Auto Generated Transcript
You can’t impart what you don’t possess. And if you have Jesus, then you can live for Jesus. But if you don’t know the Lord, it’s hard to be a Christ centered family. But it’s good for us to know that we all make mistakes. And what’s important within our own family is to be able to find a place of solace and grace in which we can minister to one another and encourage one another and growth with the Lord, both as a family and as individuals as well. Last week we looked at something very important in order to achieve a Christ centered family. We talked about communication. It’s important to communicate, isn’t it? The truth of God determines that God’s people should be able to share that with one another. As a matter of fact, if we’re honest with what Scripture says about our lives, we are born in sin and the tendency of our lives is to become very selfish and choose to follow after sin rather than follow after the Lord, and the way that we grow and progress as people and our understanding with God is one. We have to come to know the Lord. But two we have to walk with him in our lives. And we looked at last week very much the the way that we follow Jesus, as we saw in the book of Ephesians, is it uses the illustration of a walk. Your walk with the Lord. But not only your walk with the Lord, but the way that you choose to walk with the Lord before other people.
It’s an illustration to those around you, those that you love of who Jesus is, and the fact that he has the centerpiece of your life. How we choose to live is important. We can’t impart what we do not possess, and if we desire for our family to be a Christ centered family, we need to first get with our relationship right with God to encourage others and that as well. Today, one of the topics I want to look at is just simply, what does Scripture say about marriage and the family? May all these beliefs that we carry within marriage and the family, how do we even know that they’re scriptural beliefs? Out of all the things in life that we, we hold on to, to people. You know, I’m one of the first people to just want to toss aside tradition if it has no point. But if it’s significant to Scripture, very much so. I desire to hold on to it. Right now, within society, there’s a lot of things that are being tested and determining what life should be like for marriage and the family. Some people see marriage as something archaic, not knowing where it comes from and how it originates within Scripture. They think that at some point life man thought marriage was a good idea, so they designed it to better help them at the time period in which marriage was invented.
But for us as people today, it’s really not that important. So we need to possibly view and view and explore possibilities to get rid of marriage within our society, because it’s not convenient for Americans to abide by. Not a scriptural stand, but it is a stand. And in that line of thinking, people are trying to view marriage as a as a trial basis in which you you’re married for 2 to 3 years as if you were to try it out or something, like some sort of insurance which is renewed upon some sort of renewable basis. Every six months, you just kind of pay your fees and, and are encouraged to, to partake of the marriage. Further, as you renew those marital vows, when you study American history, you’ll find that within American society today that out of all the modern civilizations that exist, divorce is the highest among American culture. Even within the family, more so than marriage, there are organizations like the Child’s Right Movement that are seeking to exploit the the power that parents have over their children in order to train up their children in the way that they desire for them to go, to set a goal for their child’s life, and to help their kid achieve that goal. The child’s rights movement are attempting to bring into laws within our society that allows or doesn’t allow it outlaws parenting from making being able to make any decisions.
Decisions which include children can watch any type of television that they desire, even if it’s X-rated. Parents can’t determine where children live, where children attend school. Parents are not allowed to even discipline their children. They can’t, and they can’t prohibit their children from partaking of any activity that might discriminate against them because of their age. That’s where society is progressing. Marriage and family are the pillar of the way God designed this world. Before the church even existed, the institution of marriage was established for God, and the strength of a church is really found in the strength of its families. I tried this out last week. Let me give it another shot again. Let me, just for humor’s sake, throw out a couple of jokes about the randomness of marriage for just a minute to prove his love for her. He swam the deepest river. He crossed the widest desert and climbed the highest mountain. She left him. He was never at home. Marriage. Husband and wife were traveling together down the road. And he said, you know, honey, I got all the quotes in the world. Do you know what my favorite quote is? It’s like, no, what is it? Well, it comes from Winston Churchill. He said, we shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and the streets.
We shall fight in the hills. Why is that your favorite quote? She said, because it reminds me so much of our family vacations. Wow. An exhaustive study shows that no man or. Excuse me, no woman has ever shot her husband while he was doing the dishes. Looking for a safe place in your house, guys? There it is. The man who seldom finds himself in hot water is one with one wife, several daughters and one bathroom. Amen. Thank you. Okay. Marriage and the family are important to our society, and it’s important that we, as people who follow after the Lord, recognize how significant it is in the way that God chooses to work within this world. 2002 I was in an inner city working with a pastor on a missions trip late at night. I don’t know why I was up this late. We were out talking about just the ministry that was taking place, but we noticed as the evening wore on and it got later and later that the later it got, the more kids were out on the street playing. 2 a.m. you could look out on the street and see children running up and down this inner city, playing all night long, rolling old car tires up and down the road. Hopscotch, whatever. Kids just running wild throughout the street. And I began to ask the gentleman in charge of the ministry, has this area always been like this? I mean, this is bizarre.
Kids with no parental supervision, just running amok everywhere, causing destruction, playing all night long. And he said no. In fact, when I was a kid, I grew up just a few blocks down the road. And when when we were kids, we had fathers and and mothers living together, husband and wife living together, and and parents living in the home. And, and parents had control of the home. And and throughout the last few decades, it’s really changed. And I asked him, well, why all of a sudden, has it gone from that type of lifestyle in which you grew up? And all of a sudden now we see these children just running all over the streets like this. And he and he began to share with me that it was he said it was all because of welfare. Welfare. How does welfare have to do with how parents raise their kids? He said. You know, in the society or in the part of the place where I lived within the inner city, that that the husband and the wife, they would they would live together and they didn’t make a great amount of living, but they made enough to get by. And the father was in there as the central figure of the home. He was the disciplinary one for the home. And and the kids obeyed. And and the mother took care of things and and but when welfare came, the the mother began to notice that as they struggled to, to make ends meet, sometimes she really just all she had to do was just kick out the husband to go on welfare.
And they had the same amount of needs met in their lives. The problem was when she kicked her husband out of the home, so went the one who disciplined the children. And when the discipline of the children was gone out the window, then the kids began to run amok in the street. And therefore the society began to fall apart within that inner city. We as people have the tendency to take things that God intends for good, even the welfare program, and make them bad. If you were to read the book of Genesis when God created Adam and Eve, and we’re going to look at a few of the passages this morning, he made the statement that it’s not good for man to be alone. And so he creates Eve. And if you see it in the very end of chapter one of Genesis, down in verse 31, it says, When God created everything, as he went through all the days, he said, it’s good, it’s good, it’s good. But he created the man and woman on the final day as he gets ready to rest on the seventh day. And when he creates man and woman being able to enter into that matrimony together, he says it is very good.
God’s intentions for marriage is for it to be very good. Amen. But we as people are the ones who tend to take the things that God intends for good and make it bad. The families should be the pillar of our society. In fact, God, so much so believed in that, that when he came to the passage in Jeremiah in chapter 29, if you know any of the backdrop to the account in the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah is about to watch the nation of Israel to go into captivity, into Babylon, and he’s about to see the Babylonian nation come into Israel. Take all the people, slave and carry him off. Those who survived the siege. And God gives this note to the nation of Israel what he desires to do through them as people, as they live in the land of Babylon. It says in chapter 29 and verse four, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to those, to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. He says, build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters. Find wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there do not decrease. Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.
Even carrying the nation of Israel into exile. God had a plan for Israel. He’s saying, if you want your situation, your society to change, here’s what you need to do. As you’re being carried off in exile. Make plans for the town in which I’m carrying you to live as a godly family. And through that I will work through this nation. As you read the Old Testament, as the nation of Israel is carried off into captivity based on their obedience in following after the Lord, we see many a blessings that come through Scripture. For instance, the Book of Ezra, the Book of Esther, the book of Nehemiah, all written in Babylonian captivity by those who choose to follow after the Lord in that situation. Stories like Daniel in Babylon and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Babylon. When we read about the account of Jesus’s life and the wise men who journeyed from the East to sit at the manger and worship the Lord, they came from the east in the area of Babylon, men who would have been influenced by people of God, who carried the word of God into the Babylonian nation and began to share. And these wise men began to follow the teachings. So much reading from the book of Daniel that they knew when Christ would come, and they journeyed to the West to worship Jesus, because people in the midst of a difficult circumstance as a family chose to stand for the Lord.
We’ve seen together that what God desires in our family is the truth of him. We can’t impart what we do not possess, but we also must walk in unity with him. Galatians five told us that sin brings division and discord. But when God is at work in our lives and the lives of our family or even our church community, what we find among ourselves is unity as we follow the Lord in truth. The Bible contains for us the basics of what marriage is all about. This morning, I’m going to look at a few basics of and give us some insight of what marriage and the family is all about. So when we face opposition from this world, when we face different theologies and beliefs from people who try to influence us in society about what marriage is all about, we can turn to Scripture and say, this is what God says. One of the things that we looked at and it repeatedly comes up in study as we see together, is that to have a godly family, if you read any counseling book, is counselors have studied what a what a strong family is based upon. At first it starts with a sense of care. When a spouse can can look at their at their spouse and say that my spouse cares for me more than anything else. My spouse looks after me even more than their own well-being and even with the family and children.
As kids look to their parents, mom and dad love me and are willing to do what they need for my benefit and for my gain. Now, I may not be what the gods goal for the child, but what? Or excuse me, what the child necessarily wants. But it’s God’s goal for the child to appreciate and love the child enough to do what God desires for them. Second is a strong sense of commitment because as we’ve looked together, no marriage is perfect and every marriage for a season will have its trials. Sometimes, in the middle of those trials, we feel like that season is extra long. It’s like winter in Utah. But a strong sense of commitment to what marriage is all about. First passage of scripture I have up on the screen this morning. This morning for us to look at is about the marriage covenant. Marriage, if you think about it for just a moment, isn’t a covenant just between you and your spouse? It’s also a covenant before God. Proverbs chapter two God accuses a young lady of going against the covenant that she established with the love of her youth. In Malachi chapter two and verse 14, it says this the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.
Notice what it says in the very first line about God staying in that marriage. It says, the Lord has been a witness between you and your wife as you go to the altar to to marry that loved one, the one that you desire to give your life away. God sees it as a covenant. And as you’re entering into those vows one another. God, it says in this passage, is right there in your presence. It’s a covenant before you and your loved one, but also seen before God. God even tells us in Scripture, oversaw and officiated the first marriage in Genesis chapter two and verse 18. It says, then the Lord God said, it’s not good for man to be alone. Amen. I will make him a helper suitable for him. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. God created Adam and Eve and officiated this first wedding. And it says in verse 25 that they knew one another and were not ashamed. They were intimate together. Marriage is good. It tells us, implying in verse chapter two and verse 18, that what isn’t good is if God created you to. To marry someone is to to to not engage in that marriage with, with another woman or with a woman. He says it’s not good implying this, that the marriage itself, because of God seeing the need of man, it becomes good when he created the woman for man to enter into that intimate relationship with her.
Your commitment to this covenant greatly affects your marriage and your family. Bible. The Bible tells us that marriage is a covenant. The Bible also tells us that marriage first focuses on the relationship between the husband and wife. That’s a pretty no duh statement, isn’t it? Marriage is about a relationship between a husband and wife. Yeah, okay, I get that. It tells us in the chapter two and verse 24. Let me read it to you one more time. It says, for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife. The word join in the Hebrew text we’ve talked about it before, is as a church literally means glued together. The husband and wife, when they enter into that marriage relationship, they’re literally glued together to the point where you can’t tell where one spouse ends and the other one begins. And he goes on to describe what that means. He refers to it as one flesh. This means a completeness. See, when God looked at the man and he said, man, it is not good for you to be alone. I mean, that is that’s a sad sight. I’ve been there. Um, and I’ve learned since then what a dust ruffle is. It was a wonderful experience for me.
The things that a lady brings into life that you just. At first you don’t know what your bed’s missing, you know. And then all of a sudden, you’ve got a dust ruffle. It’s beautiful. Your sheets smell so good. It’s nice. There’s something wrong with you. He says it’s not good for you to be alone. You need a completeness. You need the one flesh. And so when he talks about making the woman he says, I am going to be, I’m going to make man a helper. In Hebrew, it literally means a helpmeet. It’s as if God looks at the man and says, and all these areas, these are definitely your weaknesses. And so what I’m going to do is I’m going to design one that meets the needs that you have in life and all the weaknesses that you have. I will create for her those as strengths. And when you two come together, what you’re going to experience as one flesh is a completeness. Sometimes we wrestle with what that means, don’t we? But the Bible refers to the wife as a helper. Can I encourage you this morning not to view your marriage relationship? And seeing that she completes who you are as a man and and he completes who you are as a woman, not to look at it as a 50 over 50 relationship. We’re going to see as we look throughout Scripture that the Bible never calls a marriage relationship as a 50 over 50 relationship, what they refer to it as, as a 100%, 100% relationship.
So when we enter into a covenant with your wife or with your husband, when when God engages and he’s there in the midst of of that relationship, what you’re saying before your spouse, what you’re saying before, before God, is that everything that I am, I have chosen you as my spouse, and I’m giving all that I am to you 100%. And likewise, the spouse’s response is the same. Marriage is about dying to self, isn’t it? And living for the needs of your spouse. And this passage of Scripture, he refers to his wife as a helper. And I love the way that God chose this word because when you read it in the in the Greek Septuagint, it’s also the same word that God selected to describe the Holy Spirit. Ladies. You’re just like the Holy Spirit and men. If I could compare you just for a minute. Way short. But you’re like Jesus. God even said that you guys are equal. God created you equal. Just like Jesus and the Holy Spirit are equal. But you know what’s significant about Jesus and the Holy Spirit? They’re different. Equality doesn’t mean the same. You can be equal and different. And that’s the way God designed us, that we are complete with one another and we are equal. But we are different in recognizing the oneness that God has given to us to be joined together in completing us as one flesh.
What God is pointing to us to as people in chapter two and 18 and verse 24, is that both men and women, when it comes to the marital role to complete one another, have different roles. God made men better at some things than the ladies. And God. And don’t tell, uh, don’t tell the feminists what I’m saying this morning. Okay. God told made ladies to be better at certain things that men greatly lack in and. Amen. And God has created us with different roles and abilities. And the more that we enhance those roles with in one another, and the more that we build one another up in those roles, the better the family functions. Now, I’m not saying this morning women can’t work. Okay. I’m not. Let’s I don’t want to fight the battle of feminism that’s coming in a couple of weeks. We’ll fight it. Okay? Um, Proverbs 31 says women can work. Okay. So just go home and read that right. If one of those guys that think women need to stay home and, uh, you know, whatever. Uh, but Proverbs talks about ladies if they’re interested in working. But what I want to point out to us this morning is we need to recognize that God has made us equal but different, and learn how to better live that with within the home. When you ever you ever watch the movie Jerry Maguire where he, Tom cruise walks in the room and Renee Zellweger is sitting on the other side and and he makes the statement, you complete me.
And then Bruce Springsteen pops in with his wonderful song. He looks you in the eye. You know what I’m talking about. Everybody knows what I’m talking about. I know you do. And that is a biblical concept. It feels so right, you guys. All you guys went home was like, honey, you complete me. Too late. Tom Cruise already stole it. But the point is, is that’s a biblical concept. The way that God has designed the husband and wife. They. They complete one another in their roles. Now, guys, let me let me just give you some some scary verses for just a moment and understand that God has made us equal but different. We all carry roles within the family. God tells to the men in Ephesians chapter five and verse 23 that the husband is the head of the home. Now, ladies, before you jump all over this for a second, if we talk about feminism for just a minute, you get mad at that. I want to be the head, you know, we’re both heads. Um, let me just say just hold the brakes on till we talk about feminism for just a minute. Because right now, what I’m telling the men is that God’s going to hold them most accountable for the way they choose to manage the family.
So before you jump for that position, God is holding the man of your house primarily responsible for the care of the family. That’s good. That relieves some stress sometimes. Ephesians six and verse four, it says to the fathers, bring your kids up in discipline and instruction, your responsibility. In Ephesians six, we’ve been looking at Ephesians together. In first Timothy chapter three, it says, you must manage your own household. Well, that is God’s goal for your life as men. In first Timothy chapter five and verse eight, it says, if anyone does not provide for his own family, talking to the men, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Meaning this guys, if you’re not working, get off your rear end and go work. And if you’ve got a family, you’ve got a responsibility and God’s called you to do that. God holds the man responsible for the caring of the family. God even held Adam responsible for the care of his family. If you were to read Romans chapter five and verse 11, that portion of scripture there, or even first Timothy chapter two, what you’ll find in those passages of Scripture is that in the Garden of Eden, who was the first one to eat the fruit? Somebody tell me, Eve. But when you read in Romans chapter five, the one that God accuses and holds responsible is Adam.
Adam was the head of his family. Adam’s responsibility was to share with the Lord or share with Eve what the Lord wanted in their lives. Let me just say, talking about men for a moment and and the headship and the responsibility that God sees upon you, and leading your family according to the way that God directs. There’s responsibility that also comes in the life of the ladies as well. It comes by the way of respect. You guys are equal, but different. Ladies, let me tell you more than anything, if God is holding your husband responsible for the leadership of the family and he sees you as a helpmate within that family, as his partner, more than anything, he needs your respect. If he’s going to lead the way that God desires for him to lead, he can’t do it without your respect. Well, what’s it like for a night to come home to the castle when his queen doesn’t even want him there? But respect is very welcoming to him. And I know the defense that ladies can make to a passage of Scripture like this. To be quite honest, the way that our society trains men up, they’re not really worthy of much respect today. And we could use that excuse in saying to your husband, Listen, you don’t deserve respect. But when we enter into that marriage covenant. And it’s important for the young ladies who aren’t married to recognize this, that when you enter into that marriage covenant with a husband, what the Bible asks you to do is respect that man.
And so if you can’t respect him, don’t marry him. Ladies who are married, what the Bible commands. If you want to see a change within your husband, if you want to see him living the way that God desires for him to do that, and for you to enable him as best as you can to be able to help him out and lead that family as God directs. What he really needs from you is your respect. You think about for a moment the the lady who when when the man comes home, he gets no respect from her. And when he when she walks in that door, she she jumps all over him about things. Could you imagine walking in a home like that? And all of a sudden the wife just unleashes on you, you know, as a man who is supposed to lead the family, you really only have two choices in a situation like that. You can either cower and become a sissy and not stand up for anything within that situation and lead as God desired for you to leave, or you can react towards her and get aggressive, and all of a sudden she begins to cry because you became a bear. It is a lose lose for you in that situation.
You don’t have a good choice. And so it’s important for us to the ladies to understand that what God desires for you to establish within your household, the way that God intends to work within your family, is that you look at your husband with respect. The Bible never says that you have to earn it, men, but it does request the ladies to give it. Can I just say to the men, men don’t make it difficult for her. Make it easy and become a man that’s worthy of respect in your household. Proverbs warns against this, and I just want to share a couple of verses comes in. Actually, it repeats it a couple of times in Proverbs. He says to to the men, it’s better to live in a corner of a roof than in a house shared with a contentious woman. All the men are being silent right now. They’re like, yes, please. Where are you going to write that verse down. Aren’t you going to put it on your wall somewhere? Proverbs 1913, in the contentious contentions of a wife, is a constant dripping. Man, can I just make it easy for your wives for a moment? We’re talking about respect, husbands. Ephesians tells the wife, as as she should respect you, that you as well are to love her. It tells us in Ephesians chapter five and verse 25 says, husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
Think about that sacrifice for a minute. What it costs Jesus to love his church so that he might sanctify and cleanse her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word that he might present to him the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. Because if you want a better teammate in your home, Scripture tells you here that you need to love. It actually gives you the cure for the ugly woman. I’m not calling any woman here ugly today, okay? But it’s saying this if your wife isn’t quite as beautiful on the inside as you want her to be, love her more. It says Jesus loved the church and gave himself up for her. And look what the result is. This as Jesus is dying for his church, giving himself to his church. It says so that he might sanctify and cleanse her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word that he might present to him the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle. It’s saying this to the men, men, as you begin to love your wife unconditionally, as this passage of Scripture is talking about, regardless of the way that she behaves as you choose to love her in that way, what you tend to do is to make her more lovable and more lovely.
Because as you love her, as Jesus loves, she becomes more beautiful in her appearance from day to day. Learn to speak her love language. Let me give you one helpful tip. Don’t always be a problem solver. You ever, as a guy in the workforce or whatever, all day long you’re solving problems and dealing with solutions. You sometimes need to consider, as your wife comes before you for a need in order to love her. She doesn’t need you to solve her problems. Sometimes she just needs you to listen, and a listening ear can even go a long way within a family to demonstrate to your wife that you love her. Husbands, your wife is your beautiful teammate. And it goes on in verse 28. So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church. Ladies, if you want your husbands to love you more. Show them respect. Husbands, if you want your wives to respect you more, show them love. And it goes a long way, ladies. When your husband walks in the room, just grab grab those big muscles and just tell him you are so strong. Look at you, you big protector of our family. Oh my goodness, I just squeeze those muscles. Now, granted, they haven’t been in the gym for about 20 years, but you know, the next time they walk into that room, you know what they’re going to be doing, right? I mean, you’re going to see a chest puffed out like you haven’t seen in years.
Your knight in shining armor that you dated when you were young is back. And he’s looking good, right? In that mirror. That morning he will he will flex. And you still continue to be impressed. Okay. I guess I’m saying fake it. Is that right to say the Bible says this to men as well in first Peter three seven, likewise, ye husbands, dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the wife as unto the weaker vessel. Um, I’ve seen a lot of feminism. Feminism get feminist groups, get upset with the word weaker vessel in this passage of Scripture. And before we ever take that approach as a church, let me just give you an idea of what weaker vessel means in this passage. I like the way the King James words it in First Peter chapter three. The weaker vessel is is an ornate decorative item. It’s saying this view your wife you think about in your home, the most precious item that you own, that you display within your home for its beauty. Think of your wife that way. Whether it’s an expensive chandelier or it’s an important vase that sits as the centerpiece of decoration to your home.
When you walk into your home, the way that you’re careful around that vase, and the way that you appreciate the beauty that it brings to your home. Appreciate your wife in that way, she is the weaker vessel. She is a vessel of beauty. After all, she does things way better than you do. And that is beautiful, right? The primary question we ask ourselves when we look at a passage of Scripture like this in Ephesians is wives. Do you respect your husband enough to live live for them? Husbands, do you love your wife enough to die for her? Marriage is about a relationship between a husband and a wife, no doubt. Well, marriage also is. And what it causes us to do is to make adjustments towards outside relationships. Notice what it says about outside relationships in Genesis chapter two and verse 24. He says, for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother. And biblical chords cut. It’s time to go on. It talks about the need to recognize the importance of severing relationships, changing what relationships were previously to your marriage, and establishing that new relationship with your wife or your husband in order to to become intimate and personal in the relationship that you now have with your spouse. I really appreciate my my mother’s understanding of this passage of Scripture. I hope she doesn’t listen to this message. Verse 24 when it talks about leaving and cleaving to your wife, my mother, in understanding this verse has never said nor.
She’s she’s made it a point to me where she ever say anything that might be considered remotely negative about my relationship with my wife. I really love that about my mom in her position that now she does say a lot of encouraging things about it, but she refuses to take a position on it. And it’s the encouragement here to us in this passage of Scripture is men and women. When when you’re experiencing difficulty within your marriage relationship, find another place other than your mom to go. Talk about your situation. What you might need is even some partial counseling because for your mother, you really put her in a bad spot. Most of the time when we are arguing with our spouse, a lot of times when we go before our friends and we begin to gossip about our situation, we’re really not looking for them to solve our problems. What we’re looking for them to do is to take our side. And when I bring my present, my argument before a loved one, a parent or or a friend, I can really begin to paint a picture of how good I am and how I did everything perfect in the situation, but my spouse was just the wrong one, and I’ll take my side and make me feel good. Now build fuel to that fire. Now let me go back and tell my spouse, well, my mom said.
Genesis chapter two and verse 24 is a reminder to us there is danger in those types of relationships and what we need to seek to do in our marriage relationship with our spouses, to guard it and protect it. It is the most intimate relationships of all relationships in which we’ll experience in this world. And God desires for us to learn a lot about our marriage relationship. After all, he connects a marriage relationship to his relationship with the church. Don’t let others divide you in your intimacy with your spouse. We see that happen a lot in our American society today. This includes friends. It includes family. It even includes your kids. A biblical marriage makes adjustments towards relationships. And I’m not saying cut your family off, but it’s important. Whatever builds the oneness, the companionship, the unity, the glued together of your marriage, that you seek to stand for that together. Also includes a biblical marriage also comes with it the blessing of raising children. It tells us in Genesis chapter one and verse 18 at the very bottom, I don’t know why I have 28 there, but God blessed them. And God said to Adam and Eve, be fruitful and multiply. Children are a blessing. America sees it different, but children are a blessing. It says in Psalm 127 and verse five. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.
And look at the blessing. When he created the husband and wife, he said, God blessed them. And when he gives us the answer about how he blessed them, he says, be fruitful and multiply. Now, given this passage isn’t just entirely talking about having children and raising them. It’s talking about taking care of the earth and subduing the earth and cultivating the earth. But in addition to that, it’s also talking about having children and the blessing that comes with that, and being fruitful and multiplying in a society that sees children contradictory to that and reminds you of Jeremiah chapter 29 and verse four, where it tells us to build our homes, to have our godly families, to raise our children the way that God desires and change our society for the Lord. Genesis chapter two and verse 24. When we’ve seen that the husband and wife are to cleave together, that outside relationships are to change with that marital covenant that’s established. Notice also what takes place in the life of the children. It says, for this man, for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother. Kids have grown up and the kids are leaving. Mom and dad are saying goodbye to their children. Children are designed to leave the home to become one with their mate. Marriage is about oneness, but parenting is about independence. Your goal for your child is to seek to to train them up in the way that they should go.
They may become independent. To be able to go out into this world, to find a spouse and become one with them. And in so doing, Jesus teaches us about our relationship to him. Think about the things you learn at a new depth because of marriage and your relationship to God. When we learn what it means to love in a different way, biblically, to give ourselves away in that love. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is gentle. It does not envy. It does not boast, does not think of its own. It keeps no record of wrong marriage is a good educator and what it means to love. We learn how to love 100%. In giving ourselves away to our spouse. We learn how selfish we are sometimes and how to die to self the way that Jesus died for us. When God says he loves us like a father, it’s through marriage that we experience children and having children and being a parent and loving your child, you begin to understand, as God expresses himself as a father the way that he loves us. As children, we learn answers and we come up with wisdom by having to trust in God for situations that we really don’t know how to work through. Sometimes, rather than ask our parents for advice, we sometimes are put in a position where we seek the just the counsel of God alone.
Marriage teaches us something about the interaction of the Trinity. Man and wife are equal but different. And so Jesus and the father and the Holy Spirit are equal but different. Marriage shows our ability to stay committed to a covenant. Marriage helps us to develop further in our maturity before God. It helps us to show what’s important in relationships, in life, out of everything. Parents, I think what marriage does the most for your child is that they finally get the opportunity in life where they realize that all the advice that their mom and dad gave them, that they thought was so stupid when they were growing up, starts to make a lot of sense. God’s goal for your children are to become independent. Learning to discover where your child fits into the marriage is important. And one of the things they say in counseling today, over over 90% of all counseling that takes place deals with marriage and family. And one of the primary problems that they find is that parents have in American society have begun to build their life entirely around their kids. Can I tell you this morning what your kids need more than anything? Especially recognizing the condition of marriage in our society is for you to display for them what a godly marriage looks like. Dad, your daughters need to know how their future husbands should treat them. Seeing the way that you treat mom. Dad, your son needs to see how to treat a lady by seeing how you treat mom.
Mom, your daughter needs to see how to love her husband by watching how you deal with the family and with your husband with grace. Mom, your son needs to know how his future wife should treat him and seeing how you choose to treat your husband. More than anything today. I think what kids need is not to focus our marriage. Our marriages on them, but to display for them what a godly marriage looks like. He considered the negative effects of building a marriage just solely around your children. When you build your life around your kids, your kids get married. Kids continue to think that life is all about them. Kids who are intended to function independently will never learn that independence. They need to establish and continue to have a dependency for the rest of their lives. Could. When kids leave, and as the parents have built a life around the kids, when the kids finally leave the nest, the parents are left looking at one another within the home as if they’re married, but they’re strangers. They’ve never sought to to build that relationship with one another and to grow further in the depth of that marriage. Kids won’t know how a proper marriage is to function because they’ve never seen it modeled. Can I take a break from you married couples for a minute and just talk to the kids, talk to our teenagers and young ones and just say, uh, to our young people.
Give mom and dad a break. You think about if you encourage them to go out and just invest some time to one another, you get the house to yourselves. Yeah. But Mom and Dad know something that eventually one day, you’re going to leave the home. And what they need is for you not to eat up all of their time. And they need time to themselves. I read of a couple who had a lot of children, and they understood the significance of just building a life together and still raising their children the way God desired and still loving their kids, but they couldn’t find time to invest one another. So they got up early on Saturday morning and just made Saturday morning breakfast a date. Time for them to go out and experience life together and grow to one another. It’s important for us to continue to establish that within our marriage relationship, because we as people are always changing. We’re always growing. We’re always progressing. We’re not the same person that we were days ago. And when you’re married to an individual or you’re married to your spouse, you can’t live on past memories of what you used to date because 20 years down the road, that’s that’s not the same guy you married. And that’s not the same lady. Guys, you know, if it’s a different day, it’ll be a different lady, right? Sorry, ladies.
It’s important to build that marriage together. Marriage is about cleaving, cleaving to one another. But parenting is about Leaving. And I think, um, recognizing that children will leave one day. Um, just having our first kid. I have no idea what that’s like yet. I don’t know if I ever want to know. But, you know, I think it might be healthy for us as parents when we’re home every once in a while, just to mention to each other. You know, I can’t wait till that last kid leaves the nest. And then it’s just me and you again. My mom called me when Stacy was flying back from back east to let me know how difficult that was. We just had our first her, her second grandbaby, her oldest boy. Kids. We all know parents. You know, you love your firstborn more than any of your other siblings or children, right? And, um, she goes, she calls me and says, well, did you miss Stacy and Grayson? I said, um, yeah, they’ve been gone for two weeks. And, um. She said, well, now you know what it’s like for me. Moving to, uh, to Utah, away from family for the sake of Christ, and that people may know him is a decision that affects family, you know, but think is having young children one day God’s designed for them is to leave the home and to become one flesh with someone they choose to love.
Some marriage and the family relationship is different than the husband and wife. Your kids didn’t get a choice in which home they were in, but when it comes to marriage, you get the opportunity to choose the person that you will love and that covenant is important. What’s a biblical overview of marriage in the family? Marriage in the family is sacred, a sacred covenant that God oversees, a covenant that is established between one man and woman, and in this covenant knew things about themselves, others, and their relationship to God are discovered. God wants them to be unified above any other relationship, and to allow that unity to help them experience the depth of love. To experience this love the way God desires, they must learn how to handle the position of their marriage as well as the relationships with other people. God intends marriage to be between one man and one woman, not between a man and a woman. The parents and the kids. And through their marriage, they can establish a family. As the couple grows together, they can demonstrate to their children what a godly marriage and a godly family looks like. And in so doing, they’ll help train up godly children who will be able to live independently from their mother and father, and to live in a God honoring relationship with the one that they chose to love. Do you see that? There’s a lot in Genesis chapter two and verse 24 isn’t there? But it’s important for us to recognize God’s value biblically in marriage. Let’s close in a word of prayer.