SIX GOSPEL COMMITMENTS: We will work to protect our marriage.
September 26, 2026 · Logos
SIX GOSPEL COMMITMENTS — MARRIAGE SERIES
We will work to protect our marriage.
▸ SLIDE 1 — Title slide
NIGHT 6
We will work to protect our marriage.
Six Gospel Commitments — Marriage, Paul David Tripp
▸ SLIDE 2 — Commitment #6 / opening prayer / hour-at-a-glance
Commitment #6: We will work to protect our marriage.
Hour-at-a-glance:
:00–:05 Welcome & Opening Prayer
:05–:12 Table Warm-Up
:12–:38 The Lesson
:38–:45 Couple’s Exercise — The Fox Hunt
:45–:55 Table Talk
:55–1:00 Review & Closing Prayer
▸ SLIDE 3 — Table warm-up (from handout)
1. What is one habit you had early in your marriage — a date night, a note, a prayer — that you’ve quietly quit doing?
2. What is something valuable you own that you actively protect — insure, lock up, maintain? Does your marriage get that level of protection?
THE LESSON
Start Here
Five weeks ago we started with confession and forgiveness. Since then we’ve talked about growth, trust, love, and differences. Tonight’s commitment is the fence around all of it. Everything you’ve built in this series can be lost — not usually in one dramatic blow, but by slow neglect. Read this before point 1:
“God’s goal is that your marriage would be a major tool in his wise and loving hands to rescue you from claustrophobic self-worship and form you into a person who lives for nothing smaller than his kingdom, his righteousness, and his glory.” — Paul David Tripp, Marriage, ch. 15 “Eyes Wide Open” (as quoted in Crossway’s study guide)
Say: If that’s what your marriage is for, then protecting it isn’t about protecting your comfort. It’s about guarding one of God’s primary tools for making you like Christ. That’s worth a fence.
▸ SLIDE 4 — Point 1
1. Watch for the little foxes.
Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes. — Song of Solomon 2:15 (KJV)
▸ SLIDE 5 — Exposition / application / illustration
Explanation: In the middle of a love song, the couple stops to deal with pests. Notice what they’re worried about — not bears or armies, but little foxes. The vines have “tender grapes”: the fruit is just forming, which is exactly when small damage does the most harm. Foxes don’t knock down the vineyard wall. They slip through gaps and gnaw at what’s growing.
Application: Most marriages aren’t destroyed by one big thing. They’re spoiled by small, unaddressed things: a habit quietly dropped (go back to warm-up question 1), a phone at the dinner table, a sharp tone that became normal, a prayer life that faded. Notice the verb: “Take us the foxes” — us. It’s a shared hunt, not a solo accusation.
Illustration cue: Termites versus tornadoes. A tornado makes the news; termites never do. But termites bring down more houses, and they do it silently, from the inside, while everything looks fine from the street. Name the five “gates” from tonight’s exercise here — schedule, screens, money, outside voices, spiritual life — as the common places foxes get in.
▸ SLIDE 6 — Point 2
2. What God joined, we protect.
What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. — Mark 10:9 (KJV)
▸ SLIDE 7 — Exposition / application / illustration
Explanation: Jesus was asked a divorce question and answered with a creation answer (Mark 10:6–8). God is the one who joined. That means your marriage isn’t ultimately your invention — it’s His work, and you’ve been made its guardians. “Let not man put asunder” covers outsiders who would pull you apart, but it also covers the two people inside the marriage.
Application: Protection starts with where you stand. Tripp draws the contrast between a couple “standing as one” against what threatens them and a couple standing separately, keeping a record of what the other does wrong. You can’t guard a marriage while you’re building a case against your spouse.
“standing as one to fight together the things that threaten [their] marriage” — Tripp, ch. 15, as quoted in Crossway’s study guide
Illustration cue: Go back to warm-up question 2. We insure the car, password the phone, lock the house, back up the laptop, and schedule the oil change. Ask the room: “If your marriage got the same maintenance plan as your truck, what would change this month?”
▸ SLIDE 8 — Point 3
3. Stay vigilant — you have an enemy.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. — 1 Peter 5:8 (KJV)
▸ SLIDE 9 — Exposition / application / illustration
Explanation: Peter gives two commands and one reason. “Be sober” — clear-headed, not dulled. “Be vigilant” — awake, watchful. Why? Because you have a real adversary who is actively looking for someone to devour. Tripp’s title for this chapter says it well: “Eyes Wide Open.”
Application: Here’s the most important sentence tonight: your spouse is not your enemy. The devil would love for you to fight each other so you never fight him. Every argument where you treat your spouse as the adversary is a win for the actual one.
Illustration cue: A lion doesn’t charge the middle of the herd. It watches for the one that has drifted off — the straggler, the isolated one. Marriages drift the same way: into separate schedules, separate screens, separate spiritual lives. Isolation is where the lion hunts.
▸ SLIDE 10 — Point 4
4. The best defense is a couple on its knees.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. — Matthew 6:13
▸ SLIDE 11 — Exposition / application / illustration
Explanation: Tripp ends his book with a chapter called “On Your Knees” and builds it around the Lord’s Prayer. Look at verse 13: “Lead us not” admits we’re weak. “Deliver us” admits we need rescue. “Thine is the kingdom” reminds us the marriage belongs to Him, not us. And every pronoun is plural — us, not me.
Application: Ask the room plainly: When was the last time you prayed with your spouse — not for them, with them? Tripp describes marriage as a lifelong “dance of sin and grace.” Prayer is where that dance happens on purpose instead of by accident.
“dance of sin and grace” — Tripp, ch. 16 “On Your Knees,” as quoted in Crossway’s study guide
Illustration cue: It’s hard to stay angry at someone you’re praying beside. Kneeling next to your spouse puts you both on the same level, facing the same direction, talking to the same Father. That’s the posture of a protected marriage.
▸ SLIDE 12 — Key phrase
Key phrase: A protected marriage is not a marriage without threats — it is a marriage where two people face every threat together, under grace, on their knees.
This key phrase gathers all four points: watching (point 1), standing as one (point 2), awareness of the enemy (point 3), and prayer (point 4).
▸ SLIDE 13 — Couple’s Exercise — The Fox Hunt (the five gates)
COUPLE’S EXERCISE — THE FOX HUNT
Together: Walk through five gates and mark any open ones:
- Schedule
- Screens
- Money
- Outside voices
- Spiritual life
▸ SLIDE 14 — Couple’s Exercise — The Fox Hunt (commit & pray)
- The ONE fox we will catch this month.
- Our first concrete step, with a date.
- Both spouses sign the card.
Then: Pray the Lord’s Prayer together, quietly, hands held.
Leader tip: give the room a full two minutes of quiet for the prayer. Don’t rush couples back to table talk.
▸ SLIDE 15 — Table talk (1–2)
TABLE TALK
1. What evidence is there that you are working at your marriage? What evidence that you’re coasting?
2. Are you standing as one against the things that threaten your marriage — or standing apart, keeping a record of each other’s faults?
▸ SLIDE 16 — Table talk (3–4)
3. Why do we protect cars, phones, and careers more carefully than marriages? What does that reveal about worship?
4. Read all six commitments aloud as a table. Which one will your marriage work on first, and what will you do about it this month?
▸ SLIDE 17 — Review & closing (series finale)
REVIEW & CLOSING
- Watch for the little foxes — small neglects spoil tender vines (Song of Solomon 2:15).
- What God joined, we protect — stand as one, not apart (Mark 10:9).
- Stay vigilant — you have an enemy, and it isn’t your spouse (1 Peter 5:8).
- The best defense is a couple on its knees — pray together, plural (Matthew 6:13).
The six commitments (read aloud together to close the series):
1. We will give ourselves to a regular lifestyle of confession and forgiveness.
2. We will make growth and change our daily agenda.
3. We will work together to build a sturdy bond of trust.
4. We will commit to building a relationship of love.
5. We will deal with our differences with appreciation and grace.
6. We will work to protect our marriage.
THIS WEEK AT HOME: Execute the first step of your signed Fox Hunt card, and pray the Lord’s Prayer together every night this week.
FOR FURTHER STUDY
Seven cross-references on protecting the marriage, for personal or small-group follow-up — distinct from tonight’s four main teaching verses.
Proverbs 4:23 — Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Ecclesiastes 4:12 — And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Hebrews 13:4 — Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Nehemiah 4:14 — …be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.
Ephesians 6:11 — Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
Matthew 26:41 — Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
1 Corinthians 10:12 — Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
Sources consulted for this Leader’s Guide
Handout: HandoutSix_Gospel_Commitments_Couples_Workbook booklet.pdf (Night 6 pages), Trent Cornwell’s Google Drive.
Tripp quotes and chapter titles (ch. 15 “Eyes Wide Open,” ch. 16 “On Your Knees”): Crossway study guide, https://uploads.crossway.org/extra/study-guide-marriage-tripp-2024.pdf.