First Presbyterian Church
Wichita Falls, Texas
February 5, 2012
MARRIAGE: WHOSE IDEA?
Of Horses and Carriages: Part 1
Isaac Butterworth
Genesis 2:15, 18-24 (NIV)
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it….
18 The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
‘Love and marriage, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. This I tell ya, brother: You can’t have one without the other.’ So goes the 1950s hit song introduced, I think, by Frank Sinatra. But it’s not necessarily true, is it? You can have love without marriage, and you can have marriage without love.
I want to visit with you about marriage over the next few weeks. It’s February, and Valentine’s Day is just ahead of us. So it seemed like a good time to think about matrimony. I’m calling the series ‘Of Horses and Carriages.’ It’s kind of lame, I know – no pun intended – but I hope that fact won’t deter us from listening again to the Scriptures to see how they help connect our horse to our carriage. In other words, what the Bible has to tell us about ‘getting hitched!”
Now, let me offer a little disclaimer here. I don’t so much want to talk about the how to’s of marriage. I can’t begin to tell you how little I know about such things. I am married to an exceptional woman, but there is absolutely nothing exceptional about me. So, I’m not going to address the how’s of marriage but, rather, the how come’s. I want us to look at God’s purposes for marriage, because I think it’s at that point that we run into the most trouble. We think we know what marriage is for, but the truth is: we may not.
Let me also say that I am aware that a number of us are not married. Perhaps we were at one time, but that is no longer the case for us. Or, perhaps we have never been married. Some of us may plan never to ‘tie the knot,’ as they say. I believe this series can be helpful for you as well as for those among us who are married, because what I am going to say about the marriage relationship can be applied broadly to any relationship. So, I hope you’ll stay with me. In any case, I plead with you for your patience.
When a couple asks me to perform their wedding, I request that they sit with me for a series of conversations. I call this process marriage preparation. I don’t call it pre-marital counseling – at least, not any more – because the word counseling carries with it some expectations that might not get met. Please don’t misunderstand; I have nothing but respect for counseling and those who do it, but I don’t see what I do with a couple to be counseling – at least, not primarily.
Our conversations usually follow a thread that includes family history, personality types, conflict styles, economic values, faith issues, and the like. But here lately, I have become dissatisfied with what I do with couples. It’s not that these emphases are not important. They are. They are incredibly important.
But I am a Christian minister, and I have wondered lately how much ministry I have done with couples and how Christian the focus has been. What I have done I could have done in almost any setting. With the exception, maybe, of a little Jesus-talk and some prayer, I could have been doing what I do in a Jewish synagogue or a public school or a state agency. And there’s not anything wrong with any of those institutions, but that is not my calling. I am a servant of the church of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I guess what I’m asking myself is: Are we as a church adequately preparing people for marriage? Surely, there is no other relationship that has anywhere near the potential for intimacy that marriage does, and with that potential goes great risk. So it’s a critical question. And it leads me to ask another one.
Does the Bible have anything distinctive to say about marriage? It certainly places a great deal of importance on marriage. To me, it’s at least of passing interest to note that the Bible begins with a wedding, and it ends with one. We read a few moments ago from Genesis, the first book in the Bible, and what we saw was how God himself performed the very first wedding. And then we read a passage from Revelation, the last book in the Bible, and what did we see there? The wedding supper of the Lamb, which, of course, refers to the blissful consummation of the union of Christ and the Bride of Christ, which is his church.
The thing about marriage – when we look at it from the Bible’s point of view – is this: It’s God’s idea. He invented it. And he invented it to be, first of all, a tableau of sorts. Or, maybe a better word for it is window. The marriage between a man and a woman is meant to show us something of great importance. And, over the next few weeks, I would like to look at what it is that marriage shows us about God and about ourselves and about the relationship between a man and a woman.
Let’s start with this. Let’s start with the image of God, the imago Dei. In Genesis 1, we read these words – you’ll find them in verse 26: ‘Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness….”’ And then, in the very next verse, we read, ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.’
Now, you could go in a lot of different directions with these verses, but the direction I want to go is this: As human beings, we were created – unlike any other creature – to be image bearers of God. Ikons, if you will! A reflection of God’s glory! And notice: We reflect God’s glory most fully in relationship. Not only did God create man in his image; he created man male and female. The way we relate to each other – in all settings, but especially in marriage – should be a window of sorts that reveals the glory of God. If the purpose of being human is to showcase the image of God, then human marriage must serve that greater purpose. Right?
But, of course, we human beings have lost track of our purpose. We have distorted the image of God that we are created to bear. Paul says in Romans 3 that all of us ‘fall short of the glory of God.’ We have defaced the ikon! And you see this nowhere more painfully displayed than in marriage. In the relationship between a man and a woman – designed to be the clearest representation of what God is like, fashioned by the Creator himself to be his image bearers – we see some of the worst distortions of this high calling. Why is that?
I think our culture has a lot to do with it. Any of you who know me well will not be surprised to hear me say that. Our culture, in my opinion, has skewed our view of marriage. We are a nation of consumers; I don’t see how we can say otherwise. We have been subtly trained to consume products, and, because we have, we treat marriage – as we do almost everything else – like a commodity. If it does for us what we want – if it meets our needs – fine; if not, we turn to another product – read: another marriage or something else that seems more gratifying. And, since I’m sharing my opinion, let me go on to say that I think the church has pretty much yielded to the culture on this matter. The church has let the culture form our view of one of life’s most important relationships – and what has happened as a result? We have a whole generation – maybe more – of Christian people who think of marriage the way the rest of society does – as a way simply to get our personal needs met.
But is that the primary aim of marriage? Let me ask you to consider the One who is the consummate bridegroom, our Lord Jesus himself. In Revelation, we read about ‘the wedding supper of the Lamb,’ when the church, the Bride of Christ, will at last be perfectly restored to her true husband.
Why is Jesus here called the Lamb? You know. It is because he has laid down his life as a sacrificial offering on behalf of his beloved, on our behalf. ‘Greater love has no one than this,’ he once said, ‘that he lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15:13). Jesus is our sacrificial Lamb. His blood atoned for our sins, washed them away, and restored us to life and to God.
In this ‘marriage,’ the one between Christ and the Bride of Christ, there is no talk of ‘getting my needs met.’ There is no consideration of ‘what’s in it for me.’ Jesus knew what was in it for him – a cross! There is no sense in which the spouse is looked upon as somehow disposable. On the contrary, what we see is the sacrifice of personal gain – of life itself – for the sake of the beloved.
Marriage is God’s idea, and it is God who joins a man and a woman together in holy matrimony. And one of his purposes for doing so is to put in place yet another window that reveals his love – his sacrificial love – for his people.
What if you began to think of your marriage – if you’re married – as an ikon of God, a way to make visible to others the qualities of love and compassion, of mercy and grace that we see in him? Would anything change?
What if your purpose as a husband or as a wife were not simply to be happy or to be fulfilled or to get what you want? What if your purpose were, instead, despite all the hardship you might encounter and despite all the failures you might experience – what if your purpose were to partner with God in bringing about what he wants? ‘What is the chief end of man?’ Do you know? Of course, you do. It is ‘to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.’ If that’s the big ‘how come’ behind being human, how different can the purpose of marriage be?
