How To Have A Great Marriage - Genesis 2:18-25 Series

Each week I create a title for the sermon and I do that because they create images and they put this online so that we can find it the next time it comes out or that something else happens. So we can find it in our blog and so on. This week I created the title for this message: How to Have a Great Marriage Instead of Watching It on TV. Now the reason I created that title was for this very important purpose. I think there’s things we like about romantic relationships when we watch them on TV. We like the adventure. We like the excitement, the passion, the romance. We like the problem that exists, the conflict that is resolved. We like happy endings. So I think there’s something very important that we like in those things that sometimes we don’t see in relationships that we have. The other thing that I think that happens is that sometimes people rely on TV for their understanding of what marriage is all about. And that’s a big mistake because it’s not as easy as it looks on TV. It makes it look a lot easier than the reality of what it is. So I want to address that.

I think that sometimes when we get to this subject of marriage we find ourselves in a challenging place and we need to be able to acknowledge it. We have misunderstanding. We don’t really understand what marriage is all about. I think kids often get it. I have some quotes here from some children about marriage.

When Derek, age 8, was asked the question how can a stranger tell if two people are married? His answer was, “You might have to guess based on whether they are yelling at the same kids.”

When Lanette was asked what do most people do on a date, at age 8 she said, “Dates are for having fun and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.”

Martin, age 8, answers the same question by saying, “On the first date they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” So I don’t know how true that is, but it is interesting to hear the perspective of children.

But it is fascinating to see that we really are interested in this subject of relationships. There’s a guy in the Bible whose name is King Agur. He’s responsible for a whole bunch of proverbs. Those proverbs are located in Proverbs 30. In verse 18 and 19 he says this. He says – There three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand. So these are things like whoa, you stop and look. He says the first one is the way of an eagle in the sky. So if you saw an eagle you would go, “Wow. Let’s watch him for a minute.” The second one – the way of a snake on a rock. He’d pause and say, “Wow, that’s interesting.” The third one – the way of a ship on the high seas. And the fourth one – the way of a man with a young woman. The idea here is that’s an amazing thing. It's fun to watch.

But marriage is under attack today. I’m sure there's a satanic attack on the family that’s trying to destroy the family in a lot of different ways, but sometimes the attack comes from neglect, just not doing the work necessary to manage that relationship well. Sometimes it comes from laziness. Just not taking the time necessarily to work on that relationship. Sometimes it comes because of busyness. Just not finding the time in order to invest in that relationship. Marriage takes a lot of work. It is not easy to do the things we need to do in order to keep a marriage strong and effective.

Today my goal is that by the time we’re done today your appreciation and your value of marriage will increase. Whether you’re married and you’ve been married for a long time or just getting married. Whether you have been married in the past, you’re not married now. Whether you are anticipating getting married someday. I hope your value of marriage will increase today as we look at this passage and try to understand what it has to say for us.

In order to do that I want to go to God’s word and I want to look at this passage in Genesis 2:18-25. It starts in this way. You might have your notebooks out where you can be writing in them and jotting down lessons you’re learning from this. But it says – Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.