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Presentation 07

If 30-50% of new homes fell down within the owners lifetime there would be a public outcry! Drastic steps would be taken to correct the situation. When things that are meant to last, regularly break down then the phone lines to TV complaints programmes like ‘Watchdog’ are kept busy. Strangely the concerns we have about the durability of consumer products are not always reflected in our concern for the durability of human relationships.

The divorce rate in the U.K. is now approximately one every 2 minutes. There is little public outcry and little is being done to remedythe situation.

Introduction

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This crisis in marriage is a major contributor to the disintegration of society. Marriage is neither an accident of history nor is it the invention of man but something which God built into the created order for the good of society.

Karl Marx taught that marriage was a bourgeois institution! As a result, in the early days of the communist revolution in the USSR, the principles of marriage were abandoned. Very quickly their society began to fall apart. They soon learned that people function best and society is more stable, when the principle of the marriage bond is upheld. This is a truth that we urgently need to recover today!

Introduction

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In Gen. 1.28 we find God’s first stated purpose for marriage: procreation. Bringing children into the world. It is within the security of the family unit and under the wise direction of parents that children are to be reared. And children are a beautiful gift from God and should be cherished as such.

That said it is possible to so over-emphasise the place of childbearing and child rearing in a marriage that deep hurts are caused to many childless couples. Some of whom have been made to feel that their marriage is second rate and unfulfilled. Casual observers of marriage have been overheard to say, ‘a childless marriage is a selfish marriage’. Statements such as these can be very hurtful to those who long for children they cannot have.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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A recent statistic claimed that 1 in 6 couples have infertility problems. The insensitivity of church fellowships towards this problem has caused some childless couples to leave local churches having been given them impression that they did not fit in, simply because they had no children. Are marriages second rate because of that? Certainly not! Just as some single people are denied partners some married couples are denied children. And neither need consider their lives as incomplete or unfulfilled as a result.

Wherever these good gifts of God are denied, God can enrich, engrace and gloriously compensate the married couple.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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The second goal for marriage found in Gen. 2.18 : companionship! When we marry, we don’t marry a sex symbol. The wrinkles and grey hairs come all too soon and teeth fall out. Nor do we marry a bankbook, we know that the money markets can soon turn a prince into a pauper. We marry a life long companion. Someone who’ll stand encouragingly at our side, accept us for what we are, warts and all, and help us to achieve our full potential.

Note that God didn’t create woman to be a ‘competitor’ but a ‘companion’ for man. A husband and wife are partners like two oars in a boat. They are ‘heirs together of the grace of God’. A husband should be able to say, “My wife is my best friend”.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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The third goal of marriage is found in 2.24: a one flesh union. More than sexual fulfilment is in view. It describes the permanent and intimate nature of the marriage bond. Two separate individuals become one single unit. And to achieve that there must be what the text describes as “leaving and cleaving”. Leaving parents not just physically but emotionally as well. After marriage a different relationship is formed.

There is a transfer of emotional dependence from parent to partner. For a healthy marriage it’s important to build on this foundation; the bonding with one’s partner should be stronger than that with one’s parent and the relationship priority is that of partner before parent!

Marriage God’s Ideal

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Marriage then is a part of God’s GOOD creation and is described by Jeremy Taylor as “the nursery of heaven”. In other words it is intended to be the nearest thing to, and best preparation for, the bliss of rich and uninterrupted fellowship with God.

This subject is developed in the N.T. where the apostle Paul describes the union of man and woman to be a model of the relationship that exists between Christ and his church Eph 5 22-33.

Present day expectations of marriage are often unrealistic. We are no longer living in paradise but in a fallen world where relationships fall short of perfection .

Marriage God’s Ideal

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It is impossible to read through scripture without recognising the existence of a whole series of imperfect marriages. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Hannah, Samson, David, Hosea all experienced problems, tensions and difficulties within their marriages albeit to varying degrees. It is important that we approach marriage with the kind of realism which recognises that problems are inevitable and will need to be worked through!

Marriage God’s Ideal

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The problems in some marriages are often unrecognised and unresolved. These marriages far from being a foretaste of heaven have been described albeit in an exaggerated fashion as ‘a living hell’. There are a number of marriage-breakers which we need to be aware of, which are responsible for or contribute to the disintegration of marriage. At this juncture we limit ourselves to comment on the social factors. Later on we will think of the more personal issues that can destroy marriages.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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The first and most obvious social pressure upon marriage is the West has been the sexual revolution. Since the 1960s we’ve experienced a gradual erosion of the sanctity of marriage. Fewer people are getting married and more couples are living together. Pre-marital and extra-marital affairs are commonplace. The social restraints of previous generations are no longer in place. Immorality no longer shocks.

Instead of being a subject that people whisper about behind closed doors, they queue up to boast of their Sexual escapades on late night T.V. chat shows or they sell their salacious stories to the newspapers.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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A proponents of the sexual revolution, Dr Helen Wright has written in the Telegraph: “Because of the pill we are at last able to free human sexual capacities. If a person is capable of responding to 3 or 4 sexual partners, that’s a rich personality”.

Now the implication of that is that if you have been married to one person all your life and continue to exist like that with no extra marital affairs then you are a pretty dull person! If we reject this new morality and if our young people refuse sexual experience outside of the marriage then they’re made to feel inferior and ridiculed as prudes. They are not! They are simply conforming to a biblical morality.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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The pressure on wholesome biblical morality is exacerbated by the media. Think of the story lines of the TV soaps or the use of sexual innuendo in TV advertising. To say nothing of the impact of satellite TV and salacious girlie magazines - all of which send a very clear message - chastity within marriage is an old-fashioned approach to life. It has always cost Christians to be out of step with society. Our young people in particular need our prayer and support.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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There is a second way in which social values undermine marriage. Think of the shallow portrayal of love in women’s romantic magazines, soap operas and films. There’s a classical stereotype and if your partner doesn’t conform to it, you become disenchanted. When a married man wakens first thing in the morning and sees his with her grey hair clinging to her rollers does he ask, “Where is the beautiful woman I married 30 years ago?”

Waves of dissatisfaction can rise within him as he realises that he is not married to Angelina Jolie or Catherine Zeta-Jones. He feels cheated because the media has conditioned him to look for a particular kind of beauty.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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Or a wife awakens and sees her husband’s false teeth on the bedside cabinet and his growing bald patch and the sagging folds of fat around his waist line where once there was muscle. Does she think, ‘He looks more like a beached whale than the Tom Cruise look-alike that I married. I’ve been robbed.’

If our expectations of a marriage partner come from the make believe world of celluloid then they will impart a tremendous sense of dissatisfaction.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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Society has further contributed to the destabilisation of marriage by making divorce easier. People used to think long and hard about the option of divorce and spoke of it with a sense of shame and viewed it as failure. This is the case no longer. Society’s values have changed and that in turn has impacted on divorce legislation. And while it is true that we live in a world of sin and failure, where divorce for some may be inevitable, it has been made easy for all.

Many today do not enter marriage intending to work to secure its permanency instead they have the possibility of divorce at the forefront f their thinking an easy escape route if their marriage gets into difficulties.

Marriage God’s Ideal

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There are three areas where the church can respond. First in our preaching we need to affirm the sanctity of marriage. The church’s calling is not to conform to popular trends in society but to bear witness to God’s purpose for marriage. We need the courage to resist the prevailing winds of permissiveness.

We need unequivocally to stand with God’s word and see marriage as the faithful life-long union between a man and a woman that has as its goal child rearing, enriching companionship and a one flesh relationship. We need to refuse to give ground here.

The Response of the Church

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Secondly, we need to recognise that the church walks on a tightrope between prophetic ministry and pastoral care. The church must offer pastoral support to families in need and become sensitive towards the profound sufferings of those whose marriages have broken down helping too the childless, the alienated.

We need to think about the kind of support we could be offering to those with disintegrating marriages. At the very least we should not close our hearts to such folk and think of them as having grown horns simply because their marriage is in difficulty.

The Response of the Church

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Thirdly, the church needs to respond not only in it proclamation and pastoral care but in its communication with the government of the day. We need the courage to express our concern for the moral fibre of the nation and to speak out against any future legislation that we consider would contribute to the erosion of marriage and thus to the disintegration of society.

The Response of the Church

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