The Sermon on the Mount-The King’s Mandate: God’s Design for Marriage
Sermon Series: The Life of Jesus: From Creation to the Cradle to the Cross to the Crown
Sermon Title: The Sermon on the Mount-The King’s Mandate: God’s Design for Marriage
Sermon Text: Matthew 5: 31-32
Sermon Date: October 30, 2016
We live in a culture today that wants to redefine things that they don’t have the right to redefine. Morality is one of many and marriage is another. It is not an unimportant issue and hopefully today I will be able to explain to you why God’s original way is the best way for all of humanity.
Jesus speaks in Matthew 19: 4 “He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Jesus says, very clearly, “Marriage is defined by God.” He authored it, He designed it, and therefore He defines it. It’s a huge issue in our culture, by the way. Today’s culture is seeking to redefine what only God has the prerogative to define. The one-flesh union of a man and a woman in wholehearted, mutual, lifelong clinging to one another.
Jay Adams, a well known Christian author and who is called the “father of Christian counseling” say. “If marriage were of human origin, then human beings would have a right to set it aside. But since God instituted marriage, only He has the right to do so. Marriage as an institution (which includes individual marriages, of course) is subject to the rules and regulations set down by God. Individuals may marry, be divorced and be remarried only if, when and how He says they may without sinning. The state has been given the task of keeping orderly records, etc., but it has no right (or competence) to determine the rules for marriage and for divorce; that prerogative is God’s.
With that in mind I want to look at God’s Design for Marriage.
- The God Designed Plan for Marriage
- God’s Trustworthy Math-Two become One Genesis 2:15-25
- God’s Post Fall Decree Genesis 3: 16-19
- The God-ordain role of the man
- Love the wife like Christ loved the church
- Cherish Her – Value her as a priceless gift from God
- Nuture her – Help her grow in her walk with Christ
- The God-ordain role of the women
- Love Him
- Respect Him
- Submit to Him – to align yourself under his protection
- The God Designed Purpose of Marriage
- For Companionship Genesis 3:16-19
- The Husband-Wife relationship with Each Other
- The Husband-Wife relationship with God
- For Procreation
- For the Restraining of Sin
- The God Designed Preeminence of Marriage
Ephesian 5:22-23 Paul refers to the Divine institution of marriage to remind us that God created marriage, from the very beginning, to be a depiction of Christ’s love for His Church.
- The God Declared Pardon for a Failed Marriage.
- God clearly hates divorce Malachi 2:16
And it makes sense. If God created marriage to be the union of a man and a woman, then divorce is fundamentally at odds with His purpose in creation.
- God regulates divorce
- Un-repented adultery Matthew 19
- Abandonment – I Corinthians 7
- God redeems divorce
If you are divorced and re-married for non Biblical reasons I want to remind you that Jesus is always forgiving and He is always faithful. While your initial marriage covenant has been broken rest assure that your saving, relationship covenant is firmly intact.
Amidst pain and hurt, gaze upon the God who picks you up where you are, not where you wish you were, where you thought you’d be, or where you think you should have been. He picks you up daily where you are, and He carries on His covenant of love with you. He will never commit adultery against you and He will never abandon you. No matter what happens in this world, Jesus never forsakes His bride – never. Regardless of whether you have been married once or fifty times, as a follower of Christ, the reality is: You are His bride forever. This is the gospel.