Grace, Mercy, and
Peace be unto your from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ.
Amen
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother
and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
In the name of
Jesus
Marriage these days,
is a very touchy topic. In fact, when
one mentions marriage in a conversation, I would bet many of you get nervous
about which way the conversation will go.
There are many different views of what marriage should be in the world
today. We hear so often about preserving
the sanctity of marriage, but also we are bombarded with a push for marriage
equality.
While we do get
many descriptions of what marriage should be in the Bible, there aren’t a whole
lot of good examples for us to follow. Often
we read about kings of the Old Testament who had numerous wives. We read about King David who slept with
another mans wife and then kills the man to cover up his sin. We do not read of the disciples, other than
Peter, being married and Jesus Himself was not married. So while we are given these words in Genesis,
“therefore a man shall leave his father
and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh,”
what should be our model for a good marriage?
God created
man. Adam. But God saw that it was not good for him to
be alone. So God cause Adam to fall into
a deep sleep and then took a rib from him.
From that rib God created woman, man’s partner. From that point on, man and woman were in a
relationship with each other. The
Bible’s first earthly marriage. Expectations
were in place from the beginning between Adam and Eve as to what the marriage
was to be. Adam was to love and provide
for Eve and Eve was to love and respect him.
Before the fall, these expectations where not a problem. But after the fall of man, their sinful
natures stepped in and created tension.
While Adam and Eve
were the first earthly marriage, they were in a much more important and
fulfilling relationship. They were in a
relationship with God, their creator.
Like woman was formed from mans rib, and therefore looked like man, so
Adam and Eve were created in the very image of God. They were righteous, holy, and perfect. And from the moment of their creation, they
were in a marriage with God. There were
high expectations between man and God in the relationship. God was to love and provide for his
bride. And his bride was to love and
respect him and submit to his will. And,
just as it was between Adam and Eve, before the fall it was easy to meet these
expectations.
But after Satan
tempted Adam and Eve, it was impossible for them to please God in their
relationship. They ate the fruit which
would open their eyes to see like God, and the relationship was broken. Instead of relying on God to provide, they
took upon themselves to seek out what they wanted. They were unfaithful to God.
Not exactly the
perfect realationship. In the Bible we
do great one great example of the prefect marriage. An example which every earthly marriage
should follow. The bride was given
everything she needed. She was given
land, food, meat and drink, house and home, and all that she needed to support
her life. And she was happy. The marriage was perfect. In turn her bridegroom providing what she
needed, she loved him and submitted to his will. Life for her was completely and
unquestionably flawless. But she wanted
more. So she went after what she wanted
and in doing so caused a great pain in the marriage. She was unfaithful to her bridegroom. She tried to find pleasure in another, but
only found great pain. The bride tried
and tried to gain her way back into the arms of her once loving husband but the
damage was done.
The bride found
herself falling farther away from her bridegroom and things were different. Since he did not provide for her any more,
she had to work for everything. There
was a great distance now between her and the bridegroom. It seemed as though things would never be the
same again.
I am sure you have
figured this out, but the bridegroom is Christ and the church, me andyou, his
bride. We to are in this same relationship with God as Adam and Eve were. We are the creation of God. We have the same expectations placed upon us. We are to love God and respect him. And we are to submit to his will. But how difficult this is for us. While we see daily the great gifts around us,
given to us by God, we don’t think they are good enough. We seek out the things we want on our own,
which causes us to stray from God. We
make what we want more important than God.
We struggle daily trying to please God, to make this marriage work. Yet on our own, we are unable.
After all the
failed efforts of the bride to come back to the bridegroom, he came back to
her. While it seemed to her that the
bridegroom had left and not taken her back, he had never left her side. He was there, but the bride’s unfaithfulness
hid him from her. IT was her
unfaithfulness that caused the bridegroom to come to her and endure what she
was going through. He was tempted, He
was tortured the same way as his bride, but he remained faithful to the end.
Christ, our
Bridegroom, showed his ultimate devotion to us by coming to earth in human
flesh. He showed ultimate devotion by
enduring the same temptations we do. By
his enduring of the same mocking, ridicule and physical torture, even to the
point of death, he showed his love for us and his desire to be with us
eternally. Yet again he provided what we
needed to live. He came to die and give
us the complete forgiveness of our sins, forgive us of our unfaithfulness to
our bridegroom.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and
hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” What fascinating words. We have seen how Christ, the Son of God, left
his heavenly throne to be united with his bride. We saw how even in our most unfaithful times,
Christ has held fast to us. After times
of searching after other gods, trying to find something to replace the one true
God, he is eagerly and joyfully waiting to take us back.
So how do we become
one flesh with God? While yes he is
everywhere, he dwells in heaven. How do
we, here on earth, possibly become that intimate with the one who dwells in
heaven? The answer is before us here
every week. The first way is when we
hear the God’s word read to us as. Both
Old and New Testament are filled with words God wants us to hear. They are filled with his love for us. And when those words enter our hearts through
our ears, we are made one with him. We
were made one with him at our baptism, where the Holy Spirit entered our hearts
and made us his own child. And we become
one flesh with our bridegroom at this altar when we celebrate the Lord’s
Supper. Here we taste his body and drink
his holy precious blood. We become
inseparable from Christ.
Jesus says in our
Gospel “But from the beginning of
creation, ‘God made them male and female.’
‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his
wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’
So they are not longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let
not man separate.” What therefore
God has joined together let not man separate.
God has joined us to himself. And
how will he who gave up his only Son, not stop any length to make sure we are
his.
I am sure that you
all can think of times where God opened doors to bring you back into the
marriage. When he opened doors to
reassure you that you were indeed in his grasp, safe and secure. And God uses us for a greater purpose as
well. Since we are in this great marriage
with him, he uses us as witnesses to his greatness. God uses us, through the Holy Spirit, as
window and door stops to give others direct lines, saving lines, into the
church and into his fold.
You see, that
loving, respecting, and praising which was demanded by God of Adam and Eve and
of us, that is the greatest witness we can give. In a world of uncertainty, you and I are
certain of one thing, God is coming back for us. Our future is set because of our
relationship, our marriage with the creator.
Let people see that excitement and confidence in our everyday life and
let the Holy Spirit open doors to witness to them.
Thanks be to God
for his constant faithfulness to us. And
that through that faithfulness, even to the point of death, we have the promise
of being gathered from the ends of the earth to celebrate with all the faithful
the marriage feast of the Lamb in kingdom, which has no end.
AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment