Intimacy in the Bed Room

We ended last time talking about 1st Peter 3:7, which says, “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding.” It is our wives we are to dwell with. And we talked about making a study of our wives.

But the King James Version brings out another connotation. The King James translates this as dwell with them “according to knowledge.” This makes us think sexual. Genesis 4:1 stated, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived.” When this verse says “Adam knew Eve,” it didn’t mean he knew her name or her shoe size. That’s not the way babies are conceived. Intimacy in marriage also involves sexual intimacy.

Aha, some of you are getting ideas. Victoria Secrets lingerie, soft music, candlelight and roses. Get the manuals that instruct you the various positions that take an acrobat or yoga instructor to get into. Well, that isn’t the way it works in most homes.

Most married couples, after a few years, have acquired a kid or two. They have put on the pounds, and suffer from varicose veins. By the time the kids are in bed, both are too tired to perform at the pinnacle of excitement. Romance maybe happens on Valentine’s Day or your anniversary, but it’s not part of the regular routine. Yet, normal married couples actually have a more satisfying sex life than those trying to emulate the movies. Why? It is because intimacy comes from knowledge, not mystery.

Proverbs 5, set in the midst of many warnings not to play with fire by dabbling in sex outside of marriage, tells us to be satisfied with our wives. Writing of the wife, Proverbs 5:18-19 say:

“Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer and a graceful doe, let her breast satisfy you at all times; and always be enraptured with her love.”

Even an older woman (still the “wife of your youth”), can compete quite successfully on those terms. As the New International Version says, he is “captivated by her love.” Wives don’t need to dress like prostitutes or act like actresses in X-rated movies. They only need to respond to one another in love, freely giving themselves to one another.

Only within the bounds of true marital love can two people relax and be comfortable with one another, to be un-inhibited in their love-making as Adam and Eve were in Genesis 2:25, which says, “And they were both naked. . . and were not ashamed.” That kind of total intimacy is possible, proper, and God’s intention within a marriage; but it can only grow out of love.

But it takes love PLUS time. Are you taking the time to understand your wife?

Time and Consideration - Key Ingredients to Intimacy

Do you know what the key ingredient is to an intimate marriage? That key ingredient is time. Unfortunately, that is the one thing we are least willing to invest. A recent survey revealed that the average husband and wife spend an average of thirty seven minutes per week in actual communication, meaning real conversation. That wouldn’t sound like much for a single day, let alone a week. For a man, a grunt from behind a newspaper takes less than a second. That doesn’t add up very fast, nor does it do much to increase intimacy. Nor does time spent in front of the TV mesmerized by the flashing lights count as quality time.

Is it any wonder so many marriages fall apart when the kids leave home? The couple find themselves married to a total stranger. They wake up alone one morning in a quiet and an empty house as a couple of old people, and they look across the bed at the other, and they want to ask, “Who are you? I don’t know you.” It is amazing that two people can live together for years, decades even, without ever really knowing each other. Yet it is probably the most common scenario – two people sharing a name and a home, but little else. What a shame.

Warren Wiersbe says,

“In my marital counselling, I often gave the couple a pad of paper and asked them to write down the three things each one thinks the other enjoys doing the most. Usually the wife made her list immediately. The man would sit and ponder. And usually the wife was right, and the husband was wrong.”

Those husbands totally missed the idea of 1st Peter 3:7, “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding.”

Quoting Chuck Swindall:

“Many a wife is lonely for her husband to sense and minister to her inner spirit. To give her his attention and personal presence. She waits to be noticed, to be appreciated, to be given time to share, and in return hear her husband respond with the newspaper laid aside, with the television off, with the whole evening available. Men, maybe it will help to motivate you if you face the fact that a continually absent husband is a major cause for illicit affairs among wives. And often with men who will simply give them time and attention. Wake up, husbands!”

Let me repeat his last words, WAKE UP, HUSBANDS! Your wives need you. Give them the time.

James Henry Jowett, in defining the phrase, “dwell according to knowledge,” writes this:

“We may grasp its content by proclaiming its opposite. ‘Dwell with your wives according to ignorance. Just walk in blindness. Don’t look beyond your own desires. Let your vision be entirely introspective and microscopic. Never exercise your eyes in clear and comprehensive outlook. Dwell in ignorance.’”

Does that describe your marriage? How sad. That attitude has killed too many marriages.

Another slant to that phrase is given by the New International Version. It translates the phrase, “Be considerate as you live with your wives.” In other words, be sensitive to her deepest physical and emotional needs. Isn’t that good advice? Consideration, courtesy – these are the oils to lubricate a relationship. But why is it so hard to do at home?

In an old “Life Magazine” article, it reported:

“The business man gives service with a smile: he is deferential to his boss, his customers and usually even to his underlings. Women are polite to their neighbors and to door-to-door salesmen. Hardly a voice is raised in anger except behind the closed doors of the home. As the outside world becomes more and more constrained, more and more people seem to feel the home is the last remaining place where they can quit kidding and be their own ornery selves. The bride and the groom who have been standing so patiently in the reception line, smiling sweetly at people they hardly know (and some people they know and don’t like), can seem ornery indeed to each other when they get home and let their hair down.”

This is backwards. Of course we need to be kind and considerate out in the workforce and marketplaces of life. Consideration is necessary in every social encounter. But isn’t the home the most important place to exercise consideration? We must learn to be considerate at home if we want to develop intimacy within our homes.

Intimacy in Marriage - Dwelling Together With Understanding

If we are expected to have an intimate relationship with our spouse, does Scripture give us help? Of course! And to answer that, I want to look at just one verse – 1st Peter 3:7 – which states:

“Husbands, likewise, dwell with them (our wives) with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.”

Wait a minute! Why is this addressed to just husbands? Isn’t marriage a joint venture? Yes! Is it solely the husband’s responsibility? No! But wives just seem to do this intimacy stuff more naturally than us guys. God wired them that way, while something must have short-circuited in us guys. But more than that, it is primarily the husband’s responsibility since God left us on charge.

As in so many areas in the home, the husband must be the thermostat setting the emotional and spiritual temperature. The wife is the thermometer letting the husbands know what the temperature is. Men, have you ever noticed things getting a little chilly in your relationship with your wife? That’s your wife acting as the thermometer letting you know the intimacy has cooled down. It’s time to turn up the heat. So both the thermostat and thermometer are necessary.

What are the husbands to do? From 1st Peter 3:7, they are to “dwell with them with understanding.” Dwell with them? Doesn’t that mean” Live with them? That’s easy. We already do. We get our mail in the same mail box, and we eat at the same table. We even share the same bedroom. How’s that for intimacy?

Ah, but the term means more – oh, so much more. In its Greek usage, it means to be completely at home. In other words, home is priority number one.

What is most important to you, husbands? Is it your career? Is it your bank account? Some of you who are Christians will say that God is your highest priority, but then what? If it is not your wife and your family, you have the wrong priority.

How many Christians are there, Mission Boards even, that get it wrong. They so often think families are expendable. Send the kids away to boarding school so they don’t interfere with your work. That’s wrong!

Howard Hendricks used to do something in his classes at Dallas Seminary. He would say, “Gentlemen, your family is not vital to your ministry.” Then he would pause for a few moments before he ended, “Your family is your ministry.”

That is illustrated in the qualifications for elders/pastors in 1st Timothy 3:4-5, when it declares an elder is:

“one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?).”

Rule? I like the New International Version translation better, which substitutes the word “manage.” To “rule” the home in Scripture means to lead it. Men are to lead their homes, not to Lord it over their families. We are not to be despots. But it does show where the responsibility lies – it lies with the husband.

But this is intimately related to the next phrase from 1st Peter 3:7, “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them (our wives) with understanding.” Or, as the King James Version puts it, “according to knowledge.” Men, this is the truth – the success of your dwelling with your wife will be in direct proportion to your knowledge (your understanding) of your wife. And I don’t mean to be insulting, but let’s face it, most of us men are blockheads when it comes to understanding our wives.

Do you know your wife? Do you know her fears, cares, dreams, and expectations? Can you read her moods? Do you know her inside and out? Are you a student of your wife? Do you study her to know her better? That’s what we men must do, we must make a study of our wives in order to live with them with understanding.

Men, marriage is too rewarding to let it be static. You will eventually fail if you simply float down stream. Marriages must grow. And yours can, yours will, if you do the hard work. The first years might seem wonderful, but as a decade goes by, love only grows, until as elderly people married for fifty years, it only keeps getting better. You can be closer, more intimate, and more in love on your fiftieth anniversary than you were on your first. That is, if you continually work at it.

The Intimacy of Marriage

Sometimes along with all the advantages of preaching verse by verse, there is a problem. People can look ahead and see where you are going, and they ask all kinds of questions. And sometimes they make suggestions. So, when I get to a verse like Genesis 2:25, which says, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed;” I get this suggestion, “You don’t really need to preach on that one, do you?” Of course I’m going to, even though some people think it’s too hot to handle in church. But no topic addressed by Scripture should be too hot to handle.

I was also asked the question, “Are you going to tell us what this verse really means?” The answer is: Yes, I am. I did a lot of deep study – I checked the dictionaries of Hebrew words – and I can tell you conclusively what this verse means when it says, “And they were both naked.” It means they didn’t have any clothes on. Nope, not even a fig leaf. The rumors are true.

I suppose that means Eve had it easy. She didn’t have to do laundry, and it meant no ironing. But then she didn’t have to dust either, since she didn’t have a house. But they say Eve did worry. Every night when Adam came home from naming the animals, she counted his ribs.

Seriously, though, what is the lesson here? The word, naked, in Hebrew means to be laid bare. That means totally and completely naked. But it also says they weren’t ashamed. The idea is this: there were no hidden areas between them – no hang ups, no embarrassment, no fears. And they were naked together. The meaning is that they were totally transparent with each other in their marriage. They had unrestrained freedom and the complete absence of self-consciousness.

Does that sound strange in your marriage? Does it sound like something foreign? It’s because we live in a different world – one marred by sin. In Genesis chapter three at the fall, self-consciousness came into being, and shame entered at our nakedness. Then Adam and Eve will resort to using fig leaves to cover up. Later, God will clothe them with animal skins.

But since the fall, sin has marred that original transparent intimacy. We are crippled by sin when it comes to relating freely and openly even in our marriages. We have too much we prefer to keep covered, even from the eyes of our spouses. Nowadays, marriages are more often characterized by selfishness, competition, resentment, embarrassment, and masks, than by intimacy. To our shame!

But, guess what? God still wants our marriages to be intimate. Remember what it said in Ephesians 5:32? We’ve covered it several times already. Our marriages represent an earthly picture of Christ’s relationship to His bride, the church. And the church is to experience intimacy with her Savior, right? Hebrews 4:16 even gives us the gracious invitation “to come boldly to the throne of grace.” We are invited into God’s presence where we can receive grace and help in our time of need. “Boldly” doesn’t mean brashly or flippantly. It has the idea of freedom of speech. We can come before God at any time and tell Him anything. You can lay your heart bare before Him. Plus, God knows us intimately. Psalm 94:11 says, “The Lord knows the thoughts of man.” You can’t even hide what you are thinking from Him, so you might as well share it.

But to be a good symbol of Christ and the church, our marriages also must be intimate. Oh, but how? That is one of the greatest challenges of the ages. It requires work. Yes, sin hinders that work, but the reward of an intimate marriage makes it oh so worth-while. If you work at it, you will win. If not, you will lose big time. But when you win, you really win. The joy of a great marriage is beyond comparison. And if you lose, the scars are never superficial. They leave no flesh wounds, but cleave the heart.

Since we are sinful and prone to hide from each other, we need help in developing intimacy. That help comes from the pages of Scripture. What sin destroyed, following God’s commands can restore. In the next article we will begin examining the Scriptural remedy for our non-intimate marriages.

Does God Ever Condone Divorce?

In the last article, I referred to Malachi 2:16 which states God’s attitude toward divorce. It says: “For the Lord God of Israel says the He hates divorce, for it covers one’s garment with violence.” God hates divorce because marriage was His idea. He intended it to be “till death do us part.” And He hates what divorce does to a family – shredding and tearing it apart, leaving broken hearts and devastated people in its wake.

But, yet, when Jesus was talking to the Pharisees (Actually, they had come to try and trap Him again with a loaded question), they tried to make the argument that God actually condones divorce. As a matter of fact, they asserted, Moses went so far as to command getting one. This conversation is recorded in Matthew 19:7-9:

7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”
8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

“But, see,” they accused. “Moses commanded that the husband give his wife a certificate of divorce.” They could only be referring to Deuteronomy 24:1-4. No other passage written by Moses even gets near divorce. But in this passage, Moses addressed the issue of a woman who was given a divorce and married someone else, saying that she could not be taken again as the first man’s wife. Try as you might in reading those verses, there is no way you can find a command to divorce. It simply acknowledges that divorce exists, and it commands that the man could not remarry his ex-wife once she had defiled herself. Jesus, of course, answered correctly that Moses made no command to divorce, Moses merely a concession.

Divorce wasn’t God’s intention. Divorce is the result of sinful men with hardened hearts who refuse to repent. Divorce, therefore, is merely allowed as a gracious concession allowing an out to the offended party. The one sinned against is not required to stay in an impossible situation. This is why divorce is never labeled sin in the Bible. Some divorces are allowed in limited situations.

Scripture is clear that divorce is always caused by sin, at least one of the marriage partners, but it isn’t always sin. Divorce is caused when one party persists in unrepentant sin and hardens their heart, and the other simply needs an out. So, no! Divorce is never God’s best and never God’s plan, but it is only God’s concession to protect the innocent victim of a spouse’s unrepentant continuing sin.

You can see this from the very next thing Jesus says in Matthew 19:9,

“And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”

First, why does God consider it adultery if a man divorces his wife without cause and marries another? It is because God considers the first marriage to be still in effect. You cannot simply get rid of a spouse you don’t want any more. God does not recognize no-fault divorce, even though the human judge may.

The only exception Jesus gave in Matthew 19:9 is “except for sexual immorality.” The word is often translated as adultery, but it means much more than only adultery. The word in Greek is porneia, which gives us our English word, pornography. It refers to all kinds of illicit sexual sins including fornication, adultery, prostitution, and homosexuality. Granted this is a controversial passage, and there are many views as to what Jesus actually meant. Some commentators seek obscure meanings, while others take it at face value. We won’t take time now to examine all the various views, but usually you should take the plain meaning if it makes sense as the best.

There is a gracious exception if your spouse is involved in unrelenting sexual sin. This is the only exception given by Jesus – a one flesh bonding outside the covenant of marriage. The emphasis of Jesus seems to be to restrict divorce, not allow it for any reason. Paul seems to give a couple of other exceptions (The abandonment by an unsaved spouse, and possibly a divorce having taken place prior to salvation), but we won’t take time now to cover them.

What I do want to do before I close, however, is say this: My purpose has not been to hammer on divorcees adding guilt to the pain they have already experienced. If you were one of the innocent victims in a divorce who did everything in your power to keep the marriage together, there is no sin on your part. You need feel no guilt. You were the one who was sinned against by a hard-hearted spouse. The church needs to support and love you.

But either way, God forgives, and God comforts. He is in the business of strengthening His children and of putting lives back together. Our purpose is not dump on you, but rather to encourage those of you who are now in a troubled marriage to stick with it. Don’t throw in the towel. Keep fighting for your marriage.

You see what God says about marriage and divorce. Will you submit to the Bible’s teaching? The late Francis Schaeffer said, “If we believe the Bible is totally true, we cannot dodge its claim on our lives in sensitive areas such as divorce.” We don’t follow the lead of the world, we follow the teaching of Scripture.

The Tragedy of Easy Divorce

Another way Satan attacks the institution of marriage is through easy divorce laws. Some of you can probably remember the way it was in the “good old days” of our parent’s generation. If you can’t remember it, you probably have watched it on “Ozzie and Harriet” reruns. Back then, divorce was rare. Divorce left a stigma on a person’s life. It carried a certain amount of shame to be divorced.

You couldn’t even get a divorce unless you proved adultery by your spouse. That’s why they hired private detectives to snap pictures through cracks between the bedroom curtains. There was enormous social and economic pressure for couples to stay together. There was a lot if incentive to “work it out,” to “hang in there” for the sake of the kids.

Sure, marriages weren’t all good, but they stuck. And the benefit was that kids were raised by both parents. But today, we live in the age of “No-Fault Divorce.” People can dissolve a marriage in our society for any reason, or for no reason at all.

Currently, the most common reason given for divorce is communication problems. Couples feel incompatible because they don’t communicate, so they divorce. But is our society better for it? Are people happier? Hardly! And, for sure, the kids aren’t better off.

Maybe God was right. Jesus gives us God’s opinion on divorce and marriage in Matthew 19:3-6:

3 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”
4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Jesus was asked a point blank question by the Pharisees. In effect, it was, “Is no-fault divorce acceptable?” To answer, Jesus pointed the Pharisees back to creation and quoted from Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24. He wants them to understand God’s original intent for marriage. What was God’s intent? Marriage is to last “till death do us part.” God designed marriage to be one man with one woman for life. God created marriage as a one-flesh relationship – a loving, intimate union of two persons into one flesh that lasts until one of them dies. They are no longer two, but “one flesh,” acting as visual flesh and blood pictures of the relationship between Christ and the Church.

Can a marriage be dissolved? Well, can flesh be torn asunder? Obviously! The answer is yes. We see it happen all the time. But what is involved in tearing flesh asunder, of ripping a body apart?
In marriage, it involves the destruction of a family. From God’s use of the terms, it is obvious that divorce is like a person being ripped in two, and the pain and agony that is involved in doing it is intense. And the death that follows is the death of the family - the union God Himself had blessed. Therefore, Jesus stated, “What God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Why do people divorce? It is because people refuse to deal with the problems that inevitably arise between them. They prefer to destroy the union because they refuse to yield their own desires or refuse to yield their own way. They refuse to obey God.

God says that divorce is not a satisfactory solution. He glued you together with permanent glue, the best available so you couldn’t come apart. Only with great difficulty can two things glued together be separated. Try to separate two pieces of wood glued together with good wood glue. The pieces don’t separate at the joint, but the wood tears along its own grain. That means you can’t separate the two pieces without doing great damage. The same principle applies to marriage. You can’t separate the partners in a marriage without great damage. But it is not supposed to be that way. You glue things together so they won’t come apart.

The symbol is to be as permanent as the reality. Since the marriage represents Christ’s relationship to His bride the church, we can glean principles. We can’t lose our salvation once we have been born-again through repentant faith in Jesus Christ. If we could, it would be like ripping off Christ’s arm or leg because we are part of His body. Can you see why God has such a bad attitude against divorce?

Malachi 2:16 declares:

“For the LORD God of Israel says
That He hates divorce,
For it covers one’s garment with violence,”
Says the LORD of hosts.
Therefore take heed to your spirit,
That you do not deal treacherously.”

When God says, “For it covers one’s garment with violence,” He is talking about torn flesh, about victims. Since in that day only the man could file for divorce, divorce left the wife broken hearted and destitute. It left children fatherless. It left homes shattered. And God hates it! He hates that kind of violence.

Do you think God has changed his mind? Malachi 3:6 says, “For I am the LORD, I do not change.” God has always hated divorce, and He still hates it. “But my divorce was justified,” you might say. God still hates it. He forgives it, but He hates the consequences. We need to fight to preserve our marriages, not give up and divorce.

Widespread Acceptance of Adultery – a Death Knell to Marriage

Satan is attacking marriage in three ways in our day: He attacks through rampant hedonism, through widespread acceptance of adultery, and through easy divorce laws. I want to look now at our culture’s destructive acceptance of adultery as simply human nature and to be expected.

We previously made the case that sex (oxytocin as the chemical carrier) acts as a glue to cement our marriages together. But with adultery, that glue isn’t sticky any more. Like tape that is used over and over, it loses its stickiness. Likewise, we lose the ability to cleave to our wives the more often we fall in and out of love. Now in our society, one third of married men and women claim to have had at least one affair. Two thirds of men and half of the women wish they could spend more time making love (bad term for having casual sex), but not with their current lover. So the stickiness of marriage is certainly diminished.

But, the world encourages that kind of immorality. It actually expects that kind of behavior. They claim it adds a little spice to life. Read the columns that the worldly “experts” write, and you can see their encouragement of adultery. Dagmar O’Connor, Director of Sexual Therapy at St. Luke’s- Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City, gave these “helpful suggestions” to improve your sex life in marriage:

“When you pass a bedroom window with the blinds drawn, try to picture the sexual scene a couple might be playing.” “Try mentally undressing people you see around you.” “Imagine other couples making love.” “Some couples enjoy flirting at parties.”

How can adding someone else into the midst of your marital intimacy, even if in fantasy, help strengthen the bond of cleaving? How does any of this fit with what Jesus said in Matthew 5:27-28, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” How can adultery in any way fit into a God-designed and God-honoring marriage?

Now here is another question: If a little adultery is good for marriage, why are there so many broken hearts and divorces caused by adultery? It is because even though our glands can convince our minds that an open marriage is good, we can’t convince our hearts. They still get broken.

How much better to listen to God. God takes sexual sin seriously, and God condemns all sexual intercourse outside of marriage. More than that, in the Old Testament, any illicit sexual activity involving married persons demanded the death penalty. Read Leviticus 20:1-14 to see this. That’s serious. And God’s law demanded that fornicators marry. Plus, two of the Ten Commandments relate to the sanctity of marriage. The Seventh Commandment found in Exodus 20:14 states: “You shall not commit adultery.” Plus, the tenth Command found in Exodus 20:17 states: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” Not only is the act of adultery condemned, but even the intent is forbidden. For a married person even to want another, to desire another, was terrible. And it is a death knell to marriage.

Adultery is a great destroyer of marriage. Any married person who even flirts around the edges of adultery is creating great damage to his marriage. A man is commanded to leave his mother and father and cle