Marriage

Marriage is a complex concept with no such thing as a perfect marriage. Marriages that are too similar often fail because they struggle to resolve disagreements. The importance of marriage was evident during a plebiscite in 2017. The Bible states that humans are created in the image of God and have the ability to create. God created marriage for procreation. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 present different stories about marriage, but the essence of marriage is two becoming one. Successful marriages involve negotiation and the merging of two individuals into one. So I'm going to talk about marriage today, and the concept of marriage is actually surprising. Everyone will have someone in their past that, or a couple, who were the quintessential perfect marriage. Now I had two sets of grandparents, and one set of grandparents were the most... I just loved to go to their place because it was just... Well, firstly, they treated me really nicely, and you could feel the love in the house. It was there like that. Now the other side, not so much. But the irony was, both sets of grandparents in my family were very stable. They were married for very, very, very, very long times, and they stayed together. You see really good marriages, and you think, wow. I don't think there's any such thing as a 100% perfect marriage. In fact, marriages where two people are really, really, really, really similar are one of the highest rates of failure. People don't realize that because... I'm not going to say any people or mention anyone or anything, but if you and your spouse are not... you disagree on lots of things, what you do is you learn to negotiate, right? And again, I'm not going to ask people to put their hands up and see who knows how to negotiate really well, but it's something that you learn to do when you're married. Because marriages by nature are compromised. It is. You've got two people, and I've never seen two people alike, ever. Even identical twins are never identical. So there's this weird fact that marriages that are almost perfect generally fail because when they actually do find the one thing that they disagree about, they have no ability to solve that disagreement. I'm going to talk... I'm going to try and not get political today. We know that... it was in 2017, wasn't it? We had the plebiscite. It's like a vote that you don't have to be involved in if you don't want to, but we're going to make the decision binding anyway. So on the basis of 40% of Australia's population, we made a decision, which is ironic. But the one thing that it did show was that this concept of marriage is so important that it creates debate if you try and change the definition. That was the big lesson out of that, is that... I'm not getting into politics about it, but it was so obvious that it was important because there were people arguing and fighting and there was violence and all sorts of stuff. So it was quite astounding. But I'm just going to take it from the Bible. So I'm going to go right back to the beginning. So let's go to the beginning. You can get your Bibles out and go to Genesis because that's where the end of the beginning is. And we're going to go right from Genesis 1. So we're going to start from the very start of the Bible. And the first part of Genesis is the creation of the natural universe, and it's quite important. And then, down in verse 24... Oh no, actually, before that, you've got all the living things. The physical universe was created first, and then the living universe was created second. And down in verse 26, God said, Let us make man in our own image. If you think about it, we're all different in this room. Have a look at the person next to you, behind you, to the left of you and to the right of you. If we're all created in the image of God, then God must be schizophrenic in the most highest order. It's not talking about your physical image. And it's my contention, and you don't have to agree with me, that when he talks about his image, he's talking about his nature, the nature of God. And if someone asks me, Who's God? I always answer the same way. God is a word that I use to describe the force, the energy, the power, the existence that created the universe. Because that is, by definition, what God is. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Amen, done and dusted, that's it. Now, as I spoke of last Sunday, second meeting, the concept that the universe can exist without there being a cause for that said universe confounds science and reality. It's illogical to believe that you can have anything without first being a cause for it. It's just, there's no sense in that. If you come along and find something, you see a watch on the ground, you pick it up, and you can't just go, Yeah, that probably just turned up by itself with no one making it, and it just, you wouldn't. To have a watch, you've got to have a watchmaker. You know, if you see a pair of shoes. Mickey's got some lovely, shiny patent leather shoes there. Now, if I was to ask Mick, Where did those shoes come from? I know he's not going to say, Oh, I turned up at home one day and there was a pair of shoes on my drawer, on my cupboard. No, he would have gone to a shop, I'm taking it, and he would have bought those pair of shoes and they would have come from a shoe factory and in that shoe factory there was a shoemaker and the shoemaker made the shoes and sold them to the shoe seller who sold them to Mickey and Mickey put them in the shoe. Because there is always a cause for everything. So here we have God. And in the image of God, the Creator, we have been made. And one of the characteristics of humans is they create things. Most commonly, messes, I've learnt. It's true. We are by nature creative people. That is the image of God. See, I don't get up in the morning and go out to my chooks and see them sitting there at a piano trying to work out a tune. Bok, bok, bok, bok. Bok, bok, bok, bok. No, they're not doing that. Because they're not creative creatures. Chickens, they eat, they poop, they lay eggs. Done. That's it. There's nothing much else they do. Whereas we, we like to cook. Mickey yesterday cooked the best sausages I think I've eaten for a very, very, very long time. If you didn't go over to Carragara Island yesterday and have your sausage sizzle, it wasn't like a sausage sizzle that you get at Bunnings. It was gourmet, gourmet sausage sizzle. It was beautiful. Yeah, we're creative. In the image of God, where did we get up to, 27? In the image of God, created he him, male and female, created he them. Oh, we've got to tear that out of the Bible. We can't say that anymore. And God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it. And he said, I'll give you dominance over everything. You're in charge now. And we've been put in... Mankind has been put in charge of the earth. We're responsible for it. And as I said before, our greatest creative ability is that to be able to create a mess. And wouldn't you say the world is starting to be a bit of a mess? Oh, actually, I just want to make a point here. I wish I did have... I have one picture. That's the only thing I have for this PowerPoint. And it's a picture of a female gamete, which is an egg, and a male gamete, which is a sperm. And a female egg is about 10 million times bigger than a sperm. And this go-forth-and-multiply thing happens because this tiny little wiggly-looking male thing runs into this big, huge female thing. And the two become one. And then you get a baby. That's how it happens. And it just so happens, in the planet today, there are three sorts of people. Or maybe four, but really three. There are people who can produce egg cells. There are people who can produce sperm cells. And then there are people who can't do either. And that's it. There ain't nothing else. And that's just how life is. And you can see in Genesis 1 that God invented marriage so that you can have children. This go-forth-and-multiply. He wasn't talking algebra when he said that. When God said go-forth-and-multiply, it wasn't, you know, 4 times 7 is 29, 3 times 6 is 12. I've been learning off my kids at school. When he said go-forth-and-multiply, he meant to have babies. And that was the whole purpose of marriage. Now, it's quite interesting because Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are very different stories. And if we go to Genesis 2, in verse 7, And the Lord formed man out of the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. But if you go down to verse 22, it says, And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Genesis 1 is a collective promise to mankind as a whole. Whereas Genesis 2 is a promise made to two people, Adam and Eve. And they're actually quite different. They're different in the way it happens and they're different in the way it sets out and they're different in the outcomes. Two very different stories, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. But for our lesson today, marriage is two becoming one flesh. And that is the essence of marriage. It also is partly the reason for the conflict. If two people, everyone's got, like everyone drives a different car. So if you've got one person who likes four wheel drives and another person who likes sports cars, right? If they get together and say, oh, we only need one car, what are we going to get? How are you going to solve that problem? He wants a sports car, she wants a, no, the other way around. He wants a four wheel drive, she wants a sports car. Or maybe it is the other way. He wants a sports car, she wants a four wheel drive. We'll do it both ways today. How are you going to decide what car that they're going to get? Well, you're just going to have to negotiate it, aren't they? They're going to negotiate. They're going to have to negotiate. And that's the essence of marriage. Two become one. And if you've ever seen a great marriage, you'll see that they almost drift to being the same person in the way that they, you'll see them always together. Oh, I've got some relatives who are just like that. You never see them apart. And they always do everything together. And you think, wow, that's amazing. So even outside the church, the principle still holds. You see it. God put it in his creation. Fidelity is so precious. And everyone knows it. It's built into our DNA. It's actually built into our DNA, that thing. When a boy falls for a girl, the part of the brain that actually really assesses things just disappears. And he's just, wow, she's beautiful. Wow, she's amazing. And the girl goes the other way, too. She's, oh, he just says such amazing things. And I think that's because if we weren't, if that part of the brain wasn't switched off, no one would get married, would they? Like, who'd marry me, seriously? Think about it. It's true. No one ever did. No one's ever been through that experience. I remember when I was 16, I fell for this girl. I was, oh, that was me. I was totally lost. She could have asked me to do anything. And I would have gone, yeah, you're beautiful. That's the way I was. It's a true story. And it does happen. People get this thing, and it's genetic, it's hormonal, it just happens. Love's beautiful, isn't it? But marriage, two become one. That's the secret. Two become one. Two become one, and they become together. That is the intention. To answer the question, if you go back to verse 18, why is this all so? And the Lord God said, it is not good that a man should be alone. And I know that. If you spend too much time by yourself in the shed, you create some really crazy stuff. God said, I shouldn't be left alone. And it's a good thing for people to get married. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with getting married, even though it is a good thing. We've done Old Testament now. Let's go to the New Testament and what Jesus said. So let's go to Matthew 19. So head there, let's head there, because you'll see that Jesus is on the page, completely on the page with God. Matter of fact, as you read through here, you read. And this story comes when, in verse 3 of Matthew 19, it says, and a Pharisee also came to him, tempting him. So the Pharisee is trying to get at Jesus. He's going, yeah, I'm going to fix him up. And he comes up to him and says, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? Seriously, if she burns the toast in the morning, that's it. She's gone. My green socks weren't washed yesterday. That's it. Can you divorce your wife for anything? That was the amazing thing. Because for those who are into Bible history, there were two rabbis at the time having this big debate. One was called Shammi and the other one, I forget what it was. But this was actually a topical thing at the time. There were two rabbis and one of them had one point of view and another rabbi had another point of view. And one had a strict interpretation and the other one was laissez-faire. And there was this big debate happening. And that's why this Pharisee goes to Jesus, because the Pharisees were... No, the Sadducees were strict, weren't they? The Pharisees were the laissez-faire ones and the Sadducees were the, yeah, come on, we've got to get this right and make rules. And it's like I said a few months ago that people tend to err on the side of justice or on the side of mercy. They're all, oh, we've got to do what's kind or we've got to do what's good, and that's where the two sides are. And Jesus, right in the middle, says... And he answers and said, Have you not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? Oops, sorry, I've got to rip that out again. That's Genesis 1. And then he quotes Genesis 2. For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and he shall cleave to his wife and the twain shall be one flesh. So Jesus quotes exactly what I've just read and it's right from the very beginning of the Bible. So I'm telling you, God has great store in the importance of marriage. Marriage is the most important relationship in God's list. And you've got to look at me and say, no, I don't think that's right. Okay, I'm going to expound my theory. So here we see Jesus just quotes exactly what I've quoted. He says it. He says, you know, you become one. Cleaving's an interesting term. Cleave is the only word in the English language that can have totally opposite meanings. So I can get an axe and I can cleave a piece of wood into two pieces. So you can split it. So you can cleave things apart, but then you can cleave things together because that's what he says. And you shall cleave unto. So you can cleave something apart. So you can get something that is one and you can cleave it apart into two pieces or you can get two pieces and you can cleave it back together. So we've got people in the assembly who weld. They're cleaving the steel together with a weld. You can get glue and you can glue things together. I'm cleaving my boat together with epoxy and fiberglass and carbon fiber. It's amazing when you cleave things together they become one. Hopefully it won't become two at any time. That's my hope. I want my boat to be perfectly married together. Amen. And that's how people should have their attitude of marriage to a partner. The two should always come together and stay together. Now any person who's seen the results of a cleaved marriage, so a cleaved apart marriage, I've seen it in my family, it's never pleasant. Never pleasant. And the people who do it are always damaged. And the reason why God hates divorce, it actually says that. The words are God hates divorce. It's in the Bible. Find it. And the reason he hates it is it hurts people. And God loves people. He doesn't want to see people hurt. He doesn't want to see people hurt. Let's move on. I'm going to go to Jeremiah now. So we're going to head to Jeremiah. And I'm going to start... Anyone who wants to know how you behave in a marriage, it's simple. Go and get the... I don't know if Huey's got them all set up yet. You know the talks, The Fruit of the Spirit? I did a whole series of talks. Get it, listen to it, and do it. If you do that, you'll have a great marriage. Because it's love your wife. Be joyful with them. Be peaceful with them. And wives to husbands too. Love, joy, peace, long suffering. What did I say? Very slow to anger. Gentle, kind, faith. Being faithful to one another. To be meek. Not to think yourself more than you ought. But in honour, preferring one another. In faith, which is the next one. Be faithful to each other. And be temperate. No one wants someone who's up and down all the time. Walk in the Spirit and you'll be a great partner for your spouse, whoever they are. Today's not about how to do marriage properly. Let's keep moving. Here we are. Now, Jeremiah 31. Now, it's quite interesting. In verse 22 it says, How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? And it talks about Israel and Judah. And then it goes to... Take verse 29. In those days they shall say no more. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. What that means is that Israel came to a situation where anything God said irritated them. And then it says, And it shall come to pass that like I have watched over them to pluck up and to break down and to throw down and to destroy and to afflict, so will I watch over them to build and to plant, saith the Lord. The whole story of Jeremiah is, I am sick of Israel. And then it says these words, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. This is verse 31. And it says, I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. And then it goes on and says, Not according to the covenant that I have made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant they break, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord. That's an amazing statement. God was saying, I chose Israel to be my bride, and though I was like a husband to her. That business about leaving Egypt and passing through the Red Sea and going to that, was actually a wedding service. God was wedding himself to Israel. And it's interesting, because marriage is a covenant, not a contract. A contract is, I will do this, and you will do that. And if you don't do your side of the contract, you have broken the contract, and I don't have to, then the contract's broken, and that's it. It's a tit-for-tat sort of thing. Tit-for-tat or whatever they call it. I do one thing, you do another thing. And it's a contract. And that's not what marriage is. Marriage is a covenant. And covenants are very, very, very, very different. A covenant is, I will do this, no matter what you do. And it's on both sides. And if you listen to marriage vows, that's what it says. Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness, and in summed up love, richer and poorer, you know. What they're saying is, it doesn't matter what circumstances, I agree to keep my side of the bargain. It's not a contract. Now, the covenant between Israel and God, God never broke it. Ever. Once. He was always faithful to Israel. Israel was unfaithful to God. And now, God says, I am going to make a new covenant. It says, but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, shall the Lord, it says, sayeth the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God and they shall be my people and they shall not, they shall teach no more every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest. And it says, sayeth the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. So there's this new covenant. It's a new covenant that we live in today. We live in a new covenant. The Old Testament covenant was broken, not by God, by Israel. And God says, okay, I'm going to make a new covenant with Israel. And this covenant is, I'm not going to write the laws on rock, right, on two tablets of stone. He says, I am going to write them on the fleshy tablets of your heart. And he says very specifically, by the Spirit of God I will write them. The first set of tablets that took down, the ones he broke, God wrote the laws on the stone himself. He wrote them on there. And Moses didn't put them, but the second set of, so Moses had to go, when Moses got down there and saw the sin and the breaking of the covenant, he threw them on the ground and then broken. So he had to go back up there and he had to carve it on himself. Because they'd broken the covenant already. So that's, that's in, righto. So let's go again to the New Testament. In Ephesians 5, if you go down, oh actually, no, no, you can go earlier. Starts in verse 21, submitting ourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives, submit yourselves to your husband. Oh, I better rip that out. It's not suitable these days. Husband's the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. And he is the saviour of the body. Wow. Verse 25, husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved, also loved the church. And there's this parallel, Jesus Christ and the church, husband and wives. Wow, that's a great parable. Parallel rather. So ought men to love their wives as their own body. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. And that's true, because what did God say in the beginning? To become one flesh. If you love your wife, then you love yourself, because you are one flesh. And what does it say about a man, a man that does not look after, what does the Bible say about a man who does not look after his wife and his children? Worse than an infidel. You better not be neglecting your wives, you people out there, you men. It says so. It says that. If you don't look after your wife and your children, you're worse than an infidel. And it goes on, where I want to read, it's actually down in verse 31. Here it goes again. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. God says it, Jesus says it, Paul says it, I'd be saying it too. Isn't that true? It says so. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. And this is where I come to my whole point. New Testament salvation is a marriage under the definition of what marriage is. What did God define? It just says it. Marriage is two become one. Jesus Christ and his church become one. It's a marriage. It is a marriage. That's what it is. John 17. So we'll go to the Gospel of John, verse 17. This is the prayer, for those who don't know, Jesus on his last day on earth says a prayer, and it goes for a whole chapter. It's a single prayer, and it goes for a whole chapter. And if you ever want to know how to pray, read John 17. It says, These words spake Jesus and lifted his eyes up into heaven. Father, the hour is come. Glorify thy son, and thy son also may glorify thee. And this is eternal life in verse 3, that they might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. And it continues on. It's a great prayer. It's an amazing prayer. In verse 20 it says, Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word. So Jesus not only prays for his disciples, he says, Oh, look after the disciples, and you read it. It's a great prayer. But then he says, Not only for my disciples who are here with me, he says, but everyone that hears what they preach. Amen, that's you. And this is what Jesus prayed for you, he said. And he says in verse 21, That they all may be one as thou, Father, art with me and I with thee, and they also may be one in us that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them that they may be one even as we are one. We're all one in the spirit, amen? That's the way it is. That's the way it is. See, salvation is a marriage. It's a marriage between God and mankind. God wants to be one with all of his creation. That's what he wants. Remember, marriage is two becoming one. Isn't that what happened to us? Like, let's go to baptism. I can read the scriptures, but I'm just going to tell you. There are two baptisms spoken of in the Bible, but they're one. One of the baptisms is your covenant to God, and the other baptism is God's covenant to you. What a baptism is you saying to God, I'm going to be faithful to you for the rest of my life. And God's baptism to you, his side of the covenant is, and I will give you the Holy Spirit, and it will never leave you. And that is the marriage. It's a covenant. That's the new covenant, is it not? You know, when you get baptized, it says that. You go to Acts 2, 38, read it. It says it there. It flat out says it. You do this, I will do that. And even if you're unfaithful, I will never take your Holy Spirit from you. It will always be there for you to turn to if ever you need. It's there, that's it. That's God's covenant. I just want to finish off. God is love. That's what God is. At one stage, God was there. And he went, I'm going to create the whole of creation. And it's going to be an expression of my love. And the creation was faithful. As I said before, go to any rainforest, go to any coral reef, go to any desert, go to any, anywhere, anywhere, before man got there. And you will see God and his covenant with creation. God created it, and the creation obeys God. That's a marriage. And it's beautiful. Like we went, yesterday, we went to the island. And we're sitting there on the beach and thinking, God did a great job at this place. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And then God made a covenant, a marriage, with the whole of humanity. And he said, go forth and multiply. I give you authority to dominate the earth. Please look after my creation for me. I think we've done a pretty bad job of it. Seriously. I don't think we've done a good job of looking after God's creation. We've mucked it up. And then he chooses Israel and says, Israel, I am going to love you unconditionally. And they were unfaithful. And now God said, well, I'm going to have a new covenant. We live in the new covenant age and we have a covenant. We're going to remember the covenant. That's what communion is about. The new covenant. Doesn't he say that? The new covenant in my blood. This cup that you drink is the new covenant in my blood. It's a new agreement. It's a new relationship. And so he makes a covenant with the church. God will be faithful to the church. Amen. But he also makes a covenant with you. God wants to be married to you. He wants you and him. That's what we just read here in John. He wants you and him to be one. As Jesus and God are one, it says, so we should be one with God. Amen. Can you see why God treasures marriage so much? That's the thing I said before. You know, I said it's the most important thing to God because it is. Because salvation is the ultimate form of marriage with God. We become one with God. And that's the most amazing thing. So, and that's my encouragement for this young couple. If you can be one, and if you, if you can be faithful to one another as God is faithful to his creation, as God is faithful to his nation, as God is faithful to his church, so as God is faithful to you as an individual, then you'll have a great marriage. Amen.