Collierville First Baptist Church

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MK, it's easy to sing that song when you've been saved, right? Whether you've saved in India, whether you're saved in Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Michigan, Or wherever you're saved, if you're born again, we can all sing from the bottom of our heart How marvelous is the love of God. Amen.

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Because I want you to know, you weren't saved because you were good enough.

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You were saved by the grace and mercy of the living God who sent His only Son to down the cross for your sins and raised Him from the dead so that you might be justified before God.

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Now, today, I want to speak to you on the subject,

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your marriage and the family, marriage and the family.

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Take your Bible, turn to Genesis, Chapter 2.

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Your family is important to the Lord.

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I want you to know that.

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That's why a strategic focus on the family is a core value for this church. Now, we know that the gospel and missions is a core value of this church. But I want you to know, if you're visiting here today, that we have as a core value that we're going to minister to families and help families be the best they can be in Christ Jesus.

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Now, I want you to do something for me. I want you to mark your calendar for September the 14th. You say, "Why September the 14th?" Well, it's not that there's going to be a football game on September the 14th. It's the fact that we're having a marriage conference on September the 14th, and we're bringing back Steve and Debbie Wilson, and they're going to be tackling an issue that just about every married couple could use some help with, and that's communication.

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I heard about a man and a woman, husband and wife, and they were having some problems.

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And the problem was over something that you might say was a bit silly. Who was going to brew the coffee in the morning?

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And the wife said, "Look, you get up early.

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So since you get up early, go ahead and brew the coffee so we don't have any lag time and we can get to the coffee quicker."

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And he said, "No, that's your job.

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That's your job to brew the coffee.

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So I want you to brew the coffee. We can wait to get the coffee until it's done."

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And she said, "I want you to know that it's biblical that you brew the coffee." And he was absolutely floored. Now, he said, "Now, where are you getting that from?" And she took her Bible. She went and got her Bible. She turned and she said, "Do you see this? There's something here on several pages. It says Hebrews. Hebrews." Now, I know that's corny. I know it's corny.

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But I want you to understand that communication is a vital part of every marriage.

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Now, during this marriage conference, we're going to have three sessions, 9.15 in the morning, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And we expect Sissy Lofton and George Lofton to be there even though they've been married 60 years. Amen? They could probably use some communication there.

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Childcare will be provided for preschoolers and children. So I want you to decide right now that you're going to make an investment in your marriage and family. So beginning today and for the next three Sundays, I'm going to preach a series of sermons entitled Family Talk.

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It's going to lead into our marriage conference.

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This morning's message goes to the heart and soul of the family, which I think is absolute necessity of a healthy marriage in a family.

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So take your Bible, look at Genesis chapter 2. Now, remember, Genesis is the book of beginnings.

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In fact, in chapters 1 and 2, there are foundations that are vital for understanding all of life.

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It answers questions like this, what is God like?

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Where did we come from?

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Why are we here?

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Let me ask you, when was the last time that you were right about something that really mattered?

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Now, sometimes we're right about stuff that really does not have any significance, but I'm asking you, when was the last time that you were right about something that mattered?

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I want to tell you, I know I'm right.

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I know I'm right about what I'm about to share with you without a doubt.

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Now, before you tune me out, I want you to understand that the Bible speaks about marriage and everything I'm going to say to you today comes out of the Bible. The Bible is our final source for faith and practice.

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The Bible says that God designed the marriage relationship.

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The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman.

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The Bible says that spouses must be committed to each other.

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The Bible says that marriage is a cornerstone for the family.

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And the Bible says that deviation from God's design is not only wrong, it's harmful. It's harmful.

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So before you tune me out, because you think I'm a bigoted, homophobic, arrogant, out of touch preacher, you need to consider the logic of the biblical worldview.

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John Piper said this, he said, "The greatness and glory of marriage is beyond our ability to think or feel without divine revelation and without the illumining and awakening work of the Holy Spirit.

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The world cannot know what marriage is without learning it from God." Let me repeat that.

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The world cannot know what marriage is without learning it from God.

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Now, there are a lot of people in the world who have tried to redefine marriage.

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There are a lot of people in the world who are putting their own spin on the marriage relationship.

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But I want you to understand that only God can give us the truth about marriage. And that's what I want to share with you today.

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A little background might be helpful.

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In chapter one of Genesis, the Holy Spirit inspired Moses to record about creation, how God created everything within six days. And on the seventh day, he rested.

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And the Bible uses a name for God over and over in the first chapter, it's called Elohim.

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It's a word that's used for God as the powerful creator.

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In fact, in Genesis 1.27, the Bible says that God created man in his own image.

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The image of God, he created him male and female. He created them.

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As we flip the page to chapter two, it's interesting that we discover a new name for God.

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The name Elohim is not used exclusively in chapter two. There's a hybrid name. It's the name, the Lord God. You'll notice that all through chapter two, the Lord God, the Lord God. It's a combination of the covenant name of God with the name commonly associated with him as creator.

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Now this hybrid name symbolizes his providential care for the human race, for Adam and Eve. In Genesis chapter two verses four through 17, the Lord's goodness stands out like a sparkling diamond against black velvet.

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Today, I want to give you the consideration, I want you to consider God's original design for marriage.

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In Hebrews chapter 13 verse four, the word of God says this, "Marriage is to be held in honor among all,

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and the marriage bed is to be undefiled, for fornicators and adulterers, God will judge."

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But what does it mean to honor marriage?

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Gary Smalley said that the word honor means to highly value something, to appreciate, to cherish, to recognize it as a priceless treasure.

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It's about dedicating your heart and your soul to building strong foundational qualities in your marriage relationship.

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And here's the truth, there's a truth that just permeates chapters one and two as we get to the very heart of the design that God had for the marriage relationship. And here's that truth I want you to remember.

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God designed marriage for his glory and for your good.

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God designed marriage for his glory and for your good.

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Now, it's interesting in chapter two verse 18, for the first time in chapters one and two, we find that God says something is not good.

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If you look at chapter one, the Bible says, "And it was good, and it was good." And at the end of the chapter, verse 31, God said when he looked at his creation, he said, "It's very good."

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Now, when you come to verse 18 of chapter two, the Bible says that something is not good. What was it?

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Well, look at verse 18, "Then the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him."

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The Lord God knew that Adam needed a companion to share his life with, a companion created in the image of God, a companion who had received the breath of life.

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So God determined to make a helper suitable for him. Now, you may be a lady in here today and you're offended that God would say that you're a helper for your husband.

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But hang on just a minute now. Before you go to that direction, you need to understand that the Bible says that God is a helper.

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In Psalm 46, verse one, the Bible says, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present," same Hebrew word, "help," a very present help in trouble.

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And the Bible says the same thing about the Holy Spirit.

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In John chapter 16, verse seven, Jesus said, "But I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you." So the Bible says that God is a helper. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is a helper. And the Bible says that God created Eve to be a helper for her husband, Adam. Adam would only be complete when he was complimented by a wife that he could share his life with.

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Look at Genesis chapter two, verses 19 and 20. "Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.

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The man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him."

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Now, many in the academic world say that when man was created, they were Neanderthals.

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Let me tell you, the smartest man other than Jesus, whoever walked on this planet, was Adam.

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Absolutely the smartest because he lived without sin. He was in a perfect world.

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God brought all of these animals before Adam and said, "Adam, I'm giving you the dominion and the authority to name all of these animals." You've got to be smart to do that. You've got to be smarter than Einstein and all the great scholars and philosophers and men who have ever lived on this planet.

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And he named them.

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Here come Mr. Hippo. Name's Hippo. Here come Mr. Elephant. He named Elephant.

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He did that. The Bible says he did that. He was super smart.

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Now, I want you to notice after Adam studied their nature of the animals and their relationships, he named them accordingly.

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And the Lord used this exercise to plant in Adam's mind and heart a desire for a companion that would complement him. You see, he noticed that the elephants had a male and a female. He noticed that even the dogs had a male and female. And he noticed that he had nobody that he could identify with.

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Look at Genesis 2, 21 and 22.

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Then the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.

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And he slept.

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Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.

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The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. Now, Adam was made from the dirt. Okay.

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But Eve was fashioned by God himself by him taking a rib out of Adam and fashioning that rib into Eve. Now, against the backdrop of a perfect world and in a magnificent garden paradise, the Lord God fashioned the first woman.

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The word translated as fashioned means to build, to build.

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You see, it pictures God as a master sculptor carefully shaping Eve to be the perfect companion for Adam.

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Perhaps Matthew Henry, the Puritan commentator said it best.

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He said the woman was made of a rib out of the sight of Adam, not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him and near his heart to be beloved.

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Can you imagine what it must have been like for Adam?

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When God finished sculpting Eve and Adam, he woke Adam up and he presented Eve to Adam, what must that have been like for him?

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Well, the Bible says in verse 23, the man 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." I believe that the moment Adam laid his eyes on Eve, he was blown away.

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Wow.

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This is the one.

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This is somebody I can spend my life with. This is somebody I can share my life with.

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This is somebody I can pray with.

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This is somebody I can love and somebody that will love me.

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He realized that Eve would like him to a degree, but she was also different from him.

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There were certainly anatomical differences. He was a male. She was a female. By the way, that's the way God designed it.

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He was stronger. She was weaker.

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Adam and Eve were the first married couple, and there was no preacher there to perform the ceremony. God himself did it.

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Amazing. I want you to understand that God designed marriage for his glory and for our good.

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For the rest of the time this morning, I want to share with you three essential ways that you can honor God with your marriage.

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If you're a young person here today and you've got marriage in front of you, I want you to pay close attention because this message is like a pre-premarital counseling session.

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The first thing I want you to notice, if you're going to honor marriage as God designed it, you've got to view marriage as, number one, a priority relationship.

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A priority relationship. Look at verse 24.

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"For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother."

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Now wait a minute. Adam and Eve didn't have a father and mother.

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So why did the Holy Spirit inspire Moses to write that a man must leave his father and his mother?

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You see, the Holy Spirit was depositing in the heart and mind and spirit of Moses a transcendent truth for the generations that would come after Adam and Eve for you and me. A man must leave his father and mother. What's the importance of that? Well, God designed marriage to function with the husband and wife relationship taking precedence over the parent-child relationship.

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The husband and wife cannot establish interdependence upon each other if they do not first establish independence from their mom and their dad. I've seen some marriages absolutely ruined and destroyed because either the man or the woman refuses to separate from their mom and their dad.

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Let me tell you, God created the man in the relationship to be a leader.

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And if a young lady grows up in a home where she has a strong dad as a leader, she has to come to the point where she submits her submission to her husband, not her dad.

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It's very important. But it also applies to what happens after the couple starts having their own family, after they start having children.

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It's so easy for a mom to build her life around her kids. It's that natural tendency that God created in her to be a nurturer.

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And it's so easy for a husband, a father to build his life around his career in hobbies.

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And here's what happens. You've got a husband and wife, and they both have prioritized something that God told them not to prioritize, and they begin to drift apart.

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And then when the children leave home, and by the way, they will leave home, now they may come back.

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But when they leave home, the husband looks at the wife, they don't even know each other. Why?

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Because they refuse to establish their marriage relationship as a priority.

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Let me tell you, people say, "Well, Pastor, am I not supposed to love my kids?" Sure, you're supposed to love your kids, but not more than you love your spouse.

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Your spouse has got to come next. The most important relationship in your life is your relationship with Jesus. Let's make that very clear.

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But number two on the priority scale has to be your spouse, not your children.

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I want to tell you, if you get that in order, you'll love your children better than you could otherwise, I promise you. And your home will be healthy, and your kids can see what it means to have the kind of marriage that would honor God.

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So God designed marriage for His glory and our good. Now to truly honor the marriage relationship,

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you must view it as a priority relationship. Number two, you must view it as an enduring relationship.

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Notice verse 24 again, "For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife."

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The idea of this Hebrew word joined means to cling to, to be glued together.

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The marriage relationship as established by God in the Garden of Eden is built on commitment.

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Commitment, not feelings or emotions. You do know that your emotions are the shallowest part of your being. How many people have come to you and say, "I don't feel like I love my wife anymore." You kidding me?

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Love is an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person. Let's get that clear. That's what love is.

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Love is not a feeling. Biblical love is not a feeling. It is a commitment and it comes out of your will.

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Marriage is a covenant before God. When Darlene and I stood before our pastor there in South Tilla 50 something years ago,

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I want you to know that we made a covenant with each other and we made a covenant with our God.

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Jesus said in Matthew 19, some Pharisees came to Jesus testing him and asking him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?"

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And he answered and said, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?" "If for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh." And what was Jesus doing? He was quoting our passage in Genesis.

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So they are no longer two but one flesh. Now listen to this. I repeat this in just about every marriage ceremony I do.

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What therefore God had joined together let no man separate.

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God's perfect plan for marriage is one man committed to one woman for life. That's his perfect plan.

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Now don't forget this truth. God designed marriage for his glory and our good.

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The Bible says in Hebrews 13 that we're to honor marriage. And to honor marriage we have to view it as a priority relationship and as an enduring relationship. Don't get married and look for an escape hatch. When you say I do to somebody, you're saying to them, "I'm committed to you for life."

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So here's the third way that we can honor marriage. We must view it as an intimate relationship.

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Look at verse 24 again. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become," get it now, "one flesh."

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One flesh. This refers to an emotional, a spiritual, and a physical union of a husband and a wife. Now let me make this very clear.

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I mentioned three aspects of this one flesh. Spiritual, emotional, and physical.

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All three aspects of the one flesh relationship are very important. You cannot ignore one or two. You've got to make sure that there's balance with all three of those. Physical, spiritual, and emotional. Now this kind of oneness develops in an atmosphere of love, trust, and encouragement.

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Genesis 2.25, look at it. "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." Why should they be ashamed? They were living in a perfect world. Sin had not occurred yet.

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Adam and Eve were totally transparent with each other. They had that perfect union of physical, spiritual, and emotional.

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At this point they had no sin in their lives. They had nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. That's God's design for marriage.

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Now let me repeat something I said at the very beginning. Your family is important to God. I don't care if yours is a blended family. I don't care if yours is a family that mirrors what we've talked about today. I don't care what your situation is. I'm telling you that the God of heaven loves you and he's concerned about your family.

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And he wants your family not only to survive, but he wants your family to thrive.

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Now today we've looked at a crucial issue. Now there is a lot of pressure being put upon us by the culture.

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Pressure to compromise. And we have to say today that I'm going to be absolutely resolved to honor marriage. To honor marriage by viewing it as a priority relationship.

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To honor marriage by viewing it as an enduring relationship.

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To honor marriage by viewing it as an intimate relationship. You got to decide. If you don't decide, the culture will decide for you. You got to decide.

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Now you may be here today and you say, "Well, Pastor, I've very blown it in the past." Well, I've got good news for you.

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The Bible says in 1 John 1.9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." He'll give you a fresh start. He'll help you to do it the right way the second time or the third time. He'll make sure that you get this thing right. If you will just humble yourself before him and decide that from this point forward, I'm going to honor marriage.

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As husband and wife, you say, "From this point forward, we are going to honor the marriage relationship as God designed it."

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So, believer, my question to you today is simply this. Will you embrace God's vision? Will you glorify God in your marriage?

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I hope and pray that in just a moment when we have a chance to respond to what we've heard today,

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that this altar will be filled with husbands and wives on their knees before God holding hands, crying out to God to help them honor God in their marriage. God to decide. But if you're here today and you're not a believer, here's the fact that you've got to understand.

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You will never be able to have the kind of marriage God wants you to have unless you first give your heart to Jesus.

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You've got to give your heart to Jesus.

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Now, there are many women and men who are solid believers that they're doing everything they can to live out their faith even though they're married to an unbeliever. They're an unequally yoke.

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And you keep on keeping on. Don't you quit for one minute.

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But for the one who is here today and you're not a believer, I would encourage you, consider the gospel. The Bible says you're a sinner. You're separated from God. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I invite you to come to Christ. Last week I baptized a young man, and right before he got married, he came to me and said, "Pastor, I need to be saved."

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I promise you this. His marriage is going to be infinitely better because he repented of his sin and placed his faith in Jesus as the Savior and his Lord. And you can do the same thing today.

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I'm going to invite our staff to come forward. I'm going to ask our worship team to come.

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And we're going to have a time where we're going to respond. We're going to worship and we're going to respond to what God is saying in our heart.

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Listen, if you're looking for a church home, let's say you're a husband and wife here today.

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Let me tell you, you need a church home. You need a place where you call home, where you put your roots in a church and you connect with other believers and you follow Christ. And you grow spiritually. Come to one of the staff members and tell them, "Hey, I want to be a part of this church."

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Or if you need to be saved, come to a staff member and say, "I want to be saved today. I want to give my heart to Jesus."

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Or if you're a husband and wife, come to this altar. Bow before the Lord. Pray for your marriage. You may be here alone and your husband's not with you or your wife's not with you. Come to this altar and pray for your marriage.

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Pray that you would honor marriage as God designed it. I tell you, the ripple effects in your kids and your grandkids are enormous.

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Make sure that you do it God's way. Let's pray, Father, in the name of Jesus. Have your way in our hearts.

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Lord, we see in the scripture that you designed marriage for your glory and for our good. And we thank you.

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And Lord, I pray right now that through the Spirit of God, you would do a work in our hearts and you would have your way. In Jesus' name. Amen. And in worship, and you come.

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