“Marriage is an outdated institution.” “Marriage is a lingering vestige from a
patriarchal society used by men who wanted to possess women.” “Marriage should be open to all people
regardless of your orientation.” “Marriage
is what happens when two people love each other very much and just want to be
together all the time.”
Friends, don’t you think it’s time we reclaim the institution
of marriage from the world? Marriage is
none of those things. Rather marriage is
a good gifts of God that he has given for our good, for our protection, but
also for our joy, for the procreation of children, for the institution of
societies most basic of structures – the family. Don’t you think its time we reclaim the
institution of marriage.
Our Gospel text is about marriage. Mark tells us that the Pharisees came to
Jesus with a question, but not like you and I come to Jesus with
questions. We carry our questions to
Jesus all the time – we do it in prayer.
We pray when there is something we do not understand or when we need
help with something. We go to Jesus in
faith knowing that He knows what to do or that he knows the answer and we know
that Jesus can help us. The Pharisees
went to Jesus in unbelief. Wanting to
test Jesus, wanting to prove him wrong. The
Pharisees intended to compare what Jesus taught to the teachings of the
experts. The experts that the Pharisees
had in mind were the Rabbis.
We have our own experts these days, don’t we? People we trust to be always right. People who have the authority to evaluation
the teachings of the Bible. These days
we call them “scholars” or “scientists” or “psychologists”. These are our modern-day rabbis. The Pharisees wanted to debunk the teachings
of Jesus by comparing his word to that of the experts. We do the same thing today.
But with Jesus the last word goes to him who gave the first
Word, and that is the author of THE Word.
The Lord himself has the last word on things like marriage, what it is
or is not. What it should or should not
be. What are the appropriate uses of it.
The Pharisees asked about divorce, a topic still timely for
us today. In addition, we deal with the
topic of gay marriage or living together without marriage or pre-marital
sex. The world has its word on all of
these things. The World is consummately and
continuously wrong. Jesus goes back to
the beginning. He goes back to the Lord’s
Word given in the Garden of Eden, when there was one man and one woman – Adam and
Eve, and the Lord made them, one for the other;
first Adam and the Eve from Adam’s rib.
The Lord brought the woman to the man and he commanded them to be
fruitful and multiply. And then the Lord
gives this word: Therefore a man shall
leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall
become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not
ashamed. (Genesis 2:24-25 ESV)
This is the Lord’s Word about marriage. A man leaves his father’s house and he joins
himself to his wife so that they who were two have now become one.
You see, the Lord does math differently then what we
do. One and one in our minds makes two. A couple.
Individuals. And because we think
of a couple still as two, two is a number easily divided. Yet in the Lord’s math, one and one makes
one. And one is a number that is
fundamental. To divide it is to break
it. To divide a marriage is to do
violence against the union that the Lord has created. The Lord sees divorce as violence. In Malachi, the Lord says, “The man who does
not love his wife but divorces her covers his garment in violence.” (Malachi
2:16) We should not be so quick to
destroy what God has made to be one.
The Lord has a better way.
Wives, submit to your
own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as
Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as
the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to
their husbands.
Husbands, love your
wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might
sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so
that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or
wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the
same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his
wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and
cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his
body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his
wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am
saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you
love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Ephesians 5:22-33 ESV)
The way of the Lord begins with a word that for us today is
offensive. In these days of liberation
and personal autonomy the word “submit”? Why that’s a dirty word. You could fill a speech with all kinds of
profanity and no one would think twice about it, but tell a woman to submit to
her husband and people will get angry. We
hate that word, “Submit”. We hate it
because we assume that the Lord uses it the way that we use it. For you to
submit to me, means that I am master over you.
It means that I control you and dominate you and bend your will to
mine. It means you are my servant and I
can make you do whatever I want you to do.
This is how the Old Adam understands this word.
The Lord uses it differently. Rather than a hierarchy or pecking order, it
is just order. It is just being who God
made you to be in the role that God made you to fill. God made men to be men and as men to occupy a
specific role in the family. God made
women to be women and to occupy that role in the family. Wives, do you ever look at your husband and think
to yourselves, “He is a lousy husband.
He doesn’t know the first thing about what I need or how to take care of
me or of our kids.” Wives keep in mind
that the Lord has given to you a husband, and that the Lord has given that
husband to be head in your family and that the Lord works through him to
protect your family and that he is worthy of honor and respect. That requires humility and meekness. That requires that you set aside your pride,
your personal demands. That requires
that you die to yourself. Take up your
cross and follow where the Lord would lead you.
One reason that this text about submission is so offensive
is because people read up to the word “submit” and it offends them so they
close the book and don’t read any more.
If they would, they would realize that in the husband and wife equation,
the wife has the lighter load to carry.
Wives must submit and that is difficult. Husband, the Lord call you to
be head of your wife, but to do that in the way Christ is head of the
Church. And remember what Christ did for
the church? He sacrificed his very life
for her to protect her and to preserve her.
You see, men, you are tempted by the World to be masters of
your domain. To be lord in your house so
that your word is the last word and so that your will is the dominant will. To be head of the house is to be the chief
servant. It is your job to give the
most, to bend the furthest, to sacrifice the greatest. Your job is to be to your wife as Jesus is to
you. Sure, it is her job to submit, but
it is your job to die. And so die you
must. Every day. Die to yourself; to your plans, to your impulses,
to your desires, to your expectations, to your needs. Lay them all aside. Lay them down. When there is work to be done, get up and do
it. When there are children to instruct
or to care for, go do it. The world has determined
that the women are the more spiritual or that spirituality is more feminine. As a result it often happens that taking the
kids to church or family prayer and devotions is viewed as the responsibility
of the wife. The Word of God gives this
task to you, men. You should do it and
make sure it gets done.
The Pharisees test Jesus, asking him if it is lawful to
divorce your wife. Jesus reminds the
Pharisees of their hardness of heart.
Jesus reminds us of ours. The Lord has given marriage as a wonderful
institution that is for our good and each of us, husbands and wives have sinned
against the Lord and against one another.
But rest assured. The
Lord is husband to the church. He has
loved the church and he has given himself up for us, to cleanse us and wash us
and purify us from our sin. He has
washed away those sins we have committed against him, he has washed away the
sins we commit against each other. And
now he presents us as his spotless bride, dressed in a righteousness not our
own. But purchased and won for us by his
sacrifice on the cross. Christ has already done for us what he has asked us to
do for each other.
In the name of Jesus.
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