Marriage is God's Idea

Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

One of my favorite stories has to do with weddings.  Matter of fact I usually tell it at weddings.  It is the proverbially story about a young minister who is doing his first wedding and he is nervous about it because he is thinks he might forget what he is supposed to say so he goes to an older minister and asks for advice.  The older minister said. “Do what I always do, just quote scripture. If you get lost or you forget what you are supposed to say just quote scripture.”  Well sure enough he is in the middle of the wedding, he forgets what he is supposed to say so he quotes scripture and he says, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.”  That one good thing about good stories, you can tell them many times.  But I think it is kind of a pathetic story because so many people today do get married without knowing what they are doing.  Many people who stay married, don’t know what they are doing. 

There was once a direction for a person who was putting together a bicycle at Christmas and it said, ‘Best results if you follow the directions of the maker.’ And it is true of marriage as well.  So for the next six weeks, up until Father’s Day, Buck and I are doing a series on marriage.  Now I realize that everybody here is in a different spot.  Some of you have been married so long you look like each other.  Some of you are newlyweds or relatively newlyweds.  Some of you are all points in between.  Some of you are divorced.  Some of you are separated.  Some of you are thinking about being separated.  Some of you are single.  Some of single because you were married sixty years and your spouse went to be with the Lord.  All kinds of different people, all kinds of different places and I know we are doing a particular subject and we are doing it because I feel that we ought to address everything in church.  But I believe that wherever you are and whatever situation you are in God will speak to you.  Just listen. Listen for what God has to say to you even if it doesn’t quite apply in a particular situation.  But if you are married, particularly, listen to what God has to say about something that He invented, because marriage is God’s idea. 

We read today from a scripture many of us are familiar with, comes from the second chapter of Genesis beginning at verse 19 going through 24.

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. 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 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." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Would you pray with me?

Oh Father we come before you to hear what you would have to say to us.  We pray that Your Spirit would move in our hearts and minds.  And whatever situation we happen to be in may we hear what you have to say us. We pray Lord it would also be a Word that would prepare our hearts for the supper of which we will partake in a few minutes.  We give this time to you Lord.  In Jesus’ name, amen.

Most people do get married.  Last count was about ninety six percent do get married.  But in our country and I think many parts of the world marriage has kind of gotten a bad name.  there is not a lot of hope out there that it will last.  We all start with the ideal and then it becomes an ordeal and then we are looking for the new deal, such as the reputation of marriage.  How do we overcome that?  How do we make our marriages, our relationships, what God intended them to be.  ‘Best results if you follow the directions of the maker.’ What does God have to say to us?  well we are going to discuss that over the next few weeks and today serves kind of as an introduction.  I want to start at the beginning.  The beginning when God presents Eve to Adam.  You know sometimes the translators of the scripture kind of translated in a PG sort of way, when it was really meant to be a little bit racier than that.  Can you imagine Adam, minding his own business, and God presents him with the most beautiful creature he has ever seen without a stitch on, what his reaction probably was.  And the language of the Bible backs it up.  It really is ‘WOW!  WHOO! Look at that!’  I know you females are saying, “That is typical male reaction.”  But it was good.  God created Eve to help Adam, for both to be partners, to be a mutual understanding and love.  It was a good thing.  In fact, when God is having Adam name all the animals, he describes the only bad thing in the whole part of that scripture.  You can imagine the ideal place, its perfect, and yet God says it’s not good.  Now he doesn’t mean its evil or some kind of sin, it’s just not adequate for the man to be alone, or the woman.  Now I want to say that the Bible here is not condemning singleness, that’s not what is happening.  I don’t think the Bible does that but even if we are single it is not good for us to be lonely.  And marriage has many purposes but one is to combat loneliness.  So it was good and yet marriage is tough.  How do we make it better?  What are we to do?  I think we have to begin with the verse we are given here in the Bible.  It’s repeated about five times in the Bible, after the woman is presented to the man a beautiful scripture.  It says, “So it will be that a man will leave his father and mother and be joined with his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”  What is being said there?

Elizabeth Achtemeier one of my favorite theologians who taught at the school I went to wrote a book about marriage.  She said this about this verse.  She says, “When Christians marry, they say in effect, we are going to maintain this union no matter what.  As the marriage vows put it: for better for worse, richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health till death do us part. The Christian promises his or her mate, ‘I will be with you no matter what happens to us and between us.  If you become blind tomorrow, I will be there.  If you achieve no success or status in life, I will be there.  When we argue and become angry, I will work to bring us together.  If our marriage becomes stale and going no where, I will believe that it can work and I will want it to work and I will do my part to make it work.  And when things are wonderful and we are happy, I will rejoice in our life together and will work to keep it going.’”  That is what this verse is saying.  And you know in all my experience, and I admit its limited, I have done many marriages.  I have never met anyone who got into it ever thinking they would be divorced.  It isn’t like the cartoon that Zig Ziglar describes of a man saying, “You know, its odd, but now that I’m actually engaged, I’m starting to feel nervous about getting married!’ And his friend says, “I understand marriage is a huge commitment, after all seven or eight years is a long time!” You know I haven’t really found anybody who really got into it with that attitude, yet in some ways that’s where we are.  

Where do we start?  Well we start with this idea that marriage is a lifetime commitment, that’s what Elizabeth was describing.  It is a lifetime commitment.  And even when things don’t go very well, it still is that.  But there are also some things that we need to leave behind.  And the verse describes one of those, “A man shall leave his father and mother.  A woman shall leave her father and mother.”  There are some things we need to want to leave behind us, and it’s not really talking about geographically, there is a psychological break that needs to be there.  But you know, for many people that is a hard break to make.  For example, even into their forties and fifties, some people are constantly calling up Mama, “Mama, what am I going to do about him, he’s done this to me.” Or calling up Daddy, “Daddy you know, this is what this woman is doing, what do it do?”  It is hard to give up mothering.  I know I am stepping on some toes here and I know I am going on thin ice. I know that this is hard but there needs to be a break.  I’m not saying it’s wrong, but when you go to your parents every weekend or for every vacation and you don’t have any traditions of your own.  Or on the other hand, if you are a parent and your children have gotten married, you need to stop meddling.  I’m talking to myself here.  I’ve got a marriage coming up. And I’m going to know the temptation, I can feel it already, but you have to let them go.  We have to give up, its not that we don’t love our parents or that they don’t love us.  There is nothing wrong with living near by, I would have loved that, we just didn’t have the opportunity. 

There is a story about a man who after a long time realized what his father-in-law was doing when he said this to his daughter.  He said, “Honey, I love you. your mother and I will always love you.  You will always be our daughter.  But when you marry him, you can’t come home. You can not come home.”  The man said, “When my father-in-law said this I didn’t know what he was talking about but after twenty years I am so thankful because when she did not have a place to go it kept us together. It made us work it out.”  Now what’s being said here is not that there are some situations in which you do have to go home, or if there is some abuse or something like that.  We are not talking about that, but in general we leave.

Secondly, we need to leave other people.  You know we are all very much the same.  Whenever we start a new job or begin a new relationship, it is like what we just talked about.  It’s that ideal thing that goes on, “Oh, it’s so wonderful.”  But then after six months to a year reality sets in.  Real life starts and we all have fantasies, “oh maybe it would have been better to take that other job.  Maybe it would have been better to marry so and so.  Gosh, I wish I would have gone with him or her.”  And we all have this tendency to idealize something else as though it would be better.  But we have to leave that behind.  We have to leave our fantasies behind.  We also have to leave some of our friends.  I remember counseling a couple and her main complaint was, “He is always going out with the boys, all his old friends.  He never spends any time at home.”  And the same is true with some of the girls.  I think it’s the Nextel cell phone thing.  She is sitting in a restaurant and she is with a guy she just can’t stand.  He is a real nerd.  And he goes off to the restroom.  She calls up her girlfriends, “What should I do?”  “Tell him your biological clock is running, do what you can to get rid of him.”  Sometimes our friends are the worst, “You should divorce him.” “You should get rid of her.” “You are better than that.”  Some of our friends are not our friends.  It’s that Grass is Greener myth. You know some people just get married to this person and this person and that person and that person.  It’s like a story I read about a woman who went through four marriages. First she married a millionaire, then she married a film producer, then she married a butler, and then she married a funeral director.  Someone had asked her why she had done this.  She said, “I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four to go.”  (a lot of laughter)  You know what the hard part of the sermon was?  It was gleaming out all the material.  There is just so much material.  (more laughter)

The Grass is Greener myth.  When you are over here, the grass is greener over there.  And when you are over there the grass is greener over here.  Frank Freed said, “The grass is not greener on that side of the fence.  And the grass is not greener on this side of the fence.  The grass is greener where you water it.  What you need to do is stop comparing and start cultivating.  Stop comparing your mate to everybody else – ‘if he or she were more like this’.  Stop comparing and start cultivating. Water your own relationship and watch it grow.  Watch it develop.  Watch it expand and become all God wants it to be.”

So we have to leave our parents, and we need to leave some of our friends.  We also have to leave our problems.  And this is the hardest part I think.  A woman once said, “I didn’t realize as I was walking down the isle in my white dress, all the garbage I had tugging behind me.”  Or all of the baggage.  We all have baggage.  All of us have things that were done to us by our parents, by somebody who dumped us along the way, something that happened to us here, or there.  We all have baggage.  We all carry it into our relationship and guess who gets the penalty?  The person who is closest to us.  And I’m not saying it is easy to get rid of baggage sometimes we need to go make sure we find some help.  Someone said that seventy five percent of the couples need some kind of counseling one time or another in their marriage and I’m beginning to think that’s probably true.  We need to work at it.  We need to hear it. 

We need to get rid of resentment.  I’ve told the old illustration of resentment, resentment is like a cow chewing its cud, over and over again, rehashing what has been done to us.  Sometimes we allow people who have been dead for years to hurt us because we bring back memories and rehash them.  We need to deal with our resentments.  We need to deal with that unresolved anger because there are so many people out there who are so angry and they may not even know why.  Something was done in their hearts or in their past and they are taking it out on their spouse. 

We need to deal with our grief.  In the movie Ordinary People the main woman character destroys her family because she won’t give up her grief.  You know that grief is a wonderful thing.  It is a gift of God, but if we keep living in it, it becomes a poison in our hearts.  Sometimes a person looses a family member or even a child and it destroys the marriage. Something happened.

Or guilt.  Ah, guilt. Some people are just guilty, “If my spouse only knew what I had done in the past what would they think of me?”  Jesus forgives us.  The Bible says if we confess our sins he is righteous and just and will forgive us our sins.  There is therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  We have to remind ourselves of these things and know that we are forgiven.  It is all wiped out.  And there is a residual effects that we have to deal with but all of that’s gone.  And not only forgive ourselves to Christ, we have to forgive others.  Now I say it many times, the old story line of the movie called Love Story, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” is the biggest hokum in the world.  Love means saying you’re sorry all the time and then forgiving.  And that’s what we have to do, forgive one another – daily.  I love the story of the woman that had married for years and years and years and they asked her how she had done it.  She said, “When I first got married I made a list of ten things about my husband that were bad and I said, ‘I’m going to forgive these things’.  But the problem is that I have lost the list along the way somewhere and whenever he would do something bad that really made me angry I would say, “Lucky for him that is one of the ten’.” 

So we must leave some things and then we must cleave.  A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined, that’s the old ancient word of cleave, to join with his wife, to join with her husband.  And I’m going to leave it there because that’s part of what we are talking about in the next few weeks, this idea, practically speaking, of how we join with our wives or our husbands.  But I will say, leave you with this, this idea of cleaving to your spouse is a process.  It takes years.  It doesn’t just happen.  It takes work.  Our culture is so enamored with this thing called love.  And we believe that love is something that we can not control, it just happens to you.  You are just walking down the street and just zappo, chango you’re in love.  Now I’m not denying that love is a powerful emotion, it certainly is, but in the end it’s a choice.  And even when the feelings are gone we can still choose to love.  We can still choose to want the best for our mate.  We can still choose to work on our relationship.  We can still choose.  And we can still choose with the help of Jesus Christ.

Another story I love to tell, I’ll leave you with this, is the image of the braid.  Having three girls I learned how to braid hair.  Now they would never let me do it.  But I did learn that it takes three strands.  The image is this:  your marriage will work if it is you, your spouse and the Lord.  The Lord will help you wherever you are.  You may be in terrible straights in your relationship right now but you give it to the Lord and try and He will help you.  it won’t work without that.  Leave and cleave. 

Let us pray.

Father we thank you for marriage.  We know it’s hard like any relationship.  Relationships are messy.  But we ask your help.  Help us affirm marriage and if we are married to help us love our spouse and make them exclusively the focus of our every intention, and to work, and to trust.  Pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.