Why Should I Get Married, Anyway?

We just finished a mini-series in the previous text, called “Walk ask Light.” That passage called us as believers who have been given a new nature in Christ to live consistent with that nature. We are light, we are therefore to shine in the darkness of the world and show the hope that Christ brings.

Paul ended that section by making this by saying one way that we must do this is by

Ephesians 5:21 ESV

21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.

So our new character in Christ is displayed through way that we relate to each other. Particularly it is characterized by “submission.”

He highlights 3 types of relationships in which we need to learn proper submission. Husbands and Wives, Parents and Children, and Master and Bondservants. Since we are against owning slaves, we will apply that to employer and employee types of relationship.

What we are going to find that we submit to each other by submitting to God and living in these relationships as God has designed us.

This morning we are going to start another 5 part mini-series, “Meant to Be” out of . We are going to look at what marriage is “meant to be.” And at how you and your spouse are meant to be.

I’m going to spend a long time looking at biblical marriage because it is that important and marriage is in trouble.

If current trends continue 40%-50% of all marriages will continue to end in divorce and marriage in the church doesn’t do any better than marriages outside of the church. That is not what God means for marriage to be. Or, what he intends for your life.

Often times, by the time couples set down in the office with me, they are looking for me to bail them out with some magic solution or they are ready to bail out of the marriage.

The failure of marriage in America is profoundly affecting the institute of the family. No generation reaching the age to marry has ever brought with it more baggage related to family breakdown. In the US, more than one million children each year experience the breakup of their families.

What is the answer to restoring marriages? What’s going to cause the newlyweds driving off with just married on the sign to make it? We are going to have to understand what marriage is as God designed it and commit to living it out that way

So, let’s turn to the Scripture to discover the purpose of marriage as God sees it. We must start by looking at the context in which God created marriage.

I. Marriage is a gift of God’s grace. ()

I. Marriage is a gift of God’s grace. ()

In , Paul gives us marriage through the eyes of God. In order to see the context, we need to start at the end of this passage.

Ephesians 5:31 ESV

31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

Paul has just described the roles the each partner in the marriage relationship should play. And ends by describing its purpose. In other words, you should relate to each other the way that I just described and it will produce the intended purpose. Each partners will leave their paternal family and start a new family by becoming “one flesh.”

Marriage is God’s way of taking two people from different family and producing a unity so intimate and special that the two become one.

Paul, in , is actually quoting . So it’s in Genesis, at the very beginning of creation that God created the institution of marriage. So to understand the purpose of marriage, we need to go back and look at how God began marriage in its OT context.

The context for this verse is . Let’s go there and read this passage.

Genesis 2:18–25 ESV

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Eph

This passage teaches some vitally important truths that help us define marriage. These truths we must understand and define our view of marriage if we expect marriage to be successful.

A. Marriage is God’s idea. ()

Genesis 2:18 ESV

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

v. 18a “Then the Lord God said,”

People have all kinds of concepts of marriage. We live in a day and age where we think we can decide what parameters marriage should have. People get married with the idea, “We’ll try this and if it doesn’t work out then we can get a divorce.”

We have no right to set the parameters of what our marriage will be. God sets the parameters of marriage because he created it.

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

This passage teaches some vitally important truths that help us define marriage. These truths we must understand and define our view of marriage if we expect marriage to be successful.

A. Marriage is God’s idea.

v. 18a “Then the Lord God said,”

People have all kinds of concepts of marriage. We live in a day and age where we think we can decide what parameters marriage should have. People get married with the idea, “We’ll try this and if it doesn’t work out then we can get a divorce.”

We have no right to set the parameters of what our marriage will be. God sets the parameters of marriage because he created it.

B. God created man to be a life sharer. ()

Genesis 2:18 ESV

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

v.18b “It is not good that the man should be alone;”

This is not an indictment against Adam’s fellowship with God. Adam had perfect fellowship with God at this point. What this teaches us is that we were created to live with vertical fellowship (us and God) and with horizontal fellowship (us and others).

We are not meant to live on an island alone. God created us not be cul-de-sacs of His bounty, but conduits. He is not complete unless God’s grace is flowing through him to another. This is what is accomplished as one shares his life with another through marriage.

But no single person should assume that this can happen only in marriage. This is why fellowship with God’s people is so important. However, marriage is the ultimate opportunity for living lives together for the glory of God.

C. God created marriage to produce oneness and children. (Gen. 2:18-20)

Genesis 2:18 ESV

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

v. 18c “I will make him a helper fit for him.”

In what way is the woman a helper to the man and how is she suitable to him?

We start to see the answer to this in the fact that in vv. 19-20 where God paraded all the animals in front of Adam and he named them.

Genesis 2:19–20 ESV

19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

But in v. 20 it says, “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.”

But in v. 20 it says, “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.”

The real answer is found in where we see the overview of the creation story.

Genesis 1:27–28 ESV

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Gen. 2:“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.”

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.”

So, the helper was to be one who produce children. An animal wouldn’t do!

The helper had to be one that was like the man, yet unlike the man. This is the point of v. 21-23

Genesis 2:21–23 ESV

21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

Gen. “So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall up on the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

This is one of our first hints at the oneness that marriage is desired to produce. By creating woman out of Adam and not out of dirt like Adam and the rest of the animals had been created, God provided the possibility of a profound unity that otherwise would have been impossible.

+This absolutely prohibits the idea that homosexual marriage is accepted by God. Innate to the oneness created in marriage is the unity of the two sexes, male and female in marriage.

Homosexual marriage redefines God’s parameters for what marriage fundamentally is. Homosexual marriage cannot produce children and is absolutely incapable of producing the oneness designed for marriage.

From what we have just seen the writer concludes with a concluding statement in , that is quoted by Paul in .

Ephesians 5:32 ESV

32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

Ephesians 5:31 ESV

31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

Eph. 5:32“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

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

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

In other words, in the beginning God took woman out of man as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and then God presented her back to the man to discover in living fellowship what it means to be one flesh.”

So the lessons that this text teaches us about marriage are that:

1) A man leaves his father and mother because God has given him another;

2) A man hold s fast to this woman alone and no other; and

3) A man discovers the experience of being one flesh with this woman.

II. Marriage is a display of God’s love. ()

Now Paul says something very interesting about in

Ephesians 5:32 ESV

32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

“This mystery is profound.” Here’s my question, “What mystery?” Everything that I just taught you has been known by humanity since the very first man and very first woman.

“This mystery is profound.” (v.32) Here’s my question, “What mystery?” Everything that I just taught you has been known by humanity since the very first man and very first woman.

What is Paul even talking about when he says a mystery? In the Bible, a mystery refers to a secret, something that had not been known up to that point. It’s New Stuff. It is something that can’t be known unless God desires to reveal it.

About this mystery, Paul says it is “profound.” The idea is that this mystery has far-reaching importance” or “has many implications.”

*One of the things that I do in pre-marital counseling is ask the future bride and groom, “What do you think the purpose of marriage is?” They will usually mention the basic things that I just mentioned about marriage from . They’ll say, “To have a family, to have children, to raise children, to grow closer that person. Every now and then one that knows their Bible will say so that we can be one.”

But they never give the most important purpose of marriage given by Paul in . If you miss what Paul is about to say, you will miss what marriage all about. Concerning he says in

Ephesians 5:32 ESV

32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

“I am saying that it refers to Christ, and the church.”

See, leaving father and mother and holding fast to our wives was never about just creating intimacy or having children, or having a family.

Here is the mystery: God created marriage to glorify him by being a running illustration of the relationship between Christ and His bride, the church.

What we are going to see in the next few weeks is that in a marriage the husband plays the role of the Christ and the wife plays the role of the church in order to display in millions of illustrations to this lost world the love and the unity that Christ has with his people.

As God made man in his own image, so he made marriage in the image of his own eternal marriage with his people.-Geoffrey Bromiley

describes God’s covenant with his people as an “eternal covenant.” As Christians, if we treat marriage as something less than lasting a lifetime, essentially what we say to the world is that God doesn’t love his people eternally.

Our marriages can be one of the greatest evangelistic tools that we have. When we make the most important purpose of our marriages to glorify God by being a picture of his marriage to his people , we experience the greatest satisfaction that any marriage can offer.

The next four weeks we are going to dive into this passage and find out just how to do that.