Marital Fractures and Family Fault Lines

Uh, I just want you to know we have waited to dismiss the kids until this moment because everyone copes with long-winded preachers in their own way.

So some of you will get that later.

Hey, listen, take take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Genesis, chapter 25.

Genesis 25 · chapter mention

I want to join you there in just a minute.

Uh Kim is back in the nursery.

She and I were out with uh the kids in children's church last week.

Man, those guys and gals are a lot of fun.

Uh, if you just want to be encouraged about all the work that God is allowing us to do here at this church, then get involved in nursery, get involved in children's church, and you will see the seeds of some incredible ministry opportunities uh in the future.

I just can't wait to see in a few years what that youth group looks like.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

So, listen, I want to open up this morning by talking to you about um a time, the very first time, in fact, that one of my children rebuked me.

Now, sometimes this is necessary, parents, right?

We we need to be encouraged or uh uh challenged by our children.

And this was Nick who had challenged me.

Uh, he was very, very young, like he may have been like just this tall.

He was he was just like he wasn't speaking very clearly, and I remember that because of what he said to me.

See, Kim and I had been arguing.

Now, we never argued in front of the kids.

We made sure that like they just like if there was a problem, you know, I bit my tongue, she bit her tongue, and we waited until we were out by ourselves somewhere.

But there's there was this one particular time we were coming in from someplace, we pulled into the driveway, and she and I were arguing, and Kim was upset.

Now, I don't remember, I don't remember even what we were arguing about.

The only thing I remember is that it was clearly my fault, right?

Don't even need the details.

I just know it was my fault.

I know it was my fault because when we got out, everyone went inside, and I'm kind of hanging out, you know, outside beside the car, just you know, doing this the skulking thing, you know, that that you know we guys do.

And and Nick came back out, little dude, and and he looked me dead in the eye and he said, You made mama cry.

He was rebuking me, getting on to me.

I'm telling you, he knew it.

He knew it.

And I did too.

It's kind of funny that we, you know, we uh we go through those moments where like we we hurt each other sometimes as as spouses, and we don't even mean to.

And we do so at great peril and great damage to our families if we if we're not careful with it.

Now, I think it's important sometimes that kids see parents disagree.

They need to know how to handle disagreement.

Some of you are like, man, we've well educated our kids, then right.

And they need to see that.

They need to see what it's like when two people are not on the same page together.

But we also know that it's very important that couples get on the same page, that they're unified.

Unity is the best gift, husbands, wives.

Unity is the best gift that you can give your children.

Because the truth is fractures in your marriage will lead to fault lines in your home.

Fractures in your marriage will lead to fault lines in your home.

Now, let me just pause for a second before we dive into this text in Genesis chapter 25, because we're about to see this.

Genesis 25 · chapter mention

And I just want to say a word to those of you who are single, uh, widowed, divorced, right?

You're here by yourself, and you may think this doesn't apply to you, and I'm gonna suggest that maybe it does or it could.

Number one, if you're single, you may eventually get married.

If you're divorced or widowed, you may eventually get married again.

If Thelma was here, I'd make a joke.

If Thelma's not here, is she?

Yeah, right.

So let her know I mentioned her.

I mean, who knows, right?

I mean, you may get married again.

And if none of that takes place, then there's someone around you who needs this word of encouragement.

So even if you're single, this is not the time to check out.

Just watch what happens here in this text with Isaac and Rebecca.

A marriage that began so beautifully, but very quickly fractured because of how they how they divided over a very important topic.

Okay, Genesis chapter 5, verse 25, uh, chapter 25, verse 19.

Genesis 5:25

Uh, I'm gonna join, we're gonna read this together, work our way through these few verses, and then I want to talk to you for a minute at the end about some biblical principles that we can use to create unity in our families.

So here we go.

Genesis chapter 25, verse number 19 begins with a very familiar refrain in Genesis.

Genesis 25 · chapter mention

These are the generations this time of Isaac.

Now, if you're familiar with the book of Genesis, you know this phrase comes up over and over again.

This is now the eighth time it appears in Genesis, eighth of ten times.

It began with Genesis chapter two, where Moses tells us these are the generations of the heavens and the earth, and then it's these are the generations of Adam, and then these are the generations of Noah, and these are the generations of Terah, and these are the generations of Ishmael, and now we're here, and these are the generations of Isaac.

So it's kind of like a marker telling us that we're shifting gears a little bit.

Same God, same story, but some different characters are now on the scene.

And then the very next phrase here underscores that.

And look at this with me, if you will.

Like this seems a little redundant, doesn't it?

These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son, Abraham fathered Isaac.

Well, duh, right?

If Isaac is Abraham's son, then Abraham fathered Isaac.

Whenever you see something like this, some would suggest the Bible is archaic and redundant, and just they would criticize the literary approach of the Hebrew writer here.

But this is actually a very important transitional marker because whenever the author says here, when Moses says here that Isaac was Abraham's son, that's one thing.

It's putting that with the toledote, with the generations marker.

But then when he says Abraham fathered Isaac, that's another bold face heading, letting us know that we're moving to another section of the book of Genesis.

The previous time we saw this phrase that someone fathered somewhere else, along with this particular way of writing, was that in the story of Abraham, whenever we're told that Tara fathered Abraham, and it lets us know that the Bible is now shifting focus.

So what's happening here is we are zooming in on one particular family, and that particular family is Isaac's family.

And the reason that's important is because the author assumes that you know some stuff about Isaac.

That Isaac was the child of promise.

He's the one who God said to Abraham when he was waved at back in Padan Haran, you go, I know you're older than dirt, but you go to the land that I'm going to show you and I'm going to make you a great nation there.

You're going to have kids.

He never had children before.

Isaac was a son of promise.

He waited for 20 years before he had Isaac.

And then at some point after the birth of Isaac, we land at that beautiful story where Abraham's faith has finally been made firm, at least for that moment.

When God comes to Abraham and says, Abraham, take your son, your only son, and go up to the place that I will show you, Mount Mariah, Mount Moriah, and there sacrifice him to me the way the pagans do.

Now, of course, you know the story.

God did not allow Abraham to go through with it.

It was just a test of Abraham's faith.

And more important than that, it's an illustration for us of the God who did not stay his hand, and his son did die and sacrifice himself for our sins.

Isaac was that boy laid on that altar, willingly laying down, allowing his father to be obedient to the declaration of his God.

Now look at verse 20.

So now this is important.

So we we know who Isaac is, and we're given some of his background, and it's alluded to how he is this child of promise.

He's Abraham's son, he's part of that story.

And then in the very next verse, we see an Isaac was 40 years old whenever he married the daughter of Bethel, the Aramean, and of course Laban also the Aramean, and he took her to be his wife.

Again, what the author's doing here is he's setting up some transitional markers.

He's going to highlight something here in a few minutes, because if you look down to verse number 24, you see the same kind of phrase, Isaac was 60 years old whenever the boys were born to him.

That's at the end, at the beginning, it's Isaac is 40 years old whenever these boys, whenever he's he's married Rebecca.

What the author's doing here is he's setting off in what's called an inclusio, this particular block of text that's going to govern everything else.

In particular, the problem that they faced.

Every marriage faces its hardships.

I don't know if they, if your uh, if your pastor told you that before your wedding, but it's a truth.

That's one of the things I always share with new married couples whenever we're in our premarital counseling session.

I remind them that, you know, on your wedding day, he's going to look good, he's going to smell good.

After the wedding's over, there's no guarantee for any of those things, right?

We'll let the other part of that go, but we know that marriage always comes with misfortune.

And for this couple, their misfortune ran deep.

They didn't have any children.

Rebecca was barren.

And so the very next verse tells us that Isaac does something important.

It says that he prayed to the Lord for his wife because of her barrenness.

He prayed for her.

The Hebrew word there is the word atar.

It's uh it's not the simple word for pray or to beseech.

It's the it's more of a heavy word.

It's uh it's a word for entreat or to plead.

It's the same word that's used in the book of Exodus whenever Moses is praying for God to relieve Egypt from the plagues that God had sent down.

He's pleading for relief.

Isaac is pleading for relief for his wife's struggle.

And the Lord in this particular case, he granted the prayer.

It's the same Hebrew word, but in a in a passive sense.

Isaac pleaded with God for his wife.

Husbands, it would be very wise of us if we were more apt, more eager to plead with God for the heartaches and hurts in this in the life of our spouse.

You are the priest in your home.

I understand Jesus is our high priest, but you and I, as husbands, have a responsibility to be Jesus in our home to our spouse, to plead for them.

Isaac has assumed that role.

Now that does not make Isaac the hero of the story, as we are about to see.

But the author is doing something very important with these first three verses in this Tolodote section, this generation section.

And what he's doing is he's he's given this beautiful portrait of a family that's doing so very well.

You you know, you can start well, and yet we have ways because we are fallen and wicked and broken, where we can we can rob victor uh defeat out of the jaws of victory.

We can destroy our home by the way we conduct ourselves, even though things may start well.

You can't assume just because things are easy now, things are good now, that they're going to remain that way.

And Isaac and Rebecca are two very good examples of that.

Think about this.

Isaac was a son of promise through Abraham.

Rebecca, we're given her lineage here in this verse.

That's significant, ladies and gentlemen, because if your lineage is provided, if they're mentioning your father's and your grandfather's name, that's because that's they're significant.

You notice whenever I get introduced, nobody mentions my father or my grandfather's name.

The reason is because they were significant to me, but they're not notably significant in the region.

Laban and his father were notably significant in the region.

And so whenever the lineage, whenever Rebecca's lineage is given, it's because that's a significant family.

So here you got the you got you got the the son of Abraham marrying the daughter of this wealthy Aramean uh aristocrat, and they come together and and and Isaac is praying for his wife.

They're all doing the right things, and yet something happens at this moment after the prayer occurs and the God blesses them by allowing Rebecca to become pregnant, the couple begin to divide.

Look at the very next verse with me.

Verse number 22.

The children struggled with her, uh, within her.

Umtice how if if you're reading the text here, Moses just kind of drops this in on us.

We don't know anything at this moment about how many children Moses hasn't told us, but right here in this verse, just immediately, he just drops it in our lap.

Children struggled together within her.

The idea of struggle here isn't simply a uh that they rustled or they were kicking or there was some disruption in her stomach.

It's much too polite a word.

The word in other sections of the Old Testament, it describes oppression, when the poor are oppressed, or an enemy oppresses someone who is weaker than them.

It's used to describe in the book of Judges what happens when someone crushes someone else's head.

They were knocking heads in the womb.

This was a violent thing.

And the the Hith Poel version of this verb tells us it was happening over and over and over and over again.

This was a constant problem.

And you know, for a mom who had waited so long to get pregnant, now to have this roaring sensation inside of her, she was incredibly afraid and does the wisest thing possible following the lead of her husband.

She goes and she seeks the Lord.

And as she does, she says this if this is thus, why is this happening?

Literally in the Hebrew it reads, if it is thus, why am I?

And the the sentence stops.

You ever been there before?

I mean, this is the formula for when things don't go our way.

We say, if God, then why?

If God gave me, then why is it now looking like it's going to go away?

If God loves me, why do I hurt?

If God wants peace in my family, then why is this disruption occurring?

We don't always know the second half of this.

We don't always get an answer for why God is allowing something to happen.

But we know that the if God part, that part that says that since God loves us, since God cares for us, governs everything else, we don't always know what God is doing, but we do know his heart.

And knowing God's heart, Rebecca goes and seeks the Lord, entreats him and asks, why is this happening to me?

And God gives her an answer in this oracle.

Now, this oracle here is again at the centerpiece of this passage because we have these two verses.

Isaac was 40 years old when, Isaac was 60 years old when.

Those are markers that let us know the boundary of the text.

So the focus is set on the prophecy here that Rebecca receives.

Now, watch this.

It comes in two parts.

There's two couplets, and each section of the couplet begins by telling her something that she'll want to know, followed by something that she's really, that she really doesn't want to know.

God tells her something that she wants to know, followed by something that she's not going to want to know.

That's what truth is, ladies and gentlemen.

Truth is not always what you want to know.

Truth is not always what you want to hear.

Sometimes, often, truth comes with the bitter taste of reality.

God tells her the truth.

That's what God does.

Look at verse number 2023.

And the Lord said, Two nations are inside of you in your womb.

Now she probably doesn't know exactly what that means at the moment.

She doesn't know she's having twins.

It's probably the case that she she's reading this, she hears this, and it's an oracle.

She doesn't fully get it.

Maybe two nations means that her son is going to have offsprings, and they're going to be two nations.

She doesn't know for sure, but the next thing that God says is very, very clear, right?

By the way, if she's going to have two nations within her, that means that she's going to give birth to the kid or the kids, right?

This is God's way of saying it's going to be okay.

You're going to give birth to the kids, they're going to grow up, and they're going to be, or he or she, or both of them are going to grow up and they're going to be a mighty nation.

But it's the next part that must have gotten her, and the two people from within them shall be what?

Yeah, divided.

That's not what you want to hear.

You don't want anyone prophesying to you, hey, listen, whenever your kids grow up, they are not going to like each other.

They're not going to get along at all.

There's going to be a huge fracture in your family.

Their descendants are going to argue.

The cousins are going to be fighting one another.

You've seen Hatfields and McCoy, it's kind of like that, but Mideastern style.

And that's what the that's what the oracle, the prophet is telling her.

So that's one truth.

But look at the next truth here, the thing that she'll want to know.

And one shall be stronger than the other.

Well, that makes sense.

Our kids are always different.

They're not the same.

Some kids are stronger in particular areas of maybe academics or sports than their siblings, and that sibling may be, you know, stronger in the opposing.

Kids are all different.

And so for one to be stronger than the other is not real surprising.

But the next part is surprising.

And the younger shall serve, or the older shall serve the younger.

The older shall serve the younger.

Now, of course, in this particular period of time, the rite of primogeniture son would be the one who ruled the family.

It was just a nice, clean, easy, natural way to figuring out the pecking order in the family.

The oldest one, the one who showed up first, was the one who was going to receive the responsibility.

They were going to receive the birthright.

They were going to receive the blessing.

They were going to receive the inheritance.

If dad died, they would become the patriarch of the family.

And yet, in this particular case, Rebecca is told that's not how it's going to be in your family.

How many of you know that the natural way of the way things happen, the natural way things happen, isn't always the grace way of things happening?

Man, I'm glad of that.

I am so glad that the natural way things typically happen, that you have to work for everything that you get, isn't the way that God does things.

The older, he says, will serve the younger, and the younger, of course, will then rule over the older.

Look at verse 24.

That's the oracle that comes to her.

So she hears these two couplets, things that she wants to hear, things that she's not going to want to hear mixed in there.

She doesn't fully understand.

And yet verse 24 tells us, as it invites us into the delivery room, that when the days were come for her to give birth, when they were complete, there was there were twins in her womb.

Boom, there it is.

Now for us, we know the story, so we're expecting this to come, but for them, twins would have been a shocker.

There were no sonograms, there were no physicians who could have told her exactly what was going on.

All she knows is she gave birth to a kid, and then attached to that other to that kid was another kid.

That'll bless you, right?

When you're not expecting it.

So what was cryptic up to that moment now becomes clear to her.

In the middle of all this clarity, she sees the scene unfold.

The first comes out, and he's red, he's all all over his body, and so they called him Esau.

Now let me explain to you what's happening here in the text, what the author is doing.

He's about to show us some differences between these two kids.

Now, the we all know that differences often create division.

If we talked about the differences in the way teams should be managed, if we talked about the differences in the way colleges should be run, if we talked about differences in the way finances and the family should be married, those differences can very often lead to divisions.

They don't have to, do they?

I mean the truth is the greatest strength in your marriage, the greatest strength Strength in your family, the greatest strength in our community, especially this church, comes from the differences that we have.

Because it's through the integration of our differences, the alloy of our differences that the strength of our unity can be seen.

Now, the reason the author, I think, is pointing this out is because he's leading us somewhere to see the breakdown of what happened in this family.

So, number one, we see these boys have different profiles.

Esau is red and hairy, and then afterwards there comes this other kid, and he has his hand attached to the heel of his older brother.

And so they call him Yaqov, which means the one who trips up, the one who grabs the hill, the heel grabber.

And so these are the different profiles.

And so uh Isaac, at this point, we're told here's the end of that couplet, was 60 years old.

So we're given the different profile, and next we're we're told about their different passions.

Look at verse 27.

When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man and preferred the indoors.

Kids are always different, aren't they?

I mean, it's surprising to me how you can have two siblings come out of the same family, raised the same way by the same parents with the same circumstances, and in the providence of God be radically different.

These two young men had very different passions, and that's okay, right?

You do not have to be your older brother or sister.

Your children do not have to look the same or act the same.

Some of your kids are going to be a little crazier than the others, and that's okay.

And these guys here, they have different passions, different profiles, but the one that's not what causes the problems, my point here.

My point is they get your kids can have different profiles.

That's okay.

Differences are great.

Our kids can have different passions.

That's great.

They bring that into the family.

Our families would be boring if all of our kids are the same.

You know, but Christmas would be easier, wouldn't it?

But it would be boring.

But you can have a you can have a unified family with this kind of diversity, with this kind of distinction.

But the one thing you cannot have is what the author shows us next.

They have different profiles, they have different passions, but ultimately, what happens because of how Isaac and Rebecca conduct when each other conduct themselves is they ultimately the boys have different parents.

Unity might be the best gift you can ever give your children.

And unfortunately, Isaac and Rebecca did not give that to their kids.

I know up to this point they've done really well.

They're not the heroes of this story.

We understand that.

But I mean, they've they prayed, they've sought God's face, they worked hard, they've listened.

And yet we see, and I love how Moses does this, he drops this again just out in front of us.

We see that there is this conflict that erupts between the two parents.

Now, watch, it's very subtle, but once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Isaac loved Esau.

Why?

Because he ate of his game.

Esau was a great hunter.

Isaac loved to eat.

Esau can make it work.

But Rebecca, on the other hand, loved Jacob.

Now, if you see the parallelism in the in the verse, you notice that something's missing.

Esau loved, or uh Isaac loved Esau and we're told why.

But the parallel is Rebecca loved Jacob, and we're not told why.

And why do you think that is?

I'm going to just suggest to you something that I think is very often missed when reading this passage.

And it's this.

Whenever you go back and you read the oracle that came to Rebecca, that you have two nations inside of you, and they're going to be divergent people.

There's going to be a war between them, a fight between them.

And the older is going to serve the younger.

There is no indication in the text at all that she shared that with her husband.

She kept that to herself.

And I think this verse here confirms that.

Esau had his reasons for loving the child that he did.

Rebecca, her reasons were already stated.

She knew something that Esau, that Isaac did not.

Now, why does this appear to be the case?

What's going on here?

Six times throughout the book of Genesis, we're told that Rebekah is the brother of Laban.

Now, if you know anything about Laban, you know he was like the architect manipulator.

Jacob was a manipulator in his own right, but whenever he met Laban, Laban took him to school.

Laban was an incredible manipulator.

Abraham, who, by the way, was part of the same family, Isaac's dad, was also a great manipulator, right?

Oh no, no, she's not my sister, she's not my wife, she's my sister.

So don't kill me.

She's my sister, right?

I mean, they they all manipulate, very manipulative family.

And so this is just in her nature when she sees that these boys are going to be warring against one another.

She kind of keeps this to herself.

And this becomes very clear throughout the text later, whenever Isaac begins to pronounce the blessing on Esau, what does Rebecca do?

She steps in.

She doesn't go to her husband and say, Listen, I got this prophecy.

She certainly doesn't go to him and remind him of the prophecy that had come, that Jacob's the one who is going to be the leader of the family.

She keeps all of that to herself.

And the family divides.

She has her own interest, her own pursuits.

That breakdown, by the way, you can see the image of this.

In case you're sitting there wondering, Pastor, I don't know if that's right or not.

Follow it all the way out to the end.

And whenever Jacob steals Esau's birthright, Scripture tells us that Esau was comforting himself with thoughts of killing his brother Jacob.

That's not good in the family.

Now, whenever Rebecca hears about this, she goes to Jacob and says, Listen, your brother is on the warpath.

You need to go and stay with my brother Laban until he cools off and forgets that you did this thing to him.

By the way, do you think Esau would ever forget?

No.

No.

You see, whenever you begin to manipulate, you can fool yourself into thinking you have it all under control.

Rebecca has lost control of this situation in the worst form possible.

She turns around and goes to Isaac and says to Isaac, hey, listen, these girls over here, the ones that Esau has married, these Hittite girls, you see how she's blaming his pick, his son?

These, I feel like I'm losing you.

How many of you have ever said to your spouse, you need to get your daughter?

You need to tell your son.

That's kind of what she's doing here.

She's going to him and she doesn't mention Esau directly, but she's talking about his wife.

She says, These Hittite women are not working for me.

We need to send Jacob away so he doesn't wind up marrying one of these Hittite women, you know, like Esau did.

So let's send him all home to see Brother Laban.

Now, of course, that's not that's not what's going on at all.

What's really going on is she has this secret that's eating her up.

She is this objective that she's trying to pursue, not for the unity of the marriage or the family, but for her own personal protection and interest.

Because if she knows who's in charge, she can get in good with him and she'll never be left alone.

She'll never be out of control.

She'll always have the authority, the power in this particular makeup.

Okay.

So what's the point here?

The point is the greatest gift that you can give to your kids is unity.

The division in this family, the picking of sides, Isaac picking Esau, Rebecca picking Jacob, ultimately led to this fracture in the family because they were not unified.

And the fracture in the marriage led to fault lines in the family.

And the inevitable consequence was as she packed Jacob up, her beloved son, she packed him up and she sent him out to Padah and Haran.

So far as we know, and we could be pretty sure of this, she never saw him again.

That's cost.

That's consequence.

Can I just tell you that there are consequences in the home whenever husbands and wives do not pursue unity together?

That's God's plan.

God's plan in the marriage, please hear me.

If you don't hear anything else, hear this.

God's plan in your marriage is not for you to make the children the center of your home.

That is a heresy of our age.

Because the moment you make your children the centerpiece of your home, two things happen.

First off, kids pick up on that pretty quickly.

And they're fallen, they're broken individuals, and they know how instinctively to pull on those threads.

But more important than that, if everything goes well, whenever you raise your kids up, sooner or later, they're going to find someone that God's going to knit them to and they're going to leave.

And whenever they do, it's going to be you and this other person that you've been working against for so many years.

It's going to be you and this person who occasionally was your partner in this project called parenting.

And you're going to be looking across an empty living room at one another.

And do you know how many marriages reach a crisis point at that place in their life?

It's tough.

Now, all marriages arrive at crisis points, but no matter what crisis points, what point we arrive at, to remember God's plan for the family begins with marriage is essential for restoration and for peace.

This is what God says to Malachi.

By the way, just parenthetical here, because I love parentheticals and I know you do too.

Malachi is the one that tells us that God sovereignly chose Jacob.

Esau has, have I hated, have I not chosen, God says, and Jacob have I chosen?

And Paul picks up on that later in the book of Romans to talk about our election.

This is in Malachi.

A couple of chapters later, God is talking to the people about how they've been conducting their marriages.

Because a lot of husbands have been abandoning, abandoning their wives.

And God comes and he calls the people out.

He says, To the husbands out.

Listen, you need to be a husband to your wife.

You don't need to leave her.

You need to love her.

You don't need to chasten her or to ignore her or to abuse her.

You need to love and cherish her.

And then God gives this proof through Malachi.

Malachi says, Did he not make them one?

Speaking of the marriage unity, the commitment, the covenant, the marriage covenant, did he not make them one with a portion of the Spirit in their union?

The answer is yes, appealing all the way back to Genesis 1 and 2, that when God brought them together, especially Genesis 2, and Eve was presented to Adam from the very beginning, this is how it was, and it's how it's supposed to be now.

When Eve was presented to Adam, Adam's jaw hit the floor.

You can see it in Hebrew very clearly.

She is Isha, he says.

She is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

This is a good enough reason for a man to leave his father and mother and be joined to his spouse.

From the very beginning, this is what it was.

And they're joined together with a portion of the spirit.

Ladies and gentlemen, there's nothing that unites people together like the Spirit of God.

That's what happens in our church.

That's how we're able to be together, even though some of you on the political spectrum you lean a little left, and some of you you lean a little right, and yet the spirit comes together and it and it knits us together.

Some of you are Virginia Tech fans, others of you are Virginia fans, and yet you're knit together.

The spirit joins us together.

We're joined together by the unity, Paul tells us in Ephesians 5, by the unity of the Spirit, the same thing that God does in the community of the church.

He wants to do in the community of the home.

In fact, he does.

When you are knit together, God binds you together with the, if you, if you will allow me to say, the gorilla glue of his spirit.

That's why marriages hurt whenever they fall apart.

Those of you who have experienced divorce, you know this firsthand.

Like I'm not preaching against you, I'm preaching with you.

You know that whenever you tear something apart that God has joined together, it's not a clean break.

God joins them together with a portion of the spirit.

And why does God do this?

What was the one God seeking whenever he did this?

The answer is godly offspring.

So he says, concerning your kids.

If you want the kids to be all that they can be and protected and provide the best home for them, the greatest gift that you can provide for your children is unity.

So he says, Guard yourselves in your spirit, and let no one, let none of you be faithless to the wife of his youth.

Malachi says.

All right, very quickly.

So how do we maintain unity in the home?

I want to give you three points that come directly out of the text.

We'll cover them rather quickly.

Number one is the word separate.

Separate.

One of the most difficult things to do is to leave the family unit that was before you.

Now, for these particular people, that wasn't just simply a geography question.

It wasn't a zip code issue.

It wasn't like, okay, we're going to pack up and move somewhere else, although sometimes they did.

But often families stayed together.

They stayed close by.

They formed communities.

And so the idea of when Adam says, for this reason shall man and father leave his family, it's not a geography issue.

It is a relational issue.

It's a spiritual issue.

There were some things that Isaac and Rebecca needed to leave behind.

Isaac needed to leave behind his father's lying ways.

Rebecca needed to leave behind her family's manipulative ways.

And she brought those things into the household.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, as a as a pastor and sometimes counselor, I'm here to tell you that one of the most dangerous things that you and I must watch out for in our marriage is to bring the habits of our parents into the relationship that God has given us.

Separate.

As you separate yourself from those influences, I'm not saying moms and dads can't give wise counsel, they do.

But I'm here to tell you, please hear me on this.

Whenever I get involved in crisis marital counseling, one of the things that makes me the most nervous is whenever I hear that moms and dads have gotten involved.

Dangerous thing.

Separate.

Draw those boundaries.

Again, it's I'm not saying dad doesn't have wise counselor or mom doesn't have great support, but I'm just saying at the end of the day, the plan is that we separate.

We leave.

Why?

Because that allows us to form something new, to be unified.

Number one, separate.

Number two, speak.

Number two, speak.

The real problem, I think, in the text here is very clear, and that's Rebecca did not share with Isaac what she had learned about the boys.

And then she intended on bringing that in to her own purposes and plans to elevate Jacob by her own manipulation rather than letting God fulfill his own promises.

There's a whole nother sermon there, isn't there?

That we don't manipulate our way into the promises of God.

God's promises come by gift.

She did not do this.

She didn't speak this.

And whenever the problem occurred, whenever the rift happened, and now she's created this incredible conflict between the two boys, instead of going to Isaac and saying, hey, listen, I might have created a little problem.

Instead, she continues to manipulate.

She's not speaking to him.

They're not communicating.

They're not sharing.

Ladies and gentlemen, especially gentlemen, let me tell you, your spouse needs to know your heart.

They need to hear you where your aches are, where your problems are.

If you have concerns, man, I cannot tell you the number of times that people have wound up in front of me, heartbroke over something that's occurred in their marriage, and it started almost always from a failure to communicate.

Someone felt lost, someone didn't feel loved, someone felt hurt.

And they didn't share that, they didn't speak it.

Unity is created as we speak.

Please hear me.

Being one flesh requires being of the same spirit.

You can't share in the providence of God.

You can't share, fully share the flesh if you're not also sharing your heart, separate, speak, and then finally seek.

At the very beginning of the marriage, the couple did the thing that they should do.

They sought God in hardship.

Listen, you know this, that difficulties in finances can create difficulties in marriage.

And difficulties in health can create difficulties in marriage.

In fact, there's just simply not a difficulty in life that cannot bleed over into the relationship between you and your spouse.

Anybody here ever gotten snappy at your wife because you had a bad day at work?

She wasn't there.

He wasn't there.

And yet, whenever you come home, there's the problem.

Difficulties can cause friction, they can cause fractures, or they can bring people together, they can unify people.

Some years ago, Kim and I were out at uh Talladega Forest on the border between Georgia and Alabama.

And we did a hike up on top of the mountain, and then we came down to the bottom of the mountain, and there was this beautiful waterfall that I wanted to go to.

And so I convinced her to go.

And so we are walking through the forest in Talladega at the foot of the mountain.

And in Alabama, they don't take care of the trails the way that you do here in Virginia or the way that we do in Tennessee.

They barely mow them at all.

I don't know why, but the trails were not real clear.

I want to be very, very clear on this point.

The trails were not clear.

So we reached this little impasse, and one trail went up into the woods, and the other one went down by the river.

I felt like it was important for us to go down by the river because it was more beautiful and scenic.

And I didn't want to go up into the woods.

And so I convinced Kim that we should take the path that went down by the river.

It was beautiful for a while.

And the further we walked, the more narrow the path got until finally, like the path was no wider than this.

And then it it kind of ended at a large boulder that you had to scale around.

And you got to know something about us, like with Kim and I, like we don't backtrack.

Like we just we just, whatever it is, like we we will create other problems to avoid backtracking.

And so here we are at this boulder.

So I'm like, honey, I think we can do this.

I believe we can.

I I've I just trust me, I've you got this.

All you gotta do is just hold on, put one foot here, one foot here, and and move on.

And I forgot for a moment that she's not as tall as I am.

So I scaled across the boulder and we were perfectly fine.

And she's about to go across the boulder, and she didn't put her foot where I told her to, so it's all her fault.

And she slipped into into the creek, and it was so much deeper than it looked at first.

She was in up to her neck.

I am not kidding you.

It went all the way.

I I was in trouble because this was.

We'd come to an impasse, we'd come to a fork in the road, and a decision had to be made.

And being a dutiful, a dutiful wife, she said, okay, if you want to go, we'll go, we'll go this way.

And we went, we went that way, and that way, that way led to that way led to trouble.

That was a you know, so she wasn't happy at first.

She said some things to me that I won't I won't share with you.

But she, while she was in the water, uh, but we helped her out.

Yeah, I helped her out, and uh we came up, and and then very soon we laughed about it.

And now it's one of those stories that that we just when we talk about, we we laugh about it, you know.

Please don't tell her I told you that though, okay?

If you don't just help me with this, don't do that.

So, so um, it's funny how that friction, things that create fractures in your marriage can sometimes later you you look back and you discover it became a unifying event.

That time you lost your job and you thought, man, this is it's gonna be tough.

She's not gonna be happy, he's not gonna be happy, it's gonna create problems in the finances, and yet you come out the other side and you realize that fire fused you together.

When Kristen was a baby and uh, you know, she was born three months early, one pound six ounces.

You know, I had concerns.

I'm like, what is this gonna be like for us?

A lot of trips to the hospital, some financial issues we had to work through, and we're all very afraid.

Like I was I was concerned because we had been married too long, and and and yet looking back, I realized that God used that time to forge us together, that that that that that moment of division and concern and friction led us to deeper connections with one another.

And and now looking back, I'm able to kind of kind of evaluate the landscape of what was going on at the time.

And other times where there were divisions, there were complications in the family.

And what I discovered is that the more we sought God, the more we sought God, the more unified we were.

Separate, draw some boundaries between you and the influence of the world that would pull you away from your spouse.

Speak, share your heart, communicate with him.

But above all, above all, seek.

Isaac and Rebecca began the story by seeking God.

And as they did, they started off very well.

Later, when they began to seek their own influences, their own ways, Isaac pursuing his own passion because Esau was a good cook, uh, Rebecca pursuing her own objectives because Jacob was the son of promise, there was this division.

But the closer that we get to God, the closer we get to one another, right?

And that makes sense.

You know, if I got a husband over here who says wallpaper is the way to go, I mean, it's better for resale, right?

I mean, it's classic, the vintage, it matches with the kitchen, and and the wife over here is saying, hey, that we're never doing wallpaper again, it's terrible.

I don't want to mess with it, it's not easy to clean.

And there's this huge conflict that erupts.

Of course, most conflicts are more significant than that, right?

I don't want to bring those up because you may be dealing with those things right now.

But if we're separated in some conflict, and we just say we're not going to come together, like there's no point in the middle where we're going to be able to decide, okay, wallpaper or paint.

I mean, it's one or the other, right?

This job or that job, this city or that city, this approach to parenting or that approach to parenting, they're incompatible.

We have to work through these conflicts, and we can't approach the solution together if you instead approach God together.

And the closer you get to the Father, the closer you move in to God, the more you seek Him.

When you look over, you realize as you've been moving closer to God, you both have been moving closer to one another.