God’s Establishment of Marriage

All right, if you have your Bibles, turn to Genesis chapter 2, please. Genesis chapter 2. The series is entitled ‘Marriage Matters,’ and we’re going to be talking about a number of things over the next few weeks. I will be speaking some of those times, and Pastor Dan will be speaking some of those times. Pastor Britt, Brother Britt, will be speaking. Jeff will be speaking, and Randy will be speaking. But we’ll have a number of speakers looking at marriage matters.


Guys, do you have the next slide of this young couple? This young couple? Here they were married for years and years, and they went into the supermarket, and the man was caught stealing some, um, a can of pears. You know how you slice those pears? He had them in his pocket, and he stood before the judge, and he says, ‘For every pear you have stolen, you will serve one month in the prison.’ And the guy says, ‘Judge, may I say something?’ And he said, ‘Sure.’ He said, ‘My wife stole a can of peas.’ So, um, don’t know how their marriage was, but hopefully, that’s not how your marriage is. That guy doesn’t look very happy, does he? Uh, you can learn some things about marriage.


Some kids, I got some quotes for you here, some kids, um, on the slide. All right, this girl named Kristen, she says, ‘No person really decides before they grow up who they’re going to marry. God decides it all the way before, and you get to find out later who you’re stuck with.’ ‘How can a stranger tell if two people are married? You might have to guess based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.’ ‘How would you make a marriage work? Tell your wife that she looks pretty even if she looks like a truck.’ Now, don’t get upset at me; that’s what Ricky, age 10, said.


All right. There is one book that has helped me immensely, and that’s the book on the left, ‘Discovering the Mind of a Woman,’ and that was written by a man by the name of Ken Nair. I probably read that 10 or 15 years ago, but that book helped me immensely, and if I could just recommend maybe two books, and then ‘The Excellent Wife’ by Martha Peace would be a book that I would also recommend. There’s a number of, yes, sir, on the left, have a million pages, uh, no, but it does rebuke people making fun of what God says to do. The premise of that book is, ‘Husbands, dwell with your wives according to knowledge,’ and God gives us the ability to discover the mind of a woman, and it’s probably about 200 pages, Brother Brett, but I appreciate that. I will give you a hard time when you get up here and preach. I just want you to not be ready.


Um, you’re here today, and if you are married, you might have a marriage that you would say, ‘You know what? My marriage is what it ought to be; I’m satisfied.’ Or you might be here today, and your marriage is struggling, or it might be greatly struggling, or it might just be that it’s just the status quo; you’re just kind of biding time, and you really don’t know if there’s more in your marriage. Um, I want to say that there’s hope for every couple, and there is help for every couple. Um, if your marriage is good, you ought to thank God for that. If your marriage is struggling, you ought to seek God and ask God to help you to be the type of partner that God would want you to be.


Um, there are building blocks in marriages. Um, you can have a foundation to build on, or you can have building blocks in between the husband and wife, and today’s sermon is going to be a foundation of marriage, and literally, we’re going to go all summer long. But the key is this, folks: it’s following God’s design and being the type person that God wants you to be, really, by God’s grace, of having the marriage that you ought to have.


Vince Lombardi, who the Lombardi Trophy was named after, um, it was said of him that even after he won the Super Bowl, he would come back to his team and he would show his team the football, and he would say from the very beginning, he’d say, ‘Men, this is a football,’ and he started from the basics, talking about the basics. And today’s sermon will serve as a foundation to everything that we’re going through this summer.


I believe that God has a plan for all of us to follow, whether you’re here this morning, and you are married, you were married, you’re hoping to be married, wherever you are in life, there is truth for us to glean.


Before I begin looking at the scriptures, I want to just remind those people who perhaps wouldn’t know anything about me. Some of you have heard my testimony in the past, but I stand before you this morning, really basically to say that the only authority that I have this morning is the authority of God’s word. I grew up in a home, and I came from a single-family home. My mom, she was, um, worked two jobs at times. She had six kids. She did the very best that she could. I have a heart for single moms; I appreciate what single parents do for their kids. But at the same time, my mom was married to five different men at six different times, and so what that means is she married one of the guys twice. There were times where my mom would live with other men or men would live with us. One of my stepdads I would say would be an abusive alcoholic; he would come in at nighttime and start yelling at us and swearing at us and everything else. I’ve said recently from the pulpit, one of my older brothers, my oldest brother, shot and killed his wife, and he ended up dying in prison. I


‘ve got a brother today who’s married to another man.


And here I am a preacher, and I just want to say this: I am here today not because I am any better than anybody in my family. I’m here today because of the grace of God, and the message that I’m preaching today runs against many of the things where I was brought up or what was modeled, and it runs against many of the things that are in our culture. And to me, my perspective is my wife and I have been married, I think, 35 years, right? This July, right? We haven’t had a perfect marriage, but you know what? We’ve had a blessed marriage, in a Godly marriage, a gospel-centered marriage. And all the things that I preach on either today or the summer, it’s things that I have learned from being in the Church, from hearing God’s word preached, from marriage counseling, or conferences, things like that. There’s nothing new under the sun. But if you’re going to be married, don’t call home and complain about your spouse, husband or wife. The spouse will be quicker to forgive than the relatives will. So, don’t complain to your brother or your sister or your mom or your dad about your spouse, because you will forgive them, but it’s going to be a whole lot harder for them. Another thing is I don’t criticize, and I’ve never criticized my wife to anyone else. If I’ve got a problem with her, and in 35 years of marriage, I think maybe one time we’ve had a disagreement, and vice versa. If we have a problem, we will talk to one another. She doesn’t complain about me; we go to each other. I don’t tear her down in front of other people.


Marriage is a change of relationship; it’s man and woman together, and it’s working and growing and maturing, assuming responsibilities for loving and providing. And if you don’t do this, then sooner or later, there’s going to be issues in your marriage, and it’s easily with the in-laws. The next truth, letter e on your outline, is marriage is permanent. In Matthew chapter 19 and verse 6, it says, ‘Wherefore, there are no more twain but one flesh.’ This is what’s said and preached in marriage ceremonies. ‘What, therefore, God has joined together, let no man put asunder.’ The illustration of it’s two boards, and you glue two boards together, and you put glue in between; that glue, that bond between will be stronger than the actual wood if you try to separate that wood. And I know that we have some who are here this morning, and perhaps you’ve gone through an awful divorce, and there’s heartache and there’s all kinds of sin, and there’s a lot of baggage or garbage, perhaps. God gives hope and grace to all of us. But if you enter in marriage, and you believe the Lord is leading you into marriage, it’s not, ‘Well, I will give it a try; I’ll see how things go.’ No, it’s ‘until death do us part,’ that’s your commitment, that’s what God desires, what God commands.


Very quickly, for the sake of our time and my keeping my promise, the purposes of marriage. Why did God create marriage? Number one, if you look in verses 18 through 25, I believe that a word that would come from is partnership, it’s relationship, it’s communication, it’s loving, it’s serving, it’s growing together. I am a better man because of my wife. We live together; we pray together; we serve together. It’s partnership. God brought Eve to Adam, and he was better for it.


The second one, in Genesis chapter one, I believe verse 28, where He tells them to go and be to multiply, it’s a purpose of marriage will be procreation of having children. That would be a natural desire, a natural growth of marriage. Can I say this, that some couples are not able to have children, so don’t always assume that everybody’s going to have children. Some of them go through a lot of expense and a lot of heartache and anguish. But for most, we would see that God would bless and God would give them children. Proverbs Chapter 5 and Song of Solomon in Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 4.


I believe that marriage ought to be pleasurable, emotionally, mentally, physically. First Corinthians 7 is a great passage. There are many times where couples are not right spiritually or mentally or emotionally, and it’ll never be right physically. God’s word does talk about the one-flesh Union, if I can say that. God is the one who designed man and woman, and He’s the one who brought them together.


Another emphasis I would say is going to First Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 2 and also verse number nine, is purity, that He’s given a husband a wife and a wife a husband; you’re not to seek relationships without that. You’re to be pure and one together. And then next week, Pastor Dan will touch on this last point here a little bit more in detail, but really, folks, marriage is a picture of Christ, the bride and the groom coming together. And what a wonderful picture that is, that as husbands and wives, we’re something bigger than just a man and a woman coming together; it’s the picture of the bride of Christ and the groom, Christ, coming together.


So, I don’t know where you are in your marriage; I don’t know where you are in your thinking; I don’t know where you are in your what God’s will is for you in the future or what you’ve just come out of and some of the anguish that might be on your heart and soul. But if we’re talking about building blocks, we’re talking about laying a foundation of saying, ‘God, if this is what Your word is, then Lord, help me to build upon that, and give me the home and give me the marriage that Your word speaks about, and help me to pursue You and going back to what Rob said earlier, if God is here, and people are here, then we grow, and the closer that we grow toward the Lord, the closer that we’ll grow in husband and wife. So, my prayer, my desire is that God would help us to have solid homes, Biblical homes, humble homes, Grace-filled homes, Christ-centered homes, that we might have marriages that would be strong and that God might bless, that we might be a testimony to other people. Folks, there’s hope in the gospel.