Word of Salvation - Vol.48 No.31 - August 2003
Marry Well
Sermon by Rev J De Jongh
Scripture Reading: Genesis 2:18-25
Suggested Hymns: BoW 178:1-3; 218; 281; 493; Rej 342
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Does marriage really mean anything anymore? Does anyone really mean what they say nowadays when they make their vows before friends and family, congregation and God? Or is it all just for show because tradition demands it and because it's romantic and until "circumstances do us part"?
A group of non-Christian girls were once talking about wedding vows. And they went through the different parts of the vows that many of us have made. They were talking about how serious you have to be in what you mean with the vows. And with each phrase they came to the conclusion that you don't really mean it anyway. They didn't take any of it seriously. As far as they were concerned, you have to say your vows because it's the thing to do, but you don't really mean it.
And if that's the general attitude to marriage, then it's no wonder the divorce rate is as high as it is. Marriage becomes just a thing of convenience. Something you stick to while you get out of it what you want but you can give up on it when you don't want to stick to it anymore.
It seems that for lots of people, all the talk about love and commitment - for richer or for poorer, better or worse, in sickness or in health, till death do us part - is just garnish around the edges that you throw away when the party's over. In fact, someone has said that the divorce rate would drop dramatically if men and women simply 'delivered' in marriage what they 'sold' each other coming into it.
And that's good advice. But the advice that comes out of this passage in 1 Corinthians 7 is a bit different. There it says that marriage is for life, and we should marry in the Lord.
1. Marriage is for life
This is not something that's unique to humans. Some animals find partners for life as well. One example you might know about is swans. There's a farmer who has some swans raise their chicks on one of the dams on his farm. Every year in spring, there they are again. They'll have flown off for the winter, but when spring rolls around they're back on his dam again. It's the same pair of swans, year after year. By Christmas they'll have a bunch of chicks following them around on the water. Not too many weeks later the chicks will be learning to fly themselves. And then winter will get closer and the colder weather starts to set in. And one day they'll be gone again. And you won't see them until next spring. But there they'll be again, the same two swans.
Now the plan and pattern that God has given us for marriage is also designed to be for life. It's something that the Corinthians needed to hear when Paul wrote this letter to them. They had started to think celibacy was more important than marriage, to the point that there was even a lot of pressure on married couples to break up their marriages. And there was pressure on the single people to not get married at all.
As well as that, the Jewish understanding of things didn't always have a high regard for life-long marriage either. There was an ongoing debate at the time about the allowance given in Deuteronomy 24 about a certificate of divorce for a woman who was displeasing to her husband. The debate was over what was bad enough to be counted as displeasing. One school of thought said that burning the beans was already enough to call for divorce, or a mole, or even her husband finding someone more appealing.
But Jesus during His ministry had fought against easy divorce. He took people back to the early chapters of Genesis and reminded them about God's original plan, which was, one husband, one wife, for life. In Genesis it says "...a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." It seems that the allowance in Deuteronomy 24 was only made to regulate sinful practices going on in Israel already, in spite of God's original pattern. It gave the divorced woman the possibility of life after divorce. But Jesus in His ministry called people back to the original pattern for marriage that God had given before the fall into sin - one husband, one wife, for life.
And for us, all of this means that we shouldn't see divorce as the easy way out. Marriage is designed for life and that should be our goal as well. The sad fact is that divorce usually proves to be far tougher than either person ever imagined. It usually leads to long and painful settlements, often battled out in the courts. It leaves scars that stay for life, not only on the people getting divorced but also, and maybe even more so, for the children they might have. But, thankfully, God can bring healing even into that sort of situation. Victims of divorce can still have hope because God can give healing to their hurts. But I suspect that no one in this congregation who has gone down that road would recommend it as the easy option to others.
Prevention, of course, is far better than the cure. So what can we do to make sure that our marriage, or maybe the marriage that we're looking forward to, has every chance of lasting the distance? One thing we can do is to prepare ourselves. We can read what God has to say about marriage in the Bible. We can read good books about marriage. We can take marriage counselling, or pre-marriage counselling, or marriage seminars or workshops.
We can talk to people who have made the distance and weathered the storms. We can talk to them about the struggles we might be having. It's not the kind of thing you want to leave until you find that it's too late and your marriage is in trouble. So take the initiative. Do what you can already do now to prevent trouble before it starts. Benefit from the experience of those who have gone before you. And those of us who are married or have a steady relationship can work up the courage to talk to each other about the struggles we're having. We can work at getting over the defensiveness and fear that usually drives us to just sweep it all under the carpet. We can talk about what we could do to deal with the problems that we know about - and then do it. We can pray together about it. We can trust God will produce fruit for our effort.
2. Christians marry Christians
The second main point that comes out is that God would have Christians 'marry in the Lord' - meaning, they should marry Christians.
And that's a bit of a different guideline to the ones you find in Dolly magazine, or Woman's Day, or even Wheels magazine for that matter. In fact what do people generally look for in a partner nowadays? Tom Hanks, in 'Sleepless in Seattle', was told that every woman looks for a guy with a cute backside. And the popular advice to guys isn't any better. Fortunately, as someone has said, we tend to be looking for different things in our partners, or else there would be a lot of lonely people out there.
But a problem that occurs frequently is that too many people are only looking on the outside. They're not looking at what's below the surface. Everything's very superficial as they go into marriage and after a couple of years they find that superficiality isn't enough. It's the deeper things about a person that are going to keep a marriage together or break it apart. Loyalty and commitment - they are the kinds of things that will cement a marriage together. Selfishness and a consumer mentality are the kinds of things that will make any relationship an uphill battle.
And Paul in these verses goes to one of the things that is deepest in a person. It is one's basic direction in life, one's ideology, one's world-view, one's faith. Where are people coming from? What's the basic direction that everything they think, do, and say, springs out of? Is their basic loyalty and commitment to God, the King of the universe, the Creator, the Saviour? Is the person that you're considering as a partner a Christian? Christians should marry Christians! It's already there in the Old Testament. From the time Israel came out of Egypt, God commanded them not to intermarry with people from the idol-worshipping nations around them. Believers should marry believers.
It became an issue again when Israel returned from exile. The prophets Ezra and Nehemiah had to deal with it. Nehemiah says at one point, "I rebuked them ... [and] made them take an oath in God's name and said: 'You're not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons of for yourselves. Wasn't it because of marriages like these that Solomon, king of Israel, sinned? ... Must we hear now that you too are doing all this terrible wickedness and are being unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women?'" And that's the attitude that the teaching on marriage in the New Testament flows out of as well. God's people should marry God's people. Christians should marry Christians.
That still leaves one other question, though. Should Christian young people go out with non-Christians? Should Christian young people have serious relationships with non-Christians that could well lead to talk about marriage? And some people would say that they shouldn't. If you shouldn't marry a non-Christian, why would you want to start a serious relationship with one? Other people would say that they could, with the understanding that it doesn't mean that they have the green light for marriage. The light is on orange. It depends on how things develop. It depends on whether the non-Christian comes to faith during the time that they are going out.
But there is an important question here. Do you have what it takes to cut off a relationship when the non-Christian partner does not come to faith? And I suspect that most people do not have what it takes to make that decision. They may love the Lord, but they cannot bring themselves to living in obedience and only marrying a Christian.
And so you meet couples over the years where only one partner is a Christian. And some of those marriages seem to work. The non-Christian partner even tolerates the beliefs of the Christian partner.
On the other hand many of them don't work especially well either. And when it comes to trying to help some of them, the Christian partner easily acknowledged that they've made a terrible mistake. Life is terribly difficult but now they are trying to make the best of a bad situation.
Yes, you occasionally meet a couple where one partner has become a Christian because the other was strong enough to break things off when they weren't going in the right direction. He thought everything was going along just fine until she broke it off because he wasn't showing any interest in turning to Jesus. That got his attention enough for him to seriously look into what Christianity was all about. And through that very break-up he ended up becoming a Christian. And that opened up the opportunity to resume where they left off and they ended up getting married. The only concern, though, is that we're still probably not as strong in that regard as we'd like to think we are.
And so, for those who are looking for a marriage partner, is one of your main requirements that the other is a committed Christian? Or are you only looking around with the same kinds of guidelines as most other people - only looking at the outside, the superficial, someone who is good looking, someone who is fun?
And are you looking for a marriage partner in the kinds of places where solid Christians hang out? If you hope to marry a committed Christian, looking for a partner in nightclubs and bars is usually a pretty fruitless exercise.
And if you already have a partner who is not a Christian, what are you doing to help them understand what the gospel is all about so that they have every opportunity to turn to Jesus as their Lord and Saviour? Are you explaining to them why you are a Christian? Have you maybe given them a tract or two, or a good book that lays out simply what the gospel is all about? Have you got them to come along to Christian activities, to a Bible study, to church? And are you asking yourself what else you could do to help them understand the gospel so that they have every possibility to receive it for themselves? Are you praying for them?
And for those people who maybe aren't Christians yet, who've started attending here because they're going out with a Christian from this congregation, well we are just happy to have you coming along. We're glad for the opportunity to help you understand why we love Jesus the way we do. We hope and pray that you will come to love Him the same way. But if you don't, we hope that you understand why your partner maybe goes through some of the struggles about your relationship
And it's understandable that they will. There's a children's story about a baby tiger that loses its mother. And so it goes off looking through the jungle for a suitable mother. And it finds an elephant, it finds an antelope, and a monkey, and a bunch of other animals it asks to be its mother. But in every case they say 'no', because they're just too different to the tiger. They know that in the long run things won't work out. Finally the baby finds a tiger and of course she makes the perfect mother.
And marriage is the same. When it comes to the foundation for marriage there needs to be common ground. And especially when it comes to our commitment to God and his Son, Jesus. Those who are committed to God should marry partners who are committed to God. Swans should 'marry' swans. Tigers should 'marry' tigers. And Christians should marry Christians.
Amen.