A Cord Of Three Stands

When Jesus is in our hearts and the Holy Spirit is guiding us. A relationship with our Father should develop and grow as we go on our journey of Faith.  If our relationship with God is truly steady, it will naturally begin to overflow into how we handle our marriages, friendships, and conflicts. We started a new series focusing on fixing our relationships.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:21

And howdy y'all, welcome to the Preacher Man Podcast, Sermons and Lessons. This is episode 22, and I am officially caught back up. It took me a little while simply because I had um two podcasts to get put together. Willie, I had a total of three. And this is the third one. Um I guess you could say I'm saving the best for last. So last Sunday, uh, we started a new series of lessons in our fix in 26 uh yearly um theme. We wrapped up uh uh Fix Your Faith la uh two Sundays ago, three Sundays ago actually. And we started a new series uh dealing with relationships. Uh restoring relationships. And that's uh that was a hashtag that I put uh out there. And uh to kind of introduce this series of lessons on relationships, I chose the uh famous wedding Bible verse that a lot of times is read in weddings where uh it says in Ecclesiastes how a chord of three strands isn't easily broken. It's a very famous three one. The reason why it's so popular is because it's it it symbolizes a marriage triangle where you have God at the top, you have man and woman at the other two bottom points, and the only way for a husband and a wife to get closer together is for them to, in a way, shrink the triangle and get closer to God. And when you do that, you are on the road to a successful marriage. At least that's my own theory about that. But we know in our churches today there are more than just relationships between husbands and wives. We have relationships between our church family, we have relationships between our sons and daughters, we have relationships with our young people and our golden believers, our senior saints. We have so many relationships that we become intermingled into the family of God. And it's important for us to in many ways maintain those relationships so that we can all have a unified family of Christ. And so for the next couple of Sundays, um, I don't know how long I'm gonna go, we're going to break down and look at a series of different kinds of relationships that are in the church. And we're going to maybe look and see where we have fallen short. Maintenance is the key. A good maintenance uh uh policy in the church, I believe, is something that is really, really important. And I'm not talking about uh buildings and grounds, I'm talking about relationship maintenance. So we're going to uh start up our series with the sermon entitled A Chord of Three Strands based off of Ecclesiastes chapter four, verses nine through twelve. And as usual, when we wrap up our lesson, we will have some closing thoughts. I brought my water bottle up here, not because I think it's gonna be a dry sermon, but because I have a cough, and sometimes that's all that's what I need to have up here with me. So hopefully I won't need it this morning. It was a good week at camp, and I just can't thank Joe and Lori and Brett Farmer and his wife and all the others who were there. Um we had a lot of people from this church help out in many, many ways. Um counselors, um working in the kitchen. Um we had we had people volunteer to not to drive the bus, both buses down there and back. Um and uh all of y'all played a big part in making sure that uh these young people uh got to camp safe, had a good week at camp, and made it back home safe. So I I am so proud of this congregation and what they do for that camp. Way back when we were still living, I was still living in uh in Dudley. Um both my brothers were were married at the time. My my middle brother Randy got married and followed his wife back to Georgia because she was still in college. She was still taking classes at I can't remember where she went to in Georgia, but anyway, she was taking classes in Georgia. So Randy, uh while he was waiting for her to graduate and get done, got a job working for a local power, uh power company, and his job was to either uh plant or put in stall telephone poles or power poles or cut down telephone poles or power poles. So um, and Randy uh really got really good at that electrical thing business. So we found out that they were going to come in and see us one summer, and so we were just trying to get some extra stuff done so we would have time to spend with them. We hadn't seen them in a while. One of the things that happened while Randy was there was we had a good decent rain come through. And and when when farmers and ranchers get a rain, the first thing they want to do is they want to start working and planting because, hey, we got moisture, we can get the ground turned over, we can get some crops, maybe get some seed planted. And lo and behold, somebody on our on our place got the front end loader stuck. I'm not gonna tell you who it was. Anyway, the front end loader got stuck, and we couldn't get it out. And so dad was thinking, well, we're just gonna have to get the tractor and get it out there and get some chains. Well, by this time my brother was here, he goes, hey, hey, he says, hey dad. He says, Don't worry about them chains. He says, I got something that'll get that front end loader out. Well, dad told me to load up the chains anyway because that's what you use. If something was stuck, you hooked up with a chain. You pull it out. That's how you did it. So Randy gets out there and he comes out with this, he calls it a tow rope. And it was uh a piece of rope that was, I can't remember how long it was, but I kid you not, it was it was about the size of a full-inch PVC pipe, and it was thick. And not only was it triple stranded or or or or stranded three way, braided in three ways, it had, it was some special kind of material that they used to to braid it. And then they encased it, that braid, inside another piece of uh some kind of technol uh nylon or whatever, I can't remember what they used. And Randy got that robot, and it was light as a feather. Randy had it pulled up, slung over his shoulders. He says, Dad, this is gonna get that backhoe out. And my dad said, You're out of your mind. That's gonna snap in two the minute we start pulling on it. He says, No, it ain't. I promise you it's gonna work. And he says, in time back, he says, Dad, you don't even have to pull the tension out. You just hook it up to this end, hook it up that tracker, and go. Dad says, Alright, here we go. And sure enough, boom, that toe rope got taut, and next thing you know, that backhoe just started sliding out like it was nothing. I mean, we just we just assumed that something that big and something stuck that bad, you would need something strong, like a chain with good solid links that wouldn't break. Not some rinky dink toe rope that, you know, you didn't know how good it was, you never seen it before. Randy said that that thing, he seen he seen similar ropes in Georgia pull uh load all kinds of stuff and pull all kinds of stuff off of trailers. And uh when he when he was able to get his hands on one, he definitely jumped on it. We're starting a new series on our fix in 2026. And so for the next couple of uh Sundays, Lord willing, we're gonna be we're going to be understanding why it's important to fix our relationships. We have multiple relationships in our churches, family, in our church families. We have relationships between physical or biological brothers and sisters, family. We have relationships between husbands and wives. We have relationships between friends and family, both inside and outside of the congregation. And when you consider the fact that one of those strands on that three-stranded cord is Jesus Christ being woven into your life, it should have an effect on that relationship. If that relationship is strained, it should have an effect on how that relationship can be made better. If that relationship is weak, then it should have an effect on how that relationship can be made stronger. What it takes, though, is understanding how much or how important it is for you to have Jesus in your life and know how impactful it is not only on you, along with the Holy Spirit, how that impacts you, but how it should have an impact on the people around you and you call friends. As we go through this lesson this morning, I want you to think about this one question. Write it down, however you want to put it. I don't have it up on the screen. Here's the question. Is Jesus Christ the foundation that holds your relationships together? Or is he more like a spare tire that you only reach for when things go flat? Is Jesus Christ the foundation that holds relationships together? Or is he that spare tire that you reach for when things go flat? I'm not trying to be unpatriotic when I say this. Because, you know, 4th of July is right around the corner. Independence Day, right around the corner. We celebrate 250 years.

unknown 13:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

But make no mistake about it. Independence can and sometimes often is a trap. God design, God's design for a healthy life requires fixing our horizontal relationships while we are anchoring them with the vertical relationship that is in him. If your vertical, your connection with God is good, then your horizontal will also be good. Oh yes, present. Think about the culture that we live in in 2026. We are highly connected in non-physical ways. Digitally, we're connected. With cell phones and computers and Skype and Zoom and everything else. And we see the benefits in those things. I can send a text message right now to many of you, and you would get it instantaneously. Yet we are the most in human history, we are the most digitally connected people. And yet, society, and many of us have felt this too, we are drowning in an epidemic of isolation. Sometimes that's self-induced, sometimes it's not. We are drowning in an epidemic of broken marriages. And we are drowning in epidemics of fractured friendships. We can try to scroll our way out of that isolation, scroll our way out of that loneliness, and we try, try and try, but the heart still stays empty. I believe that the solution is not more, well, not less, but more. We need more contact. We need more connection. We need more across the aisle relationships with one another. So that we can understand each other. We need to actually be talking to one another. Like we did this, like we do this morning. We need to be singing to one another. It's one thing to get a text message from someone going, hey, I love you, thinking about you. But that can totally change with a phone call or a physical, I love you. The joke at camp this week was that if all those campers went back to the doctors for their checkups, the doctors would be impressed with all the vitamin D they picked up this week. Because they didn't spend a whole lot of time in their cabins. They were outside, in the sun, in the fresh air, playing sports, socializing, doing whatever. Their vitamin D levels should be high right now. But what happens when camps over? What happens for you on Monday when it's time to go back to work? We don't need more contacts on our phone. We need more connections with each other. Like I said, we we if you're not careful, independence can be a trap. Another reason why independence can be a trap is because we, as Western civilized, good, gold-blooded Americans praise the idea of the self-made man or self-made woman. The kind that pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps. The kind that don't need no help. If I want a problem solved, you gotta solve it yourself. Independent. Ain't nobody can tell me what to do. Ain't nobody could tell me how to live. Ain't nobody could tell me how to think. But Solomon exposes a danger to that. Because if you keep that attitude up, it leads you to isolation, and that is dangerous. Isolation steals joy. Oh, yes, sometimes. Isolation can cut, can cut productivity right down the middle. Being isolated in many ways, according to the Ecclesiastes, leaves you unprotected. What does it say in verse 4? I mean verse 9 of chapter 4 of Ecclesiastes. Two are better than one. Why? Because they have good return on their labor. We have to admit that, well, we don't have to. You should really consider trying to admit to yourself, to your friends, to your family, that trying to do life on your own, that's not a good strategy. That's a broken strategy. Oh, sure, you might get it to run for a little while, but just like a messed up engine, it's going to crater on you again and you ain't going to be able to get fixed. We are designed by a great universal designer to be interconnected with each other. We need each other. We need those people. Listen, I know that some of us have a preference for being, you know, there's extroverts and introverts. And some of us are, and we hear them, you're either one or the other, or you fall on a degree of, well, sometimes I just like to be, I love to be around people. Sometimes I need to be by myself. That's not what I'm talking about. It's not the emotional or the or the physical or the psychological. I'm talking about what's happening up here, this bull-headed stubbornness of saying, I don't need anyone but myself. I can do it all on my own. Because needing help is a sign of weakness. Being part of a church family, that's a sign of weakness. Etc. etc. No. Two are better than one because there's good return on their labor. Verse 10 of Ecclesiastes 4 gives us a lifeline. And that lifeline looks like accountability and it looks like support. What does it say in verse 10 of Ecclesiastes chapter 4? For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. We've all seen the commercials about the life alert badges, the little necklaces that some of our maybe our senior saints or our golden believers might want to have on because they think that they can live by themselves and they don't need help. I don't want to be, oh, my favorite line I don't want to be a burden on anyone. So they get life alert bracelets and necklaces and or whatever. And the commercial is that if they they demonstrate it if a if a if a senior saint falls down, they can push the button. And talk on the thing, hell, I've fallen and I can't get up. It's not scary for someone in that situation until it becomes real. Have you ever been maybe in a situation similar to that? Like, you know, I told this story, I can't remember if I told it at camp or recently, but I remember one time I was doing I was doing youth ministry work, I think it was in Eastwood. I mean it was in House of 36. And I had a bunch of kids in the vein who were going to a devotional, they had rain that day, and the place we were going to was their house was at the end of a longer road. And it was very narrow. And I knew that if I was going to have to load these kids up and take them back home, back to the church, I was gonna have to back out and do some maneuvering. And it had rained, so the c uh it had gotten really nice and slick and muddy. And Michelle was with me. And we were in the van, we were about to load up the kids, we're about to go back home, and I'm backed up, and Michelle, doing what she does, what she know we're supposed to do, and being my helper, being being there for me in support, said, honey, be careful, if you get off into that ditch, you're gonna get stuck. To which I said, Darling, I've never been stuck in my mouth. I didn't, I got the set. But there was a lot of rocking and reversing and putting it in drop, rocking and reversing and putting it in drop, and I think I pissed a couple of kids out the backseat and they hit the kid on the roof of, hey, I got that van and I got it back in the church, but I got that. And bless her heart, she just sat there and just couldn't just looked at me and watched. That's a good wife right there. Who is standing next to you when you need pulling out of the ditch? I don't need nobody until you're in the ditch.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Until you're laying on your backside, until you're in a position where you need someone to help you pull out. Pull it out. Get you unstuck. Get you back on the road. You shouldn't, we shouldn't be traveling down this road by ourselves. We should be traveling in caravans, in groups, escorting one another. That way you can tell your brother or sister next to you, hey, if you get in the pickle, you need to call me. And because if I get in this bind, I'm gonna call someone, I'm gonna call you, or call each other, whatever. A fixed relationship means having people in your life who have permission to tell you the truth. Sometimes that's a hard deal to swallow, but we need it. We need to have people in our life that we need to give them permission to tell us honestly how things are going, or how how not things are going, to catch you when you stumble, to help you up when you are down, and to help heal you when you are broken. Yes, the Lord is the great healer. I'm not just discounting that. I'm just saying there are there's power in sitting by someone's side and holding their hand while they go through the suffering. That's right. Finally, the analogy of the three-stranded cord comes into full display. The threefold cord or the cord of three strands illustrates two people working so hard trying to support each other. They're going through trials and they're going through heartache. Maybe they're maybe they're just maybe they're maybe they're in between in a season of a break, but they still know that, hey, all we got is us two. And then all of a sudden, in wrapping itself in amongst themselves, comes that third chord. Could it be interpreted as faith? Yes. Can it be interpreted as community, Christian community? Yes. Can it be interpreted as God through Jesus Christ becoming that third strengthening bond that becomes almost unbreakable? How do you fix a marriage that's drifting if you don't have that third cord in your mind? How do you repair that fractured friendship if that third cord is not winding through, wanting to be a part of whatever conflicts there is? Is it safe to say that just with human effort, eventually things will start to fray and snap and come unwind, and next thing you know, you just have a hair strand of a thing that's keeping everything together. That third strand, Jesus Christ, is the fix to so many different kinds of relationships. When a husband and a wife, when two friends, when a church family becomes so deeply anchored in Christ that that third strand, that core, that unbreakable knot can come through, it can withstand a lot of pressure that just with the world or with two strands would snap in a heartbeat. Verses 11 and 12 say this. Furthermore, if two lie down together, they can keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. Why? Because a cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart. The takeaway this morning requires a little explanation. Three-chord strand is exceptionally strong, scientifically, if you will, or physically, if you will, because the braiding of a three-stranded cord distributes tension across all the fibers. It also will distribute an increase in friction, meaning that if one strand starts to fray because of the pressure, the other remaining strands can help carry the load. And so with an intertwining of the cords, it creates an architectural completeness, if you will, where no single strand has to act alone. We each can take apart, we each can take a section of the load, and we can use the strength that we have knowing full well that what I've got is I'm gonna work out all I've got, but I've got other strands also working in the same direction, working to do the same thing. And so the takeaway is this: real simple. If you want to fix your life, fix your circle of influence. Oh yes. And make sure that Jesus Christ is in that circle of influence. Because when that third strand is Jesus Christ, there's not anything that's going to get you stuck. This morning God wants to pull you out of the mud. God wants to help whatever it is that needs to be held together. Some of us may have walls up because we've been hurt. And so we feel like, well, if that's the way the world's going to be, then I'm just going to retreat into and behind the wall of isolation because that way all I have to depend on and worry about is me. Others are trying to save the relationships. You're doing all the pulling and you don't have any support. You don't have any more strength. Whatever your need is this morning, if it's prayer, we want to pray for you. If it's counsel, we want to visit you and talk to you. Maybe we can find a way to help you with whatever's going on in your life. If today's the day you want to give your life to Christ, and you want him to become that third string in your life, so that you won't, so not only that, so that not only you know that with Jesus you won't get stuck. If you do get stuck, he's going to help you get out of the mud, and he's also going to help you get someone else out with you. Yes, sir. Because with Christ, all things are possible. With Christ in your heart, with the Holy Spirit guiding you. I'm not saying it's going to be easy or less difficult. I'm just saying you've got a little more backup with Jesus in your life and the Holy Spirit living inside of you. And it should change the way you act, it should change the strength in your core as well. The difference between how we celebrate our independence from from tyranny, from being unrepresented. The history of our nation is based on wanting to be on our own. Wanting to have the freedom to establish our own laws, establish our own form of government, etc. etc. And the independence that we gained came at a rifle cost. There is a reason why he wanted everyone to be the to be together at Pentecost when Peter preached that great sermon in Acts chapter 2. The need for someone to be with us to help us pick us up when we're down, or to pick them up when they're down. Interdependence with each other and with God is so, so important. And we shouldn't take it for granted. There's no such thing as an independent Christian. I know that some might feel like, well, I'm the only one that's doing the right thing. Let not your heart be troubled. There are many people out here who are trying to do their best to walk into the same walk that you're walking with. Don't give up. Find that family. Find that everyone. Find that ally that confidence accountability partner. A quarter three strands is not easily broken. There's strength in numbers, and there's a whole lot of strength when one of those strands is intertwined with a relationship with Jesus. I look forward to um putting out more of these podcasts with on these uh series of lessons, and I hope you do too. I would love to hear from you if you have a question or a comment about anything that we have looked at in the past couple of well, since we started doing this podcast. If you have a question, you can always contact me at uh preacherman1178 at gmail.com. That's preacherman1178 at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Looking forward to uh this weekend. I'm gonna celebrate 4th of July with some family friends. And then watch some fireworks, and then looking forward also to the next coming Sunday, where we will have a new lesson based on the chord of Three Strands, and we're going to be looking at what it means to what what it means when people see the new you. How do you maintain your Christian relationship with your old friends? What does that mean? I don't think it means I'll give you a little teaser, I don't think it means you're supposed to shun everybody and walk away from everybody who you've had relationships in a long time. What it does mean is that they see a change in you, and it is something that they will become attracted to. Looking forward to uh delivering that lesson in the next couple of Sundays. Hope you have a blessed day. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. This is the Preacher Man. Happy Fourth of July. And always remember who you are and whose you are.