H2 O Marriage
Pastor Dan Little
Adfontes.djl@gmail.com
07-31-11
As you know, our New York lawmakers passed legislation on June 24th by which they expanded (as they put it) the definition of marriage to include same-sex marriage.
This legislation became law on Saturday July 23rd, 2011, and thousands of same-sex weddings were performed around the State for those who wanted to celebrate the new law by getting married. And there were many outward shows of celebration.
Today I want to tell you what is the most powerful thing we can do in the face this kind of moral and emotional darkness.
Before I do that I want to say that in expanding the definition of marriage to include same sex unions, our lawmakers have done something very different from what they think they have done. What they have done is very much like expanding the definition of water.
You start with H2 O
expand it a little by adding an “S” after the small “2”
expand it a bit more by adding a small “4”after the “O”,
so your expanded definition looks like this: “H2 S O4”
They sort of look alike in written form.
They sound a bit similar when you say them out loud.
The two liquids look identical in a glass.
Here is the difference; drink H2 O you will suffer no harm; you may even be refreshed. But if you should somehow ingest H2 S O4 very bad things would happen to you, like (for example) you could die. My brother Gary spilled some on his hand when he was a young man in high school. That was probably 40 plus years ago and he still bears the scars from the chemical burn.
The problem is this, in expanding H2 O to “H2 – S - O4” , you don’t have water at all. What you have is a whole different substance called sulfuric acid.
After a fashion, that is what our lawmakers have done. They have expanded the definition of marriage and are offering something they think is sweet but will prove to be quite bitter. Time will tell if I am right.
They have given us the perfect Isaiah 5:20-21 storm which sets us up for the coming of “woe” as the Isaiah puts it, we would say misery. They have “…put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! ESV
Most of you are familiar with the moral implications of this new law. I want to think for a moment about a couple of the practical implications of this law and tell you why I think this new law will produce woe for both homosexual as well as heterosexual people. Let me give you just three reasons, but there are many more than these three.
1. For many in the homosexual community there is a very high level of promiscuity, a constant succession of partners that they kind of mill their way through. Will this new law suddenly draw them toward a monogamous life, as in “till death do them part?” In some cases maybe, but in the vast majority of cases they will soon crave the former drama of the latest and greatest encounter.
The homosexual drive is for wide, horizontal freedom with growth in the number and kind of encounters. What marriage provides is vertical freedom and growth, depth, height and foundational stability. It lacks the intense drama found in promiscuity. I don’t see this law working in the direction they want to go. I think divorce lawyers are going to make a fortune on same-sex marriage couples who find monogamy (or even an attempt at) too tame on the dark side of the drama scale. I doubt that many of them will marry.
2. Along that same line, it is very common for those who live the homosexual life style to maintain a relationship with two or three or more people in the same period of time, a same sex “ménage à trois” sort of thing. The day after New York passed their expanded meaning of marriage I heard a trio of homosexual ladies on Public Radio complaining that the new law was of no help for them unless all three of them could get married to each other. The new law did not allow for their “ménage à trois”. Many, once they have thought it through, are going to find that this law does not include their life style.
So once the initial blanch of marriages takes place, I expect to see the rush of weddings cut to a trickle.
3. Consider the potential woe that this will bring to millions of H2O marriages.
A) If the statistics for health problems in homosexual community remain about the same as now, then health insurance for married couples and families will be driven out of sight.
B) It now opens the door wider for justifying and demanding the teaching, training, indoctrinating public school students (children of H2O parents) in the wonder and complete normalcy of a homosexual life style.
I see trouble and woe ahead for all.
I mention these few examples not for the purpose of condemning, but simply to say that same-sex marriage may not be all that wonderful for the low percentage of those who attempt it. And the woe may also be felt in the ranks of heterosexual marriages when they discover the
"not-so-loving-teeth behind this law.
But here is my question; what can the followers of Christ do who care deeply about Genesis 2:24 kind of marriage—what I am calling H2O marriage, where “ … a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” (NLT)
Limitations:
• Believers have no power to control what others do or say or think in this or any other realm.
• At the moment believers are experiencing diminishing political power to influence lawmakers, law enforcers and judges.
Absolute Control
But there is a place where the followers of Jesus have absolute power and control. It lies in how we (married or unmarried) treat Genesis 2:24 - H2 O - marriage.
But even here, at the heart of our Christian strength, we who say we are followers of Jesus have unwittingly diminished our strength. How?
We our selves (we who say we are followers of Jesus) have been tinkering and expanding the definition of marriage long before our State lawmakers got around to it.
Our tinkering often starts before marriage.
As followers of Christ we know that the wonder and privilege of sexual intimacy is to be kept for and then released with complete freedom and with great joy in marriage.
Keeping this privilege only for marriage is a very important part of what it means to give your self in marriage to your spouse.
You keep your body, as one would keep a hidden spring of water, for the spouse of your future, and then literally offer your body to your spouse as God’s means of loving them, of quenching their sexual and emotional thirsts, and protecting them from lust. That is what Paul means when He says the husband’s body belongs to the wife and the wife’s body belongs to the husband.
1 Corinthians 7:3 The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. 4 The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. (NLT)
I have been a pastor for a long, long time—been marrying people for many years, and I can tell that it is wonderful to find a Christian couple who by God’s grace have taken H2O marriage seriously enough to keep the hidden spring sealed until marriage, and then comes a rush of giving and receiving.
I know we have all heard that “You don’t buy a pair of shoes before trying them on.” Having been a pastor of 33 years, I can just tell you authoritatively that when people say that they are not really talking about shoes. Maybe you knew that.
But after you have tried on a pair of shoes and decided not to buy them, and maybe you have tried on two or three more pairs of shoes, (and some folks try on shoes just for fun), and then maybe you finally see the right pair of shoes and say, “That’s the pair of shoes of my dreams. I want to spend my life with that unused, bright and shining pair of shoes.”
That may be the moment when you find out that the bright, shining pair of shoes is not looking for a pair of shoes that has been tried on and walked in by other people.
I am advising you not to tinker with the definition of marriage even before the wedding day you may hope to have some day. The past has a very inconvenient way of showing up in your future. It doesn’t make things impossible. God will be gracious, but it does muddy the waters up and make things more difficult than they need to be. Honor marriage.
And if you are just now saying to yourself, “Too late, but I do get it now! Am I doomed?” The answer is it is never too late to begin to obey God. Start honoring marriage from this moment on. God will graciously forgive and help you.
Tinkering with marriage from the inside.
Christian people have also tinkered with the Biblical definition from inside the realm of marriage. Here are wedding vows I typically use because I think they express what the Bible teaches us about marriage.
“I take you to be my lawfully wedded husband/wife, my constant friend, my faithful partner and my love from this day forward. In the presence of God, our family and friends, I offer you my solemn vow to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, and in joy as well as in sorrow. I promise to love you unconditionally, to support you in your goals, to honor and respect you, to laugh with you and cry with you, and to cherish you for as long as we both shall live.”
But then in the back of our minds or some where along the line we add “…or so long as you make me happy.”
So Long as you make me happy?
Please hear me. I am not judging anyone here, but I want to say that there are probably people here today whose first marriages were poisoned and destroyed by this expanded formula for marriage. It only takes one of the partners to add and apply that addition to the definition for a marriage to be torn apart.
Here, then, is the self-inflicted weakness we have in this debate. When it comes to talking to people about the dangers of what the State has done in expanding the definition of marriage we are giving up an awful lot of leverage and strength if we ourselves have tinkered with and expanded the marriage formula to include our own ideas and our own wisdom. We bring woe upon ourselves. There is a level of hypocrisy that the world and the devil use like a club to keep us from bearing witness to Christ.
I promise to love you unconditionally … that is the Biblical bases for H2O marriage. The Bible instructs men to love their wives when they finally deserve it? No! Love them as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, … 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ESV
The husband has given himself to his wife. The wife has given herself to her husband … not when each has earned it, but unconditionally.
I can hear guys saying, “Whoa! That’s how I want to be loved—unconditionally. Don’t have to earn nothin’.”
No! In H2O Genesis 2:24 marriage each spouse loves the other unconditionally, but the men go first.
That’s what it means to be the head, the leader in the marriage. So what you end up with in genuine H2O marriage is a husband and a wife who out of reverence for Christ love each other as He loves them … unconditionally.
Ephesians 5:21 … submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. (NLT)
When we allow God to define marriage and do not expand the definition to suit ourselves then the relationship grows and the chemistry and attraction stays alive. In a way that I am attracted to no other person on earth I am more attracted to my wife today than at anytime in my life. That’s 44 years later. But it isn’t chemistry that keeps our marriage alive. It is our marriage that keeps the chemistry alive.
Here is the great question that Jesus puts to us all in regards to God’s instructions for being married or single or any thing else he instructed us in. Luke 6:46 "Why do you call me ’Lord , Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? ESV
Here is what happens when we who are believers take the definition of marriage and let it change us rather than us change the definition.
Matthew 5:16 … let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. ESV
Our marriages shine in the darkness of the day. Not because that is what we are trying to do, but because that’s what happens when we obey God in marriage or in anything else. Our good works shine and give glory to God. People will come to us for counsel, and we get to tell them about the life we have found in Christ.
Living in H2O singleness or in H2O marriage is the most powerful thing you can do, the brightest light any of us can shine in the midst of a rapidly spreading darkness—the Gospel becomes incarnated in our marriages, not so we can use our marriages to make a point, but so our marriages will make a difference in our home and in our neighborhood and then God can make His point.
The secret to the incredible power of the early church was in the lives of her members. They didn’t just proclaim the gospel. The lives they lived gave visual clarity to it, and particularly the marriages they enjoyed caused pagan worshippers to leave the darkness of their old ways and pour into the light of the glory of God.
If you have lost your way in your marriage, let this be the day when you go back to loving with out conditions. Don’t wait until your spouse deserves it. Don’t do it to make a point. Do it out of reverence for Christ.
