In this enlightening episode, we invite couples to explore the profound meaning of living in covenant with one another, emphasizing that marriage is not merely a partnership, but a sacred union designed to flourish in unity and love. Drawing inspiration from the deep bond between David and Jonathan as depicted in 1 Samuel 18, we uncover essential covenant principles that serve as a foundation for resilient lasting relationships.

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Website: https://familyfortress.org/

Welcome to the Fortifying youg Family podcast.

It can be daunting to navigate through an anti marriage and family culture.

Our teacher will expound biblical principles to help fortify our families and keep these sacred institutions strong.

And now here's this week's teaching from Sam Wood.

To First Samuel, Chapter 18.

And I want to read the first four verses and then we're going to dive right in and share some thoughts with you from the story of David and Jonathan about covenant.

First Samuel, chapter 18.

Look with me at verses one through four.

And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David.

And Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

And Saul took him that day and wouldn't let him go no more to his father's house.

Look at verse three.

And then Jonathan and David made, here's a word, a covenant because he loved him as his own soul.

And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him and gave it to David and his garments even to his sword and to his bow and to his girdle.

In our book that we wrote, I guess it's been, it's hard to believe it's been, I guess over 10 years ago, entitled what Is Marriage?

We defined the marriage relationship as a covenant of companionship between a husband and a wife.

We defined marriage and this is big.

If you don't have our book on marriage, what is marriage?

I hope you'll pick it up before you leave today.

But marriage is a covenant of companionship between a man and a woman.

It's essential that we understand that definition again in light of the day and time that we live in today.

In the Bible, covenant is the most sacred and binding promise that can possibly be made.

It's a commitment to sacrificially serve the covenant partner, to do what is best for them in spite of what it may cost me that I might sacrificially in that relationship, love them.

And in the Bible, God works in relationships using this thing called covenant.

A covenant says you belong to me.

And in the marriage relationship, Debbie is all the time saying, you're mine, you're mine, you're mine.

And I will tell Debbie you are mine.

But a covenant says you belong to me.

In this covenant of community that we're in, whether it's a small covenant in marriage, whether it's a family bringing together husband and wife and children, or even in a church setting, a church family covenant, as your pastor described this morning, a covenant says we belong together you belong with me.

There's a church covenant for this church.

And it's very, very important to understand really what covenant looks like now in this chapter here in First Samuel, chapter 18, Jonathan and David sealed this pledge of covenant in a ceremony that was very typical of most ancient covenants in that day.

And in that time, they exchanged three items, we might say, that symbolize important aspects of a covenant relationship.

So I want to look at these items and what they symbolize in this ancient covenant and apply it to us today as we look at the covenant relationship and understanding really what that means.

Now, if you look at these verses, you see that David here, Jonathan, gave David his robe.

Jonathan gave David his weapons.

And then it says, jonathan gave David his girdle.

Now, when I read that, I thought to myself, only thing I know about a girdle is I know women.

When I was growing up, my mom used to wear a girdle.

But this means his belt.

Okay, he gave him his belt.

Consider these three items and what they symbolize here this morning for just a few minutes, let's consider the robe.

First, Jonathan is a legal heir to the throne of Israel, but he humbly strips himself of his royalty and his dress, and he places it upon his friend David as an acknowledgement that David was chosen by God to be king of Israel.

David now outwardly bears the likeness of Jonathan's royalty.

So as covenant partners, they're symbolizing that they will be identified with one another.

Here's the first point.

Covenant partners accept a new identity.

Covenant partners accept a new identity.

And this is apparent, I think, in the most vital and most important covenant that's ever existed, and that is in our covenant relationship with Jesus Christ.

In the new covenant, Jesus comes, God incarnate.

That we might take on his identity.

I love that.

Takes on our humanity, that we might take on his identity.

Paul continually says, I am in Christ.

I am in Christ.

Praise God.

We can call ourselves a Christian.

As a Christian, we have taken on the identity of Jesus Christ.

So each of God's children is a new creation in Christ Jesus and is clothed with the righteousness, his righteousness, which means that we should reflect Christ's likeness to those around us, everyone around us.

And we see this, I think, exemplified in Paul's teaching in Ephesians, chapter 4 and verse 22, where Paul admonishes Christians to put off their former conversation or their former behavior and to put on the new man.

A Christian is to put off pride, and he is to put on humility.

He's to put off harshness and put on kindness and goodness.

He's to put off impatience and put on long suffering.

Listen, as a Christian, we're to put off bitterness and we're to put on what?

Forgiveness.

We're to put off selfishness and put on selflessness.

Similarly, in marriage, when a husband and wife become one flesh, they accept a new identity as a husband.

And as a wife, they belong to each other.

We're no longer Sam and Debbie.

We're.

I mean, Sam.

I'm Sam, and this is just Debbie.

We're Sam and Debbie.

We're Mr.

And Ms.

Wood.

We're husband and wife.

We're bride and groom.

And continuing with that thought, when we got married, we got new identities.

And so when Sam, he put off this care, this carefree lifestyle of a single guy, and he put on the responsibilities of a married man.

And what that means is when he got his paycheck, he didn't go down to Dick's and buy himself a new set of golf clubs.

What he did is he brought that check home to me, and I would go and buy a pair of shoes.

No, not really.

Not really?

No.

What it is, just being honest.

It's not his money and my money.

It's our money.

And we make our financial decisions together.

We're a team.

I put off the freedom of being a single woman, and I put on supportive dedication for my man.

I'm a wife now.

It's a new identity.

It's different.

You know what?

I remember on our honeymoon, and all of a sudden, these people were calling me Mrs.

Wood.

And I thought, oh, they're talking to me.

And I love that it's a new identity.

We put off flirting, both of us, and we put on focused affection for each other.

We have a new identity.

But I have a friend that got married a few years ago, and she'd been a widow for like 15 years.

And she married a guy she knew from high school that also been a widower.

And she was this successful businesswoman.

She had inherited a business from her first husband, and she built it up, and she was really very, very successful.

And when she got married, she didn't take her new husband's last name because she felt like if she changed her name, then people would no longer recognize her as CEO of her business.

And this was something that was really important to her.

Well, he moved to where she lived because she had a big, fine, nice home.

Her business was there and her family was there.

So he moved to where she was.

It's like he left everything and Came to where she was now.

She would.

She was willing to adjust her schedule, you know, from work, and she'd get off early, and she'd go with him, and they'd chase cows or they would work on construction projects or whatever.

So she gave up this.

But even though she did this, she resented it a little bit because she told me privately, she said, you know, I do this because, you know, I want him.

I'm his wife now.

I'm supposed to do this.

But she says it costs me a million a year to just to give up this little time that she did for him, you know, And I think he could catch on that she was just working him in, and he didn't feel like he belonged there.

He started resenting her church and her family.

And although she would give up things, you know, for him to do this, you know what?

Their identities were not meshing.

They were not revolving around their relationship with Christ and what they had in common in Christ.

And so as a result, what was happening is they were maintaining two separate identities.

They were living in the same house, but they had two separate identities.

And it was like they were still resentful because what was going on was their significance.

Both of them.

Their significance was coming from their former identities.

And instead, what they should do, they should mesh as a unit and revolve around Christ, and that's where they should be getting their identities.

So it's caused a lot of problems.

But like Sam said, you know, we're not Sam the preacher and Debbie the assistant.

We're Sam and Debbie, and we see ourselves revolving around Christ in a dance together.

And that's our identity.

We're a strong unit because that's what we have in common, you know, and.

Because of that, we have to continually, I think, remind ourselves of something that my habits, her habits, my purchases, our schedules.

Listen, everything that we do in a married relationship has an impact on the other person.

I mean, all.

Every habit I have, everything I spend has an impact on Debbie in some way.

Same thing with her, with me.

So marriage partners are to leave parents their past.

And the Bible uses the word cleave in Genesis chapter two.

They're to cleave to each other.

And that word cleave in the Hebrew actually means to unite in covenant together.

That is, God performed the first covenant relationship of marriage in Genesis chapter two, when he brought Adam and Eve together and united them.

They came together and they cleaved together in a covenant relationship.

I love what Dan Allender says in his book Intimate Allies.

It's a Great book.

He says leaving means starting a whole new relationship in which the core loyalty is not the parents, priorities, traditions or influence, but to an entirely new family that must set its own course, its own form and its own purpose.

In other words, a couple sets their own family identity, we might say, as covenant partners.

The couple, listen, shares dreams, they share goals together.

That's what we do.

We love doing that, talking about that we share our purpose, that we feel like God has given to us.

My switching, our switching thinks from.

Switches from me to what we.

Okay, from mine to ours.

It's no longer about me.

Now I have Debbie.

I'm in a covenant relationship with her.

It's not mine.

Listen, it's ours.

Because we are in covenant together.

The relationship's not competitive, it's complementary.

And that's what God created it to be.

You know, really, it's a wonderful thing because living this way in covenant, listen, our joys are doubled and our burdens are cut in half.

And that's a wonderful thing to think about as a married couple.

But not only do covenant partners accept new identities, they also accept that they join forces against their enemies.

That is, we join forces against our enemies.

When Jonathan transferred his weapons to David, he was committing to join forces with David against his enemy.

That is the enemy that David had.

And who was the enemy that David had?

It was Jonathan's.

What?

Jonathan's father.

That's pretty significant that Jonathan says, listen, I'm joining forces against the enemy that you have, the main enemy you have, and that main enemy, even though he is my dad, I'm joining forces with you against my dad.

So he transfers his weapons to David.

And when he does that, he's saying, listen, I'm joining forces against all of your enemies.

So after entering covenant, Jonathan sets up a warning signal for David that just in case his father tries to harm him in some way, that he can warn him so that his friend David will not be killed.

When a man and woman enter into the marriage covenant, they join as one force.

Listen, I think it's so important we join as one force against any foe that would try to come against our marriage relationship and to harm our marriage relationship or to harm either one of us individually.

And we're talking about marriage.

But this applies, like if you're just friends.

Hey, Jonathan, David.

That's what they are, they're friends.

So this applies whether we're talking marriage, whether you're talking church, covenant, because y'all are a group that belongs to each other.

You've got each other's backs, and you fight enemies, you pray for each other.

But so it applies to friendships and to marriage.

But I do remember a couple in particular.

And Kelly was devastated because one night she discovers that her husband is into porn.

To pornography.

He is addicted strongly to pornography.

And she'd wake up in the middle of the night, and she would find Mark staring at these porno sites.

And it was shocking.

She was just in a state of disbelief.

And she started investigating, though, and she found out there were all these 900 charges on her telephone bill, and those were from where he was contacting sex operators.

And, you know, her first impulse when she found out this stuff, her first impulse was to attack his character.

But she remembered just a statement, a brief statement that her pastor had made that her spouse was not her enemy.

And so she acknowledged her true enemy was Satan himself.

And so she determined, before she even said anything to Mark, she determined that she was going to stand against that enemy that was attacking her husband.

And so she had her prayer life expectancy, and it would include taking authority over those evil influences and crying out for deliverance for Mark.

But finally, she did go to Mark, and she confronted him, asked him about it.

But as she talked with him, when she let him know what she found out, she assured him she didn't attack him.

She assured him that she was on his side and she was ready to battle for him against this enemy.

And Mark, he was able to confess and to admit that he was really struggling, and he just couldn't just let go.

So she agreed.

She said, I'm with you on this.

We'll fight this together.

And they were very.

They became very transparent.

And he talked about everything with her.

And she investigated Christian agencies that could help him with this.

And she encouraged him to attend these counseling sessions and wanted to know what he was, you know, what he was learning and things like this.

And let me.

Let me tell you, ladies, her prayers were fervent.

I mean, they weren't just, oh, God, help him.

She was fervent in her prayer.

And, you know, I think of that verse that the fervent prayers of a righteous man availeth much.

And she dedicated that when she first discovered his addiction.

Listen.

She had the ammunition and the motive to initiate marital conflict.

But instead, she chose to join forces against her spouse's enemy.

You know, I can remember even just personally, about a year ago, Sam was.

He was depressed.

And God showed me that all these thoughts he was having, thoughts of quitting the ministry, thoughts of inadequacy, and just thoughts of being defeated.

And it's no use.

It's not accomplishing.

All of those thoughts were coming from the enemy.

And so once I realized that, I could really pray.

And I would pray that God would expose the lies and that he would magnify the truth, the truth of who he was and the calling and the power that he had given to Sam just because Sam belongs to him.

And I prayed those things and Sam and I talked together and we prayed together, we joined forces together.

I prayed that pastors would, that their understanding would be opened up, that they would see the need to have marriage conferences, that they would want to schedule things like this.

And so we joined forces together and we fought that enemy together.

And Debbie's being very transparent.

We're just trying to be real with you.

A lot of people think that a preacher, somebody in ministry never has depression or they never get discouraged.

Well, that's not true.

And sometimes we do.

One of the great needs you have in this church is for your pastor to pray for him and his wife Regina daily.

Amen.

You need to pray for them.

Satan attacks those in ministry especially.

And so we certainly need to understand that.

And as Debbie said, and I probably know I've said this before, but I'm going to remind you again, Listen, your husband is not your enemy.

Your wife is not your enemy.

Your children are not your enemy.

Your mom and dad are not your enemy.

The devil, the world, the flesh are your enemy.

And we're not in a physical war, we're in a spiritual war.

And so we have to use spiritual weapons.

There's an evil trinity I just mentioned a while ago called the world of flesh and the devil that is continually against us.

The world being the counterculture to marriage, family that we live in.

And let me say, it's never ever in America really, I believe in the world been like it's been today where that everything is against family and everything is against marriage.

Satan is doing all he can to destroy it.

Our flesh, of course, being our sinful tendencies that we have to battle.

And the devil, of course, the archenemy of marriage and the arch enemy of the family.

And if we're not careful, we can buy into our cultures standard of protection and think if I got a big bank account, if I got a security system for my house, if I've got all the right things, then I'm okay.

But again, as I said a while ago, we're not in a physical battle, we're in a spiritual battle.

And a spiritual battle requires spiritual weapons.

And we must remember this and that's why I'm saying it again here this morning as much as ever in the time that we're living in today.

We need to appropriate the spiritual weapons that God has given to us.

And I'll mention them very quickly this morning.

One of them is what Debbie said a while ago.

Prayer and do we pray?

Are we praying for our wife?

Are we praying for our husband?

Are we praying for our children?

Daily?

Debbie can tell you, every day I get up in the morning, we pray together for our family, a hedge of protection around our family and our children, our grandchildren, our ministry.

Because we know that we're in a war.

We know that we have an enemy.

We know that he wants to do everything he can to distract us so that he can destroy us.

You have listened to the first part of a two part message by evangelist Sam Wood.

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