THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR"The Blessings of
a Godly Marriage (1)"
Rev. Carl Haak(e-mail: Rev. Carl Haak) |
Dear radio friends,
It is not uncommon for husbands and wives to have pet names for each other —
what are called terms of endearment, private and exclusive names of love: Honey, Punkin, or whatever one that you have in
your marriage. So also God, for His bride the
church. Proof?
Read the book of the Song of Solomon. There
God speaks of His love for and His delight in His beloved people, His church, in terms
that sometimes make us blush. “My love,
my dove, my undefiled.” It is almost
like when your children see you as a husband and wife hugging and being silly and
smooching and they blush. And they say,
“Stop! Don’t do that.” So also God has tender and precious names
expressing His love for His bride the church. He
has names of endearment for us as He sees us in the righteousness of His Son Jesus Christ.
For instance,
Isaiah 62
— where God calls us Hephzibah, which means, My
delight is in her. We read in verse 4,
“Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed
Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah,
and thy land Beulah: for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be
married.” There God says He will take
away our rightful name (Forsaken) and call us by a new name, which He would choose
(Hephzibah). Why? For the Lord delighteth in thee. God delights in His church, He loves her.
Psalm 149:4,
“For the Lord taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation.”
Isaiah 43:4,
“Since thou wast precious in my
sight, … and I have loved thee.” In
His love for us, God intends that we be blest and that we know that we are His special
precious children in the blood of Jesus Christ, chosen from an eternal, gracious love and
saved in the precious blood of His own Son. God
has determined that you and I, as His children, might know His love and His grace and His
faithfulness, know the tenderness of His love to us.
One way in which He conveys the blessing and the tenderness of His love to us His
children is through a godly marriage. Marriage
is intended by God to be a picture of His bond to us His church and also, then, to be a
picture of the blessings that come to us in the love of God.
Do you experience that blessing of the love of God in your marriage — that
precious, faithful, dear, and enduring love of God? If
you do, you thank God, do you not? If you do
not, why not? Is yours what could be called a
happy marriage, or have you today secretly, and at times even openly, given up and
resigned yourself to a life of disappointment in each other? Have you said to yourself and have you concluded
that your marriage was a mistake? Do you say,
“I can’t change her (I can’t change him)”? And do you find in yourself resentment,
frustration, distance, inability to communicate? Do
you feel trapped in your own marriage?
The Word of God teaches us that God intends the marriages of His children to be a
means from His hand to teach them and to convey to their hearts something of the truth
that God takes pleasure, that God delights in them. Therefore,
He calls marriage a blessed state in which He promises to His children, in the way of
obedience, fullness of joy. Marriage is
blessed of God.
Because marriage is an institution that God has made Himself, and it is therefore
God’s will that a man and a woman live together in the bond of marriage, marriage has
great potential to bring His blessings. But
marriage also, if we live in it in a sinful way, has great potential to bring us woe. The tremendous power and the influence of
marriage in our own lives is seen in that perhaps nothing can bring such bitterness and
such woe as when a marriage goes sour and goes astray.
It is not really the experiences that you have outside of the home that hurt so
deeply. But it can be marital strife that
leaves the deepest scars. It is the home
cross — perhaps rebellious children, or separation, breakdown, and distance in the
marriage, unfaithfulness. Oh, what heavy
crosses. Oh, what heavy woe this brings upon
the hearts of God’s dear children. In
marriage some of the deepest woes that can be experienced in this life are brought to us
because our sinful flesh has the potential to destroy.
Sometimes a man or woman might even say, “If I had known that this would
happen, I would have run away the day before I got married instead of walking to the altar
of marriage.”
That is looking at it not from reality, but from the point of view of our own sins. We must look at it from the point of view of the
grace of God. Looking at it through the Word
of God and through the cross of Jesus Christ, and when, by faith, four believing hands lay
hold of God’s Word, then marriage has great potential in the hands of God to bring
the greatest blessings, blessings from the storehouse of Jesus Christ.
We must understand, however, that the blessings that God promises in marriage are
not cotton candy blessings. They are not
those blessings that look so good but are so soon gone.
They are not instant gratification blessings.
They are deep blessings. They are
abiding blessings. They are blessings that
God forges. He works slowly, but He works
them. He blesses you in marriage more than
you realize, perhaps, and more than you could ever know.
If you are to have a blessed marriage, your marriage must be built upon some
presuppositions or some basic principles that we are to believe from the Scriptures and
believe them with all our hearts. Especially
today it is important to hold fast to these principles.
Let me mention just a few of them today. What
are the principles undergirding a blessed marriage?
What are the truths, then, that husband and wife must firmly believe from
God’s Word if they are to experience the blessing of God in their marriage?
First of all, simply this. We are to
understand and firmly believe in our hearts that marriage is a lifelong bond created by
God. Sitting down at your computer, you see
advertisements pop up. I saw one the other
day. It said:
“Simple divorce — online — low cost — fast — easy —
guaranteed.” Another offered a great
bargain: “No fault divorce — only
$25.95.” Divorce, apparently, is a
booming business. But divorce is not
God’s will. God wills that we live
together in a lifelong bond of marriage.
You know that the Scriptures speak of this especially in a passage recorded in
Matthew 19.
There the Pharisees came to the
Lord Jesus Christ asking Him these questions about divorce.
“Is it OK to divorce someone because you want to? Is it OK to divorce a man because he annoys you or
your wife because she’s gained twenty pounds and you want to marry someone more
attractive? Is it OK to divorce your husband
if he watches too many sports programs on TV? Is
it OK to get a divorce because your marriage simply is not going along very well and it is
too much of a burden, and it would be better for both of you to seek your happiness
somewhere else? Does God approve of divorce
and of putting each other away?”
The answer of the Jews in Jesus’ day was, “Yes.” Many of them held to the teaching of a certain
school that took a very permissive view of divorce. There
were others present in Jesus’ day who had a stricter view. But most of them followed the teaching that a man
could divorce his wife for nearly any reason at all.
If she did not cook well, he could divorce her with God’s approval, they said. If he found a more beautiful woman, he could
divorce his wife and marry the more beautiful woman.
Many in Jesus’ day said this was OK as long as there was a proper certificate
of divorce. They found in the Old Testament a
little snippet from the law of Moses that, they claimed, supported this permissive view of
divorce as long as one’s paperwork was properly filed.
So they bring to Jesus the question: “Is
it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” The Lord responded, teaching them the permanency,
the lifelong bond of marriage. The Lord is
not ignorant of or unsympathetic concerning the difficulties that married people
experience. He knows all of those things. And His grace is there and sufficient for us in
every trial of our marriage. But the Lord
knows the truth and knows that the truth of a happy marriage is this: God calls us to a lifelong bond of commitment to
each other. Jesus answered and said in
Matthew 19:4-6,
“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 father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be
one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain,
but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined
together, let not man put asunder.” There
Jesus is teaching in unmistakable terms that God, the Creator, the One who made marriage,
had from the beginning a design for marriage. That
design was to unite two persons, a male and a female, a man and a woman, in a lifelong
bond of marriage — to make them one in body and purpose and that no one has the right
to tear that union apart. What God hath
joined together, let not man put asunder.
From the rest of the Scriptures we understand the reason why God has done this. I hinted at it at the beginning. It is because God has created marriage in the
beginning to be a picture of His union to His church, of His covenant love, of the bond of
fellowship through the cross of Christ with His chosen people, a bond that is enduring and
eternal, a love that does not fail. And God
says, “Now, I want your marriage to look like My marriage. Though you are sinful, though you are weak, I have
loved you. Now, so live in marriage, in this
permanent commitment one to another.”
That is the first principle of a happy marriage.
It is an indispensable principle of a happy marriage. Forsake that principle and believe in the back of
your skull that there might be a possibility for you to get out of your marriage if you
discover that you are not very happy, and you are going to have many troubles in your
marriage. Believe this with your heart! Believe that this is the sovereign and wise will
of our heavenly Father — that marriage is a lifelong bond.
But there are other principles that we have to believe firmly. Another principle is this: that we must be fully persuaded that God’s
blessing and our happiness are to be found in marriage. I refer you to
Psalm 128.
Blessed is
the man that feareth the Lord. Then the psalm
goes on to say that his blessedness will consist in his life with his wife and with him
home and with his children. God says in this
psalm, “My blessings are going to be found in your marriage.” We have to believe that. That needs to be shouted from the housetops and
must be constantly brought to our remembrance, because the world and our own flesh of sin
does not believe that. The world looks at
marriage as God has designed it (as a sacrificial, exclusive love — seen in the
headship of a loving husband and the subjection of a submissive wife) and sees bondage,
oppression. So the world wants to remake
marriage in a way that they think will make them happy.
Their marriages, then, must have no commitment.
There must be a prenuptial agreement, a no-fault marriage and divorce, no defined
roles of husband and wife except that somehow they are to support each other in some way
or manner — no faithfulness when something more appealing comes along. They want to change God’s design. And when they change God’s design, they
plunge themselves into misery and woe. Not
only a misery in their own life, but a misery brought now upon their children.
We can be guilty in our thinking, too, of the notion that blessing is not really
found in marriage, and true pleasure is not found under all the sacrifices that are
involved in maintaining a home. We begin to
think that, perhaps, satisfaction is found elsewhere.
Slowly we begin to give our energy elsewhere and not to our marriages. Satan makes many efforts to have us seek our
happiness and our contentment somewhere other than in the marriage state or in our own
home. Proof?
Proof is found in just this one telling point.
More and more no one is at home. Everyone
is out. We live in a world that is utterly
devoid of sense. The homes that are being
guilt are bigger and bigger with more and more rooms — and less and less time is
being spent in them. Husbands allow work to
swallow up more and more time. Women can
become intent on their own careers. Entertainment
and recreation gobble up more and more time and money.
Young people, who come by their attitudes honestly (they get them from you, Dad and
Mom), think that they have got to be out, that real happiness and joy is not found just
with the family. And when the family is
finally at home, it is the TV and the videos that are dominating the precious time. Family night now is defined as getting a video. No conversation.
No, we bring in the world and watch what the world has to offer. That is family night!
Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, we must believe that God’s blessing is to be
found in marriage and in the family life of communication and love, activities with our
own children and husbands and wives. Blessing
is to be found in a husband coming home at night to be with his wife and to spend an
evening with his family talking and folding the laundry or whatever else, the children
around the table, homework being done, games being played, catechism being taught,
discussion taking place. Right there, in
that, is God’s rich blessings. Do you
believe that?
We must be firmly committed to the principle that God’s blessing and happiness
are found in the marriage and home.
There is a third principle that I want to refer to just briefly — that we are
to be godly. We are to practice godliness. A godly marriage is a marriage in which everything
is done out of the motive to please God — when husband and wife do not look at each
other first, but look at God first and primarily and ask, “What will God have me
do?” This is very important.
There is a passage that we ought to glue somehow to our eyes as husbands and wives
today. The passage I refer to is
I Samuel 2:30,
“For them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be
lightly esteemed.” The goal of our
marriage must be to honor God. That means
that you must marry in the Lord. And that
means that you must place the Lord and His unconditional love before you every day of your
life. Are you godly? Is your wife today a believer? Is your husband a believer? Do you thank God for that? Do you see that that is an indispensable, a great
necessity for the building of a happy life together?
Do you see that, as a young person? Or
are you so foolish and so self-centered that you do not realize that you must establish
your marriage and future life on the basis of one faith and one love in God? Do you see that, do you believe that with all your
heart?
If your husband or wife today is godly, do you thank God? Or do you sit back and begin to complain in your
own self-pity about all the habits that you see in them now that really irk you? Do not do that.
You ought to get down on your knees and thank God for a believing spouse. Do not take this for granted. After a few years of marriage and the honeymoon is
over, we begin to know each other in ways that we did not know each other when we were
dating or in the first days of our marriage. Do
we thank God for a believing husband and a believing wife?
There are many obstacles that we must face in our married life. There are financial obstacles. There are obstacles with the children and with
their health and with their needs. And there
are aplenty difficult issues confronting married couples today. They are multiplying and they are great
difficulties. But do not ever conclude that
marriage is not worth it, that your marriage is not worth it, that maintaining your
marriage is not worth it. Do not ever
conclude that, child of God. But believing
this, believe it with all your heart because it is true, it is found in the Book, the Holy
Bible, it comes from the Word of God: that
God has sworn to open heaven’s blessings to two of His children whom He has united in
the bond of marriage, who together confess their sins.
Look to Him and be thankful for His unfailing love.
We will come back to the subject next week. We
would like to have you join us again as we talk of the blessings of marriage.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank Thee for the Word. We
pray that it may enter into our hearts. Remember
us in our marriages. We need Thee. Bless us in the truth of Thy Word. In Jesus’ name, Amen.