THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR"Words to Those Who Marry"Rev. Carl Haak(e-mail: Rev. Carl Haak) |
Dear
radio friends,
In our day the marriage covenant
could almost be classified as an endangered species.
Each decade divorce is easier to come by in many states. And most of us, perhaps in our own immediate
families, have known of someone involved in a divorce/remarriage situation. Our hearts grieve.
Truly it is important that the
church speak very clearly on what the Bible has to say about marriage. The teaching of the Word of God on this issue must
be faithfully presented so that young people will be careful in choosing a mate, and so
that married couples will strive, by the grace of God, to maintain their marriage and to
preserve it the way God intended.
Divorces in Jesus’ day
could also very easily be had. You remember
that the Pharisees, in Matthew 19, came to Jesus and asked Him His opinion on the question
of divorce and remarriage. Jesus answered
them by going back to the beginning — to the book of Genesis — and quoting from
Genesis 2:24: And for this cause “shall
a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Those were the words that God spoke concerning the
very first marriage — of Adam and Eve. Those
words express God’s standard for marriage. That
is God’s original plan. And you will
note in those words that there was no mention and no room made for the ending of that
marriage except, as Jesus adds, death. For
the Lord also said to the Pharisees in Matthew 19, “What therefore God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder.”
Yet, today, more and more
marriages are ending in divorce. What has
happened? Has God’s standard for
marriage changed? No. The primary reason for the change is that the
church has let down the standard of the Word of God concerning marriage. We have tried to make the Bible relevant to our
day. That is always a mistake. We must not seek to make our day the standard for
God’s Word; but we must seek to make our day measure up to the standards of
God’s Word. Very often the church
becomes involved in the difficulties of divorce and remarriage through her evangelism. The Lord leads us into some very difficult and
heartrending situations. Very often the
results are that churches call for conferences, discussions, and studies on the subject,
trying to see if there is a way to interpret the Scriptures so that there are some
loopholes that would somehow allow for divorce and remarriage of divorced persons.
Yet the Word of God is clear. The Word of God teaches very plainly that marriage
is for life, that marriage is one man and one woman united by the hand of God for life,
and that God alone ends the marriage in death. This
is the plain teaching of the Word of God for all who will have ears to hear.
This teaching must be, in the
love of God, faithfully maintained in the church of Jesus Christ. It must be maintained for the good of young people
and for those who are about to marry. And it
must be maintained for those who are in marriage.
This is what God says: “Marriage
is My bond in which I unite you for life.”
We must understand, then, that
the very hand of God almighty makes a marriage. Marriage
is an institution of God. Whether it is
performed by the state or in the church, by a justice of the peace or a minister, the fact
is that God is God. He is the creator. And marriage, according to Genesis 1 and 2, is the
institution that He has made for the man and for the woman — for one man and one
woman united as one flesh. Therefore, when we
are married, we are in God’s institution. We
are before God’s standards and we stand before God.
God tells us in His Word that He
has a purpose in marriage. The purpose that
He has for our marriages is not, first of all, our happiness. That does not mean that God will not make us happy
in marriage. He will. But that means that our marriage serves a higher
purpose than just our own happiness. Rather,
the Bible teaches that the marriage of every believer is a picture, a picture of
God’s marriage or covenant with His people in the blood of Jesus Christ. To represent the glorious truth that God has taken
to Himself a church, a bride, in the blood of Jesus Christ, and that God has bound Himself
to the church in an eternal bond of faithfulness, love, and mercy God has instituted
marriage. Therefore, we must make God the
goal of our marriage. And in making God the
goal of our marriage, we will be blessed. In
no other way will we be blessed as His children. We
must make our marriage, by faith in Jesus Christ, to be a picture of God and His church. Hold that before your eyes every day.
There is a passage that is often
quoted or used in marriage situations. That
passage is Ruth 1:16. The words of Ruth: “And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee,
or to return from following after thee: for
whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my
God.” As I said, that passage is often
used at marriages, Christian marriages. It
teaches us that the living God must be the glue, must be the union, of our marriage.
You remember the setting. It was a crucial moment in Ruth’s life. She was standing at a crossroad, at a decision
which she had to make that would affect every day of her life after that. Naomi, her mother-in-law who was an Israelite,
was leaving the land of Moab where Ruth was born and raised. Naomi was leaving to return to her own homeland of
Israel. Foolishly she and her husband and two
sons had left the land of Israel during the time of a famine. They had governed their life by their own eyes and
not by faith. Now her husband and two sons
had died. And she returns to the place in
which, God had said, His people must wait upon Him — the land of Canaan. She had two daughters-in-law: Orpah and Ruth.
These daughters-in-law express the desire to return with her to the land of Canaan. But Naomi, if you read the passage, shoos them
away, tells them to go back. Go back to your
homes, she says. I have no more sons for you. Go back to your people. Orpah kisses her mother-in-law and goes back to
her people. But we read that Ruth clave unto
Naomi. She would not let her go, so that
Naomi speaks even more sharply: Go back,
Ruth, don’t follow me, go back!
It was then that Ruth responded,
“Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou
lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my
people, and thy God my God.” That was a
decisive moment. Ruth could have had the best
that the world had to offer in Moab. She
could have had a husband (she was a beautiful woman, we gather); she could have had ease
and things and children. But she will not go
back because she was united to Naomi spiritually.
Those words tell us something
about the marriage covenant of a man and a woman. It
tells us, first of all, that this marriage covenant must be based upon a unity in one
faith. Naomi heard Ruth say, “Thy God,
my God.” Marriage must be built upon the
same faith in Jesus Christ, in the God of the Scriptures.
He is the God of salvation. He is the
Creator. He is the Sovereign. He is the glorious God. He is the only God.
The goal, then, of your marriage is God. The
goal of your marriage must be to know God better in the infallible Scriptures and to walk
with Him and to yield obedience to Him. The
most important thing for the health of your marriage is your personal walk with God.
Picture with me a triangle, one
point being up and the two other points at the bottom.
How do those two points at the bottom become closer?
They become closer when they travel up to the point at the top. So, in your own personal walk with God, when two
strive to be faithful to God, they will draw closer together with a love that the earth
cannot comprehend. The goal of your marriage,
you see, is not yourself. Do not marry him
thinking of all the things he will now be to you and everything that he can give to you. Do not have your focus, first of all, upon the
other person. Before you get married you had
better have both eyes open. You had better
take a good look. You had better take a good
look at his father and how he treats his mother. And
you had better take a good look at her mother and how she behaves towards her father. So, have your eyes open. But after you get married you should close at
least one eye and do not focus on the other person. You
must focus on God. Marriage must be a unity
of faith in God.
But, still more, marriage must
be a unity with God’s people. Ruth said,
“Thy people shall be my people.” It
is more than just the fact that you will marry into each other’s family. You will do that.
But your marriage must stand in the unity of God’s people on the earth, in the
church of Jesus Christ. Membership in a
faithful church is crucial for your marriage. You
must be found in the church where His Word is honored and His truth is embraced. You must make the church the center of your life. On the Lord’s day, on Sunday, you and your
husband/wife must be found there in the church twice, feeding on the Word of God. I am not going to elaborate on why this is so
important. But mark my words – no, mark
God’s Word – commitment to the church and the fellowship, truth, and worship of
the church is the glue and the strength of a Christian marriage.
Still more, marriage must be a
unity of life. Ruth says, “Whither thou
goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge.”
When you marry a man, then you pledge to him, before God, that your life and all
that comes into your life will be under his control and direction. Did you hear that, men? That woman, your wife, pledged to you before God
that whatever her life will be and all that comes into it, for good or bad, she places
under your direction. That ought to make you
sit up and think of what you are doing and how you are leading your wife. That is what she pledged. That is what God entrusted to your care — her
life!
And wives, when a man marries
you, then he gives to you his name. That is
very close to a man. That represents his rest
and his peace. His name — that is a
sacred trust, too.
Still more, marriage must be a
unity till death. For Ruth said, “Where
thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the
Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught
but death part thee and me.” Only death
separates the marriage. Only God parts in
death. What God hath joined together, let not
man put asunder. Those were the words of
Jesus. Those words are plain. You may not divorce. And you may not remarry. Yes, I know that Jesus taught that if one of the
married partners falls into impenitent fornication and continues in that sin, then the
spouse has the right to put that person away. But
they do not have the right to remarry. God
has made this very plain. Very plain for the
littlest child to understand. When something
is so important, it has to be plain. And God
has made it plain. Listen. Marriage is for life — one man, one woman,
till death. Now, no matter how much this word
of God is rejected, no matter how much everything else is defended that rejects this
truth, no matter how much remarriage and divorce for whatever reason is advocated,
God’s word is plain: Marriage is for
life. Why?
For some cruel reason? No! It is for life because marriage is a picture of
something faithful, something unending. It is
the picture of God and His church. It is the
picture of the love of God. That is why
marriage is for life.
If we understand those things,
then we need to live in marriage in a holy way. Therefore
we must, in the words of Colossians 3, put on as holy and beloved, bowels of mercy. We must put on kindness and charity one towards
the other. We must put on love, which is the
bond of perfection (Col. 3). We must, then,
put on the love of God. God’s love
— well, we could go on and on about God’s love!
But this about God’s love is absolutely true:
God’s love is unbreakable, compassionate, and gracious. We are to love each other even as God loves the
church, even as Christ has loved us. That
means that our love will be sacrificial in marriage.
How did Christ love the church? For
the answer to that, I want you to go with me to Calvary and to Golgotha, to the hill of
the skull. He was nailed to a cross for our
sins. He gave Himself for us. He gave Himself unto the reproach of our hell. For whom? For
sinners, given to Him of the Father’s grace, for those who have no merit, for those
who are not lovable and not lovely and not good. That
is how Christ has loved us. He sacrificed for
unworthy sinners.
That means that you must be
filled with “bowels,” with feelings, with spiritual emotions of kindness,
humbleness of mind, meekness, and longsuffering. Do
not talk about Christ dying for you on the cross if you are not willing to love your
wife/husband with a sacrificial love that puts the other person first.
Our love, then, for each other
will be a forgiving love. We will forgive one
another even as God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven us. That means that the actions of the other person in
marriage must not determine what you will do. Your
actions must be based upon what Christ calls you to do.
Your actions must be based upon and motivated by what Christ has done for you. Your response must not be determined by what he
did, or what she failed to do. But your
response must be based upon what Christ did for you and what Christ wants you to do, that
is, forgive, be kind and forgiving.
If we are to live, then, in
marriage, the word of Christ must dwell in us richly with all wisdom, teaching and
admonishing one another. The Word of God must
be maintained. God is going to maintain His
own Word. It is not as if we are the ones who
hold up God’s Word. We are given the
privilege (and we must be faithful to this privilege) to tell what God’s Word says. But we must do so because we are convicted that
the truths of God’s Word are the answers, are the way to peace and happiness
and to the glory of God. For your marriage,
that means that the Bible must be central in your life.
You must read it together. You must
read it in a loving fashion. You must read it
so that it thrills your hearts. Read it
richly — do not be a pauper. Do not give
it just a few, fleeting moments now and then. But
be rich in the Word of God. Do not worry so
much about the earthly things — about how much time you have for entertainment, how
much time you give to get this and that. Give
yourself, as a husband and wife, from day one, to the Word of God. Make God your goal!
When you get married, by
God’s grace, the love of your parents will go with you. When you get married, by God’s grace, the
love of brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ will be with you. But all of this will not be enough. It will not be enough because what has happened in
marriage of itself is that two sinners have been united.
And that is a situation for trouble. The
love and the prayers of others are not enough, as important as those things may be. They are important but not enough. But God is enough.
His Word is enough. Walk with Him. Make Him your goal, and you will be blessed in
your marriage.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank Thee for Thy
Word and we pray for its blessing today upon our needy hearts. Amen.