For This Reason … Genesis 2:24 - April 22, 2012
Series: After The Honeymoon - #2
When I was in elementary school my very best friend in the whole world lived right across the street from me. It was a great set-up. We would hang out almost every day. Our families were very similar – Mom, Dad, and two kids in each household, a boy and a girl. He was my age and his sister was my sister’s age. It was a natural fit and the families had a lot of fun together in those years. In my mind, this was normal. But I remember the day that normal began to change and it changed the day that my best friend shared with me that his parents were getting a divorce.
Now that’s the first time that one of my friend’s families ever broke up. And I wish that I could say that that was the only time it ever happened, because there was lots of hurt and pain and turmoil in their family during that period, but the truth is that within just a few short years of that day the number of my friends who still had Mom and Dad in the same household began to be overtaken by those where Mom and Dad had gone their separate ways. Normal had changed. And today it’s just that much worse. At Kierra’s birthday party last weekend fully 4 out of the 10 girls who were there came from broken homes and some of them came from homes that had been broken multiple times.
My heart aches when I think of that! And I can’t help but wonder, if that’s how many marriages have broken down, how many more are there out there that are hurting, and troubled, and headed towards disaster that we don’t even know about? How many out there are just one more bad day away from letting go and giving up and moving on?
The truth is that there is not a single marriage, not yours, nor mine, nor anyone else’s, whether in the church or outside of the church, that is immune from hurt and heartache and turmoil. And that’s part of the reason for this series on marriage. Our desire is that good marriages would become great, that troubled marriages would discover new life, that hurting marriages would find healing and restoration, and that those who have not yet, but who would one day desire to enter into marriage, be given a firm foundation on which to build.
I’ve called this series, “After The Honeymoon,” because that’s when the reality of marriage begins to sink in for most of us. That’s when the hard work of marriage really begins to happen - as two very different people, from possibly two very different backgrounds, try to shape a new life together. And that process can be fun and exciting and full of laughter and joy but it can also be touched by hurt and pain and disappointment and tears.
Last week, Matthew and Amy were good enough to come up here and share with us a little about their own marriage. This week I’m going to ask my own wife, Heather, if she would come and join me up here for a few minutes, as we share a bit about our early days together.
We got married during Spring Break while we were both still in Bible College. This past February marked our 15th wedding anniversary. And as Heather reminds me from time to time we have still not had our honeymoon yet – there just wasn’t time during that one week we had off to get married, to get set up in our first place together, and to go on that honeymoon. So she is still waiting, and guys I missed my opportunity, because in those early days it was her suggestion that our honeymoon take place during a caribou hunt up north. Since that time her idea of a honeymoon has changed and now I’m told it will involve someplace warm and sunny and there will be no hunting involved! That’s the price I pay for waiting!
But Heather, why don’t you share very briefly about how we met and where you were at in your life at that time? …
I was in somewhat of a similar situation in that I had been engaged to someone for a number of months but had called it off just three days before Heather and I met. So really we were two hurting people, trying to deal with our own baggage, and who were in no place to look for a relationship at that time. That was probably a good thing because it meant that for a number of months we didn’t even think of dating but instead built into a rich friendship and I cannot think of a better thing than to marry the person who became, and who remains, my very best and closest friend today.
But our marriage hasn’t always been easy. In fact there have been a couple of very troubling periods in our marriage when the future looked pretty grim. God has brought us through those times, for which I am eternally grateful, and He has refined us, and transformed us in the process, and continues to do those things in us today.
One of those periods of turmoil in our lives happened early on in the very first years of our marriage. To understand what led to some of those troubles you need to know a little about the families in which we were each raised. So Heather, maybe you could share a little about your family and your upbringing …
My family was very different from Heather’s from the way conflicts were handled to the way money was viewed and everything else in between. We didn’t realize the impact those differences would have on our own marriage though until we began trying to build a life together.
As you’re moving towards marriage you have such an idealized concept of what marriage is going to be like. You know, theoretically that there are likely to be troubles along the way, but early on you are so filled with feelings of love and tenderness and closeness that you simply believe that love will win the day. But the truth is that feelings can come and go – and they can do so on a day by day basis. What you feel one day isn’t necessarily what you feel the next.
That’s why I appreciate those verses that were read for us early in the service from 1 Corinthians 13. If you look closely at those verses you discover something that every one of us needs to learn and that is this: love isn’t a feeling as much as it is a choice. I’m not discounting those feelings of tenderness and compassion and attraction but love is more than that. Love is a choice to treat someone in a certain way. It’s a choice you make in any close relationship, but particularly in a marriage relationship, and it’s a choice that you make many times during the course of that relationship as well. It’s a choice to be patient, to be kind, to seek the good of another above that of ourselves, to keep no record of wrongs, to always protect, trust and hope and to persevere through all things. Those things are the essence of love and they are a matter of choice. But the closer the relationship, the deeper the hurt, and the harder those things can be to do.
Now Heather, thinking back over the course of our own marriage, those are choices that we’ve both had to make many times, but thinking of those very early days of married life, what do you remember as being a big source of conflict for us?
There was a lot of stress in our marriage in those years because there was this pulling in different directions. We would decide something together, Heather would talk to her folks, and next thing I know, her decision had changed, not because her views had changed, but because she wanted to please her folks. Ephesians 5:33 tells us that a husband must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. I was not feeling respected as a husband, in fact I was feeling just the opposite, and over time my heart grew hard and angry and because of that, there were probably times when Heather didn’t feel my love for her like she ought to have.
And Heather, maybe you can share a little bit of what you were feeling in those days, being caught, as you were, in the middle.
What do you think ultimately made the difference for us? How did we get through that time in our lives?
I would agree, that geographical separation, made a huge difference in our marriage and allowed us to really begin shaping our life together. And it really leads us to the verses that we are going to look at for a few minutes this morning. Take your Bibles with me please, and turn to the book of Genesis. We are going to look at Genesis chapter 2 again today but we are just going to focus on one verse in particular and that’s verse 22.
Last week we talked about how after God created each new thing, we’re told that what He had made was good. That’s the declaration He makes. But when it comes to the creation of man, we read something different. God makes Adam, He looks, and He says, “It is not good for man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) And it’s only after God has fashioned Eve, taken her to Adam, that we’re told that God looked and saw that everything He had made, was not just good, but was, in fact, very good. (Genesis 1:31) It is very good for man and woman to be joined together, before God, in marriage. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to be single. There is nothing lesser about being single, it can be a gift in itself, but the whole point of these verses is to show that marriage has been God’s idea right from the very beginning, and that not only is it His idea, but it is a very good idea in contrast to what you hear some people proclaiming today.
Now Genesis 2:24 says this … “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24, NIV) “For this reason,” those words tell us something important. They tell us that this is a response to God, this is a step of obedience, this is how it is meant to happen. When a man and woman come together in marriage three things are meant to take place. First there is going to be a leaving, then there is going to be a cleaving, and finally there is going to be a weaving. If one and two do not happen, number three, cannot happen. We are only going to have time to talk about the first two of those things today and we will pick up on the third one next week. But understand this: God’s plan, His desire for your marriage, is that your lives are intimately, intricately, and irrevocably woven together as you become one flesh. But that cannot happen unless you get the leaving and the cleaving right. And they have to happen in that order, you leave, and only then can you cleave.
What does it mean to leave? It sounds fairly straight forward, doesn’t it? To leave is to go away, to depart, to move on. And there is a sense in which that usually happens by default when two people get married. If they’ve each been living in their parent’s home then typically, and hopefully, they will leave that home when they get married and start living in a place of their own. In that sense they have left their father and their mother.
But Scripture means more than just this physical leaving. The word translated “leave,” is translated elsewhere as “forsake.” It’s the same word used by Moses when he speaks to Joshua and say, “The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” (Deuteronomy 31:8, NIV) God will not forsake Joshua. He will never leave him or turn away from him, He will be with Joshua through all things.
But we could read Genesis 2:24 like this: “For this reason a man will forsake his father and his mother and be united to his wife.” Now that doesn’t mean that you turn your back on your parents and cut them out of your life when you get married. What it does mean is this: they no longer have the primacy in your relationship. Before a man is married his obligation may be to his parents. After he has married though his obligation is no longer first and foremost to his parents, but to his wife. His priorities change. And Psalm 45 makes it clear that it is the same for the wife.
The goal of leaving is so that husband and wife can cleave to one another. If one or both is still trying to please their parents and to satisfy their parents rather than their spouse there is going to be a great deal of hurt and heartache in that marriage. That’s what Heather and I were experiencing in our own marriage in those early years. You cannot have divided loyalties and make a marriage work well. In fact, if you have forces constantly pulling in different directions, eventually something is going to break.
Parents, the greatest gift you can give your adult children, is to let them go. That doesn’t mean that you cut them out of your life. What it does mean is this: You don’t tell them how to live their lives. You don’t force your dreams, your desires and your aspirations, upon them. You give them space to grow together, to establish their own traditions and customs with holidays and celebrations and so on. If they come to you for advice, give it freely, from your own experience, but give it carefully. Cut the financial and emotional ties that bound them so closely to you over the years.
Chip Ingram tells the story of a young married woman who had a horrible fight with her husband one night. There were tears and harsh words and she got so worked up that she grabbed the car keys and left the house in her pajamas and drove a couple of hours to her parent’s place, crying all the way, and wondering how she ever could have made the mistake of marrying the man she did. She was determined that she was going to leave him. She got to her folks place early in the morning but wasn’t too concerned because her mom was an early riser and she figured her mom would be up as she knocked on the door. Sure enough she knocked, heard footsteps approaching, but the door didn’t open. Instead the curtains on the little window in the door were pulled aside as her mom looked out to see who it was. “Mom, let me in,” she cried. And her mom opened the door, but just a couple of inches, and then mom stopped the door with her foot so her daughter couldn’t come in. “Honey,” the mother asked her daughter, “did you have a fight with your husband?” “Yes, mom” she sobbed, “you wouldn’t believe what happened,” and then before she could go any further, her mother interrupted her and said, “Honey, Honey go home and make it right.” And then she quietly shut, and locked the door, in her daughter’s face. The daughter confessed later that her mother gave her a great gift that morning. She was forced to go back and deal with the hurt and the heartache and to work things out with her husband which they did and which wouldn’t have happened if mom hadn’t been willing to cut the ties that bind.
There needs to be an emotional, psychological, and financial leaving that takes place so a couple can cleave to one another. There’s a shifting of loyalties that’s occurring. Parents, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for you in their lives, nor that there might not be a place for you to help them out at some point in time, but keep in mind that the struggles they will face may be ordained of God to help them grow closer to Him and to one another as well. Marriage is about God’s glory and God is glorified as we are refined, molded, and shaped into the character of Christ.
So that’s the leaving. The next step, which the leaving makes possible, is to be united, or to cleave to one another. It’s the same word use in Deuteronomy where we read “Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to Him and take your oaths in His name. He is the one you praise; He is your God.” (Deuteronomy 10:20–21, NIV) “Hold fast” to him. “Cling” to him. Let nothing come before Him in your life. It’s a word that speaks of union, and unity, and togetherness. When you’re married your allegiance, loyalties and everything else is meant to be for your spouse above all else. It’s greater even than your allegiance to your children. That’s what a lot of us get wrong. We put the children ahead of our marriage. We make time for the children but not for one another. That’s why two of the most likely times for divorce is around year six and year 16 of a marriage. Kids come on the scene and suddenly everything changes. You’re tired all the time, you seem to have no time for yourself let alone for your spouse, and, if you’re not careful, a disconnect happens between husband and wife and after about year six one of them is looking for something different. At year 16 the kids are becoming much more independent, they are off doing their own thing to some degree, and husband and wife, if they haven’t been building into their marriage all along, wake up one day and realize that they no longer have anything in common, nothing to talk about, no solid foundation on which to build. The best gift we can give our children is a good solid marriage for them to be raised in so our allegiance needs to be to one another ahead of the kids. But that same allegiance needs to come before parents, and friends, and our work. Besides your relationship with Jesus there is no more important relationship that you can have then with your spouse. Cling to one another and hold fast, make those times to regularly to build into each other’s lives, that you might truly cleave together.
Our time this morning is gone, but let me leave you with these passionate words from a former pastor in Seattle whose marriage was going through a rough time. He writes …
I am standing for the healing of my marriage! I won’t give up, give in, give out, or give over till that healing takes place. I made a vow; I said the words; I gave the pledge; I gave a ring; I took a ring; I gave myself; I trusted God; and said the words and meant the words…in sickness and in health, in sorrow and in joy, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in good times and in bad; so I’m standing now, and won’t sit down, let down, slow down, calm down, fall down, look down, or be down till the breakdown is torn down!
I refuse to put my eyes on outward circumstances; or listen to prophets of doom, or buy into what’s trendy, worldly, popular, convenient, easy, quick, thrifty, or advantageous. Nor will I settle for a cheap imitation of God’s real thing. Nor will I seek to lower God’s standard, twist God’s will, rewrite God’s Word, violate God’s covenant, or accept what God hates, namely divorce.
In a world of filth, I will stay pure. Surrounded by lies, I will speak the truth. Where hopelessness abounds, I will hope in God. Where revenge is easier, I will bless instead of curse, and when the odds are stacked against me, I’ll trust in God’s faithfulness. I’m a stander, and I won’t acquiesce, compromise, quarrel, or quit. I have made the choice, set my face, entered the race, believed the Word, and trusted God for all the outcome. I will allow neither the reaction of my spouse, nor the urging of my friends, nor the advice of my loved ones, nor the economic hardship, nor the prompting of the devil to make me let up, slow up, blow up, or give up till my marriage is healed up. AMEN!” (As quoted by Todd Coget, Illustrations, sermoncentral.com)
Friends, may we be as diligent, and as dedicated, when it comes to our marriages!
Let’s pray …
