Our country is suffering a spiritual breakdown. Our enemy is not one from without but within. We have an internal spiritual erosion that the world is beginning to see. There is a breakdown of our morals, and the very fiber of the Christian faith that has made our nation so great An expression has been made that is very relevant for our time in history. Stand for something, or you will fall for anything.
The breakdown of the family unit, the home, the marriage: and even the Christian teaching and training of our children has been under an all out attack by the enemy to destroy our CHRISTIAN heritage.
Divorce is at an all time high, couples living together and the world’s view of sex outside of marriage is being accept as the norm. Run away children, and street kids on dope, and into prostitution is an epidemic. When a nation loose it’s spiritual values, it has lost it’s heart.
Problems can make us stronger, or destroy us. Couples divorce for almost no reason: instead of working through problems they go their separate ways. There seems to be no tolerance for a weakness, or a fault, or a mistake. The marriage vows seem to mean nothing: for better or worse, in sickness, and in health, for richer, or poorer, for better or for worse, til death we do part.
A marriage is a covenant: between the couple and God. Taking the marriage vows is making a covenant with God. The marriage is a covenant, union, unity, agreement. A covenant is the nearest thing to the heart of God. When a marriage covenant is broken, the union is broken, the unity between the couple and God is broken. Satan’s number one target is the marriage. Satan knows if he destroys the home: he has destroyed the church. The home was before the church. Actually we are the church. Ephesians 5 - 25. says: Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, 26. that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27. that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. 28. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. 29. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. 30. For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. 31. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 32. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and his church. When a man loves his wife, he loves himself. When a man neglects his wife, it is the same as neglecting himself, and God.
God is a covenant making God. God is a covenant keeping God. God works through a covenant relationship. Psalms : 89 - 34 My covenant I will not break, nor alter the word that has gone out of my lips. When God calls a man into ministry he makes a covenant with him. When we stand on God’s word, we are agreeing with his covenant. God appeared to Abraham and made a covenant with him.
If we get in agreement with God’s word; we are blessed. Gelatins 3 - 29 And if you are Christ’s then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. Another word for testament is Covenant.
Hebrews 8 - 10 says: The children of Israel continued not in my covenant and I regarded them not. God is very serious about his covenant.
Why is God so serious about the covenant of marriage? Amos 3 - 3 says: Can two walk together unless they are agreed? God works in an atmosphere of peace, and unity, and agreement. Satan works where there is strife, division, and discord. Mather 18 - 19 Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. One of the greatest covenant privileges of the new covenant is agreement.
Marriage provides security, provision, protection, and love. God made a covenant with Abraham for two reasons: his faith, and he would train his children. Genesis 18 - 19 For I have known him in order that he may train his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness, and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him.
Because there is unity in a marriage covenant, and power in that union, Satan wants to divide the marriage, kill the union, and destroy the church. We are not ignorant of his devices, and we want to spoil his plan. For the church to keep the marriage unit together, it has to walk in the spirit: bear the fruit of the spirit in all it’s attributes. Love suffers long and is kind: love does not envy love does not parade itself, is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek it’s own, is not provoked, thicket no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,endures all things. Love never fails! The fruit of the spirit is not in a life because we will them to be there. It is the fruit of the spirit. We bear the fruit by walking in the spirit, not in the flesh. If we survive as a people, a nation, a world: we must walk in the spirit, bear the fruit of the spirit. We can turn around a marriage, a nation, a world from it’s downhill destruction if we walk in God’s love. January 1 2004