I’ll never forget the first time I preached a series of messages on marriage. I don’t even remember how old I was, but for the longest time, I just felt like it was something that I wasn’t qualified to deal with. I hadn’t been married long enough to deal with it, so it took a while before I got around to doing that. After I preached that series on message, series on marriage, married people were coming up to me, and some divorced people were coming up to me, tears streaming down their faces, all saying the same thing. I wish I had heard this 20 years ago, and every time I talked about it, every time I dealt with the subject, every time I dealt with the issue,
married people and some divorced people would come up to me and say, ‘I wish somebody would have told me those things before I got married.’ So then I decided after that, well maybe, maybe every once in a while when I’m with folks, you know, single adults and people who are on their way there because statistically, the majority of you in this room will be married in a relatively short period. Now, for some of you, you hear that, and you go, ‘I’m scared.’ For others of you, you’re doing all you can right now, not just get up and shout amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord, thank you, Jesus; I’m claiming that one right there. If the brother doesn’t say anything else, I’m all over that one.
Statistically, we know that the majority of you will be married. Within a relatively short period, statistically, we also know that unless you do something differently than it’s being done right now, no more than half of you will stay married. Don’t let that one pass you by statistically; if the statistics in our culture bear out, the majority of the people in this room, under the sound of my voice right now, will be married in a relatively short period. And statistically, if you do things the way we normally do them in our culture, no more than half of those who get married will stay married. That’s why this is important because, in many instances, we don’t even know what we’re aiming for, and it’s kind of hard to hit what you’re not aiming for.
Another reason is my wife, and I got married my sophomore year in college; I just turned 20, and a lot of times people hear that, and they’re like, oh man, I’m just 20 years old; I, and you know, 50 years ago, that was the norm. Fifty years ago, people have been looking at me like, ’20.’ What’s up, man? What are you waiting on? You know again today, the average age is somewhere around 28 for men and a little bit younger than that for women. But we got married my sophomore year in college; I was 20 years old and just turned 20. I met her on January 21st, 1989. We got married six months later, June 30th, 1989. Oh, I knew what I wanted.
Um, had our first baby 10 months later, and we were what you call efficient. Last two generations, my side of the family, my wife’s side of the family, the last two generations of our siblings, our parents, and all of our siblings, our parents and all of their siblings, last two generations. 25 marriages, 22 divorces. So, we walked into that situation realizing that we didn’t know, we didn’t understand, we didn’t have what we needed in order to make it in this life of marriage. If we were going to look at what had come before us. So, we had to have something else. And that’s probably where most of you are most are most of you may not be that scary in your family.
But for most of you, you’re looking at your family, and you’re looking at your siblings, and you’re looking at the people around you, and your friends, and all this stuff, and you’re looking at them, and you’re going, ‘Okay, I want to do everything that they didn’t do. Amen!’ But here’s the problem: we have a standard; we’re just making it up as we go along. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to Talk about what that standard is, and here’s what it’s going to do for you. Two things happen a lot of times when I deal with this subject matter: one is there are people in the audience who quit playing and get married; you can’t say ‘amen’. You ought to say, ‘Ouch.’ Usually, that happens – people in the audience who say, ‘You know what?
We’ve been messing around; you’ve just been playing for a long time. Time has stopped playing; it’s time to get married second thing that happens is that I’m more excited about this: some people break up. Why would I be excited about that? I’ll tell you why the first couple I ever married should Never have been married. I counselled them; I spent two hours with them, and I came away saying, ‘You two probably shouldn’t go through with this.’ They got angry with me. It was my sister-in-law. I had only been married a couple of years to my wife, so I was like, ‘You know what? I’m down this hill right here; I’ll do y’all’s wedding.’ I did their wedding. They lasted two years; they got divorced. Broke my heart.
It broke my heart. I-I mourned. I-I wept when they got divorced, and all of a sudden, I was like, ‘God, I’m sorry. I-I’m-I’m sorry. I wish I could have stopped that before it happened because it should not have happened.’ And there may be some of you in This room, walking straight into a situation like that, but if you don’t have a standard and you don’t understand what marriage is about, you don’t know that. You know that you like the way you feel when you’re around this person. Helps you, and so what we’re gonna do is tonight we’ll look at Genesis 2, and we’ll get a bird’s eye view of what this thing we call marriage is all about.
After that, we’re gonna spend our time in Ephesians 5 and Ephesians 6; um, looking at what the Bible says about the roles of husbands, the roles of wives, and looking at what it says about the family and you know, children and things of that nature. What we do with our children and what our goals ought to be in that regard, we’re just going to look at these things straight out of the scriptures and just let the Bible say what it says. And as we do that, my prayer for you and my challenge to you is that you would take whatever it is that you’re holding on to right now and you would measure it against what the scripture says.
Because if we do that, it’ll completely transform the way we view our relationships; it’ll completely transform, um, you know, the way we think about, you know, marriage in general; it’ll completely transform the way we relate to married people around. We pray for married people around us it’ll completely transform what it is that we think we’re looking for because it’s one thing to know what you like. It’s another thing to know what you need. With that in mind, open your Bibles with me, Genesis Chapter 2. I love Genesis. It’s all the way on the left. I don’t assume anything. Genesis chapter 2, beginning of verse 18, then the Lord God said it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him out of the ground. The Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to man to see what he would call them, and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. Pause right there: how smart do you think Adam had to be to name all those animals? I used to think about that; I mean, how many animals could you sit down and somebody bring them in front of you and say, ‘You decide what they’re going to be called’? I’d run out of stuff, you know. That’s the four-footed crawling thing that’s slightly larger, a four-footed crawling thing, just a thought. The man gave names to the cattle, to the birds of the sky and every beast of the field, but for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him, so the Lord God caused us a deep sleep to fall upon him.
And he slept why so he wouldn’t mess it up, then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place; the Lord God fashioned into a woman, the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. I love that Adam God just made Eve. He has His ribs fastened, so now that what we’re seeing here is that He is the Creator’s fashion. Yes, thank you, Jesus. All right. And the man said this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Eshah because she was taken out of Esh. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Beautiful passage of scripture. I want to lift from this several principles about marriage. The first is that marriage was God’s idea. Marriage was God’s idea. It’s not something that Adam thought up. It wasn’t even something that Adam was aware of. It was God’s idea. God said in verse 18 it is not good for man to be alone. Think about that for a moment. Every day in creation, God says two things. Let there be, and it is good. Every day. Day one, let there be, it is good. Day two, let there be; it is good. Day three, let there be, it is good. Day four, let there be, it is good. Day five, let there be, it is good.
Day six, let there be, it is good. All the way through, two things. Let there be, it is good. The first time he says something is not good is when he looks at the man by himself. It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. It was God’s idea, not man’s idea. And so if marriage is God’s idea, then it’s something that we need to think about God’s way. And it’s something that we need to do in God’s way. It’s not something that we invented. It is something that God ordained. It is the first and the foundational institution that God gave to us. Three institutions he gave to us: marriage and the family, the church and government. The family is foundational to Bythe other two.
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