Marriage And The Church

Marriage - what a wonderful creation of God!

Just yesterday Pastor Karenlee and I were privileged to perform a marriage ceremony for two of our friends who live in Rochester! May the Lord bless their union and their lives.

Jesus Himself believed in marriage. Listen to what He told the Pharisees in

Matthew 19:4-6 NASB

“And [Jesus] answered and said, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said,

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

Marriage was created and instituted by God and the guidelines are specific.

So, why try to parallel marriage with the relationship between Jesus the Messiah and the church? Well … because the Bible does so! So, why not???

Marriage is a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman.

“For as long as we both shall live.”

I love these traditional vows:

“I take thee to be my wedded wife/husband,

To have and to hold from this day forward,

For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer

In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish,

till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance;

And thereto I plight thee my troth.”

(And according to these vows I pledge to you my faithfulness.)

Nice word, aren’t they???

What if we made them sacred, between us and our Lord?

Lord, Jesus, I take you to be my Lord and Savior

I will hold completely to You from this day forward

For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer

In sickness and in health, to love and cherish

Never to part for all of eternity, according to Your Holy Word

And according to these vows I pledge to You my faithfulness.

Recently I’ve seen a bumper sticker that said, “Try God.”

Can we take Jesus out for a test drive?

I mean, the Bible does say, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Doesn’t it?

The phrase “Try God” just seems to have the same sentiment of those who say you should live together before you are married so that you can see if it will work out. God is definitely NOT in favor of that.

Perhaps “Taste and see that the Lord is good” means that people should come into the presence of God (like we are gathered here together here today) in order to observe us worshiping the Lord, to sense His presence and learn from His word! Kind of like dating.

But it won’t be long before the Holy Spirit will be saying, “You’ve got to make a commitment here, you can’t just sit on the fence for the rest of your life.”

You see, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” is not the end of the sentence. The rest of it says, “blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.”

So, what about you? Could you make that pledge right now?

Lord, Jesus, I take you to be my Lord and Savior

I will hold completely to You from this day forward

For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer

In sickness and in health, to love and cherish

Never to part for all of eternity, according to Your Holy Word

And according to these vows I pledge to You my faithfulness.

OK. Now that is how man and the woman are married and are husband and wife. And the church equivalent of that is now you are a child of God, you have entered into a holy covenant with God. In common church vernacular, you are now saved or born again.

OK. So, what do married people and those who are a part of the universal church have in common? Well, God gave a commandment to Adam and Eve which has carried down through the centuries to us, and what is that command?

That command found in Genesis 1:28a

“God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth…’”

Now, this is just a natural part of being a married couple but in addition to having children this commandment also sets in stone the formation of the marriage family; one man to one woman.

Only a man and a woman can be fruitful and multiply. Only a man and a woman can procreate children and fill the earth with children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews and great grandchildren, etc.

Two women cannot. Two men cannot. The God who created everything gave a natural order to this process.

If all of the humans in the world became exclusively homosexual or even celibate the human race would cease to exist. We would become extinct. But that’s not God’s intention. We are to be married, one man to one woman and to be fruitful and multiply.