"Murder Kills...So Does Adultery" - 26m:01s

Scott McFarland
10/15/17 - Sun AM Worship

Scripture Reading:  Exodus 20:14 and Proverbs 5:15-17

Always Faithful

“One of the most tragic events during the Reagan Presidency was the Sunday morning terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, in which hundreds of Americans were killed or wounded as they slept. Many of us can still recall the terrible scenes as the dazed survivors worked to dig out their trapped brothers from beneath the rubble.  A few days after the tragedy, I recall coming across an extraordinary story. Marine Corps Commandant Paul X Kelly, visited some of the wounded survivors then in a Frankfurt, Germany, hospital. Among them was Corporal Jeffrey Lee Nashton, severely wounded in the incident. Nashton had so many tubes running in and out of his body that a witness said he looked more like a machine than a man; yet he survived.  As Kelly neared him, Nashton, struggling to move and racked with pain, motioned for a piece of paper and a pen. He wrote a brief note and passed it back to the Commandant. On the slip of paper were but two words -- "Semper Fi" the Latin motto of the Marines meaning "forever faithful." With those two simple words Nashton spoke for the millions of Americans who have sacrificed body and limb and their lives for their country -- those who have remained faithful.”**

The stories of faithfulness in the face of pain and death abound in military history.  Countless brave men and women have gone to the very end to fulfill their oath of protecting the people of the United States of America from danger.  These stories are told and re-told, and become the stuff of legends.  We admire and respect these people for their deep commitments to what they set out to do.

How many of us could say the same about our marriages?  Would we fight to the very end to uphold our promise of “ ‘til death do us part”?  The difficulty in these promises is that they occur and are challenged over a lifetime, and we don’t always gain notoriety for fulfilling them.  No stories will be told of our faithfulness.  Sometimes, we suffer silently to uphold our end of the bargain—persevering through a spouse’s illness or unfaithfulness to us, a death of a child, an addiction of a son or daughter, a parent whose care is constant, financial burdens of debt and bankruptcy, etc.  The list of “til death do us part” obstacles could go on and on.  Our call, like those serving in the Marines and our military, is the same—Semper Fi.  Always faithful.

**Story found on http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/f/faithfulness.htm, taken from J. Dobson & Gary Bauer, Children at Risk, Word, 1990, pp. 187-188.

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