Marriage has Meaning

Introduction

Last week we talked about the life of a disciple. The biggest part of this is that we need to make war against our sin, taking the extreme measures that are needed to rid our lives of it. Tonight we are carrying on in this theme of the problem of sin. Through all of these lessons I want you to realize just how big of a problem sin is. Sin is our biggest problem but luckily for us Jesus is an even bigger solution to this problem.

Today we are going to talk about something that isn’t typically talked about in youth groups but I see it as the perfect time to talk about it. This is marriage. Those of you that come to Sunday School know that I see this as a deeply important issue and it is just the thing that our passage talks about today.

The good thing for you all here is that you are young enough that you have not been married so this is all stuff that you have time to digest and hopefully someday apply. I want to preface this with saying that these things we are going to talk about happen a lot in our world and a lot of them may have happened in your family. I’m not going to tell you it is not wrong because it is but I need you to know that we are all sinners. We are going to talk about this sin but we are also going to talk about God’s design for marriage and how that is how we should desire that our marriages be. My prayer is that through this you can learn what a biblical marriage is supposed to look like and resolve to someday make your marriages reflect this biblical design.

Lets go ahead and look at Mark 10 and then we can begin to think about the topic of marriage.

Mark 10:1–12 ESV

And he left there and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan, and crowds gathered to him again. And again, as was his custom, he taught them. And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast 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 not man separate.” And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

So here in this passage we see Jesus continue his journey south towards Jerusalem. On this journey he begins to teach as he always does and he is once again cornered by the Pharisees where they give him a difficult religious question to stump him. This question was regarding whether divorce was legal or not. In the law there was rules for divorce but they were limited to where it was only allowed if there sexual immorality. They had taken this and expanded it to where divorce was legal if the wife cooked a meal that the husband didn’t like. Jesus says that divorce was never intended to be the way all the way from the beginning. Once married they are no longer two but one. After this teaching moment when he is just with the disciples he further instructs them going a little deeper into the issue and showing us how it connects to the moral law of God.

This teaching from Jesus is one we need to listen to and think about now because it deals with something that is related to most of our life but you are not to yet. Think of the effect it could have on your life if you started out thinking this way. It’s like a bad habit in a sport, if you had just started out using the right form you wouldn’t be trying to break yourself from the wrong form later.

Tonight we are going to look at three things. First is what marriage is in the first place, this will give us a strong foundation as we talk about the issue of divorce which is the second thing we will talk about. The last thing that I want to cover is how you can apply this information now, this may seem like a far off issue but there is uses for this information for you now in junior high and high school.

Lets pray then we can begin to discuss what marriage is.

pray

What Marriage is

To begin this section go ahead and turn over to Genesis 2.24

Genesis 2:24 ESV

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

This is the passage that Jesus quotes in Mark and I wanted you to turn to it so that you can see where it is. This is the beginning, creation, where marriage was instituted. There are a few observations that we can make from it here that are vital to our understanding of it.

First is that marriage was created by God. This is not mans idea but Gods. In this we can know that God has a design for it and a purpose for it. If this were not so then God would not have made it.

Second, marriage is between a man and a woman. This is God’s design for marriage and is why woman was created in the first place because there was no suitable helper for man. There are more specific verses that we could look at about the sin of homosexuality but for tonight we want to look at this one and see that marriage is between a man and a woman.

The last brief observation I want to glean from this verse is that they become one flesh. This is to show that they are no longer two but one. They are to operate together, they are to complement each other, they are to care for each other as though it was themselves. This is also why divorce is a sin because in God’s design once you are one you are to remain one.

These three observations give us a simple basis of what marriage is at it’s core. It is a union between 1 man and 1 woman that God created and when that union is formed they are now one and are to remain that way. We can see how much of our culture does not adhere to these standards of marriage but this is what God designed it to be and the most freedom and the most joy is always found in God’s design.

I want us to now turn to another passage that quotes this verse and gives us some more details into the marriage relationship and that is Ephesians 5.22-33 so when we get there lets read it.

Ephesians 5:22–33 ESV

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

When talking about the last verse I said that God’s design has a purpose and that the husband and wife are to complement each other, this verse shows us what this means.

The purpose of marriage is to be an image of Christ and the church. The husband it to lead like Christ and the wife is to be under this leadership as the church. This is also how they are to complement each other. Often when we read this passage we have two views of it; the girls hate it and the guys love it. I hope to now change this a little bit on both sides.

First girls, I know this can be tough especially coming from a guy but being submissive to your husband is what you are called to do in a marriage. There is a little detail though that you need to notice. Your husband is called to lead like Christ, though he will fall short at times if he is pursuing this he will lead well and it will not be an oppressive situation. If he is leading how he should it will be a joy to be under his leadership.

Now guys, I want to start by having you glance at how small the section directed at wives is and how big the section directed at husbands is. You have a lot to do and big shoes to fill. Yes wives are supposed to be under your leadership but you are supposed to lead like Christ. That is a lot more difficult of a task. You are to love her more than yourself and be willing to die for her. You are to lead her spiritually in the word. This is a big task and this is a difficult task.

In these roles we find the perfect balance of marriage. The wife is the helper of the husband and she follows his leadership. The husband leads and loves the wife well in all things. In this they are one flesh and a perfect representation of Christ and the church.

When we stray from what marriage is supposed to be that is where we begin to run into issues. Let’s turn back over to our passage in Mark as we look specifically at the problem of divorce.

The Problem of Divorce

Mark 10:9 ESV

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Divorce is the ending of a marriage and I assume that many of you in here have been in some way affected by this. It is never pretty and it always causes pain. Now more than ever it is easy to get, you can legally get a divorce for no reason at all.

In this passage Jesus shows that divorce was never commanded. Moses allowed it under certain situations but that had been expanded by Jesus’s day. Divorce was allowed on the grounds of sexual immorality and this still holds today but this does not mean you have to.

There are so many reasons that people give for getting a divorce; we are different people now, we fell out of love. Let me tell you this right out the gate, when you marry someone you will both change. Neither of you will die the same person that you were when you got married. Also you have to choose to love that person every single day. What happens when the warm fuzzy feeling goes away? You choose to love them still.

So many today say that they are looking for “the one” and often when they get a divorce they may say that they weren't “the one”. If you think that there is “the one” you are wrong. Me and Courtney openly say that we could have each made a marriage work with different people but we chose to make it work with us and we wake up everyday and choose to love the other one despite all of our faults. There are billions of people out there if you are looking for “the one” you won’t find it, especially if you leave a marriage on that hunt. Courtney is my one, but there is no the one.

Here it is stated that divorce is a sin. We should avoid this sin at all cost.

Application for Now

So how do you apply this information now? I have a few points of application that you can use right now even though many of these things are far off.

Resolve now to have a marriage that follows God’s design and not what the world says.

Pray for those you know that are going through or considering divorce, maybe even encourage them to seek biblical counsel

Make a list of characteristic of a Godly spouse and treat those things as non negotiable. If they don’t meet those criteria you won’t even date them now.

Date to marry

Pray for your future spouse now

Be what the Bible calls you to be

Conclusion

As we come to the end here of thinking about what a biblical marriage should look like we need to know that all the issues surrounding marriages such as divorce and not following those three foundations we looked at in Genesis stem from our problem of sin. Jesus says that these stem from our hardness of heart. Sin is a problem that affects many areas of life and our relationships is one of those areas.

The forgiveness of our sins is possible and is found in Jesus through faith and repentance. This salvation effects all areas of life including our marriages and relationships. You can’t lead like Christ is you are not in Christ, you can’t represent the church if you are not a part of the people of God, you can’t escape the issues of the world if you are still a part of the world.

You are young now but when faced with marriage how will you handle it, like the Bible says or like the world. It is not to early to think about this and it is not to early to make the decision to let the Bible influence your relationships.