October 4, 2009 — Marriage: God’s Plan — Genesis 2: 18-24 — Pastor Jerome Teichmiller
Teichmiller Comments OffMARRIAGE: GOD’S PLAN
Genesis 2: 18-24
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for this mornings meditation is recorded in the book of Genesis, chapter 2, verses 18 through 24, particularly these words: “God said, It is not good that the man should be alone… Therefore, a man leaves his father and his mother, and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” This is our text.
In the name of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, dear Christian friends. In the Houston Chronicle this week, a Dallas judge said that her court had jurisdiction over divorce proceedings between two men who married in another state. The Texas Attorney General ruled that a Texas court cannot grant a divorce to anyone who is not legally married in the first place according to Texas State Law. Stay tuned for the outcome of that dispute. A few months back, a religious denomination which even dares to call itself Lutheran, declared that same sex marriages would be permissible in certain circumstances and that congregations that wanted to do so, could call openly gay and lesbian pastors. Not Missouri Synod by the way. Obviously, there is a lot of confusion concerning marriage and how individual people relate to each other these days. There are so many different kinds of relationships these days between men and women, men and men, women and women, that it gets very hard at times to tell who is married, or who is just dating, or who has a “meaningful relationship”, or who is just fooling around. We hear and read about lawsuits for palimony, about surrogate mothers, and there are advertisements for sex therapists. Our televisions, our movies, our magazines are running over with all kinds of articles, and programs, and talk shows which are really unfit for children to watch, or hear, or read. Our nation seems really confused as to just what is a proper relationship between men and women in general, and between husband and wife in particular.
With all the confusion over sex, marriage, and the relationship between men and women — how does the Christian make a good and right decision on this matter within his or her own personal, private life? This morning, our assigned Scripture readings tell us what God has to say concerning these issues and this debate. Let’s let God speak to us through the Words of today’s Old Testament reading and our Gospel reading!
First of all, we read, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” The first thing that we learn about the relationship between man and woman is that “it is not good that the man should be alone.” And although the text doesn’t come right out and say it, the opposite is also true – it is not good that the woman should be alone either.
God made man a social creature. Barbara Streisand (and those under 40 are saying, “Who?”) used to sing a song which said, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” There are a few hardy souls who want to buy their own little island and get away from everybody else — but basically we all need someone around us for company. As God said, “It is not good that man should be alone.”
But even in a crowd, you can be lonely, and so God recognized that he had to make a “Helper that was suitable for the man.” Call her a “counter-part” to man if you like. The rosters had their hens. The bucks had their does. The gander had his goose. But for man – no suitable helper was found. So God created Woman — Eve –And as He gave away the first Bride and brought her to Adam, God himself established the marriage relationship. Eve brought great joy into the life of Adam. You can almost hear the excitement in his voice, “This is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” Eve was created — not inferior to man — not superior to man — not even equal to man — Eve was created different from man! To each God gave certain responsibilities in life — responsibilities that were supposed to complement each other — not compete with each other! Adam was to be husband and father — and Eve, as the “Helper suitable for him,” as his counter part, was to be wife and mother! This is what we call in theological terms, “God’s order of creation.”
This relationship between man and woman were created perfect and holy. It brought joy and happiness to both Adam and Eve. “It was not good that the man should be alone”. That was why God created woman — and marriage.
What happened to this perfect creation of male and female and marriage? Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Sin came into the world. And with sin came the knowledge of good and evil. Now they knew just how badly this precise gift of God could be misused and abused – so they blushed for the first time, they got embarrassed to see each other naked – and they hid from each other by sewing fig leaves together to make cloths for themselves. Sin not only tore apart their relationship with God – but also with each other. In the Gospel reading, the Pharisees asked Jesus why Moses allowed divorce and Jesus said it was because of the “hardness of their hearts” – because of sin.
It is still sin even today, which tears apart God’s perfect creation of marriage. Selfishness, greed, lust, and unfaithfulness among many other things rob God’s creation of marriage of the blessing that it should be for all mankind. Husbands refuse to love their wives even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her – And wives refuse to submit in love to their husbands in the same way as the church submits to Christ. God’s perfect creation has been turned into smut, and porn, and dirty jokes by a sinful world!
At their creation in the garden there was a special interdependency between the two — man needed woman — and woman needed man. Paul made this clear in the book of Corinthians where he reminds us that Woman was taken from man — and that man was born of woman. They are dependent on each other!
I feel that some of the problems of marriage today is that husband and wife no longer need each other. In the days of the old west — when husbands and wives had to fight side by side to protect their lands, cattle and crops, and when they had to protect the family against wolves and other wild critters, and when they had to make a living farming land with only an old mule and a broken plow — husband and wife needed each other to survive. But today — when the husband makes a good salary — and the wife makes a salary equal to or maybe even better than his — they can each go their separate ways and still survive. If they have a small argument or disagreement, they go their own way — because they don’t need each other.
That wasn’t God’s intention for man or woman. God made woman from man — and God brought woman to man — and God meant for them to be good for one another — for them to need each other — for them to live together, sharing all that was to come – for them to reproduce the species. God’s plan was an interdependency between man and woman — sharing all that was to come in a life time commitment of marriage.
And that brings us to our last point for today — God intended this relationship between a man and a woman to be a lasting and deep relationship. We read from the text, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
Jesus quotes this Old Testament verse in Today’s Gospel lesson and then he added, “What God has joined together let not man put asunder.” Our Gospel lesson for today recognizes that because of sin — separation and divorce are a part of life — only perfect people have perfect marriages and those don’t exist! But God’s intention when he first created Adam and Eve and marriage was for a life time union between a man and a woman. And this is not an easy task or assignment that God has given.
Some like to blame their problems on “THE MODERN DAY LIVING”. But those people who celebrate their 40th or 50th or even 60th wedding anniversary didn’t have it any easier than the young married couples of today. In fact, if we take a close look at history, they lived through some very difficult times. The great depression, world wars, Korea and Vietnam, and many of the diseases that are easily cured today, were killers back then. Times are not any harder today than they were back then! But what made those long term marriages work was FIRST, a commitment to God, and THEN, to each other — that they would share the hard times, they would share the sorrows, even while they shared the good times and the joys. Most importantly of all, they forgave one another as God for Christ’s sake had forgiven them. When we look at marriage as a life-time commitment, not a temporary living arrangement, then the problems of any one given day seem kind of small. To make a marriage work, both man and woman have to be committed to the relationship and forgive one another, as God has forgiven each.
Even in our crazy, mixed up world — God’s will for a man and a woman is the same as it was in the Garden of Eden — between Adam and Eve – “It is not good that man should be alone,” so “A man should leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife, and they would be one flesh.”
Living in the forgiveness earned for us by Jesus Christ, and living in the strength that God gives us for our daily lives, let us commit ourselves to God’s will for us. Amen.
May the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.
