Marriage: God’s Design, God’s Demand
Sunday, June 29th, 2008From a sermon by Pastor Don Mason
Scripture Reading Hebrews 13:4
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.
The Foundation of Marriage
Why do we have marriage and how did it start?
In Genesis 2:18 God says “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” (ESV) And so God causes Adam to go into a deep sleep and creates from Adam’s own flesh a woman. When Adam awakes to see her he says “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man.” We need to take a moment and highlight “This at last”. When Adam says this he says it with a joyful excitement. It could be read as “Wow! This is bone of my bones…”
Then in verse 24 the Bible continues “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This is why and how we have marriage. We as human beings have a need for a partner. We were not made to be alone in this world. And so God created marriage to define a relationship between two people for life.
The Foundering of Marriage
What to do when a marriage fails?
Now there was a huge debate in the camp of the Pharisees on the meaning of Deuteronomy 24:1. In this verse Moses writes “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house…” The question is where does the emphasis lay? Is it on “Finds no favor” or is it on “found some indecency”. Some of the Pharisees were saying “A man may divorce his wife if he is displeased with her for any reason at all” while others were saying “No, a man may only divorce his wife if he finds some indecency in her” And so in Matthew 19, as Jesus is leaving Galilee and entering the region of Judea (Matt 19:1) and a group of Pharisees came up to him and asked him saying “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” (Matt 19:3) But Jesus does not say yes or no, instead he goes back to Genesis and asks “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” This answer does not make the Pharisees happy. And they blurt out “Then why did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” and Jesus replies to them “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” (Matt 18:8-9) Wow, God gave us this wonderful gift of marriage. But because our hearts are so evil (hard) God allows us to divorce. Did you catch that the Pharisees said “Mosses commanded” but Jesus says “Mosses allowed”. Divorce is not God’s plan. It is a breaking of something very sacred and should not be taken lightly.
The Future of Marriage
Is there any hope?
After hearing Jesus saying all of this his disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” Marriage is hard. And like today people in Jesus’ time were getting married with the opinion of “well if it does not work out we can just get a divorce” and if you can’t go into marriage with that attitude it’s not worth it. But it is worth it! As God said in Genesis “It is not good for man to be alone” So is there any hope? We want to get married but its way too hard to stay married. We do not look at Ephesians 5:21-33. In these verses Paul tells the Ephesians that they should be submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” He then goes on to say that wives should submit to their husbands and that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church. I truly believe that the emphasis here is on the husband. We as husbands are to do our best to lead our wives (and children) in such a way as to lead them more and more to Christ. A true husband will lead their wife to Christ. And that is the only hope for marriage. That husbands and wives will humbly submit to Christ and to each other. Sure two people may be able to live together for their whole life and never divorce. But a true marriage is so much more than just living together. A true marriage is the deepest relationship (spiritually, emotionally, physically) that two people can have. And it is a gift from a loving God to a sinful people.
All scripture is quoted from the English Standard Version (ESV).
This is my first geocache. It’s placed in Plant city and is a puzzle cache. To get to the cache you must solve the puzzle of the cache. I had a great time making it! Scaredofbees (a husband and wife combo) were the first people to find it. I even got to meet them and congratulate them on their FTF (first to find). They did all of the heavy lifting by themselves but I had to just give them a nudge to put it all together. If you would like to try to solve it the things you would need to know are… 
