Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

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Continue to look at what the Bible teaches about marriage in particular its significance for unbelievers and believers.

Marriage is provided by God as part of his loving purpose for humanity since the beginning of creation.

Marriage is enriched by God for all who have faith in the Gospel, for through the saving grace of Christ and the renewal of the Holy Spirit husband and wife can love one another as Christ loves them.

Marriage is thus a gift and calling of God and is not to be undertaken lightly or from selfish motives but with reverence and dedication, with faith in the enabling power of Christ, and with due awareness of the purpose for which it is appointed by God.

Marriage is appointed that there may be lifelong companionship, comfort and joy between husband and wife.

It is appointed as the right and proper setting for the full expression of physical love between man and woman.

It is appointed for the ordering of family life, where children—who are also God’s gifts to us— may enjoy the security of love and the heritage of faith.

It is appointed for the well-being of human society, which can be stable and happy only where the marriage bond is honoured and upheld.

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1. Separation v24

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What about parents?

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2. Joining v24

a. Hold Fast

b.

One Flesh

Marriage does make sexual relations legal and above board and does not leave one with a guilty conscience.

But marriage is more than that.

Likewise, marriage is more than an institution designed to propagate the human race.

One of the duties within the marriage bond is to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, but that is not the first and only reason.

Some married couples find they cannot have children.

Does that mean the marriage is finished?

Or what about the time when the woman has passed the age of child-bearing and the children have grown up and left the home?

There must be more to marriage than the producing and rearing of children.

We are only too aware these days, when people act like animals, that it does not need marriage to propagate the human race.

Marriage is more than legalising mating.

Philip Eveson[3]

“They become one flesh.”

This does not denote merely the sexual union that follows marriage, or the children conceived in marriage, or even the spiritual and emotional relationship that it involves, though all are involved in becoming one flesh.

Rather it affirms that just as blood relations are one’s flesh and bone (cf.

Comment on v 23), so marriage creates a similar kinship relation between man and wife.

Gordon Wenham[4]

c.

A Binding Commitment

I CALL UPON THESE PERSONS HERE PRESENT / TO WITNESS THAT I, Alhaji Rashid, / TAKE YOU, Lucian Conteh/ TO BE MY LAWFUL WEDDED WIFE, / TO HAVE AND TO HOLD / FROM THIS DAY FORWARD; / FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE, / FOR RICHER, FOR POORER, / IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, /TO LOVE AND TO CHERISH, / TILL DEATH US DO PART, / ACCORDING TO GOD’S HOLY LAW.

/ IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD, / AND THE CONGREGATION AS WITNESSES, /I PLEDGE TO YOU MY FAITHFULNESS.

I CALL UPON THESE PERSONS HERE PRESENT / TO WITNESS THAT I, Lucian Conteh, / TAKE YOU, Alhaji Rashid, / TO BE MY LAWFUL WEDDED HUSBAND, / TO HAVE AND TO HOLD / FROM THIS DAY FORWARD; /FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE, / FOR RICHER, FOR POORER, / IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH, / TO LOVE, CHERISH, AND OBEY, / TILL DEATH US DO PART, / ACCORDING TO GOD’S HOLY LAW.

/IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD, / AND THE CONGREGATION AS WITNESSES, / I PLEDGE TO YOU MY FAITHFULNESS.

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3. Openness v25

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This verse immediately prepares us for the next chapter and reminds us that shame has to do with sin.

Their lack of shame was not a moral weakness but an indication of their sinless perfection.

Premarital sex often results in feelings of disgust, distrust and betrayal.

Marriage alone proves the right setting for such openness and bodily union.

Philip Eveson[5]

The Song of Songs takes up the theme of the first love song and celebrates this aspect of creation.

Despite the Fall it is still a wonderful blessing and we are to make the most of it during this fleeting life, as Ecclesiastes 9:9 reminds us.

Marital love is beautiful.

Such passages of Scripture provide positive answers to the exploitation of sex for selfish ends and at the same time serve as a corrective to asceticism.

They show that sexual union in marriage is not an inferior state.

It is not a concession to human weakness.

That was the teaching of the Middle Ages and it has persisted ever since in some circles.

Physical love within the marriage bond is not something unclean.

It is good and wholesome (see Heb. 13:4).

Philip Eveson[6]

“Let marriage be held in honour among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

(Hebrews 13:4, ESV)

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4. Christian Marriage – Ephesians 5:22-33

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a. Submission v22

b.

Calvary Love v25

c.

Christ and the Church

Conclusion

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