and Shoulders, you know, or whatever, or Pert Plus, or I don't even
remember what it was.
You know, maybe it's time to deal with this.
You know what, it's better to just get it right the first time.
And you know, there are a lot of young people here, a lot of singles and children.
You know what, it's better to learn this stuff going into it and learn the principles of
this morning's sermon, so that you don't get to this point.
Because when you're to the point where your wife's throwing the bloody foreskin at your
feet, and your wife's going home to daddy, and your wife's living with her dad, you know
what, it might be too late to fix that mess.
That's why it's better to do maintenance on it before it gets to that point, nip things
in the bud, get it in conformity with God's Word, get in church, be equally yoked, get
on to the preaching of God's Word, do things right, and don't get into these kind of scenarios.
And if you weren't here this morning, you know, I would definitely download the sermon,
it's going to be on the internet, because you know, you need those biblical truths.
Or, you know, go home and read Ephesians 5.
That's the main passage.
I mean, I went to a lot of other passages this morning, but that's the main passage.
You know, let's make sure that we don't neglect this area of our life.
We don't want to neglect our wife or our children, wives, you don't want to neglect to take heed
unto having a good marriage, but especially I'm talking to the husbands, both this morning
and tonight.
It's mainly, you know, the husbands are the leaders, you know.
We need to keep this thing together.
Seventy-five percent of marriages are ending in divorce.
Even godly men are having issues.
We need to make sure that we take heed unto this and continue to have a great marriage
and keep things on track.
This is an important subject.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your Word and for the wisdom that you give in your Word.
You know, the world's got a lot of wisdom out there, but it's all foolishness.
It's all garbage in your sight.
And so, Father, please just help us to take heed unto your recommendations, even though
they're completely contradicting what the world tells us.
Help us to go through a marriage in conformity with Ephesians 5 so that we will have a marriage
that can be blessed by you, and in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
All right, let's go ahead and sing another song before we go.
Does anybody have a song that they think ties in with the sermon tonight about dysfunctional
marriages?
The fight is on?
No.
Does anybody have a song that they'd like to sing, even if it's unreliable?