A Marriage Made in Heaven

Introduction

For being here this morning. My name is Ralph Walker. My wife Paula is here with me today, and we live in the Tampa, Florida area. I am a one of the shepherds and a part-time preacher with the Henderson Boulevard Church of Christ. And I work full-time with Florida College. I’m the public relations and alumni director at Florida College. So I get to work with college students a lot, and I have three children of my own, and I got a wife. So I’m about as qualified as anybody else in that respect to talk about the family. But I’ve studied and read and learned from the one who has more to say about the family and who knows better about how to conduct and direct a family than anybody else.

And that is our Father in Heaven. And you’ve not come here to learn a lot of practical advice from somebody who in many cases has made the same mistakes you’ve made. But we’ve come together, together to learn from the God of all the universe who created us and made us and directs our ways. And it is in the name of his son, Jesus our Lord, the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega, that I bring you greetings today. And am so happy to be in your presence.

And I mean old in the sense of not chronology, but in terms of being long friends, and a lot of new friends, and some people that we’ve run into through the years because of my relationship and my wife’s with Florida College, and we’re really glad to be in your presence today. I want to begin, not with the lesson this morning, but I want to begin by clarifying something. I said right at the end of class, I was pushed for time, and I got hit by three people immediately after service saying, I want an explanation of one of the comments you made, and I would have ignored two of those, but I have to ride home with the third one. That’s my wife. So I want to explain a comment that I made.

I said, quoting somebody else, if you put your children first, they will put themselves first. And some of you are a little bothered by that, saying, What do you mean by that statement? Well, here’s what I mean. My first and primary obligation in my family is not to my children. It is to my wife. The first and most important relationship in any family is the husband-wife relationship. And the children need to learn, I think, that they are secondary to that. Certainly, they are dependent on us for everything. And in some ways, you know, my wife can feed herself, and if she were need, if it were necessary, she could clothe herself and house herself, but my kids couldn’t do that. And so, in some ways, I have a deeper obligation to my children.

But my daughters were raised knowing that the first and most important relationship I had was with my God, and the second was with my wife. And they were number three. And I think that when we put our children first in all things, if it’s always what they need, what they want, then we create in them this sense that they are number one, and they never have been and never should be in God’s plan. It is the husband-wife relationship that is most important. So I hope that clears that up for those of you who are wondering about that statement and what I meant by that. So let’s talk about that first relationship. I love doing weddings. It’s such a joyful occasion. There’s so much positive attitude generated in the air when it comes to the subject of weddings.

Wedded bliss. Everybody’s smiling. Everybody’s excited. Everybody looks their best. That bride looks more beautiful than anybody ever dreamed she could look. And her groom is looking better than anybody ever thought he could. And they’re dressed as best they can, and they’re ready for each other. And I I repeat these statements, or I make these statements, which they repeat. And I’m saying, you know, I will give you everything I have and everything I am, and I will love you, cherish you, honor you for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, for better, for worse. And they repeat that. They just say, I do, I will, I am, and I’m thinking, no, you won’t, no, you aren’t. Because those weddings are beautiful. And they’re so positive. Somebody said, almost all marriages are happy.

It’s a living together afterwards that causes all the trouble. And they think on that day, theirs is the best marriage that’s ever been, and they were made just for each other, and they’re going to go together like puzzled pieces, and there won’t be anything messing up in their marriage. I’ve had young couples tell me, you know, Brother Walker, we’re not going to fight. I mean, we just don’t. And they and they believe everything is perfect about their mate. Their feet don’t even stink. I mean, they are just absolutely perfect in every way. And that just doesn’t happen. Somebody said the honeymoon is over when he stops helping her do the dishes, and he does them all by himself.

That is true because things get real quickly. Reality sets in. And I’m going to tell you, from that beautiful day where all those promises are made, and I’m not a cynic about those things. I’m thrilled that they come together with those high aspirations and hopes and goals. That’s the way it ought to be. But then there are things that come against the beauty of that white icing wedding. Boredom sets in, drudgery, work, worn nerves, afraid emotions, disagreements, which become fights, which become cold wars, breakdowns and fix-ups, bills, faded dreams, reality. From the way we were to the way it is.

Marriage is also three meals a day, sharing the workload and taking out the garbage. And our choices when our homes begin to crumble around us, or it seems to me, three. We can tough it out and live with it. We can move out or we can remodel. And I think too many people are choosing that second option, and they’re moving out. They’re choosing divorce or separation. Too many people. There was a sign in a Hollywood jewelry store that said we rent wedding rings. That’s the reality of our culture. So let me just suggest for you two things in our lesson this morning. And when I say two, the first is one point, and the second one has four subpoints, and we’ll be done.

1. There Is a Marriage Made in Heaven

I want to suggest to you, first of all, there is a marriage made in heaven. I know I’ve painted the picture that, well, marriage sounds like a pretty drudgery affair and a very difficult thing, and some people just can’t make it any better than it is. But I suggest to you there is a marriage made in heaven. And what I mean by that is God instituted marriage. I mean, it was the very first organization and organism that God created.

So it’s not a man made thing. It’s not something we devised or that we can revise and make better. It’s something God made right from the beginning. Let me tell you what I mean by that. In Genesis chapter 1, when God creates the world, and he does that on those six successive days, at the end of each one of those days, God looks at what he did, and he does kind of a quality control check at the end of the day. And he takes out that notepad and he looks at everything he did and he says, it’s good. And he checks it off. This is good. This is good. This is good. This is good. This is good. Six times he does that. In verse 10, verse 12, verse 21, verse 25, verse 31.

And at the end of all that, he said, it was very good. Very good. Now, I think there are a couple of reasons why God says that. But the one that really strikes me as to why God keeps telling us it was good is because for many of us it’s not. You know, we look at the world around us, we say, no, this isn’t good. This isn’t right. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. And I think God would say to us, well, I’ve got to tell you something. When I turned it over to you, it was. Now, it may not be now, but it was fine when I left it in your hands. So if our marriages aren’t what they ought to be, if this world’s not what it ought to be, maybe instead of looking to God and saying, Why’d you make it that way?

Well, look to ourselves and say, why did we mess it up that way? Because when he made it and turned it over to us, it was running fine. And it didn’t just break on its own. But there’s one thing in this creation story at the very beginning that God stresses to us was not good. Go to chapter 2 and look at verse 18. In the recap in chapter 2, where all things are created, and particularly the emphasis is on man. Verse 18 says, The Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I’ll make him a helper suitable for him. One thing was not good man alone. Now you might look at that and say, Well, why in the world didn’t God just make the woman at the very beginning?

Why did he make a mistake? Did he forget something? Did he make the man and then say, whoa, what was I thinking? I left the woman out here. No, I don’t think so at all. This is written for our benefit, for us to look at, for our perspective on this. And God made that man by himself so that he would understand this is not good. So that man would realize he’s not complete without that woman. And God produced the solution. The Anglo-Saxon word for wedding or wed was actually a groom’s pledge of marriage. It was the amount of money or goods, the purchase price he paid for a wife. Now, what’s interesting about that is that word was actually derived from a root meaning, which means the gamble or wager.

So the original idea was that a man was going to put up a lot of goods in the hope that he’d get something good out of it. But it was always a chancy thing. A risk he was taking. A wager or a gamble. But I’m going to tell you, marriage is not that. Marriage is not a gamble or a chance thing. Not the way God intended it to be. Good marriages don’t happen by luck or by chance. It’s not, well, did I marry the right person? Charles Shedd said marriage is not so much finding the right person as it is being the right person. So it’s important for us to think in those terms. Listen, I don’t know what your marital state is. You may be newly married.

You might be here on your honeymoon. When my wife and I got married, the very first place we worshiped after our wedding was in Orlando, Florida. It was at the Parr Avenue congregation, the old Par Avenue congregation. And we went there on the Sunday morning after our wedding. You might be here this morning in a similar situation. You’re here on your honeymoon, and you’re saying, I don’t know what that man’s talking about. We do have the perfect wedding, don’t we, honey? And that’s wonderful if you feel that way. And I hope it continues that way. And you might be married many years and say, you know, we’ve had our ups and downs, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. But in your heart of hearts today, you might be in a situation where you’re saying, you know, my marriage isn’t what it ought to be, and I’m very unhappy with it.

And I don’t know what to do to make it better. Well, I do. Because God intended for your marriage to be as happy as that Adam and Eve had. I know they had some advantages we don’t have. You know, they never had anybody to compare their mates to. You think about that. Adam and Eve were together. Adam never had to worry about Eve saying, how come you don’t take out the garbage every time like the Joneses do? Or our house is falling in around us. How come you’re not a handyman like so and so down the street? He’s always out there hammering around, framing and bamming on the house and making new things for them. And on the other hand, when he was out late working, he never had to worry, and she never had to worry about who he was out with.

And she never had to worry about a roving eye from him. There weren’t other women for him to look at or make comparisons to.

Because God gave us some principles right here in the book of Genesis that kind of get marriage started on the right footing. And if we’ll follow those things, then we can have good marriages. Psalm 127, verse 1 says, unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain to build it. It’s important for us to turn to God’s blueprints for marriage. Now there are a lot of self help books out there, and some of them are really good. Our girls claim that we didn’t raise them. James Dobson did. Because we read all those James Dobson books when they were young. And I don’t know who it is that kind of turns you on when it comes to parenting or marriage. Paula and I are blessed to have been invited years ago to participate in a marriage retreat weekend with my best friend and his wife.

And they’ve been doing those for years and ask us to join them. And we get together with couples from all over the area, about 50 couples, and we go off for a weekend. The last year it was at Howie in the Hills. And we had 50 couples there, and we all get together for a weekend and just kind of renew our marriages and spend some time together. And I don’t know whether it’s that kind of thing for you, or whether it’s books you find, or whether it’s listening to somebody on the radio, or watching other people in their marriages, and what they do that you like, or the opposite. Watching other people in their marriages and saying, I’ll never do that. On one occasion, my mother got frustrated with me, and she said, You know, son, if you can’t do anything else in life, at least you can serve as a bad example.

Now, some marriages are like that. They serve as bad examples. And we can see those things and pull away from that so that we won’t do those things to our mates. But whatever that is, whatever your sources, they better come back to being rooted in the word of God. Because God has the answers for us, and I want to go through those with you right now. Turn with me to Genesis chapter 2. Look at verses 24 and 25. I want you to note that God fashioned, verse 22, fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man, and he brought her to the man. I would love to have been there when Adam first saw his mate. He’s never seen anything like her.

Anatomically, she is different than he is. And those are very obvious. I’m not being crude and I’m not being funny. But they’re both naked. And so they see immediately everything the other one is. And they are the perfect physical specimens. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know that that necessarily means he was a bodybuilder and she was a fitness instructor. I don’t know that it means that. But God made them like he intended man to be. They look like what they ought to look like. And God brought this woman to the man, and they both look at each other and they see their partner for life for the very first time. They’ve never seen each other before.

Now, you know, there are so many things about that that are a little bit disconcerting to us. Most of us dated our marriage partner for a long time. Some of us for months, but most of us for years or more, that we were with each other and got to know each other and then made a decision that of all of all the people that we had run into, this was the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with. Adam and Eve didn’t have that. And I want to tell you what I think that says. Because they had very distinct personalities. It says that you can make a marriage work. It’s interesting to me that the countries in this world that have arranged marriages have a lower divorce rate than those countries which have marriages that are predicated upon romance.

And I think the reason for that is they know they’ve got to make it work. And they’re supposed to make it work. And so they work out the differences. In our culture, we say, oh, this is not the person I was supposed to marry. I’m going to go looking for another one. And we just keep kissing frogs, looking for princes. And so God brought her to the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman. I got to tell you, in my heart of hearts, I think that construction is a little backwards. I think the first thing he said was, whoa, man. I think that’s the very first thing. Woman. Whoa, man. I like this.

2. Number One, Severance: We’ve Got to Leave Home

Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. She was taken out of man. She shall be called woman. Now look at verse 24 and 25. Four principles from this. Four musts for a successful marriage. You want a successful marriage? Listen, Adam and Eve didn’t have to worry about some of these things because some of the things that are mentioned are assumed to be true for future marriages, not theirs. The Genesis writer is not talking about Adam and Eve’s marriage. He’s talking about our marriages. And I’ll tell you why I know that. Read with me. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother, right there. Adam and Eve didn’t have a father and a mother. Adam and Eve didn’t even have belly buttons.

They were created. They didn’t come from somebody else. But the passage says, a man shall leave his father and his mother. That’s for us. This is an eternal principle God is giving us. A man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife. Many of your versions say, cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh, and the man and his wife were naked and not ashamed. Four principles right there. Number one, severance. We’ve got to leave home. Now that’s not just a geographical statement. But I want to tell you, parents, something. At the marriage of your children, the best gift you can give your children is to release them. To turn them loose. To encourage them to go. I don’t even use the word let them go.

And when I say push them away, that’s not a callous statement from a father who doesn’t love his children. But it is a statement just like a mother bird is not being cruel to her little ones when she pushes them from the nest. It is the only way that they will spread their wings and fly. A man must or shall leave his father and his mother. Why? Because he’s got to establish his own household. And that’s not just for the man. I think that’s for the woman too, and maybe in some cases more for the woman than the man. Who doesn’t remember the words of that ancient song, Billy Boy. The chorus of which says over and over, she’s a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

You’ve got to leave home. You know, we demonstrate that in so many ways, and sometimes it’s a symbolic thing. I’ve always been a little bothered by the wedding practice of the unity candle. There’s one aspect of that I think is really cool, but there’s another aspect that bothers me, and I’ll tell you what that is. You’ve got these couples that come up, and first the parents come and they light these separate candles, each representing their households. And then when the couple joins themselves together in marriage, they go and they light their candles from the candles of their respective families, and then they light a new candle that becomes their family. And that’s all beautiful. And I like that. I like what it says. We have taken from the light from our families, and now we have united them together.

But then they do something that makes me want to say, don’t. They go snuff out their families. They just go over there and go. And I expect to see the parents on the front row just collapse. Just die right there. That doesn’t happen. But I want to tell you what that really, what they’re trying to say by that. And what they’re trying to say by that is we are cutting off what we were to become what we are. But here’s the problem with that. It’s not that easy because those two candles still burn. So it’s got to be a conscious effort on your part to separate yourself from the influence and authority and dominance of your respective homes to become what you are in your family.

You’ve got to make your own way. You’ve got to get out from under the parental domain. Not heading home every time you got trouble or picking up the phone to call every time. I remember the story that I read in one of the books about a father who said to his daughter after a squabble, she came to them, sat down with her parents. She was so unhappy with her husband. He talked for a little while, and then he said to her, You’ve got your own home. Now get to it. That may sound cruel to you or harsh. I don’t think he meant it that way. I think he was carrying out the biblical injunction. You’ve got to establish your own home. That doesn’t mean you don’t carry baggage and sometimes wonderful gifts from your own families.

3. Number Two, Permanence: Cleave to Your Mate

But it does mean you establish your home. And it’s not always this is the way we did it at home, and this is the way we should do it in our home. Nothing’s more annoying than living somewhere where people have come from other places. I remember one guy who got fed up with that and he had a bumper sticker on the back of his car, and he said, We don’t care how you did it back home. There is a point at which you’ve got to establish your own foundations. Number two, permanence. Severance, permanence. Just as you separate yourself on the one hand, you cling to or cleave to your mate on the other hand. You know, we talked in the Bible class period about the balance, it’s essential.

This is part of it. You’re cutting off and clinging to, tying together. You’re separating and joining. For this reason, a man shall be joined to his wife. The percent of increases in marriage since 1970 has been 19%. 85% increase in singles, a 400% increase in unmarried couples. People living together, but not joining themselves together. No long-term promise, no long-term commitment, just sacking up. That’s not what God intended. God intended there to be a commitment on the part of the couple to be married together, to be joined by vows and promises that they will take care of each other. In Matthew chapter 19 and verse 6, it said, What God has joined together, let not man put asunder. God put you together. Don’t throw in the towel.

God put you together. Somebody said there are two processes which should never be started in haste. In balming and divorce.

We wouldn’t even utter it. Divorce is not a possibility in the Walker household. We’ve made that promise. We’re toughen it out. We’re going to get over the challenges and hurdles. We’re going to make it work because we believe that’s what God wants from us.

4. They Shall Become One Flesh

And I know it gets tough. I haven’t faced what some of you are facing. I’m not a person who’s been everywhere. You could say, well, you haven’t gone through this route. That’s right. I haven’t. I may not have. But I’ve gone through some things that you may not have gone through also. I may have had some difficulties you haven’t had. But I know this. God joined us together. This man and his woman are not going to separate that. Permanence is the other side of the coin. Cleaving to one another. Holding to one another, making some firm commitments that this is going to be our lives together. The third statement, he was joined, he shall be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about this, but I do want to tell you this.

The one flesh relationship is not just a sexual statement. It’s not just a sexual statement. It’s a statement of unity. It is the idea that they will become one unit. There is a statement for the one flesh or the one the sexual relationship, and that is one body. We find that in 1 Corinthians. That a man who is one flesh with his wife, how can he become one body with a harlot? Those are not interchangeable terms, folks. When you become one body, that’s just a sexual experience. It’s nothing more than that. But one flesh. That’s thinking alike. That’s common purposes. That’s common goals. That’s common fears. That’s common challenges. That’s common joys. That’s common love. One flesh. And I want you to notice that the verb that’s used of that is they shall become one flesh.

That’s not a punctillier statement. Like I will become hungry if I don’t eat today. It is an ongoing statement. They shall constantly be coming to the one flesh relationship. It’s a growth process that takes place over a long period of time. Doesn’t happen overnight. Doesn’t happen over a week. Doesn’t happen over a year. Happens over a lifetime. Constantly finding out what’s going on in your marriage and how you can make it better. I tell young men all the time there are only two times in a young man’s life when he doesn’t understand his wife. One’s before marriage and the other’s after marriage. But you better be working at it. You better constantly be working at it. To learn your mate and to know who and what he or she is and to become one flesh.

That’s unity. That’s not uniformity. There’s a difference. Uniformity is there’s one way to do it, and everybody’s going to be that. It is forming yourself to the one idea, unit. Uniform, forming to the one. That’s not what unity is, though. Unity is working by consensus. It’s giving and taking. It’s not a dictatorial style of authority or leadership in the home. It’s ruling by servant leadership, as Jesus demonstrated for us in his own life. It’s willingly blending two wills together. It’s becoming a unit together. Last and final point: look at verse 25. And the man and his wife were both.