Marriage: God’s Good Creation

The pillars of our society are crumbling; and if radical changes are not made, our society will fall to pieces. The pillars of the church are crumbling. And, although the Church of Christ will not be destroyed, churches and denominations will fall.

The pillars are families – the church, as well as the country, depends on families. As the families are strong – praying, worshipping, holy, families – the church is a strong, God-honoring, God blessed church. Families are in danger. The truth of marriage and the family, as it is ordained and biblically governed, is under relentless attack by the devil and the wicked world.

Witness:

The need for sexual purity is denied except to avoid the dreaded sexually transmitted diseases.

Quick and easy divorce, along with easy remarriage afterwards, is common. The homosexual lifestyle is accepted and condoned and encouraged, even by many churches. And, families are not together anymore.

If there is one instrument that the devil is using with a success rate second to none, it is the weapon of the television. By what is shown and by how much time is taken away from family fellowship and reading, the devil uses the television to destroy families. Because we love families, we show our colors early and say that we believe the misuse (which is often the only use) of the TV is to blame for a majority of family trouble.

Marriage: God’s Good Creation

The family is foundational because God made it that way. God created the family in paradise as the first institution He made. To begin properly our treatment of good family life, we must understand the beginnings of family life in creation, especially the first marriage and family.

First, God made Eve out of Adam and not from the dust as Adam was created (Genesis 2:7), the woman in creation was not independent, not his equal, but was made a helper, and perfectly “fit” for Adam (this is the idea of the word “meet” of Gen. 2:18 in the King James Version).

What a wonderful creation of God the woman is!

But now, since woman is not man’s equal (except in terms of salvation), we need to
guard against thinking that women are lowly, insignificant, inferior creatures.

Not so!

The long history of the woman being trampled on is not biblically founded!

Let every male chauvinist hear this: God said that it was necessary for Adam to have a wife (Gen 2:18). Remember, too, that also Eve was created in God’s image, unlike all other creatures. The woman must be glorified and her place must be exalted.

Second, marriage is “leaving father and mother” (Gen 2:24). Not that children must abandon their parents when they marry, but they must see marriage now as the most important relationship in their life, even above the parent-child relationship. This is amazing! The tie of flesh and blood takes second chair to the tie God makes in marriage. There are two important implications in this. first, if this is true, parents ought to let them go when they marry. More marriage problems occur either because children don’t really leave, or because parents don’t release them.

Second, if this tie is stronger, shouldn’t people be even more horrified at the abandonment of one spouse by another, than the abandonment of a parent of his infant
children?

Ah, how some have become numb to this horror!

Third, marriage is “cleaving” to the wife by the husband (Gen. 2:24). Cleaving means clinging to, holding dearly to. This refers to a covenant commitment by the husband and wife to each other. They are, as it were, glued together. That’s the picture in the Biblical word. This also expresses the permanence of marriage. Jesus emphasized this in the New Testament in answer to the Pharisees’ question on divorce:

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

If a man and woman are not committed to this kind of permanence in marriage, before God they may not marry.

Fourth, marriage is “becoming one flesh” (gen. 2:24). Marriage is even closer than cleaving to the other; it is two becoming one. Jesus reaffirms this in Matt. 19:6, “Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.” This refers to the sexual union but we shouldn’t limit it to that. Husbands and wives become one in their entire nature – their thinking, hopes, sorrows, joys…What a wonderful, good creation is marriage!

Is this what the television teaches?

That God brings men their wives?

That the woman is a helper, perfectly suited for her husband?

That the woman was made in the glorious image of God and ought to be honored for that?

That marriage is leaving parents and cleaving permanently to the wife?

That marriage makes them one flesh?

That sex is just for marriage?

Rather, it teaches just the opposite, leading away from the Biblical foundations. One can hear the Old Testament prophet sing, “Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law” (Ps. 119:136).

God made marriage. God brought Eve to Adam. God performed the first wedding and established it as a permanent institution among men. The reason marriage is corrupted so badly is that this is denied.

Also, any kind of evolutionism necessarily denies this (that God created marriage), if not explicitly, then implicitly. And if marriage is not God-made, but man-made, then man may do with it as he pleases, as is being done almost everywhere today.

Then the standards of right and wrong will be made by the Ann Landers, Harvey Rubins, and Sally Jesse Raphaels. Then anything may be done. But marriage is a creation of God. And because it is, we must obey God’s regulations for marriage: one man for one woman; seX only in marriage; no divorce, except for fornication, and no remarriage unless death dissolves the bond; the man is the head of the woman, husbands loving their wives, wives submitting to their husbands. We will look at
these more closely in the following messages.

To disobey these regulations is to invite disaster.

Shall we say that because we don’t like the ordinance of gravity, we will disobey it…without suffering seriously?

So, too, with the regulations of God in marriage. No one can disregard them without suffering the most disastrous consequences, as we all know so well.

Our only escape from this misery is to look at the Creator of marriage, the Creator of heaven and earth: obedience to Him, following His ways, and finding grace in His Son, Who came to deliver us from all our misery and destruction, yes, in family life too.

By Barry Gritters