The Household 2: Marriage

Intro

Good morning, would you please turn in your Bibles to Matthew 19:4-6.

This is our second sermon in our teaching series on the Household.

Where we are exploring what the Bible says about the institution of the Household,

learning our roles within it,

and seeing how God uses it to reveal himself to us,

and to accomplish his mission in the world.

Last week we looked at the purpose for which God created the household.

And that was to bring flourishing to the world,

We saw this with the dominion mandate in Genesis 1,

Where God told humanity to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and rule over it.

But now that Christ has come, that flourishing that God brings through our households is both physical and spiritual.

Now we have both the dominion mandate and the great commission:

to bear fruit physically, but also spiritually through making disciples,

and teaching them to obey all that Christ has commanded us.

This morning we are going to be focusing on the foundational relationship of a fruitful household: Marriage.

Seeing how God instituted marriage to bear fruit physically and spiritually.

But if your single here I don’t want you to check out.

We will be looking at how God uses single people to bear fruit in a few weeks,

but marriage is something that God uses mightily to teach us about himself and his mission in the world.

And this matters big time to all of us who belong to Christ.

Which takes us to our passage this morning: Matthew 19:4-6.

Matthew 19:4-6

Matthew 19:4–6 ESV

He answered, “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 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.”

Exposition

Scriptural Context (v. 3)

Our passage this morning is Jesus’ essential teaching on marriage.

But like much of Jesus teaching, it is sparked by a question that is asked of him.

Jesus was a master of using questions that people had as a launch pad to teach.

And not just questions from his disciples,

but even questions from those who were hostile towards him.

He demonstrates to us that we ought not to be afraid of the questions the world is asking.

As the author of life, Jesus had the answer.

And he has equipped us with answers as well.

Something I used to love to say in our youth ministry is that the scriptures have the answers to the questions the world is asking.

Now, they may not be the answers the world wants to hear,

but they are answers that are true, good and beautiful.

Given by God to connect us to him, and to help us live in his world.

Jesus’ teaching in our passage this morning was an answer that he gave to a question,

that was asked by people who were hostile towards him - The pharisees.

In this case their question was about a debate that the pharisees were having amongst themselves.

The debate was about the correct interpretation of the old testament law about divorce in Deuteronomy 24.

In that law, Moses tells the people of Israel Deuteronomy 24:1, “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favour in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her (meaning that she has not been faithful to him), [he can write] her a certificate of divorce and put it in her hand and send her out of his house.”

This was actually the law that Jesus’ adopted father Joseph was following,

when he discovered that Mary was pregnant before the two of them had come together physically.

Matthew 1:19 says,

Matthew 1:19 ESV

Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

But after the angel appeared and explained that Mary was with child because of a miracle of the Holy Spirit,

he did not divorce her and he raised Jesus as his own.

Rabbinic Interpretation

The debate the pharisees were having was around what was an appropriate reason for divorcing one’s wife.

Now the pharisees at this time were preoccupied,

not with following what the scriptures said,

but with following what their preferred rabbi had said about the scriptures.

And we actually know what each of the different positions were,

from the rabbinic writings at the time.

These teachings are found in the Talmud and not in the Bible.

Rabbi Shammai taught that “a man may not divorce his wife unless he has found some unchastity with her.”

This was really the biblical interpretation, but other Rabbi’s had more liberal readings of the text.

Rabbi Hillel said that a man may divorce his wife “even if she spoiled a dish for him.”

I like to imagine Hillel’s wife, after reading that, saying that he can cook his dinner himself.

Finally, Rabbi Akiba went even further in saying that a man may divorce his wife “even if he found another fairer than she.”

And this just goes to show how when we emphasize teachers, tradition, or culture above the word of God,

what we get is devastation and confusion.

And so in Matthew 19:3 we read the question that the pharisees asked Jesus:

Matthew 19:3 ESV

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

Our Culture’s Weak View of Marriage

Now the reason I bring all of this up, is not just to give you the context of our passage,

though that is important.

The reason I bring all this up is because our society is a lot like these Rabbi’s.

Over the last century, and especially since the sexual revolution that began in the sixties.

Our culture has not just rejected, but has run from,

the beautiful framework for marriage that we are given in the scriptures.

For our society (I hesitate to call it a culture) marriage has become little more than a piece of paper,

that one signs when they feel in love with someone else.

And if those feelings change, that marriage can easily be nullified by signing another piece of paper.

As foolish as some of those rabbi’s sound, what our society thinks of as normative,

and what is often celebrated in popular books and movies,

is no better.

Now there are circumstances where, biblically, divorce is permissible.

There is sin that is so bad, that God permits the wronged party to divorce their spouse.

Jesus affirms this in Matthew 19:9 when he says,

Matthew 19:9 ESV

And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

This is sad, but its a reality of being sinners in a fallen world.

My Purpose in this Message

Now the very last thing I want to do is open up a wound that has been left by an unfaithful spouse,

or to heap guilt on those who have gone through divorce in their past,

whether it was biblically permissible or not.

That’s not at all my intention.

There is forgiveness and healing in Jesus Christ for every sin, for every sorrow,

for every broken vow, and every act of unfaithfulness.

God lavishes his wonderful grace on all of us who go to Christ to receive it.

My intention isn’t to heap guilt on you.

But I do want to put before you the beautiful vision of marriage that God designed for us, and designed us for.

And to teach God’s people to treat marriage with the respect that God intends it to be treated with.

As Hebrews 13:4 says, “Let marriage be held in honour among all”

As God’s people we ought to hold this God ordained institution with all honour and respect.

Because God created it for a purpose,

to bless both husband and wife,

to bless their children and those who come after them,

and to bless the world.

Our society doesn’t get it, the pharisees didn’t get it,

But Jesus, as God in the flesh, the one who created the institution of marriage, he got it.

Have you Not Read? (v. 4)

We read Jesus’s answer to the pharisee’s question vv. 4-6 of our passage.

there, Jesus doesn’t quote from the rabbi’s,

he doesn’t appeal to tradition or to culture.

Jesus grounds his teaching on marriage on the scriptures, and God’s good design in creation.

Jesus begins his answer by pointing the pharisees to the scriptures.

He asks them in v. 4 of our passage, “have you not read?”

Now if you read through the gospels you will see Jesus says this to the pharisees over and over again.

And it’s not just a hypothetical question.

This is a dig, of course they have read the scriptures,

they considered themselves the experts at reading and understanding the scriptures.

this is like asking a lawyer, “do you not know the law?”

Jesus is mocking the pharisees every time he says this,

it offends them because they though they had the law of God down.

They prided themselves on their knowledge of the scriptures,

but they spent their efforts on finding and exploiting loopholes in accord with the teaching of the rabbi’s

and not in obeying the word of God from the heart.

Jesus calls them out for this in Matthew 15:7-9, he says:

Matthew 15:7–9 ESV

“You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”

Male and Female (v. 4)

So Jesus here says in v. 4,

Matthew 19:4 ESV

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,”

Jesus is pointing to the creation narrative in Genesis.

He quotes here first from Genesis 1:27

Genesis 1:27 ESV

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Jesus believed the creation narrative in Genesis 1,

he understood that it wasn’t a myth, but that it is the authoritative word of God.

And so he draws his doctrine for what marriage ought to be - from it.

God created the man and the woman specifically so that they could be united together.

One Flesh (vv. 5-6a)

He goes on to say in v. 5,

Matthew 19:5–6 ESV

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh.

Here Jesus quotes again directly from the creation narrative, this time from Genesis 2:24.

Jesus is making a point here,

teaching the pharisees a foundational truth that, in spite of all their study, they have missed.

Point 1: Marriage is a union between one man and one woman.

And this point that Jesus is making is our first point this morning:

Marriage is a union between one man and one woman.

Now, I want to focus on that word union for a moment.

Because we often don’t understand how deep and profound this word is.

More Than a Contract

I remember back in my early twenties, talking with a friend who grew up in the church.

He and his girlfriend were living together at the time.

And so naturally I asked if he planned to marry her.

He told me, “We don’t need to get married, that’s just a piece of paper, it means nothing, we don’t need a piece of paper to prove we love each-other, and getting married is expensive.”

Now, I truly wish his girlfriend was there to hear him say the word “expensive”.

But this is the kind of attitude that many in our society have towards marriage.

Legal Union

In our society we, of course, recognize a marriage as being a legal union.

Our country, because it was founded on Christian principals, recognizes the institution of marriage legally.

So when a couple gets married there is a legal part to it,

with a marriage contract being signed and sent off to a government office.

But that doesn’t mean that marriage is merely a contract that two people agree to and sign, its part of it, the legal part of it.

By getting married you become legally married in the eyes of the law.

But getting married is not like signing up for a phone plan, or filing for a tax return.

The union that Jesus is talking about here is far more than a mere contract,

more than a legal union.

Covenantal Union

Another aspect of the marriage union is that it is a covenantal union.

In the Bible a covenant is an agreement that God makes with his people, a union between him and his people.

God makes several covenants with his people in the scriptures,

there are blessings for those who keep the covenant,

and there are dire consequences for those who break the covenant.

But the Bible also treats marriage as a covenant between a man, a woman, and God.

In Malachi 2, the prophet Malachi chastises the priests of his day for their unfaithfulness to their wives.

In his rebuke he tells the priests that God does not regard their offerings, or accept their worship.

Malachi then says this in v. 14,

Malachi 2:14 ESV

But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

By getting married, you become married in the eyes of God by covenant.

Point 2: Marriage is a Divinely Ordained Institution

This takes me to my second point this morning, and that is that:

2. Marriage is a Divinely Ordained Institution

Marriage is created by God.

God Ordained

Mankind did not come up with marriage.

In Genesis 2:18 We read that when God created man, he said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

God then made the woman, to complement the man.

So that the two could be united, to fulfill the mission that God had given humanity,

The dominion mandate from Genesis 1 that we studied last week.

To be fruitful, and fill the world and take dominion, to rule over it.

After the first man Adam meets his wife Eve in Genesis 2, he sings the first song recorded in the Bible,

probably the first song anyone ever sung,

because all of a sudden there was a girl to impress.

In that Song, Adam says, “She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

She is a part of me.

And it’s after that that we read the words Jesus quoted in our passage this morning:

Genesis 2:24 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

God instituted marriage to be the foundational relationship on which the household would be built,

so that through that union of man and woman,

a family might come forth,

and bring fruit and flourishing to the world.

God United

But God does not just ordain the institution of marriage.

Remember, marriage is a covenant between a man, a woman, and God.

God joins the specific partners of a marriage together.

When you were married to your spouse, God united the two of you.

He joined the two of you together.

The God who created the heavens and the earth,

the God who made and named every star,

united the two of you.

This is why Jesus says in v. 6 of our passage,

Matthew 19:6 ESV

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

And this is why it is so painful when spouses are separated by death or abandonment.

God brings a husband and wife together in the covenant of marriage.

When someone commits adultery either physically or in their heart,

which is what Jesus says looking on another with lust is,

that is to transgress the marriage covenant.

So we need to be careful about what we do with our bodies, with our eyes, with our minds.

I’m preaching to myself here as much as I’m preaching to you.

We need to be on guard!

Because to be married is to be in covenant with your spouse, and with God.

Witnesses to the Marriage

This is why in a typical wedding service we say that the couple has come before witnesses,

and before God, who is always present,

to be united in holy matrimony.

When you attend a wedding ceremony, you don’t attend it as a guest,

you attend a wedding ceremony as a witness.

To a covenantal union instituted and witnessed by God who is present.

This is why the people of God ought to only attend weddings that correspond to what God has said in his word.

The wedding of one man and one woman.

Union of Flesh (vv. 4-6)

Jesus actually teaches us why only the union of one man and one woman can be considered a marriage.

Because a marriage is not merely a legal union,

it is not only a covenantal union,

it is a union of flesh.

This is the main argument that Jesus is making to the pharisees in our passage in Matthew 19:4-6.

Matthew 19:4–6 ESV

[Where] He answered the pharisees, “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 the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh.

Let me be real frank with you:

God made man and woman physically distinct to complement one another with their sexual organs.

This is the only kind of physical union that results in the fruit of children.

The kind of fruit that fulfills the mission that God designed humanity for in the beginning.

The dominion mandate:

To be fruitful, and fill the world and take dominion of it.

To make it flourish.

This is the physical union that Jesus is talking about here.

The kind of physical union that is only permissible within the covenant union of a man and a woman.

God designed sexual organs, and sexual intercourse for the purpose of consummating,

for making complete,

the union of marriage.

Jesus, and the witness of the rest of the scriptures,

as well as entire created order, makes this clear.

Countercultural

Now we all recognize that this is very countercultural in our society today.

But what we often forget was that this was countercultural in Jesus’ day as well,

and really throughout the period of history the Bible covers.

The Bible was not written in a vacuum.

Each book of the Bible was written in a time and a place where the surrounding cultures had very libertine ideas about most types of sexuality.

As the New Testament was being written it was surrounded by a pagan Greco-Roman culture.

In that culture practices such as; sex outside of marriage, extra-marital affairs, orgies,

homosexuality, bi-sexuality, sex with temple prostitutes and even pederasty were normal. 

The christian view of sex, that it is to be enjoyed only within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman,

was as countercultural then as it is today. 

Whether back then, or today, the world is going to go it’s own way.

But as God’s people, we trust

that God’s design and his framework for sex and marriage,

is good, true and beautiful. Because it is.

And for those who claim to belong to Christ, but who want to adopt the world’s beliefs about marriage and sexuality.

Jesus says the same thing to you as he said to the pharisees,

“have you not read”.

God makes all of this clear in his word. We reject it at our own peril.

God’s way is so much better than pursuing our own lusts.

The reckless pursuit of of our lusts only ever leaves us broken in this life,

and dooms us in the next.

But I’ll say again, there is forgiveness and healing in Jesus Christ for every sin.

God delights in forgiving sinners, and healing the broken, who come to him in repentance and faith.

And he frees us to pursue what he has intended for us.

The good, the true and the beautiful.

Point 3: Marriage Is Symbolic of Christ and His Church

The Bible has much to say about marriage,

and theres too much for us to cover in our time together this morning.

But I believe one of the most beautiful things about marriage that we see in the Bible

is that each marriage between a man and a woman,

points to something even greater.

Something that exists on a cosmic scale.

This takes me to my final point this morning. That:

3. Marriage is Symbolic of Christ and His Church

Something that were going to keep referring back to in our series on the household,

is something that the church in the west has lost over the last couple centuries.

This is a way of viewing the world that God’s people had enjoyed in Biblical times,

and throughout much of church history.

We lost it when we began to believe in materialism,

that all that exists is those things that we can touch and see.

And when we started to believe that,

we lost the meaning that God had put into each and every one of those created things.

God has placed meaning into every part of his creation,

every physical thing points to a spiritual reality beyond it,

ultimately they point us to the creator who made everything,

but also enchanted he has made with meaning.

And the institution of marriage that God created is no different,

it points to a spiritual reality beyond it.

Christ and His Church

See, marriage is the union of a man and woman, legally, covenantally, and physically,

but every marriage of a man and a woman points beyond it,

to THE marriage between Christ and his church.

This symbol actually gets set up for us early on in the Bible.

It’s subtle, it’s easy to miss, but it is incredibly beautiful!

And it begins at a well.

Wells and Weddings

If you read through the book of Genesis you begin to see a pattern emerge,

Men tend to find a wife at a well.

Isaac and Rebekah

This happens with Isaac and Rebekah in Genesis 24,

when Abraham sends a servant to go to his homeland, and find a wife for his son Isaac among his relatives.

The servant went to Abraham’s homeland and stopped at a well,

and he prayed that God would give him a sign of the woman Isaac was to marry.

The sign was that the woman would offer water to him and his camels.

No sooner had he finished praying that Rebekah,

who just so happened to be a relative of Abraham,

came and offered him water.

Rebekah would later marry Isaac.

Jacob and Rachel

But that’s not all.

Isaac’s son Jacob also meets his wife Rachel at a well, after he had travelled 720 kms in Genesis 29.

Rachel was a shepherdess, and she came to the well at noon when the sun is at it’s highest,

When Jacob met her he offered her water for her sheep,

and after some difficulty with Rachel’s father Laban, the two were married.

Moses and Zipporah

But that’s not all.

In Exodus 2, Moses ran away from Egypt to the land of Midian, which was a distance of around 690 kms.

In Midian Moses stopped by a well.

and when some shepherds chased away the seven daughters of Jethro who were there to water there sheep,

Moses stood up to the shepherds, saved the girls, and offered to water the girl’s sheep.

Moses wound up marrying one of those seven sisters,

a woman named Zipporah.

Why A Well?

God ordained history so that these couples met around a well,

and he put it into his word because intends us to see a pattern here.

And the spiritual reality that a well points to.

Wells bring water, and because of that wells are lifegiving,

especially in a desert climate like that of the middle east,

But just like a well in a desert brings life,

marriage also brings life.

Bringing forth new life for each spouse in the marriage.

And bringing forth new life in the children born from their union.

Jesus and the Woman at the Well (John 4)

But those are not the only stories about a man and woman meeting at a well in the Bible.

We don’t have time to read it this morning, but I’d encourage you to read this story on your own.

It’s in John 4.

In that passage Jesus is travelling in, what was to him, a foreign land:

the land of Samaria, where Jews and Gentiles had intermixed and had created their own culture.

Jesus, tired from his journey, comes and sits at a well.

A well that was dug, thousands of years earlier by his ancestor Jacob.

And at high noon, a woman comes to the well alone.

And what they talk about is marriage.

It turns out that this samaritan woman had had five husbands,

they had either been abandoned her, or she had abandoned them.

And at that moment she was living with a man who was not her husband.

But Jesus had compassion on her.

And invited her to drink from the water he would give her,

living water.

Water that satisfies,

water that brings life beyond - what water from a well could give you.

Jesus offered her new life, eternal life, through faith in him.

And she received it, and went brought many from her town

who also came to believe in Jesus.

Christ and His Bride (Eph. 5:25-32)

Though that woman did not become Jesus’ wife, she did become his bride.

This is a theme that we see throughout the New Testament,

that the church, the gathering of believers in Jesus,

is the bride of Christ.

The Apostle Paul gives such a clear picture of this in Ephesians 5:25-32,

Listen to this it’s beautiful!

Ephesians 5:25–32 ESV

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.

Christian Marriage

See, marriage is not what the world makes of it.

It is not just about self-fulfillment, it is not merely a piece of paper or a contract.

And Christian marriage is not what the world characterizes it as either.

Hollywood likes to paint Christian marriages as loveless cages that people long to escape.

But thats not what biblical marriage is.

Biblical marriage is far from loveless,

if you need proof read the Song of Songs in your Bible,

try and read that book of the Bible without blushing,

we can’t even handle the kind of beauty, and love, and intimacy that God intends for our marriages.

But Biblical marriage goes beyond eros, it goes beyond sexual passion.

It includes it, but it goes beyond it to something much more beautiful.

Biblical marriage is founded on the Love that Christ has for his church.

The love that he had for us in spite of our sins,

the love that compelled him to die on the cross,

so that we could be free from sin and death,

so that we could be united to him by faith as his bride.

Never to be left or forsaken.

Not even till death do us part.

That is the love that Christ has for his church.

Application

This is not going to be one of those sermons where I give you 5 easy steps to a spectacular marriage.

I don’t know those steps, you can ask my wife.

But what I can tell you is that if you want to pursue marriage as God intended it,

which is far better than anything self help can get you,

what you ought to do is look to THE marriage between Christ and his church.

And were going to do that as we look at the roles of husband and wife over the next few weeks of our series.

Every marriage on earth points to this spiritual reality of the marriage between Christ and his church.

but how often do we look to it?

If you want to love your spouse intimately, passionately, sacrificially, fruitfully

fix your eyes on the real deal,

the living archetype from which all others are copied.

Look to Jesus, and his love for his bride,

and you will see what intimacy, love, and care is,

so that you can participate in it in your own marriage.

You want a marriage that flourishes, that bears fruit? Look to Jesus.

If you have not yet been united to Christ by faith, if you have not yet received his love and salvation,

the well is open, and he is eager to draw out for you living water.

We receive that living water, like the woman at the well,

by repentance and faith.

When we repent and believe in Jesus Christ, you become a part of the church,

the bride of Christ, the bride he loves,

the bride he died for,

the bride he will never leave.

Don’t walk away without receiving that water by faith.

Conclusion

Jesus shows us what love is.

Don’t look to the world, look to Jesus,

to see what marital love can be, and to receive it for yourself.

Pray: That God would draw our eyes up to the marriage of Christ and his bride, so that we can know his love for us, and so that we can better pursue love, fruitfulness and flourishing in our own marriages and households.