Marriage Matters to God

Introduction

This is chapter 1. We’ll be turning there in a few minutes and looking at some passages there and throughout the rest of the scriptures as we seek to come to a further and better understanding of the will of God this morning. We do have many who are visiting with us from all sorts of places. We have those who are visiting with us right from here in Orlando. We welcome you and thank you for joining us. We have those who are visiting with us from across the country, and perhaps you never know, maybe even from other countries. We hope that what we’ve done here today has been edifying to your soul as we have come together to worship and to praise our great God, to give thanks to him, for he is the reason why we exist, the reason why we have hope because of what he has done for us in his Son.

And now we come together to look to His Word, to study His Word to help us in every facet of life. And I hope what we’re doing today and throughout the rest of this month will be meaningful to us all.

Now, on June the 26th of this year, the Supreme Court issued two rulings. One, of course, was a well, both were viewed in light of the gay marriage question in our society in favor of gay marriage. One striking down a key provision of the defense against marriage, a defense of marriage act, rather, and one more or less a refusal to hear the merits of a case based on Proposition 8 in California. I’m not going to really talk about the Supreme Court cases today, but what got me thinking was the reaction. And of course, you can imagine whether liberal, conservative, the reaction was strong after those rulings. But some of the conservative reaction is what really piqued my ears. And while I agree with the sentiments, I think there’s a fault behind them, and I want to talk about that here in just a minute.

One representative said that marriage is a fundamental building block of our civilization. It precedes this nation itself. It’s the fiber that keeps our civilization so strong. And certainly it’s the ideal model from which we raise children. A representative from Michigan, for the best interest of society itself, we had defined a marriage between a man and a woman in the interest of those children. Society itself is at risk. And then this one from a representative in California. Marriage has been debased by this decision. Decisions like this makes the people’s voice muted. Again, I agree with the sentiments in all those quotes. But I found it offensive to me of hearing so many come out talking about how marriage has to be defended. Marriage has to be defended, and I’m wondering, well, where have you been the last several decades?

Because no one’s been defending marriage for years. You think of the statistics, and these are the recent statistics from 2010. Whereas opposed in 1960, 70% of adult Americans were married. Now only 50% of adult Americans are married. Now 8.2% of all American couples are unmarried cohabitors. That is, they are living together, yet they are not married. That’s almost one in ten of adult couples in our country. And to think that that’s not going to be rising, well is to think against the trend. Because from 2009 to 2010, that number increased by 13% in just one year. And that’s just some of the things that we can look at from statistics. We think of the media and how marriage is portrayed there. We think of how traditional roles in the family, whether it be husband or the wife or children, how they are portrayed.

We look at the sexualization of our society, and all those things are debasing marriage. And yet, relatively few people have been speaking in defense of marriage. Thinking about how important marriage is and that commitment between a husband and a wife that has to be a lifelong commitment. And it’s not just a societal problem either. For it’s a problem that we see in each and every one of our own marriages. When we mistreat our spouse, do not honor them, do not support them, do not submit to them. Then we ourselves are debasing marriage. We are not showing honor to the institution of which God made. What we’re talking about this month is marriage matters. And marriage does matter. And while we’re approaching this is we’re just putting society aside.

1. Marriage Has Always Mattered to God

But I’m not worried so much about society. I’m worried about what does marriage mean to me. And among God’s people. What are we thinking of marriage? And so we start today by saying, Well, what does marriage mean to God? And certainly marriage does matter to God. Marriage has always mattered to God. If you’re there in Genesis chapter 1, you may be thinking, well, Genesis chapter 1 doesn’t say anything about marriage, but Genesis chapter 1 makes an important point that we have to understand in light of what we read in Genesis chapter 2. It’s interesting that in Genesis chapter 1, you read six different times that when God looked at his creation, he said, It is good. You read that in verse 4, in verse 10, in verse 12, in verse 18, in verse 21, and also in verse 25.

Six times in which God looks at the creation and sees that it is good. And then you’re already thinking ahead with me that when you come to the end of chapter 1, after God has created man, and God looks at all of his creation, and he sees it and beheld, and it was very good, according to verse 31. We understand that. Everything that God spoke into existence and informing man with his own hands out of the clay, everything was good. In fact, creation was very good. And that’s why when we come to chapter 2 and read in verse 18, that when the Lord looked at man and said, It is not good that man should be alone. That’s just strike us. That God has created a perfect world.

God has created everything, and it is perfect, it is good, and yet he looks at man’s situation as man as alone and says, That’s not good. And so, in some ways we could say that marriage is, in fact, the completion and the perfection of God’s creation. That’s not until woman is created, and man and woman are joined together and they become one flesh, that then everything is truly very good. Now, there’s several things we could say about that just here in Genesis chapter 2. We can talk about how when God gave man woman, he did not give him an inferior. In fact, he says, I will make him a helper depending on your translation, suitable, comparable, corresponding to. The idea is different, yes, but not inferior.

And so it is a perfect match that God created there in marriage. And not only that, it’s a perfect union. As man and woman have come together, now they are said to be one flesh. And they have left father and mother, and they joined together as one flesh. The Christian philosopher G.K. Chesterton once mused that man was intended to be a quadruped. That is, man was intended to be a four-legged animal, not a two-legged animal. And he’s only a four-legged animal whenever he is married. Thought that was interesting. But the idea, a perfect union between man and woman. That was what God created in the beginning. Well, you fast forward over 4,000 years, and you come to the time of Jesus. And to say that thoughts on marriage had changed in those 4,000 plus years, well, it would be an understatement.

You come to Matthew chapter 19, the text that’s on the board. Matthew chapter 19 is a context or verse that’s familiar to most of us. And we see there in verse 3 that Jesus is posed a question by the Pharisees. They’re testing him, and they say, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? Some of you have done some looking into this passage into the scripture know that there was a debate among the Jewish rabbis of the time. That there were those who held to a very strict view that only because of adultery that one could put away his spouse. But there are others like the Rabbi Hillel who said that if a woman burned your food, then you could divorce her.

Or Rabbi Akaba, who said that if you found a woman who was better looking, then you could divorce your wife. Now, just so you know, even if I subscribe to Rabbi Akaba’s view, I’ll never find a woman more beautiful than mine. I got that in early on. I am safe now. But to say that societal’s thought on marriage had changed. To even pose a question like this, is it okay to divorce my spouse for any reason? What was Jesus’ response? Nothing new. Just going right back to what God had done in the beginning in verse 4. Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together? Let no man separate. They then pose a rebuttal, a question. Why did Moses give command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away? Referring to Deuteronomy 24. First of all, they misread Deuteronomy chapter 24. Moses never gave such a command. He is dealing with a contingency that when someone divorced their spouse and that woman went and married another, and then that spouse for some reason found something displeasure in her, she cannot go back and remarry the first spouse. It’s contingency legislation. Moses was not making a command that God said, okay, you can divorce your spouse. Just give her this certificate. No, they had perverted that. But you’ll note again what Jesus does.

Because of the hardness of your heart, yes, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for immorality and marries another woman commits adultery. Brethren, we may not think that we even have to go here, that we even have to look at this to say that yes, marriage has always mattered. But when you look at what our society thinks of marriage, and recent surveys say 40% of people in our society think marriage is obsolete. 40% of surveyed adults think marriage is obsolete. Not to God. Never to God. Marriage has mattered to God from the beginning. It mattered to God over 4,000 years after that. And to think that just because we are living in more modern times, and marriage seems to be an antiquated institution in the minds of me, to think that somehow that has changed because we are now 2,000 years further into the future.

2. Marriage Involves Real Love

Let it never be said by any of us. Because marriage matters to God, and it always has. What we’re going to spend the rest of our time on this morning is look at some of the reasons why. I want you to stay with me, because we’re going to talk about some things that, yes, we all well know, but I want to make a point at the end. Why does God think marriage is so important? Well, it’s because of what marriage involves. First of all, marriage involves real love. We think of a couple who comes together to be married. Our Nissa Thigpin and her fiance, Ben Haley, are with us this morning. And they’re going to be married here in just a couple of weeks. Some of us may even be there.

I’ll be there. I’m supposed to be there. In fact, they’re getting a little preview this morning of their marriage ceremony, if you will. But we’ll think of what a wonderful occasion that is. As two people have come together and they love each other. And we think of beautiful words throughout the Bible to express the love of husband and wife. We think of the song of Solomon and the Shulamite woman, how she would say over and over again, My beloved is mine, and I am his. And to say that love cannot be quenched even by many waters. We think of love and marriage, and yet we think of how many marriages end because people fell out of love. And what that meant was they don’t have the emotions that they once had.

That they were all giddy at one time because they’re just thinking of the other person, and some reason I’m just not as excited as I was before, and I’m just not in love with that person anymore. And oh, if they would only think of what love in the Bible is. We think of love and we think of 1 Corinthians 13, and for good reason. And if we don’t think of this kind of love in our marriage, then, well, then our marriages are not going to be very happy places. We read in 1 Corinthians 13 and verse 4 that love is patient and love is kind.

Does not act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, is not jealous and does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. That’s the marriage that God wants us to have, or the love that God wants us to have in our marriages. That’s the kind of love that a husband is supposed to have for his wife in Ephesians chapter 5, when he is to love her as his own body. That’s the kind of love that the older women are to instruct the younger women in in Titus chapter 2 and in verse 4, where they are to instruct them to love their husbands. You don’t give instructions to people about how to feel.

3. Marriage Involves True Commitment

But marriage also involves true commitment. We’ve already spoken about this in some of the length this morning already, going back to Genesis chapter 2 and in Matthew chapter 19. But let there be no mistake. That’s what God says is that when a man and woman come together in marriage, they are to remain in that marriage. That again goes against the tide of society. That goes against all that we’re told about how it’s okay for people just to divorce after a short period of time and things aren’t working out exactly right, or they don’t feel the same way as they once did. If that were the case, then why would God say in such harsh terms in Malachi chapter 2? And speaking of those men who have been acting treacherously with their wives, their wife by covenant, he even says in verse 14.

And then the Lord says in verse 16, I hate divorce. Why would our own Lord in the Sermon on the Mount even address the idea of marriage? When he says in Matthew chapter 5 and in verse 31, that it was said, or you it has been said to those, whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce. Does that not parallel our society today? I think it does. If you’re not happy, get out. Give her a certificate. Go to the courthouse. Not according to our Lord. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. The same thing being said in Romans chapter 7, where we see that a woman is bound by law, God’s law to her husband, so long as he lives.

If she’re to join herself to another while her husband lives, she is to be called an adulteress. Throughout the scriptures, God has said this is a commitment that is to be honored. But let’s not stop there. When we talk about the commitment in marriage, we are talking about much more than sexual fidelity. We are talking about much more than simply agreeing to continue to live with each other, not divorce each other. We are talking about true commitment. We are talking about the commitment that would give your heart to your spouse and your spouse alone. That’s really at the heart of what Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5 and in verse 27, we said, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.

Well, certainly, we would agree with that. You must not go out and commit adultery. You should not cheat on your spouse. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. We should be saying, along with Job, that I made a covenant with my eyes. Why then should I look on the young virgin? That when I talk about the commitment that I am to have to my wife, it’s much, much more than simply agreeing that we will stay together. As I’m committing my heart to you. You are the one for me. I am the one for her. My heart is for you. My eyes are for you. And it’s a commitment that involves submission by both parties.

Ephesians chapter 5, passage that we go to oftentimes when speaking about marriage. We typically would begin in verse 22, where we see that wives are to be subject to their own husbands as to the Lord. But I think we ought to begin in verse 21, because there is a theme that will run throughout this and throughout the rest of the book. When Paul says that we are to be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Submission on the part of us to each other. Then he goes on to talk about how that submission is seen in various phases and aspects of life. Wives, being subject to your own husbands. You’re not going to get that unless you’re committed to that person. You cannot be subject to your husband if you are not committed, fully, wholly committed to that person.

4. The Same Qualities Needed to Follow God

Husbands, loving your wife, verse 25. Just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. Husbands, we will not do that. If we’re not completely committed to our spouse. That’s the kind of commitment that God is looking for in marriage, and why marriage matters so much to God. And here’s the big point. Those things matter to God because those are the same qualities that are needed to follow God. That if marriage is supposed to be a place where true love exists, and where real commitment to another person exists, well, there’s not a mistake in the scriptures when our relationship to God is spoken of as a marriage. Or just as even here in Ephesians chapter 5, where Christ is the head of the church.

The church is to be in subjection to Christ. Christ loves the church as he loves his own body. That’s the marriage relationship. When Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 2, how he betrothed us to one husband, and he reigns to present us as a pure virgin. There’s a reason why our relationship to God is typified as a marriage. Because what’s my relationship to God exists and based on? When Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment? You know what he said. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. The second is likened to it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But to be a servant of God involves real love.

Again, it’s not a love that’s superficial. It’s not a love that’s supposed to die in a little while. No, this is real commitment to God of everything that I am. A real commitment to God that Jesus was even saying, John 14 and verse 15, that if you love me, you’re not just going to feel a certain way about me, but if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. You’ll follow me. That my relationship to God involves real love. And my relationship to God involves real commitment. That when the apostle John says in Revelation 2 and in verse 10, to be faithful until death, Jesus says, and I’ll give unto you the crown of life. Or we read Jesus’ own words in Mark chapter 9. Mark chapter 9 and verse 22.

Where there we see that if I’m to follow him, sorry, verse 23. I’m to take up my cross, I’m denying myself, take up my cross, and follow him. Real commitment. Not temporary commitment, not commitment for a day, but real lifelong commitment. That’s why marriage matters to God. Now, going back to husbands and wife for a minute, I just want to make one other point. Go back in your old testaments of Genesis chapter 24. There’s a reason why love and commitment are tied together in marriage. Genesis chapter 24 is the occasion where Abraham sends one of his servants to find a wife for Isaac. We’ll not take time to read all of Genesis chapter 24, but we know that this servant comes back with Rebekah. Isaac and Rebekah had never met each other.

We read in verse 64 of Genesis chapter 24 that when Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she dismounted from the camel, and she said to the servant, Who is that man walking in the field to meet us? And the servant said, He is my master. And she took her veil and covered herself. The servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. And he took Rebekah, and she became his wife. And he loved her. That text is talking more about more than just a sexual relationship. He took Rebekah, whom he had never met, and yet he knew this was now his wife. And so he took her as his wife, and he loved her.

What does that tell you about commitment and love? It tells you that love is much more than just how you feel about that person on a given day. Love lasts and love grows because love is viewed in light of this commitment that you’ve made to that person. Isaac and Rebekah were committed to each other. Yes, it was an arranged marriage, but because of that, they were committed to each other. They knew that is now my wife. That is now my husband. We are going to be married. So what are we going to do? We’re going to love each other. Commitment and love go hand in hand. They go hand in hand in our earthly marriages, and they certainly go hand in hand with our relationship to our God.

5. Marriage Matters to God Because I Matter to God

Marriage matters to God because He wants us to love Him. He wants us to be committed to Him, and that’s what this relationship is all about. Which brings us to our final point, which is really just a summation of what we’re saying. Marriage matters to God because I matter to God. Now let me go ahead and say, I recognize there are many people in this audience who today who are not married, and the point is not that you have to be married to know how to love and be committed to God, or that you have to be married to be the person that God wants you to be. We can just read a 1 Corinthians chapter 7 and know, no, that’s not the case. But I do have to think this way about marriage.

My church needs to think this way about marriage. And as much of an influence as I can have on the society around me, I want my society to think this way about marriage. That this is the marriage that needs to be defended. This is marriage that matters. Relationships that are formed on love and true commitment. Because what are we seeing?

Are people’s love for God increasing or decreasing? Well, it’s decreasing. Is the commitment of people to God increasing or decreasing? It’s decreasing. And let me tell you, I think that there is a very strong tie to the fact that those two commitments and love and marriage are also decreasing. When you live in a society that no longer values marriage as it’s supposed to be, that love and commitment in marriage are not honored as God says they ought to be honored, then guess what? People’s love for God is going to suffer too. Their willingness to commit to God is going to suffer because we don’t really appreciate what marriage is all about. What being in a covenant with a person is all about. Marriage matters to God because I matter to God.

Conclusion

Marriage matters to God because you matter to God. This institution is a holy institution. Because this is how we need to be thinking about it. We need to be cherishing our spouse, loving that person with an active love. Committing ourselves to that person wholeheartedly, the whole person. And we need to be living in environments where that is appreciated and fostered and that grows. So that all of us, whether married or unmarried, all of us can better appreciate here’s a relationship that God wants me to have with Him. I matter to God. And that’s why marriage matters so much to Him. And so the imitation that we would offer you this morning is that you could be betrothed to Christ. Whether single or married, whether old or young.

You could be betrothed to God. To be in this loving relationship, where he has shown his love for you by giving his only son, and where now you can return that love to him. You can love him with your whole heart, with your whole mind, with your whole soul, and follow him. A marriage of commitment where we know that our God is faithful. There is never a question, our God is not going to cheat on us. He is faithful. He keeps his promises. And where I ought to be committed and faithful to him. You can have that relationship with God, regardless of what situation you find yourself here in this life. You can have that relationship with God if you’ll enter into it with him.

This is a marriage by choice. Would you believe in his son, Jesus?