A Life In One Direction Series

A Life In One Direction - Genesis 2:24 - April 29, 2012

Series: After The Honeymoon - #3

This morning we are continuing our series on marriage, entitled, “After the Honeymoon.” You’ll remember that last week we began to look at Genesis 2:24 where we read these words: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” And what we learned first of all is that marriage is a response to God. Scripture says, “For this reason,” - that’s a response to God - marriage is a response to God’s goodness in bringing a man and a woman together. So marriage is both a gift from God, and is itself, God ordained. It’s His plan for joining the lives of two people together.

And then when we began to unpack that verse further, we started to see that not only is marriage God’s intention for uniting two people together, but that God also has a basic, three step plan, that’s meant to help your marriage get started on the right foundation and become everything that He has desired and planned for marriage to be. And if we don’t get these steps right, our marriages are going to fall short of what they could be, and of what we ourselves, would really desire for them to be.

First there is to be a leaving. This is a forsaking of the loyalties that bind us to our parents but not a forsaking of our parents themselves. God’s desire is not that we turn our backs on mom and dad when we get married, but rather that our allegiance shifts from the family we grew up in, to the family that we are now building with our spouse. And a number of you came up to me after last week’s message and shared how that has been, or in many cases still is, an issue in your own household. And if that’s the case I just want to encourage you to work those things through with one another because it is affecting your marriage and your marriage will never be all that it can be until that leaving properly happens.

Understand this: when that leaving doesn’t take place, as God intends for it to, you are hurting your spouse and sabotaging the life that you are trying to build together. In the book of Ephesians we read that husbands are to love their wives “just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:27) A few verses later we read that not only must a man love his wife in this way but that a wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:33) Yet when that leaving doesn’t take place, a husband isn’t loving his wife, as Christ loved the church. He’s not laying his life down for her. He’s holding something back and not unreservedly giving himself for his wife. And it’s not just the men but it’s you women as well. If you don’t properly leave mom and dad then you are not respecting your husband as Scripture says you ought to be. This brings tension, hurt and pain and division into our marriages. God’s plan is something better.

His plan is that you leave your parents so that you might cleave to one another. That’s the same word used of our response to God when we read in Deuteronomy 30:20 that we are to “hold fast to Him; for this is your life.” I remember back in the 80’s there was a t.v. commercial for Crazy Glue which showed a construction worker, Crazy gluing his hardhat to the underside of a iron girder, and then holding himself up off the ground by holding on to that same hardhat. The idea being that the bonds formed by the glue will hold fast through anything. That’s a picture of what God intends us to understand that that marriage bond is supposed to be like. We are to hold fast to one another so that nothing can come between us. And just like with Crazy Glue, if you allow anything to contaminate the bond between the two items you are trying to join together, the glue won’t hold as it should. The bond will be prone to failure. Marriage is very similar. If husband, or wife, is holding on to a greater loyalty, a greater bond, to parents, children, friendships, or work, than they are to their spouse, that relationship will be more susceptible to marital breakdown and unhappiness as well.

So there needs to be a leaving, and there needs to be a cleaving, in order that there might be a weaving of those two lives together. Because the truth is, when you get married, you typically get married to someone who is very different from yourself. Yes, you might have similar interests, or hobbies, or tastes in music, you might enjoy similar leisure activities, you will hopefully have a similar understanding of God’s plans, purposes, and desires for your life, but at heart you are still two very different people. Which is good, because if you saw everything the same, if you shared the same strengths and weaknesses, one of you probably isn’t necessary to that marriage!