The First Marriage and Your Marriage, Pt. 2
Most people walk into marriage hoping it will make them happy. If it stops making them happy, however, they wonder if they chose the “wrong person”. But Pastor Nick Gatzke takes us back to Genesis chapter two, to discover that God’s design for marriage is built on something far stronger than feelings
What is strong enough to keep you married and what is a good reason to marry someone? A covenant, a binding commitment to another person when two people say I’m gonna put God first in my relationship with him first and this means that we can make promises to each other. That type of binding commitment in God’s plan calls upon God’s power and his priorities to keep you married. And you know, knowing that divorce is not an option, with the exception of two instances we see in the Bible, is actually an incredibly freeing reality. Knowing that divorce is not an option is really freeing to you. People, our culture would tell you the exact opposite. You should be free. If this thing isn’t going the right way, then get out, you’re free. Well, you know what’s even more free? Knowing that divorce isn’t an option. How so, you say? Well, think about it.
If you walk into your marriage with a framework of, I’m gonna do whatever I can do to make this work and things start to go bad, now you’re trapped within the four walls of your house with this other person that you don’t like for the moment and they don’t like you for the moment and you only have two options. There’s no doorway to get out. So what are you gonna do? Option number one, you live with the status quo, which seems pretty terrible at the moment. Or option number two, you work really hard and you humble yourself to sacrificially love this person that you don’t like at the moment and see how God works in your very midst.
And it’s a freeing reality because you don’t have to think through all these variety of exit plans and options and then deal with all the hurt and fallout in the long run that comes from that type of crumbling. You actually get to move structurally through a path of healing and health all because you have this binding commitment to one another. I’m so glad that in God’s design, He makes the deepest relationships that we have in this life to be defined by the deepest form of covenant in this life. And this glorifies Him. Marriage glorifies God. And so it is good for you.
There’s a third aspect here of how marriage glorifies God. And this is found again in Genesis 2:24 in the making of one flesh. Look with me. Genesis 2:24 is this wonderful and mysterious description of what happens when two people get married. Says, “therefore they shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” Clearly, God takes a commitment that’s formal and practical and spiritual and then he adds to it a physical and emotional component.
Becoming one flesh is what happens through a sexual relationship with another person. And it’s more than just physically pleasing in its nature. Sex engages us in a deeper emotional and spiritual way as well. Now for years, our culture has been promoting a common practice of sex before marriage or outside of marriage. And unfortunately, even some of us as Christians have fallen into that temptation. And we know that those relationships in which there’s sexual activity are deeper in their nature. They have to be, don’t they? And we know that those relationships that are sexually active when they then break up are much more painful. And the sort of path of difficulty and pain and dysfunction and devastation that follows is something that can take for some of us years to heal from.
Why is that? That is because sex was designed to be part of a more substantial commitment, a binding covenant. And as such, when you engage in sex outside of that covenant, you’re actually hurting yourself by taking something that God has made for your good and abusing it. First Corinthians gets to this reality. Paul is writing First Corinthians to a bunch of Christians who, well, we’ll just say they have very loose sexual ethics. And he says to them, in chapter six, verses 16 through 18. “Do you not know that he is joined to a prostitute, becomes one with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body. But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” Likewise, Jesus is arguing against the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 19 against the idea of divorce. And he cites Genesis 2:24 as well. “The Pharisees say, is it lawful for us to divorce anyone or one’s wife for any cause? And Jesus answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, 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 no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate.” Did you get that? What God has joined together. There’s a spiritual reality that happens in the context of a sexual relationship. It’s wonderful, it’s mysterious, it’s an act of God. And if that’s true, then play forward the implications. And your sexual relationship inside of your marriage is incredibly glorifying to him so much so that there’s a spiritual component to it. He didn’t just give it to you for physical pleasure. He does something even deeper than that. And your sexual relationship outside of marriage is incredibly offensive to him. And he calls you to turn back. Malachi chapter two, verse 15 underscores this idea of God himself being right in the middle of this one flesh union that happens in marriage. God’s rebuking the Israelite people for leaving the wives of their youth. And he’s speaking through this prophet Malachi. And he talks about his role of bringing them together. This is what the prophet says. Did he, God, that is, did God not make them one with a portion of his spirit in their union?
And what was the one God seeking, godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wives of your youth. A portion of his spirit in the one flesh union. Ephesians five reminds us that because you are of one flesh with your spouse, then therefore, when you take care of your spouse, you actually take care of yourself. The logic’s clear, right? You were two, you became one, but that other spouse is part of you, now one flesh and therefore, you take care of that flesh, you take care of yourself. He says this in the same way, husbands love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes for it, just as Christ does for 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. Caring for your spouse, and here specifically husbands loving your wives is a way of also taking care of your own flesh. What does it all mean? You pan through the Bible and you see this one flesh dynamic that’s glorifying to God. What it means is that if you are not married, wait to have sex until you’re married. Let me even say it another way. If you’re not married, save yourself for the one to whom which you will get married.
God has designed this as a wonderful, profound, mysterious part of this unique union between a husband and wife. If you’re married, don’t underestimate this part of your union. Ongoing regular sex is part of a healthy marriage, and I understand the dynamic that the allure of risk or the process of discovery changes over time, and that’s not part of the sexual relationship for those of us who’ve been married for a long time, but you know what? It’s actually replaced by something better. It’s replaced by a desire to please this other person that you are in committed, loving relationship with.
I can tell you as a person who talks to couples who are struggling with some regularity, there are themes that we see emerge, healthy marriages and unhealthy marriages. And some of the biggest points of friction in married life is around the sexual intimacy between husband and wife. It’s just plain fact, whether that is engagement or frequency are a variety of issues. And we know, we know that we are being bombarded with images all the time in a highly sexualized culture. We know that in a healthy relationship, there needs to be emotional engagement that leads up to and comes out of a sexual relationship. But just know, this part of your union is important. Don’t underestimate its importance.
It’s not surprising though, is it? Because in our marriage, God actually makes us one flesh and designs us for this type of union. Marriage glorifies God, and so it’s good for you. There’s a fourth aspect, and I will move quickly through this one of how your marriage glorifies God. And that is marriage is a visual representation of the gospel. In a couple of weeks, we’re gonna talk about how sin came into the world. We’re gonna talk about why marriages got so hard and why they still are so hard in certain ways. And it’s fitting that the solution for the difficulty of marriage is the same solution for all of our sin issues, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5 points to the reality that you learn about the gospel actually more and more in the context of your marriage.
Ephesians 5 tells us, husbands, that you have a role and it’s to mirror the Lord Jesus as he loves for and sacrifices for his church, his bride. And ladies, that you have a role as you mirror the church as you submit to and respect your husband, just like the church does to Jesus. Your greatest covenant in this life, your marriage covenant teaches you about God’s greatest covenant, the new covenant in his son in which he saves you. These point to some of these greatest realities, that God did this for us by Jesus coming to sacrifice on our behalf. Men, you are called to do something that’s nearly impossible for you to do, to sacrifice yourself, even be willing to die for this woman that God has joined you to and that the church would follow Jesus, and that, ladies, you are called to do something that is incredibly difficult for you to do, and that is to submit yourself to this man that God has joined you to, even when you don’t want to sometimes. But it comes in the mirroring effect that God did this for us through the person of Jesus. He came and sacrificed on our behalf, even though we didn’t deserve it, and he forgives us and provides for us and loves us, and conversely, that we did not want to give up our own will and our own way and surrender ourselves to him, but we did, by his grace, have our eyes to open, come to realize that we need him, and our marriage is a reflection of that very gospel, and it teaches you about the gospel, and that increases over time.
Some of you here have been married for a very long time. Amy and I have been married for 15 years. And I can honestly say over the course of our 15 years, we have gone through phases in our marriage and I can see more and more how marriage teaches me about the gospel the longer that we’re married to each other. I love the way that Philip Yancey expresses this. He and his wife on their 25th wedding anniversary talked about these types of phases. He said, before marriage, each person by instinct strives to be what the other wants. The young woman desires to look sexy and takes up interest in sports.
Amy didn’t do that part. I mean, the sexy part was no problem. The sports part. She missed that memo. The young man notices plants and flowers and works at asking questions instead of answering monosyllabically. Phase two, after marriage, the process slows and somewhat reverses. Each insists on his or her own rights. Each resists bending their will to the other person. But after years, the process may subtly begin to reverse again. Nancy’s wife writes, I sense a new willingness to bend back toward what the other wants, maturely this time, not out of a desire to catch a mage, but out of a desire to please a man who has shared a quarter century of life.
And I grieve for those couples who give up before reaching that stage. Marriage glorifies God and it’s good for you. We set out at the beginning to encourage you in your desire to get married or to keep pursuing health in the marriage that you have or not to give up when things are difficult because it glorifies God and because it’s good for you. And so let me leave you with this charge this morning. This is a charge for both men and wife, but maybe especially for men. Men, make sure you help your wife know that she is an eight cow woman. Let me explain.
I love the old story of an isolated Pacific Island where it was the custom when the young man wanted to propose marriage, he would announce his attention to the whole village. And he and the whole village would head to the home of the young woman. Her father would come outside and then in front of the community, the father and the suitor would begin to barter. Clearly there were no feminists on the island. And the main items of value on this island were cows. Therefore the suitor would offer the father a certain number of cows for his daughter. The average bride was worth two cows. Perhaps three if she was unusually bright or attractive. The all time record was four cows.
The most eligible bachelor on the island was a man named Johnny Lingo. How cool is that name, by the way? Johnny Lingo was handsome. He was wealthy. And imagine all the excitement that went through the village as word got out that Johnny Lingo had announced that he was going to get married. He shocked everyone in the village by announcing that his choice for a wife was a girl named Lisa. Lisa was not in the top ten. She was known as plain and frightfully shy. And some of the jokers in the crowd suggested that maybe Lisa’s father should give Johnny a cow or two instead of the other way around.
But the community gathered at Lisa’s house for the bartering, and then came the even greater shock. Johnny’s opening bid for Lisa was eight cows. Her father almost fainted. But he managed to gain composure and to say yes, and that very evening Johnny and Lisa were married and they departed for their home on an adjacent island. Nobody saw Johnny or Lisa for a year. And on their one -year anniversary, they returned to the island to visit their parents and the grapevine of the village went ballistic with the gossip. Johnny and Lisa are back. Come to the dock and see Johnny and Lisa. Everybody gather around and see Johnny and Lisa and everybody came. But nobody noticed Johnny.
All eyes were on Lisa. She had been transformed. She was a vision of loveliness. She was poised, she was warm, she was friendly and she was confident. And at the end of the day, as Johnny and Lisa were preparing to return to their home, one of Johnny’s longtime friends pulled him aside and he said, I wanna know the secret of this incredible transformation in Lisa. How did it happen? And Johnny said, well, I tell you, from the time that Lisa was born, she had been treated as though she was not worth very much. And she began to believe that about herself. I announced to the whole community that she was worth eight cows and I’ve treated her the very same way. She has become the vision of herself that she sees every day in my eyes.
Friends, if you want an eight cow wife or husband, you have to catch a vision for that first and then treat him or her that very same way. God, the change agent, the master of change agents, produces in this one flesh union in this binding covenant this eight cow wife or husband that you envision. Marriage is glorifying to God and it’s good for you. Guys, as you go home today, make sure that you let that lady know that she is an eight cow wife. But even more than that, treat her like an eight cow wife. Let’s pray.
Father, in all of the joy and enrichment and in all of the difficulty of our marriage relationships, we thank you and we praise you. These are incredible and profound things that you have instituted, whether that’s a covenant or one flesh dynamic or a reflection of the gospel or a unique complementarity. God, you and your perfect will and perfect ways have done it again, and we worship you. I pray for help. I pray for the marriages of Old North Church, Lord, that you would strengthen them, that you would bolster them in the truths of your scripture, that you would help them in their practical interaction, that you would grow them in intimacy and in partnership for the many days, weeks, months and years ahead. To you be the glory as marriages here flourish, amen.
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** This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.
