“What Makes A Happy Marriage?”

Take your Bibles please and turn to Genesis 2.  It's probably on Page 2 in the pew Bibles, I believe, in the pew in front of you if you would like to follow along.  While you are turning you can hear these familiar words. 

"Will you take this woman to be your wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health till death…. Oh wait a minute, and keep you only unto her till death do you part?
And will you have this man to be your wedded husband, to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, to keep you only unto him so long as you both shall live according to God's holy ordinance?"

Marriage at one day was a delightful subject to preach on.  And then, by God's grace, the church began to wake up and recognize that not only is marriage a delightful place it is a difficult and damaging place for humans to exist in a fallen world.  But the Bible did not leave us alone in how to deal with such real issues.  It is a book of reality.  It tells the truth about people.  That's why there is only one star in the Bible and it is Jesus Christ, God the Son.  The Bible is not about people.  It is for people, a book about God and how to come to know him.  So, in this series on the home, this morning we deal with marriage and its foundational issues.  You have a note-taking outline in your bulletin if you would like to follow along.  At the end of that you will notice some resources.  I'll mention those again, I think, when we come to the end, and just in case I don't, when we come to the end, you'll notice that there are names at the end of Bob and Rosemary Barnes and a date for next spring.  Bob and Rosemary live in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  He has led an institution for years called the Sheridan House that cares for delinquent and trouble teens as well as works with single mothers.  It is a very large organization.  They deal with hundreds of people in a year and they are coming to help us take a biblical look at family this spring, in particular parents rearing children, and I think it will be a delightful thing when they get to come and there are some other resources on there.  I figure the book of at least C.J. Mahaney's title would make the men somewhat interested.  That's the book I was reading in Starbucks and kept covering the cover because I was kind of afraid people would read it, if you're not looking at it, the title of the book is "Sex, Romance and the Glory of God." Now, you're interested aren't you?

I want to make three statements that are statements of primary importance for you and me.  By the way, I recognize there are people in here who are not married.  I recognize that there are people in here who were once married and have gone through an awfully bitter divorce.  I recognize that there are single mothers and single fathers in here and I will be very honest, I am not, at this time, addressing those issues.  That does not mean, however, that there is not truth in this message that won't help you. These are foundational principles for life, and Lord willing, in the future we will have time to address those realities of other home situations that are that, realities on a fallen planet that the church needs to know how to biblically address instead of sticking our heads in the sand and act as if they don't exist.  We left the world of the Cleavers a long time ago, folks.  As a matter of fact, it really never existed, we just thought it did and we want to deal with issues.

The first of three things we want to take a look at this morning:

Marriage is founded upon God's design.

Now, isn't that a profound statement. It really took a lot of work for me to come up with that from Genesis 2.  Let's take a look at that.  We're only reading 2 verses, verses 24 and 25:

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

Marriage is founded upon God's design.  Now that's in fact very profound and it's not because I said it, it’s because God did it.  But, let's think about the reasons why it is so important.  You have to realize that the issue of home life is not random, but reasoned.  Now put that in your brain; the issue of home life is not random  but reasoned. So we must be Biblical in gaining an understanding of marriage.  Because….since marriage is founded upon God's design, if we forget that, there is therefore now no foundational reason for monogamous, loving relationships if we don't found it there.  If we believe we evolved and not created, if we believe we came into existence somehow other than the way God said it, we have no foundation upon which to say, "This is what a marriage is and this is what a marriage is not."  Can you understand that now, based on today's society?

I just read about a Methodist Church whose pastor came in to lead the church and was a different sex than he or she was the week before.  If that happens to pastors, and, I don't know if you've read Time Magazine or seen any of the shows lately about these sexual orientation troubles that so many people are having, and they are changing themselves physically by way of surgery? And we have men living with men and women living women, and the strangest thing is I wonder how they ever planned to propagate the human race and we are subverting the issue of evolution  by using biological technology to reproduce when we know we can't reproduce.  So our minds are confused as to what marriage is and that confusion doesn’t only happen outside the church, it happens inside the church and that's who we're talking about this morning, us.  You have three possibilities when you think about marriage and how we came to this idea that there was a woman to be for a man, and a man to be for a woman for a lifetime, physical intercourse was for the marriage bed only and that's the way life was supposed to be.  My friend, if you don't have an authority to tell you that and then agree with it, you are arrogant.  But, if you have an authority that is God Almighty, and you believe that and live by it, you are humble. 

So don't go fight for what you think a marriage out to be, if you're fighting for your personal preferences.  State it from God's preferences because you only have three real choices in life:

1.                 You can say, well, everything just happened.  We don't know what the Big Bang was, we don't know what the first initial cause was, everything just happened and we've evolved to this state we are now… it just happened.  Can you imagine seeing that on the back of a car after two young people engaged in this marital relationship, instead of saying, "Just Married" it said, "Just Happened!"  [Laughter] Did it just happen? Does anything just happen? Is there really the possibility of chance in all of creation? You think that through hard. 

I don't have a coin, but if you flipped a coin, is it chance that it is going to come up heads or tails? No.  Because if you changed the humidity in the room, if you changed how high you flipped it, or if you caught it in your hand or if it laid on the ground, all those things are influences that determine whether it's going to be heads or tails.  There is no such thing as chance, other than in our minds.  No, so you could believe it just happened, and if it just happened, we have to realize, if life just happened, there is no foundational reason for marriage as most of us think it should be.  You could do whatever you wanted.  You could have two husbands, I don't know who would ever want to do that, or you could have two wives, and I definitely don't know who would ever want to do that, you could have multiple partners and no marriage, you could have a man for a partner or a woman for a partner and there's no reason to say that's wrong.  That's why the world is doing it! Do you understand that?  When you remove God from the situation and you believe we are a higher form of animal, we can do anything we want to do, because, please understand, in an evolutionary perspective, values are totally irrelevant and baseless, and existence without a cause is an existence with neither reason, nor right or wrong.  So, before we fuss at people for living what we would label an immoral life, let's make sure we understand their perspective before we start shoving the Bible down their throat.  But let's go back to us. 

2.      The second option is this:  You believe in God but you believe in a God made in your image.  In other words, God is what you think God is.  And so you, in your sentimentality and the sincerity of your heart, you think God would want it this way, and that's even more foolish than the evolutionary perspective because who in the world would ever want to believe in a God they made up in their own mind?

3.       The third perspective that seems foolish to most people in the world is that you happen to believe in an Almighty Sovereign God who created all things, including us, by the word of his mouth and since he is the founder and the creator and the designer of all things, it might be good to consult him and ask, "What's it for? Why do we have marriage?" 

I think it distinct  that Moses writing a long time after creation, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was very clear to declare that in his image, God created them male and female, he created them.  Why? Because he knew the problems that were already occurring by the time Moses wrote these first 5 books.  We have to keep in mind that marriage is not primarily about us.  For marriage to be properly about us, it needs to be primarily about God.  Do you see that?  For marriage to be properly about us, as we look at our spouse, as we look at ourselves and in turn look at our children, it has to primarily be about God, so if God is not the primary figure in your marriage, then the troubles will Be exponentially increased.  All marriages have troubles, but you need something in your marriage bigger than any trouble you could ever have and the only thing bigger than your troubles is God.

So, that's a foundational point that marriage is founded upon God's design.  Because of that, then we can learn what is within the home, other than our Relationship to God.  What is the primary relationship?

The second point is the primary relationship in the home is the husband and wife.  I'm going to say that again, I want to make sure you get it.  The primary relationship in the home is the relationship between the husband and the wife, the wife and the husband, not the relationship of parent to child.  The best thing, Mom and Dad, if you are in a home where both of you are there, the best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother and love their father.  Again, I'm aware I can't address some of you today because you're not in that situation.  You don't have a spouse there to help you rear your children and may God doubly bless you for the strength that you will need.  The reason that this is primary, and we'll look at in God's Word in just a second, but a practical thing, as well as in God's design, is when a husband and a wife relate properly for your children, it models a relationship to the opposite sex in it's proper manner.  Howe you treat your wife, men, will end up how your son treats his wife or how your daughter's expect to be treated.  So are you treating your wife in a way you'd like for another man to treat your daughter? Tough huh?

There was a marriage this weekend, a fine young couple got married, and on the night of the rehearsal, when we were walking through things, I reminded Scott Combs, who was the husband-to-be, that I was once told that when a man gives his daughter away in marriage, it's like giving a Stradivarius violin to a gorilla! [Laughter]  That's how the father feels who is giving away a daughter.

It models the relationship with the opposite sex and it provides tremendous security for the children in the home without ever saying a word when they see and hear that mom and dad love each other.  But let's look at it practically, look at the text:  Verse 24: In the verses preceding this, verses 18-23, we find another descriptive story of God making man and then making woman.  He made us male and female, and evidently he made Adam and Eve adults.  And in verse 24, Adam has been presented with his wife, Eve, and then God gives instructions after Adam's exclamation at seeing a woman for the first time in his life.  He was a pretty excited fellow.

"God said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.'"

Part of the one flesh issue is obedience to God's command to replenish the earth and fill it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and all the earth.  The point is really simple.  God made adults, and God told the adults to make babies.  You got that!  It's really that plain.  That's what God is saying to them.  It's far more than just having intercourse, conceiving a child and birthing them, but that's exactly what God told them to do.  He told the adults, after he made them, that their role was to have children.  Now, this is all learning why the husband and wife is the primary relationship in the home.  When the children then become adults and fall in love, God tells them that they need to leave their parents and hold fast, the man is to hold fast, we'll talk about that word in just a minute , be united to his wife and they are to be one flesh. So the truth is very plain.  A husband and wife are to be together till death and they are not blood kin, not in the immediate family, anyway, we're all blood kin in one way or another.  But they are to stay together until death do us part.  We are to prepare to stay.  That's what parents do, husband and wife, till death do us part.  Parents, however, their major role as parents is to prepare their children to leave.  How good are you doing?  That is your job!  You, mom and dad, are to prepare your children to be ready spiritually, emotionally, financially, and some of you wish you had done a better job financially because they are still draining your pocketbook even though they are 35 years old.  [Laughter]   I don't even bother reaching for my wallet when I go out with my mom and dad anymore.  I used to pretend, anyway.  I knew they were going to pay for it.  I'm 48.  We ate with them this week, guess who paid?  Wasn't me, baby! [Laughter]

Husband and wife are to be together.  We're suppose to learn to stay.  Together we are supposed to learn how to prepare our children to leave, why? So that one day they will be able to stay.  If you can make your children, can lead your children to a maturity to where they can leave you, be independent of you spiritually, emotionally, relationally, vocationally, then they will be prepared to stay.

Two things:

1.               First marriage is founded upon God's design.

2.               Second, because of that, we then know that the primary relationship in the marriage is husband to wife, wife to husband, not parents to children.  They are only going to be there a very few short years and most of your marriage is without kids. So, what's the third thing?

3.               The third thing is very simply, "It takes a grownup to be married."  Have you learned that after you said, "I do?"

Two things in life caused me to grow up more than I ever grew up before in my life, and the first thing both of them did was point out how selfish a person I was.  The first one was getting married and the second was having children.  Life could no longer be built around Tony.  And God would have us learn that life also cannot be built around our spouse or around our children. Life is built around God and that's how we prepare children to be grown up enough to be married.

It takes a grownup to be successfully married!  Look at the simple language and we will see the depth of what God is saying.  In two verses he has described holy matrimony.  How do you understand it when he says, "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.  And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed?" How does that prepare us for marriage?  Maybe it would help if we just asked two questions: Here's the two:

1.                 Are you, if you are single, mature enough to leave.

2.                 Are you, if you are married, mature enough to love.

That's what God is asking us.  You'll have to understand this passage, as in all the Bible and all the Christian life, is centered upon one truth: God revealing himself in Christ so that we can see who we are.  It is in Christ that we see that by God's early writings in the law that there is something wrong that we cannot keep and in Christ's coming we see someone keep the law perfectly, we see him die on a cross, we see him buried, we see him raised from the dead to show us some things.

1.                 I can't live up to God's expectations.

2.                 God loves me in spite of my sin.

3.                 Jesus died with my sins on his shoulders so that if I would trust him, I could receive eternal life and have his grace and his life in me to follow and obey God's commands and enter heaven when I die.

How in the world can any human ever become mature enough to leave and mature enough to love if they are the center of their own life?  If you were the center of your life, you will feel the need to protect yourself from your spouse.  You will feel the need to compete with your spouse.  You will feel the need to protect your time from your children because you are worried about you.  But, if God is the center of your life, your whole perspective changes.  You find yourself humbled before a God who would die on the cross, you find yourself lifted up in security because you are loved unconditionally, you are able to look out at other people filled with the Holy Spirit of God thinking how can I help them in my home be mature enough to leave and mature enough to love.  What's it mean to be mature enough to leave?  We've hinted at it already?  Spiritually, are your children on their feet ready to leave your home? Do they know God's truth? Do they know who God is and what he's like? Do they know his Word? Have they understood clearly the Gospel of Christ so they can stand in humility and security all at the same time? Are they ready emotionally, or are they still too tied to you because they're too insecure to be out on their own? What about relationally?  Do you see that they relate well to people?  Now, not everybody relates the same, but all of us need to have healthy relationships.  Do you see that your children have great fears of what other people think? Or that they are afraid someone is always trying to take advantage of them or get one up on them and they see all of life as a competition, as people against them and them against people, or are they secure in Christ? Are they supporting themselves vocationally? Now, that sounds awfully practical, but if you can't support yourself vocationally, you're not ready for marriage.  You can't leave your momma and your daddy yet.  It's not their responsibility to support you after you're married.  It's your responsibility, in fact, as they age, to get prepared to support them, and I can tell you, baby boomers who are entering retirement, Social Security is not going to be there to support you.  There's not going to be enough money anywhere for your medical insurance and nursing homes to keep up with all of us.  You better hope you've taught your children properly spiritually because some of their responsibility is to take care of their own, especially their aging parents.  It is in that context in which in 1 Timothy Paul said, that "if anyone will not take care of his own, he's worse than an infidel," an unbeliever.  We have that responsibility.

So, are you mature enough to leave?  That's what God is asking when he says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother.  By the way, some children are mature enough to leave, but their parents aren't mature enough to let them go!  Many a parent has been a gross interruption in a potentially happy marriage.  Love them, be with them, but get out of their lives.  You're their parents.  Would you have liked it when you were newlyweds, [Laughter] I just thought of something.  This is terrible.  My dad was in the Korean War.  He had been gone 13 months and he and mom married just before he went to Korea.  Dad wasn't even a believer when he was there.  It wasn't until my sister was born that he became a Christian. But they were newlyweds, deeply in love, been writing each other from around the world.  And he comes home for the first time being in close and heavy combat to see his bride!  They lived in a one-bedroom apartment somewhere in old Louisville.  And his mother and sister came and spent the night with them!  [Laughter]  I'd have kicked them out and said, "Go find a hotel room!"

So, parents, there is a time to get out.  They have to learn on their own. You've done your teaching.  Let 'em go.  Do you not trust the power of God through your own prayers.  "Well, they're not going to church."  Quit hinting and nagging.  By the way, do you know the official definition of nagging?  If you look it up in the dictionary, it says "Nagging: The official definition is being nibbled to death by a duck!"  It really doesn’t say that, but that's a great definition.  You will never improve your married children's life by manipulation, nagging or bribing.  You will drive them far away.  Let 'em go. 

Are you mature enough to leave, and are you mature enough to love?  Hmmm…

Look at the first word, and notice, it's to the man… Sir, you need to leave your mama and be a man!

"Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife." Get this word, get this definition, hold fast, in its Hebrew nuances, here are some of the things that word means in scripture:

·                     It means to cling to.

·                     It means to fasten oneself to an object.

·                     It means joined fast.

·                     It means to be stuck together.

·                     It means to catch up, it means to overtake someone.

Now the trouble with men is we like the pursuit prior to marriage.  It's kind of like you're on the hunt or you're fishing in a tournament, and all you want to do is get the bass in the boat, into the live well!

Now when you're dating you buy your wife-to-be cards, you buy her perfume, you send her love notes.  You show up at her door unexpected.  You plan nice dates.  You have your wedding, you say, "I do," off you go on a honeymoon and you come back and you go to work, and she asked you questions in the morning over the paper and all she can get out of you is, "Uh…uh…. Yeah."  Haven't bought her a card in 5 years because, "Well she's in the bag!"  Do you know anything about your wife at all, and how to tell her that you love her more than anything else on this earth?

It says to leave your father and mother, and hold fast, to catch up to, to overtake, to make linear  motion, to come to the same place as another person, to be united!  That's what God has in mind when he talks about a husband's love for a wife, and I'm confident he has no intention for it stopping because he only speaks of that in the marital relationship, not in the premarital dating one.  Is there still a pursuit in your relationship?

Joie and I have the privilege of going to the Southern Baptist Convention next week. I’m looking forward to it for two reasons: 1.  I'm your pastor and I need to go to the convention.  That's the second reason and on the totem pole of priority it's way down about here.  The other thing is that Joie and I are going to have about 4 days together in a nice hotel room that we get to go to and it's up here on the priority list!  We don't get to do that real often.  And I'm still in pursuit of that woman and delightfully so. 

So, sir, can you and will you hold fast, pursue, cling to, overtake your wife alone? You are hers and she is yours.  Will you become one? In C.J. Mahaney's book, he has a great statement about this issue of physical intimacy.  He tells the men in his book, "You better learn to touch her heart and soul before you touch her body." That's a great statement, and you need to read the book.  Will you become one?

I'm going to leave it at that because there are some things we need to do in application that are very important.

The Bible goes on and says in Verse 25, "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." That's the way life was prior to sin.  They were unclothed before each other and I think it means far more than just the fact that they did not need coverings over their body.  I think it means that their soul was also and they were not ashamed, before each other and before God, because Adam and Eve very well knew that they were in the presence of God.  So the third question is, can you be if you are mature enough to love, and can you be vulnerable before your spouse, transparent, and still be without shame?  The word ashamed means to have a painful feeling, an emotional distress, sometimes to the point of despair by having done something wrong.  You see, sin is what brings shame and decreases vulnerability, both between us and God and between us and our spouses, so the question then to ask is this, "Do you feel the need to defend yourself in front of your spouse at any time?" Or are you willing to be vulnerable?  How does that happen?  When you are so convinced, first that you have so convinced your spouse that you love them unconditionally and then you are convinced that they love you unconditionally, you can sit back and rip the curtain of your heart open and know that they are not going to willfully harm you.  It takes a lotof work to get there, in this sinful world with two sinful people married, but that is still God's intent. 

How can some of that happen?  There are three questions of application that ask simply to remind you of today's message and then I want to give you some specific ones.

1.                 Have you left, have you properly left your parents?  It doesn’t mean you don't love them, it doesn’t mean you don't let your dad buy you a meal, but it does mean you talk to your spouse more often on the phone than you talk to your mom or dad.

2.                  Parents, have you let their children go or are you still meddling in their lives, trying to run them?  By the way, if you try to run your children's lives, you will ruin them.  Your job is to teach them that God is the center and commander of all of life, not you, not them, and turn them loose.

3.                  How can I better love my spouse?  Are your ready? Think this through.  This is extremely practical, but this is how you work out what God has said. 

How can I better love my spouse?  First, and this is one of the lessons every couple gets with me in premarital counseling, you need to become a student of your spouse.  How well do you know them? If somebody gave you a piece of paper in your spouse's absence and they asked about your spouse's history, about the home she grew up in, about where he or she grew up, about their internal emotional proclivities, about their fears, about their joys, about their greatest loves in live, about anything, about their salvation, their relationship with Christ, how much could you write on a legal pad of paper without asking your spouse questions?

Gentlemen, how cyclical is your wife? Ladies, how much does your husband enjoy his work? By the way, what does he really do at work?  Sometime early in our marriage, by God's grace, I decided to become a student of Joie.  For a good long while I knew more about her as a female than she knew about herself.  It's not just coming to know her as a person, you need to come to know your spouse (husband or wife) as a person of the opposite sex, because I can promise you, being educated in this world and being educated by movies and television, you don't know beans about the opposite sex, because everything you have ever seen on television is a lie.  Just put it down.  Have you ever seen those stories, when the villain or the good guy, either one, who is handsome and brutish, and the female star in the role is an absolute gorgeous knock-out woman and she hates this man who is the star and she's pushing him away and he's embracing her, and just about the time he turns his head sideways to kiss her, she just sucks up to him like a suction cup, and she just loves his…. All at once!  Just makes me want to vomit! [Laughter] It doesn’t happen that way, does it, married men?  [Laughter]  You thought that man, it's finally, it's okay, I'm married, we can have sex guilt free, it's going to be the easiest thing that's ever happened in the married life!  You don't know much do you?  You don't know much about men or women. It is your job to become a student.  One of the things I did, I read a book written by a woman for women because I didn't know beans about women when I got married.  The only thing most of us know about the differences between men and women, is that it took more fig leaves to cover Eve than it did Adam.  [Laughter]  You've got to get way beyond that. 

1. Are you studying your spouse, instead of studying how you want your spouse to make you feel?

2. You need to work hard at equipping yourself to be a better mate. Don't you go to seminars and read books and listen to the experts so you can be a better person at what you do to earn money? Don't you get training? Don't you go to school, get an education, a degree?  Why do you think the most important relationship on the earth is just going to happen? When is the last time you looked at the Bible, you prayed, you looked at books, you went to a seminar to say, "How can I be a better husband?" or "How can I be a better wife?"

3. Concern yourself with your need for change, not your spouses. When you become a student of them, don't become their instructor.  That's not the purpose, become their lover. 

4. Plan for a growing marriage.  You have a plan for anything in your life of importance. Some of you can tell me what you are doing 18 months from now at your place of business, but you don't have a clue what you're doing tomorrow for your spouse.