What Is Marriage? - Bible Overview 4
Kim and I got married in 1984. 8/4/84. We were 20 years old. Here’s a photo of our wedding rehearsal—no one told me that I should probably dress up a little. No one told my brother that guys shouldn’t wear midriff t-shirts. But those aren’t the biggest failures, everyone I knew completely failed to tell me the most important thing about getting married when you’re young.
You gotta shave off that pathetic attempt of a mustache or you will forever be shamed by the wedding photos. I was reminded of this important life lesson while watching the 15 year old quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs last Sunday. Guys, listen to me, you should seriously consider shaving that neck beard and wiping the chocolate milk off your lip before your wedding day if you get married before your thirties. You’re welcome.
I know, some guys are teenage werewolves and can give Hagrid a run for his money by the time they’re 20, but unless you’re planning on being married to the beard as well as the bride—you might want to consider a trim. And I’m not even gonna bring up man-buns.
We’ve been looking at some different ways to read the whole Bible, so it all comes together as one big story of how God is saving the world through Jesus. Last week we talked about how the Bible has the ultimate happy ending.
You probably know this but classic plays were usually considered to either be a comedy or a tragedy. A tragedy, like Romeo and Juliet, or Hamlet, is a story that ends with everyone dying. A comedy is a play that has a happy ending—usually ending in a wedding. A wedding was considered the happiest possible ending because it’s the beginning of a new future—the start of happily ever after.
This idea comes directly from the Gospel. The New Testament is the happy ending of the story of God. It’s the culmination of everything He set in motion and fulfilled in Christ. It ends with the marriage supper of the Lamb. The wedding of the Bride of Christ. Happy endings are happy beginnings.
So we should understand our new life in Christ through the metaphor of being married to the Son of God. It also means that Christian marriages should be holy marriages—holy matrimony. They should all point to the great mystery of Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:32 says,
““For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.”
But our culture is pretty confused about marriage, so let’s look at what God’s Word has to say about what it is and what it’s for:
God created the world and put Adam in a garden with enough friendly animals to kick off a musical montage in a Disney cartoon—Also, God Himself hung out with Adam and went for walks in the cool of the day. There wasn’t sin in the world yet, but it wasn’t good—the man was lonely.
“The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18.
Man and woman. This is the origin of marriage.
Man was in a perfect place with God but it wasn’t enough. Verse 20 says,
“But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”
Adam woke up and saw the perfect woman—in all her birthday splendor. He wrote the first love song. He said:
“Finally! Bone of my bone,
flesh of my flesh!
Name her Woman
for she was made from Man.”
People been writing more verses to that song ever since:
If a picture paints a thousand words,
Then why can't I paint you?
But did you know,
That when it snows,
My eyes become large and
The light that you shine can be seen.
Talkin’ bout my girl,
I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day
When it’s cold outside, I’ve got the month of May.
I see Your true colors
True colors are beautiful
Like a rainbow.
Baby, when I think about you
I think about love.
Then Genesis 2:24 wraps it up by saying this:
“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
When the religious leaders asked Jesus about marriage, He quoted the same verse and said,
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Matthew 19:4-6
This is marriage. There is a lot of confusion about what marriage is and what it isn't.
Are we going to let God's Word be the standard and final authority? Or are we going to assume that cultural opinions should rule the day? Do we interpret truth based on how we understand Scripture? Do we interpret Scripture based on how we understand truth?
What is marriage? Marriage is when God joins together a man and a woman to make a new household. To be one flesh. Who should get married? A man and a woman, who, in the site of God and their friends and family, desire to be joined in holy matrimony. When should they get married? Before they start experimenting with what it feels like to be one flesh, before they start playing house, when they are ready to stand before God and witnesses and promise to love and cherish til death do they part. Why should they get married? Because they’re lonely, like Adam. Because they want help doing what God has called them to do, like Adam. Because they’re starting to fantasize about what one flesh feels like and are considering the financial and family benefits of being a new household. Y’all know this “one flesh” thing is at least in part talking about sex, right? It’s the spiritual connection that happens between a man and a woman when they have physical intercourse. It’s a distortion of what God created it for if we attempt to consummate a relationship outside of marriage. We do it in all kinds of creative ways, too. Before we’re married it’s called fornication, after we’re married but outside of our vows it’s called adultery. With family members it’s called incest. With animals it’s called beastiality. With dead people it’s called necrophilia. With magazines and computers and cell phones it’s called pornography. There’s a lot of ways to get this wrong, and I’m pretty sure people make up new ways every day. Every time a new technology comes along someone tries to figure out a way to have sex with it.
Most of the ways that we try to destroy our life, our relationships with people and our relationship with God, are a distortion and misuse of the gift God has given us in marriage. That “one flesh” thing.
When St Paul wrote a letter to the churches in Rome, trying to raise money for a missionary journey to take the Gospel to all the pagans who were living their freaky pagan lives all over the empire—he started his letter by explaining why people need to hear about Jesus.
He said everyone knows there’s a God. They might lie to themselves and pretend like they don’t, but deep down, they know. Everyone knows.
Romans chapter 1 verse 18:
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
Then he goes on to say that they might know God is out there somewhere but it certainly hasn’t slowed them down in sinning up a storm and really making Him mad:
Verse 21:
“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”
In other words, we make idols out of everything. We worship everything under the sun except for God. Mostly we worship ourselves and our selfish pleasures. Do you know what God says He does to people who ignore Him and insist on following their impulses?
Verse 24:
”Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.”
And what do you think it looks like when God gives people over to the sinful desires of their hearts? When they ignore God and do whatever they want to do?
It looks like prime time TV in America. Verse 26:
“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
I know some of us aren’t very comfortable with these parts of the Bible. But are we going to let God's Word be the standard and final authority? Or are we going to give-in to cultural opinions? Do we interpret Scripture based on how we feel? Or are we going to understand truth based on what we find in Scripture?
This isn’t talking about hating anyone, or judging anyone. This is talking about how every single person needs to hear the Gospel. Every person needs to wake up and realize that God is God and they’re not. We have to stop ignoring Him, or we will be given over to our shameful lusts. Every culture that has ignored God and gone down this road has come to the same dead end. It always looks like this:
Verse 28:
“So God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”
It’s no coincidence that our culture calls anyone who tries to talk about God’s truth and holiness “haters.” People have a hard time hearing the truth once they get in this downward spiral. Inventing new ways of doing evil. They’re gossips, slanderers, insolent, arrogant and boastful—God-haters. They’re defined by their sin. They want to be defined by their sin. They want people like me to shut the hell up, so they can go back to pretending that there’s no such thing as sin.
The rest of the book of Romans explains the Gospel. The promises of God that are available to anyone who believes in Jesus. Even the people caught in this downward spiral. Even you and me. Anyone who confesses their sin and confesses with their mouth that Jesus is Lord, anyone who believes in their heart that He died for their sin and was raised from the dead—anyone who believes—will be saved and will inherit eternal life.
Stop wearing your sin as a badge of honor. You don’t have to be defined by your sin. Not anymore. Doesn’t matter how you’ve tried to screw this up in your past, you don’t have to be defined by that anymore. You can have a fresh start. A clean slate.
We Can Take The Name of Christ The gospel can be understood as a marriage that God the Father arranged for His Son to marry a dirty little whore. To take as His bride a woman who is without honor and save her from her shame. In spite of how she screwed up in the past, in spite of how she might screw up in the future—He gives her His name.
This is about you and me. It’s not about what we’ve done or haven’t done. It’s not about what we do or don’t do. Listen—it’s about how we are defined. Do we let God define us, taking the name of Christ? Or do we continue to define ourselves by our sin and our shameful lusts?
You can take the name of Christ. Like a bride takes the name of her husband. You can be a Christian. This can be a wedding day for you, too. It can be the end of the dead end road you’ve been on and the beginning of something new. Something with a happily ever after.
Let me ask you something: Will you accept the Lord Jesus Christ? To live for Him as God ordained it? Will you submit to him? Will you love, honor, and keep him—and this is the hard part—in sickness and in health and, forsaking all others, remain united to him alone, so long as you shall live?
If so, and only say this if you mean it, say: I will.
We’re supposed to understand our relationship with God in the context of us being the bride that He rescued from a dead end life of shame—the church is the bride of Christ.
And this has profound implications for how we view the world. We submit to Jesus Christ. No matter what happens in our life. No matter how much we’re tempted to flirt with sin and be unfaithful to Him. No matter how much we’re tempted to forget that we’ve taken His name and go back to our former ways of thinking about ourselves. We are no longer defined by our sin but we have taken the name of Christ. Our culture has some pretty jacked up ideas about marriage and gender and sex—we no longer listen to lies and confusion. We listen to the Word of the Lord.
And we submit to Him. We also submit to each other—we love each other.
“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." 1 Peter 4:8
Jesus gave Himself for us, all the way to death on a cross. We are to give ourselves to Him, even willing to die rather than deny our faith. Not only willing to die rather than do the wrong thing, but willing to live for Him and do the right thing, too.
Not only willing to promise til death do we part. But willing to live every day committed to loving each other by being patient, kind, honoring each other, not being selfish,not being easily angered, and keeping no record of wrongs. That’s what a Christian life is to look like. That’s what it means to love.
To all of you who said “I will,” now that you have committed yourselves to Jesus Christ, have given yourselves by your solemn pledges, and have declared this before God and these witnesses, I pronounce you to be the bride of Christ, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
What God has joined together, let no one tear apart. Amen.
AMEN