Pastor Buddy’s Blog

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Journal,

Yesterday afternoon Betty and I went to a matinee to see the movie, ‘Fireproof.’  We had been hearing a lot of praise for the movie. Well, words fail me. I can say with no reservation that Fireproof is the kind of movie that every married couple should see regardless of how long they’ve been married. We’ve been married 45+ years but I’ve never seen a movie that could go right to the heart of why so many marriages get in trouble, including Christian marriages.

As we were leaving the theater, I could not help but notice the ‘holding of hands’ of those still seated. I don’t think there was a dry eye around. (Cough! Cough! Pardon me. Must be something in my throat.)

Fireproof is a healing movie. I wish every couple would take time to see it. It reminded me of just how dumb I was the first few years of our marriage. The movie did a pretty good job of validating that. 

By the way, I’m not that dumb anymore. Anyway, here is a trailer to the movie. See if it does something to your heart:

With this in mind I want to provide a study that I’ve shared before, but this time with some modifications to allow it to reach even deeper into the heart of marriage. 

The study is titled…

The Covenant of Marriage

Every marriage begins pretty much the same, with wedding bells and wonderment. What often happens over the years is that the wedding bells lose their sound and the wonderment begins to disappear. And a question arises, ‘Where did the love go?’ 

The main culprit for the disappearing of wonderment and love can usually be summed up in one word, ’selfishness.’ You can hear it from either the husband or the wife, and sometimes from both. This is when we begin to hear things such as, ‘My wife does not understand me.’ Or, ‘I don’t know who I am.’ Or, “He never thinks about me.’  Or, ‘We were married too young.’

Maybe some of this is true but most often what is really happening is that this couple is missing out on what a true marriage is all about. It is not about the submerging of one life under another life. It is not even about 50/50. It is more about 100/100. It is about the merging of two lives into one. It is even about learning to provide for spaces in your togetherness. This is what the term covenant refers to. 

There is a  Scripture that places the word ‘covenant’ in direct relationship to the marriage. At the closing of the former testament we hear the man’s cry as to why the Lord will not accept his weeping and tears. The prophet responds,

“Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.” - Malichi 2:14

Did you know that how men treat their wives is singled out in the Scriptures as to why the Lord refuses to answer a husband’s prayers. Peter summed this up when he said,

“You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.” - 1 Peter 3:7

Here we have two witnesses as to how the Lord refuses to bless a man where the wife is being mistreated in some form. But Malachi points out the man’s attitude towards his wife is only an indicator of a much deeper problem. The prophet calls attention to the prevailing arrogance in the man that has spilled over into all his life.

Listen carefully to these statements that the man makes in the book of Malachi:

“The table of the Lord is defiled.” “My, how tiresome it is.” “How have we robbed You?” “Why won’t God accept my offering with favor?” “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them?” “Where is the God of justice?” “It is vain to serve the Lord!”

The reason I point this out is because the words recorded in Malachi are very much in vogue today. There is a spirit of arrogance in our western societies that has been the cause of the spiraling destruction of marriage. How desperately we need to reorder our lives in the ways of the Lord. As one writer says, “Divorce and unhappiness are the gravestones that pockmark the open fields of the free society.” (Maurice Camm, author)

While Malachi is the one book that uses the term ‘covenant’ in a direct tie to marriage, it is interesting to note that the Bible opens and closes with scenes of the marriage. The first marriage is between Adam and Eve. The last marriage is between Christ and His Bride.

Of course Adam and Eve were brought together before sin entered the picture. Christ and the church are seen after sin is removed from the picture. Yes, sin can really distort what God originally intended for our lives. 

These two marriage scenes tell the story of redemption.

And so we have a Bible that wraps itself around the marriage.

The Biblical marriage is not only a divine picture of Christ and His Bride, it also speaks to us of something mysterious in God. It can be said that in the marriage the wife can be likened to the Holy Spirit, whereas the man can be likened to the Word of God. It takes both to produce life. But let’s leave the mystical aside for now.

Part of our modern day problem is that we have drifted far from God’s program for marriage. This problem did not begin yesterday. It reaches far, far back to when the Church began to lose her Biblical moorings, and began to take on a Latin-Greek mind set. 

For example, where the Bible teaches the goodness of marriage, the Latin-based church began to take up the idea that marriage was a distraction from a deeper walk with God. The result was monasticism and the eventual requirement of a celibate priesthood. The problem with this picture is that celibacy is never portrayed in the Scriptures as God’s best for a deeper spiritual life. In fact, one of the basic requirements to be a pastor is that the man had to be married. 

The truth of the matter is that marriage itself relates to things that are deeply spiritual. This means that there are certain things about God that cannot be truly discovered in a celibate life style. They can only be discovered in marriage. And the only way to make a marriage work in its spiritual expressions is to return to its Biblical foundation. (This is not an affront against someone who has the gift of celibacy. Such can be a gift from the Lord.)

God said that it was not good for man to be alone.

The very first commandment given to man and woman in the Scripture is,

“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28)

So once again, is marriage a covenant? Aside from the covenant of Christ, marriage is the most sacred of covenants. Adam and Eve were a sacred couple. In fact the very Hebrew word for marriage and the Hebrew word for holiness is one and the same word; kiddushin.

Marriage is the only covenant in the Bible that allows two people to be perfectly joined in all areas of life, from the physical to the spiritual. Where else but in marriage can we find such sacredness and dignity placed together? 

Now let’s consider some of the mystical side of marriage along with God’s ideal. In the very first marriage, which will always be God’s ideal for marriage, we find the Lord presenting Eve to Adam. Does it not say that,

“House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.” (Proverbs 19:14)

From the mystical side we have this truth that the Church is a gift of the Father to the Son. Out of the cross came God’s gift to Christ. Jesus said,

“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.” (John 6:37)

When Eve is presented before Adam, we hear Adam say,

“This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23)

The same is true with Christ and His Church. Adam’s role was to draw Eve to himself. Adam’s role was to drive Eve’s fears away. Adam’s role was to let her know his love and his protection, that she was now sanctified to him. On the mystical side, this is what Christ does for the Church. On the marriage side, this is what men are to do for their wives.

Paul said,

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.” (Ephesians 5:25-28)

This statement by Paul shows us why the Lord will not bless a man who mistreats his wife. Every woman is designed to be a gift to some man. But she is ultimately a gift from the Lord. The gift is to be cherished, loved, and cared for. This is covenant. Two lives become one. While it seems we are putting the greater responsibility on the man, it is as I said earlier, the man carries the greater responsibility. God designed the woman to be weaker in certain areas, so that she could fit the marriage in her proper role.

This does not mean that a wife is never in the wrong when it comes to a broken marriage. No, women can be just as foolish as men. Listen again to the sage: 

“A foolish son is destruction to his father, and the contentions of a wife are a constant dripping.” (Pro19:13)

“A wise woman builds her house, but the foolish tears it down with her own hands.”  (Prov14:1)

To take this a step further, can the marriage covenant be considered a blood covenant?

There are various covenants given throughout the Bible, but not all of them are blood covenants. Again we see the mystical side of marriage. God gave the woman a hymen that was designed to be broken in the first act of intercourse. In the breaking of the hymen there is the letting of blood. Thus the Lord built into marriage the idea of a blood covenant.

Surely this ideal has been set aside today, and even mocked. But it should go without saying, that the man and woman who will keep themselves sexually pure before marriage, are able to bring into their marriage something to be treasured. In this sense, there can only be a ‘first time’ covenant marriage.

Where does this leave a second or third marriage? Certainly these marriages miss God’s ideal, but so does the whole of our earthly lives. The apostle said, 

“…for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one … for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom3:9.10,23

It is important to understand that divorce is not the unpardonable sin. In certain instances divorce is not accounted as a sin at all.  Paul said,

“Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” (Romans 5:20)

By the way not many people know this, but God divorced Israel in the Old Testament. Yes, he actually divorced Israel. If divorce made us sinners, then God would have to be a sinner. Divorce does not make us sinners. Sometimes there is no other substitute aside from divorce. Keep in mind that we do not live in an ideal world. 

God divorced Israel because of sin.  We live in a world filled with sin. Men and women who come to Christ are not to walk in condemnation because of a sin that destroyed a prior marriage. Sin is in the world. God’s provision for all our sins is Christ and the cross. And in the case of a remarriage, any marriage can become hallowed in the sight of Christ. 

Where the enemy is able to destroy, the Lord is able to more than redeem. 

Isn’t it odd how people who’ve been divorced and then remarry get beat up so much? Not so with Jesus. One of the best examples of how the Lord looks at divorce and remarriage can be seen with the woman at the well. Jesus went out of His way to minister to this one person. It is true that this lady had been married five times, and was then simply living with a man. Did Jesus tell her to go back to one of her other husbands? No. He simply told her how to get her life together.

It wasn’t a matter of the Lord approving all her past marriages. It was a matter of the Lord seeing her as a person damaged by sin. It was a matter of meeting her where she was at that moment. Nor did he tell her that she would have to wait in line behind all the people who had been married but once, before He could bless her. He simply said,

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)

What then is our need? Begin where you are right now. Regardless of your past sins and mistakes, the Lord is always present to forgive us and to lead us on to a life of grace and blessings. He does not punish us for our stumblings in life. Yes, there are consequences but even with consequences this one promise remains in place: 

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” - Romans 8:28

It is the love of Christ that bonds a marriage into a proper covenant relationship.

Our marriages need to have an abundant flow of living water. There is no greater love that a man can have for a woman other than that of loving her with the love of Christ. This love transcends all other loves and gives the Biblical marriage its true strength. So it is with the woman. While romantic love is certainly a part of marriage, it is only one part of the whole picture. Romance alone is not the kind of love that bonds the marriage in covenant. Only the love of Christ can do that. But the love of Christ certainly can include romantic love. 

In closing there is one more picture to be seen. The ancient marriage covenant had two parts. They were called ‘kiddushin’ and ‘nissiun.’ Kiddushin was the betrothal of the woman to the man. Today we call this the engagement period. For the ancients it had a much deeper spiritual significance. The woman was considered married but had not yet been taken to the husband’s home.

This is the stage of marriage that the church is in with regard to Christ. Paul said,

“For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that in Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.” (2 Corinthians 11:2)

Paul was speaking as a Hebrew man, and had the ancient Hebrew marriage in view. For the Hebrew people, the completed marriage was called nissiun. Nissiun speaks of elevation, or the lifting up. This is where we get the ‘lifting of the veil’, and the carrying of the bride over the threshold. For the Church, the nissiun takes place at the second coming of Christ.

Jesus uses these two aspects of the ancient marriage in his sharing with the disciples in John 14, where He says,

“In My father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:2,3)

Yes, marriage is a covenant. Think about it.

Ok, now get your self together and go see ‘Fireproof.’ You will never regret it 

May the love of Jesus overflow your life,

Buddy