A Biblical Definition of Marriage

I had posted a transcript of my June 10th sermon on Facebook, and Hansen commented that it was blog material. Since I have ditched Facebook, I suppose this is a good resting place for it.

----------------------------- We're faced with a lot of tumult in the world; we're faced with a lot of decisions to make. There are contrary opinions floating here and there and we often have to make statements because people ask us what do we think about this thing or that thing. It's good to understand exactly what the Scripture has to say about certain things. I'd like to begin reading in the book of Genesis, all the way back in the second chapter. God had created man, He set man in the Garden of Eden, and He gave Adam a task. In the 18th verse:

Gen 2: 18-24 "18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh."

I would also like to read from Matthew, the 19th chapter, where Jesus was faced with a question. Matthew 19, beginning with the 3rd verse:

MT 19:3-9 : "3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?
4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?
8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.
9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. "

Recently, a Federal court made a ruling that parts of the law known as the Defense of Marriage Act were unConstitutional. That aroused a good bit of unhappiness because one of the things the Defense of Marriage Act says is that marriage is defined as the union of one man and one woman. Anybody running for office is faced sooner or later with the question, "Where do you stand with regard to this?" As Christians, we're often expected to say, "We agree with the Defense of Marriage Act." Yet the Scripture tells us something that is slightly different -- it's enough that we have to stop and think about what it's actually saying -- because Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." And when we stop to think about that, we have to stop to think about what it is that God has set up in His regime that is different from the world's.

Peter writes that in the last days, it will be just like in the days of Noah. He says they are going to be marrying and giving in marriage. So we have to think a little bit about this question. What is marriage? That's a big argument that's going on in our society today -- What is marriage? How do you define marriage? Is marriage just the relationship between one man and one woman?

I read a very interesting article, by Dr. R. Albert Mohler -- he's the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary -- writing as a contributing writer to CNN. He said that the question about homosexual marriage is one of the things that he is asked about most frequently. He pointed out what the Scripture has to say about homosexuality, and then he made a statement that caught my attention He said that the church has an opportunity at this point, and that it needs to make sure that it does what's right because it made a mess of the question of divorce.

I thought about that. You see, one of the things that people are upset with Christians about today is that we say marriage is just between one man and one woman. They ask, "What's so wrong about some other kind of arrangement? How can you Christians be so judgmental?" In fact, we find that in all the Scripture, it doesn't talk too much about what marriage is, so much, as it talks about the union between a man and his wife. So in Genesis we see that God declares that the two become one flesh. And we see in Matthew that Jesus repeats that, and He goes right back to that verse in Genesis, and says, "Have ye not read that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they twain shall be one flesh?" For the most part the Christian world looks at that and says, "OK, that means one man and one woman."

However, the Apostle Paul writes something very, very interesting. He says this in the 6th chapter of 1st Corinthians :

"13 Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
14 And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.
15 Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.
16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh."

Throws an interesting light on it, doesn't it? What happens in an adulterous situation? What happens if you have one man and one woman and they have been joined together as one flesh, and one of them steps outside the relationship and becomes joined to another person as one flesh? Is that also a marriage? It would be, according to the Word of God. At that point the world says, "Wait a minute, we can't handle that."

In fact, under the law, people said, "We can't handle this." So Jesus pointed out, "Because of the hardness of your hearts God gave you divorce." But, he says, "It wasn't like that from the beginning. Divorce -- simply the fact that somebody says you are no longer married -- doesn't undo what God did."

The world says, "Wait a minute -- that means that if a man divorces his wife and marries somebody else, he now has two wives!" Yeah, it does. And they are both marriages. And the question becomes, "How do we get around the Word of God? How do we satisfy our consciences so that we can say it's all OK?" Jesus said divorce was permitted because of the hardness of peoples' hearts -- the unwillingness to obey God. What God has joined together, nobody can take apart. And Paul writes in Romans, that under the Law, when a woman is married to a man, the only thing that separates them is death.

At this point someone -- the government -- steps in and says "We're going to define marriage." I suppose they can do all the defining they want, but they can't undo what God said. That creates some other problems, too, doesn't it?

The Apostle Paul in Romans talks about those who have left the intended use of the body; about homosexual relationships. That leaves you wondering exactly what God is looking at in those. Are those marriages in the sense of becoming one flesh? Scripture is really not that clear on it, but the possibility exists. If the mere physical act is enough to trigger the joining as one flesh, would that illuminate the statement in the Law that bestiality creates confusion?

But our problem is that we fail to understand, we fail to admit, we fail to cling to what the Scripture says. God says, "The two become one flesh." And the Apostle Paul says, "You fool around? You go out and have an affair with a harlot, or more than one, and when you do, you become one flesh with that person or persons!"

It doesn't talk about any marriage ceremonies, it doesn't talk about any legal arrangements, it talks about the fact that the two become one flesh. And THAT's Gods standard, His definition.

Brother Froelich wrote a very interesting book, and it ought to be required reading for everyone. We've got it on our website, so if anybody wants to read it, it's there. You see, he had a problem. He had a very big problem, because in Switzerland, in his canton, if you did not belong to the established church, if you did not go to the established church, you couldn't get married.

He met his wife, and they wanted to get married, and the canton said, "No, you don't belong to our church. We won't issue a marriage license for you." So he searched the Scripture, and his book, Matrimony According to the Word of God , is an interesting read because he tells about what he found. Nowhere in the Scripture is there a marriage ceremony! It all comes down to the two becoming one flesh.

So, free in conscience, he and his bride went before his church, and they asked the church's blessing. Then they set up housekeeping, without a marriage license, without a ceremony, without official sanction from the state. And every time his wife bore a child, she was thrown in prison for prostitution. That's what happens when there is no First Amendment.

What is our stand on marriage? Do we go with the world, or do we go with the Word of God? If we go with the Word of God, are we willing to accept the discomfort that comes with accepting what the Word of God says, because Jesus says this, " Whosoever shall put away his wife except it be for fornication and shall marry another committeth adultery, and whosoever marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery."

Now -- is adultery sin? Do we call sin, sin? Do we admit to it? Or do we shovel it under the rug and say, "Well, that was for those people. We don't have to worry about that, because our government says something different."

I don't think we have that liberty if we want to be faithful to God.

So I think the church may need to change its terminology a little bit. We may need to redefine things a little bit, because when the world talks about marriage, it talks about a contractual relationship between people and it talks about legal relationships. You know, in Ohio, we no longer have common-law marriage. We did, up until the 1970's. Common law marriage came out of Anglo-Saxon tradition where two people could simply say, "We're married" and set up housekeeping. Simply because they agreed and said so, the state accepted it. But then the lawyers passed a law, and they said, "No, you can't do that any more, because it produces legal problems. It makes it difficult for the state to determine who owns what property. So, you can't do that any more." And that is the reason why everybody's so interested in defining marriage -- because there is money involved. Not because they want to take the high road, not because they want to take God's definition, but because there is money involved.

So maybe the church needs to sit back and think about this a little while, because as Froelich wrote, matrimony is something that is honorable, just as the Apostle Paul also wrote. And it's something that is good and clean. But it has to be within the constraints of what God says, and there's a difference between that which is blessed by God, and that which people do on their own.

Maybe that term that seems to have fallen out of use -- the idea of Holy Matrimony -- ought to be revived. Not that we would talk about marriage, because as we see from the Scripture, somebody who is promiscuous could be married to an awful lot of people, but it's not HOLY matrimony. It's not God's plan, it's not what He intended. We need to understand that.

Yes, the church has made a big mess of the question of divorce. Because of the hardness of their hearts, people didn't want to look at what God said. They looked to government rather than God, and the government gave them an out and said, "If you want to do it, we'll let you do it."

So people make excuses. The Apostle Paul talks about that too, in Romans -- it's kind of interesting the way he phrases it -- he talks about them excusing and accusing one another -- because they know that the things they do are condemned by God. In chapter 2,

"14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel."

See, all those excuses aren't going to stand up. People make up rules and they make up laws and they define things but if they don't look into God's word, and see what their conduct ought to be, it's all in the vanity of their own minds. They're all going to have to give account of it someday because there will be a judgment. We have to ask ourselves whether we want to be included among those who accuse or excuse base on worldly judgments; based on the darkness of our own minds, the hardness of our own hearts.

Oh, yes, it leaves a lot of problems. What do we do when people sin; how do we handle it? What happens within our own families when people sin? How do we treat those who sin? Scripture has a remedy for that also, and the first place we need to look is how does Jesus treat us when we sin? It is easy to condemn someone for an infraction of the law. Its easy to condemn someone for something that we might say is a really big sin. Do we condemn, or do we intercede?

Scripture tells us that if we offend in one point, we've broken the whole law. We might try to weigh good and evil and we might try to say that this sin is worse than that one, but in God's eyes, the businessman who takes home pencils from the office is just as guilty as the murderer. We don't like that, do we? We don't like that standard of judgment because we'd rather say, "My sin is not as bad as his!" But all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. That is the measuring stick -- the glory of God. When God says that something is, and in this case, He says the two shall be one flesh, then I'd better believe it. We'd better listen to what He has to say.

When the world comes to us and asks, "How do you define marriage?"; we've got it here: the two become one flesh. Throw aside all the little conditions that people might put on it. Throw aside all the things that they might say, like, "It doesn't count unless the state sanctioned it" or, "It doesn't count unless it's done in a church" or, "It doesn't count unless it's between two people who are ... whatever." Throw that all aside. God says, "The two become one flesh." That is HIS definition of marriage. Where do we stand? Do we look at marriage as being just a convenience or do we really take it for what it was intended -- Holy Matrimony? Maybe we need to bring our own thinking in line with God's.