Married For The Glory Of God

Introduction:

A. Today, I am going to talk about being married for the glory of God.

1. Two weeks ago, I shared a sermon called “Single for the Glory of God” in which I talked about the importance of serving God as singles, whether that singleness is short-term or long-term.

2. Last week, we were blessed to have Chris and Leigh Lawrenson with us and Chris talked with us about the two important things we need to know about our spouse: (1) our spouse is not our enemy, and (2) our spouse is not our savior.

3. As I explained two weeks ago, it is important for us to periodically discuss how disciples of Jesus can be faithful to the Lord as disciples who are single and who are married.

4. If you are single, divorced, or widowed, you may feel like this message on marriage doesn’t apply to you and you may feel like checking out, but let me encourage you not to.

a. By listening to this message, you are showing your high regard and support for marriage.

b. We live in a culture that dismisses marriage as an irrelevant relic of tradition.

c. The spirit of our times has vigorously sought to dilute the sanctity of marriage through its condescending disregard, disrespect, and redefinition.

5. As Christians, whether we are married, divorced, widowed, or single, we must affirm and reclaim marriage as a gift from God and I hope we can be reminded of that in today’s sermon.

a. The truth is that marriage has never found its worth or definition from any society or culture because ultimately marriage is a divine institution.

b. Marriage between one man and one woman is the exclusive design of God’s personal genius.

c. It has withstood the test of time and will continue to endure as a living memorial of God’s gracious provision for His creatures, created in His perfect wisdom and established by His infinite power to reflect Christ’s love for the church.

d. Hebrews 13:4 says, “Let marriage be held in honor among all.”

B. The story is told of a psychiatrist who visited a mental institution and interviewed a patient. “So, how did you end up here? What is the nature of your illness?” he asked.

1. The psychiatrist received the following reply…“Well, it all started when I got married. I married a widow with a grown daughter who then became my stepdaughter.”

2. “Then my dad came to visit us, fell in love with my lovely stepdaughter, and married her.”

3. “So my stepdaughter is now also my stepmother, but that also makes my wife my step-grandmother.”

4. “Soon, my wife and I had a son who was, of course, my daddy’s brother-in-law since he is the half-brother of my stepdaughter, who is, my daddy's wife and my stepmother.”

5. “Now, since my new son is half-brother to my stepdaughter who is also my stepmother, he also became my uncle.”

6. The patient ended his explanation asking: “Now can you understand how I got put in this place?”

7. After staring blankly with a confused look on his face, the psychiatrist replied: “Now I think I’ve lost my mind as well!”

C. Marriage has always been a complicated matter, but it is getting even more and more complicated with the moral revolution that has taken place over the last decades.

1. For millennia, civilizations defined marriage as an exclusive, permanent union between a man and a woman.

2. Back in 1996, politicians in our country voted across party lines to defend this definition of marriage in what was called the Defense of Marriage Act and President Clinton signed it into law.

3. But then, two decades later, in June of 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down key provisions of that Act, paving the way for the complete redefinition of marriage.

4. Then two years after that, on June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalized it in all fifty states, and required states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses.

D. So, what is the present state of marriage in our country?

1. The 2020 US Census report revealed that:

a. There are 128 million households in our country.

b. Of those 128 million households, 60 million are single households.

c. The rest of the 128 million households, 68 million, are coupled households.

d. 58.5 million are opposite sex married couples.

e. 8.3 million are opposite sex unmarried couples.

f. 640 thousand households are same sex married couples.

g. 512 thousand households are same sex unmarried couples.

h. Current U.S. divorce rate is 42%.

2. In general, we are seeing more and more singles postpone marriage or put aside marriage altogether.

3. Statistics show that over the past forty years, the number of independent female households in the U.S. has grown by 65 percent, while the share of independent male households has skyrocketed by 120 percent. (Mark Regnerus, “The Case for Early Marriage,” Christianity Today, July 31, 2009)