Marriage
All Scripture Marked NKJV: The New King James Version. 1996, c1982. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
Tonight, we are continuing a series called “From the Heart” and tonight we are talking about Marriage.
When I began thinking about this series, I was at home enjoying the time with my family. I began to realize how important my marriage is to me.
Several weeks ago, we celebrated our sixth anniversary. I guess you could say that we are still newlyweds—that’s ok because that means we have so much more to learn about each other.
We have a good marriage, but it is not with out its problems and challenges—one being that I’m in Iraq and she’s in South Carolina and will be moving to Fort Campbell within the next two weeks.
During these challenges, it is always important to go back to the basics of marriage.
As with any area of life, we constantly need to look at the very foundations to understand what makes them work and how we can improve on them.
Since God designed marriage, it is best to go back to the Bible to see how it is supposed to work. A successful marriage is one that conforms to God’s design.
So tonight we are going to look at the very beginning of the story at Genesis 2:24, which is found on page 4 in the Red Bibles underneath your chairs.
The story of marriage began when God said that “it was not good for man to be alone.” God saw this and created woman for man to be a helpmate. (Ge 2:18) So he took one of Adams ribs and created woman. Adam saw that she was “flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.”
And then came to our focal verse tonight.
Genesis 2:24:
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Ge. 2:24, NKJV)
The first thing this verse teaches about marriage is that the couple leaves father and mother.
Genesis 2:24 says;
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother…(Ge:2:24, NKJV)
In order to conform to the design of God, the couple must
1. Leave
Those of us who are married know that this easier said than done.
One of the focal points of most weddings is the part that happens right after the processional when the father turns to his daughter and ceremonially gives her away to the groom.
This is a time of tears, but is an important symbol. It symbolizes that the daughter has left the family to go and start her own.
While we have a spiritual obligation to honor our father and mother, leaving is an issue of dependence. We are to leave our parent’s support, and begin to support ourselves, in every area of life—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We are to seek one another’s support and begin to depend on each other.
Many times, we allow this one issue to come between the marriage relationships. We allow the parents desires and manipulation, in some cases, to dictate what will occur in our marriage. We never cut the ties between our dependence from our family. We hold on to those ties, because we have depended on them for so long and we don’t let go. But what happens is that, when we do this, we also don’t allow those bounds to build with our spouse. We are to leave our father and mother.
I’ve heard the statement; “My husband or wife may leave me, my family will never leave me.” The problem with that statement is that it is upside-down. You made a commitment to never leave your spouse regardless of the circumstances—you have never made any agreement like that with your family.
We need to honor our father and mother, yes; but we are to not seek to fulfill or needs through that relationship this needs to come through the marriage.
Then the very next statement that is brought out is that the two will be joined together.
Genesis 2:24 continues:
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, …(Ge:2:24, NKJV)
In order to conform to the design of God, the couple must
2. Cleave
The word cleave comes from the traditional King James Version of the Bible. It is an old school word that we don’t use very much, but it means to
cling: come or be in close contact with; stick or hold together and resist separation; (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn)
But the word cleave gives a stronger picture than simply joined.
You join a health club. You join a mailing list to a website. But, to cleave means to stick together and resists separation.
Once it is attached, the bond does not let go.
One day last year, I came home to my very apologetic wife. I picked up a coffee travel mug at Starbuck’s last year sometime and was very happy with it. The problem is that I have a problem with leaving it in the car after I finish drinking it. The coffee had fused the lid to the top of the mug. Well, I finally took it out of the car after being heat sealed with the coffee over several days. Monica, trying to help, took the coffee cup and was going to put it in the dishwasher. She tried and tried to twist the top off and finally broke the handle the process.
When things are bonded tightly to one another, separating them will break something. That’s why divorce hurts, because once they are bound together the bound is not supposed to break and our hearts and our homes get broken in the process.
The Bible teaches that there is to be a bond, like glue to hold the two people together.
Monday morning, I left to go to Talafar. I saw that we were going to ride Black Hawks, instead of the Chinooks, which was ok with me—because my last trip on a Chinook was not that enjoyable.
So we get on the Blackhawk, which I discovered had no windows. We took off and flew to the FARP and I began to feel the wind on my face. It was then that I realized that this trip would be bad.
So we took off again and flew toward Mosul. The birds began to pick up speed and I feel myself getting plastered to the back of the aircraft. My glasses were flying off! For those of you who haven’t felt this—think about it this way.
If you have ever rode in the back of a pick-up, you have probably tried to stand up. When you stand up, you are hit in the face with the wind from the speed of the truck. Take that wind blast and drive 100 miles and hour and that’s what it feels like.
The problem was that I was committed. I could not get out. I could not move. I had to sit there while I got pounded. I knew there would come a time when the helicopter would land and I would be able to change seats, but for the time being I was stuck where I was.
There are times when we get pretty beat up in our marriages. Remember the vow you took “to have and to hold, for richer or poorer, for better or worse.” These are the times that you must hold on to the vow and realize that this is the worse that you are experiencing. Stay committed and together as you whether the storm you will become one.
Genesis 2:24:
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Ge:2:24, NKJV)
In order to conform to the design of God, the couple must become
3. One
This is one of the mysteries of the Christian life and one of the biggest mysteries of human relations. How can two people become one person?
One of the common adages about marriage is that a marriage is 50/50. There is a common thought is that if the marriage is 50/50 they are doing everything they can do to have a good marriage. Interestingly enough, however, when we look at our marriages as 50/50—each partner thinks that they are putting in 60% or more. This where many arguments in sue—each person in the couple feels like they must stand up for their rights. The 50/50 marriage is completely unbiblical.
Listen to 1 Corinthians 13:4-7;
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Co 13:4-7, NKJV)
This is not 50/50 love—this is everything you’ve got. This is hard work. This is long term commitment. This is giving of yourself to the other person, in that you will be one person.
The marriage should be 100%/100%. The two are to become one. Do you put 100% into your own interests? Absolutely. The problem is that when we become married we became one with another person—and they are part of us, and we are apart of them. We have forgotten this—we think that our marriage is a living arrangement rather than a life change.
Marriage is a life where we say goodbye to taking care of our needs but begin to take care of the needs of another person. The Bible teaches the wife to submit and the husband to love his wife like Christ loved the church. This is what happens when two people are one—they put the other’s needs above theirs. When we become selfish is when the problems begin. We are to be one with our spouse.
This is one reason that red flags go up when I hear about couples having two separate checking accounts. I have heard all of the good ideas why they have two checking accounts—but I don’t buy it. The bottom line is that she wants her money and he wants his money. The two are not one. The two do not want to talk about every purchase. The two want some sort of independence. Marriage is not a relationship that thrives on independence, but on dependence. The checking accounts are just an example, a very visible example of the issues that are happening in the relationship. There is no room for selfishness in the marriage, because the two have become one.
Our marriages should be deep relationships between two people. We are to become one with our spouse, we are to learn their thoughts and their feelings. We are to become one.
I was in Talafar this week where I bought a new book, Perfect Nightmare by John Saul. I don’t know why I buy these creepy books, but this one is pretty enjoyable.
At one point the family is discussing the need to leave the house they are living in.
It is a struggle to leave a house that they built from the ground up. They supervised the construction and the design. The husband grew the garden and the trees. The little girl grew up in that house for 17 years. The family took many years to get the house just right—just the way they liked it.
And they were all sad that they had to leave it.
Our marriages are just like that house. When we enter marriage, we have nothing. We slowly begin to buy things together, store shared memories, raise children. We make a home between ourselves and our spouses.
But, it all begins with the basics. Leave, Cleave, and Become One.
Tonight, you may be sitting in here after I’ve gone through the basics of marriage and you are single. How does this apply to you? Or you may have gone through a divorce recently—what about you?
As I thought about all of this, I remembered, once again the basics. God designed marriage. We have made a mess of it through our sin. Similar to our lives, we have so much promise, but we sin, others sin—sin gets in the way of his ultimate plan for our lives. Even people that are happily married, see the effects of sin through everyday missteps and bad decisions.
But God loved us all. He loved us enough to deal with our sin directly.
All of us are sinners, all of us have made God unhappy. The Bible says that the payment for this sin is death. And God sent his son down to earth to die on a cross, to pay the penalty in our place.
We can not have a fulfilling marriage or a fulfilling life without following Jesus Christ that is because we will always have sin around to make what was created to be beautiful to scar and to distort.
Tonight, you have an opportunity to accept his payment on the cross for your sin and become a follower of him today.
After the service, I will be down here in front and will be happy to talk to you more about accepting this gift.
Let us pray.
