22PT1 - Priority

Big Idea:

Short Term Challenge / Call to Action:

Pray over Word

I thank you, Father, that your word has the power to change my life. I'm a hearer of the word and a doer of the word and I'll never be the same after today. In Jesus name Amen.

SERIES SETUP (2min)

[WHY THE SERIES]

vision for familys

Married

Single looking to marry

Philippians 3:13–16

...Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize...

single not looking to marry

Book - Four Laws of Love

[SERIES BOTTOM LINE]

Marriage is the safest relationship on the earth when God’s marriage laws are honored.

THE PROBLEM (8min)

[STORY POINTING TO PROBLEM]

driving in italy

[STATE PROBLEM]

marriage seems like it has no rules

[REASONS FOR THE PROBLEM]

[RELATE EXAMPLES TO GROUPS EXAMPLES]

Families, Friends, Work, School, Neighborhood, Unsaved Listening

[TRANS2 SOLUTION]

THE SOLUTION (15min)

[CONTEXT]

So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. 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. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”

[SCRIPTURE]

Genesis 2:24-25

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Leave = to depart from, leave behind, leave, let alone

God wasn’t speaking this to Adam & Eve

They didn’t have earthly fathers or mothers.

He was talking to humans universally and laying out laws of marriage.

God made Adam out of the dust but made eve out of Adam’s rib

from the very beginning women were more expensive and complicated.

Covenant means “to cut”

Covenant = permanent sacrificial relationship

means we are all in no matter the cost

if there was no cut, there was no covenant.

LAWS

God knows us through relationship.

God rules the universe through laws.

Laws create order, predictability and safety

Physical: gravity, laws of physics.

Spiritual: If you give, you will receive. Pride comes before a fall.

Mark 11:23 ““Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them.”

Relational: Laws as well

Contract protects my rights and limits my responsibilities

Covenant sacrifices my rights and states my responsibilities

God created marriage with laws.

B. The four laws of love are found in verses 24 and 25.

[STATE SOLUTION / BOTTOM LINE]

Pillar 1 : Your Marriage must be a Priority

That is why a man leaves his father and mother

[SUPPORTING SCRIPTURES]

Matthew 19:3-6

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “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.”

“In love” = infatuated: marked by foolish or unreasoning fondness

Through most of human history, love was not at all the point of marriage.

The notion that a couple would marry for love was considered almost anti-social, even subversive; parents could disown their kids for doing it.

according to Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage":

"For most of history it was inconceivable that people would choose their mates on the basis of something as fragile and irrational as love.”

~Stephanie Coontz

Many couples use this unrealistic standard to measure the quality of love in their marriage.

Most of us wouldn't even dream about getting married unless it was for love. But that creates an interesting dilemma once you've been married for a while. Any married person knows that love comes and goes over the years

[media]

So what is the media telling us? What is a movie tell us what is love about when we go to when we see it from Hollywood?

Hollywood's version of love is lust.

It's all encompassing

overwhelming romance.

I can't live without you.

It's all just fairy tales and lollipops. It's just everything's just grand and amazing.

[objection]

I can see couples watching this right now saying, but that is really depressing. Being “in love” is bad?

No feelings are not bad. I mean, God gave us emotions. And being in love or infatuated is an amazing and good emotion. he wants us to feel overwhelming love, but the reality is that overwhelming feeling of love is a feeling. It will come and go.

Jer 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

Your emotional heart will deceitful.

Prioritize Love over In “In Love”

couch time

Train your children to prioritize your marriage.

THE CHALLENGE (5 min)

[Short term Challenge / Call to Action:]

You have a 100% chance of success and happiness in marriage when you honor God’s foundational

pillars of marriage.

[APPLY TO INDIVIDUALS / WHAT IF YOU DID]

put your spouse 1st

[APPLY TO CONGREGATION / WHAT IF WE DID]

be an example.