MCC Podcasts
This is so fun doing a love series. I just think that's the best. I just think it's so fun that we do a thing on love. Love does make the world go around. And it's challenging. And at every turn, we see God's love for us and our love for Him and our call to love the world. I just think it's great. And this February is a little mini series on marriage. And I gave you a little warning about that last week. We're taking four weeks, we're preaching on marriage. Ben, by the way, and actually Ben and Katie are gonna preach together next week. And so don't miss that. And then I'm coming back a week after that in "Arts Preach" in the last week in February. We're gonna spend it on marriage. And many of you aren't married. We understand that. And we think that this is gonna be a great experience for all of us because we have married friends. We come from married people. We're products of marriages. Some of us may be getting married or married again. And we also learn about our relationship with God when we talk about marriage. So this is a theme, this mini theme is on marriage. And we think it's gonna be really good for you. And I wanna start with the big picture. We're gonna talk about the big picture, you guys, when we come thinking about marriage. Because the truth is we get lost in our little small pictures. Whether we're married or single, we, our life consists of all these little small details of life and we get lost in those details all the time. And it's hard for us to sort of zoom out and look at the bigger picture. And I wanna do that with marriage. Marriage for sure, marriage and family for sure. We get lost in the details. There's the chaos of everyday life. Any of you relate to that? Unbelievable. And some of you go, I don't have kids or I'm not even married and my life is chaotic. The small details of my life, we fight the battles of detail after detail after detail. And we lose sometimes the bigger ideas that are a part of that. And I don't, you know, I don't want us to get lost in the small things. We wanna look at the big picture. Here's a picture of the small thing. I've read this to you before, I think. And I think it's great. So here's a mom and a dad, a wife and a husband. And this is about the end of their day. Mom and dad were watching TV when mom said I'm tired and it's getting late, I think I'm going to bed. So she went to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the next day's lunches and rinsed out the popcorn bowls and took the meat out of the freezer for supper the following evening and checked the cereal box levels and filled the sugar container and put spoons and the bowls on the table and started the coffee pot for brewing the next morning. And then she put some wet clothes in the dryer and put a load of clothes into the wash and she ironed a shirt and fixed a loose button. And then she went to the computer and shut down all the programs and checked a couple of emails and picked up some newspapers and magazines that were thrown on the floor and picked up the game pieces left on the table and put the address book back in the drawer and she watered the plants and emptied a waste basket and hung up a towel to dry. She yawned and stretched and headed for the bedroom. She stopped by the desk and wrote a note to the teacher and counted out some cash for the field trip and pulled a textbook out from underneath the chair and signed a birthday card for a friend addressed it and stamped the envelope, wrote a quick note for the grocery store and put both near her purse. And then she washed her face and put a moisturizer and brushed her teeth and trimmed her nails. Husbands called, "I thought you were going to bed." "I'm on my way," she said. She put some water into the dog's dish and put the cat outside and then made sure the doors were locked. She looked on each of the kids, turned out a bedside lamp, hung up a shirt, threw some dirty socks in the hamper, had a conversation with one who was still up doing homework. In the bedroom, she set the alarm laid out clothing for the next day, straight in the shoe rack, added three things to her list of things to do for tomorrow. About that time, husband turned off the TV and announced to no one in particular. "I'm going to bed," and he did. Do you need that right there? That's for you and your growth, brother. These small stories seem to be never ending. And if we don't stop and zoom out and ask some of the bigger questions, we don't get the point of the life that God has called us to the story that God has written us into. There's always a bigger story, bigger than the small stories. And we ask, where is God in all of this stuff? We ask this big question, why did I get married? Why did I get married? It's not a very theological question. It's certainly a practical one and one that we feel. Why did I get married? I asked that question about us. Why did I get married? Why did I get, we were young. We were really young. I know, seriously. Babies, it's right. We were tricked. We were tricked, we were young and we were enthusiastic and she was stunning. And I thought I need to have sex. No, that's not all that I thought. I thought all kinds of things, but there was stuff going on inside of me. And we thought of glory and changing the world. And we thought of warm fuzzies and flowers and chocolate and romantic. We were tricked. And then the story of the laundry and the kids and the, right? Why did I get married? We have to zoom out and look at the bigger picture of all of this thing. This is my title this morning. My title for our sermon this morning is four reasons why God wrote marriage into your story. Four reasons why God wrote marriage into your story. And I actually really liked that language that God wrote marriage into your story. God ordained it friends. I can actually picture myself on this side of the stage. I think it was during the sermon on the mountain two years ago or whatever. When I said something like, "Here's a reality." And for some reason I just recalled this this morning. I could picture the view of the you from where I was preaching when I said something. God made marriage and you picked it. So now you're in it. That's a reality. But God's the one that ordained it. You go, "Well, I picked it." Well, you know what? Not in the world that I believe there's a sovereign God who orchestrates and even takes your stupid decisions. Some of them were dumb and he goes, "And now I've got that as my will." And God's will that you're married and in that situation that you're in right now. Four reasons why God wrote marriage into your story. He ordained it. He created it. You picked it, but he brought you together. Stop. Do you believe that? God brought you together. And some of you have these really super romantic stories and when you go, "I know." We floated on a clown of angels wings into our engagement and now we're married. And that's your story. And so you get that God brought you together. And others, that's not your story and that's not the reality you're living in right now. And you think, "I don't know that God brought me together "because how would God want me to wrestle "the way that we're struggling right now?" I'm here to tell you, in the economy of our sovereign God, creator of the universe, he brought you together. And we wanna ask the big question, why would God have brought you together? Why would he write marriage into our story? Biblically, I came up with four things. I think there's probably more. There's at least four. Two, I'm gonna zoom through and two, I'm gonna spend a little more time on. And given the fact that we're running the little late Michael and Ben, I think we won't take the time to do that last song. So we'll make sure that we take full time to get this preached and be out of here on time. Does that make sense? If Michael's not in the room, somebody go tell him. So, here's the four reasons why God wrote marriage into your story. Number one, procreation. Procreation, that's right in the scriptural text. Genesis 1, 27 and 28, look at that text. And in fact, there's a couple of places I'm gonna have you look this morning and some of them are gonna be upfront, some won't. So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. Verse 28, what's next verse? God blessed them and told them be fruitful and increase the number, fill the earth and subdue it. That's a call to Adam and Eve to have children. One of the reasons God writes marriage into your story is so that you would be fruitful and multiply. And this is not an absolute, of course, as many broken hearts can testify. Not everybody's able to have children. And we weep with you if that's been your longing and it's not happened. But for the majority of people and in the purity of the vision of marriage and the purity of our creation, there's all kinds of stuff wrong with our bodies now that's such a bummer. But in the purity of the deal, God designed for us to be able to have children. And so many of us are able to do that and choose to do that. And that's one of the reasons God may have written it. And that's one of the bigger pictures. I wanna tell you that 'cause it's so beautiful. Sometimes we think, man, I got married for love. And now we just have this family that we're messing with. And it's a small story that we get embedded in. Do you guys get offended when I talk about kids? Like they're really a lot of trouble and they're sort of in our way. Because it's sort of true. And we get lost in that. And we think this couldn't be why God had me get married. But procreation is part of it. And it's a beautiful thing. We're like God in procreation. He said, "We key created us in his image." And then he said, "Blessed Adam and Eve." And he said, "Now you go and you created your image. You create out of your love. Let your love create this little being of love." That's beautiful, man. I love that idea. We're like God when we procreate and have kids. And we're filling the earth with God honoring people, loving kingdom, bringing little creatures. That doesn't describe most of your children, does it? But that's the ideal. And that's what we're working toward. And that's the job that God has given us. It isn't easy. Sometimes it's not even pleasurable. But I want to remind us, friends, listen, marriage again. It's and procreation in particular. It's not for us. It's not even for the kid. Do you know that? Let's talk about this. You did not have children for you. You may have. But in God's sovereignty, that's not why we procreate. That's not why we multiply and fill the earth. We didn't do it for us. If we did, we would have had better kids or something. We're not doing it for them. Do you know that? You didn't have kids for them. You had kids because God gave you the mandate to create God-honoring, Jesus-knowing, world-loving, little-kingdom creatures. Fill the earth with these. And then we get focused on, I'm not happy because my kids are hard, or my kid needs to be happy. And so it's everything I'm all about it instead of this bigger picture, which is God wrote it into your story because he said you create these children to be these kingdom people. We had kids for God's kingdom. It's part of the bigger picture. So one of the reasons God wrote marriage into our story is that he told us to go create these kids. And God bless you as you do that. I just did three weeks at MCCU on parenting, and we didn't even scratch the surface. Good luck with that. Procreation. Number two, the second reason God wrote marriage into your story. Number two is for partnership. Again, in Genesis, Genesis 2, 18 through 25 starts with, the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone, "so I will make a helper suitable for him." In fact, I'd like to look at this text 'cause I don't think I put the rest of the verses up there on the PowerPoint. You have your Bible, you should look at this with me very quickly. Genesis chapter 2, 18 and following. The Lord God said, "It's not good for man to be alone." By the way, I always think this, oh, duh. So I will make a helper suitable for him. See, the Lord God, verse 19, had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky and he brought them to the man to see what he would name them. And whatever the man called each living creature was its name, so the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and the wild animals. But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh and then the Lord God made woman from the rib. He had taken out of the man and when he brought her to the man, the man said, "Whoa, man." That's how she got her name, did you know that? Just kidding, it doesn't say that. But kind of, he said, "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man." Remember what God said, "He would create a partner suitable for him." If you're on our couple's retreat last November, we talked about this Hebrew word, that partner suitable for him. It's the Hebrew word, "Ezzar connecto." And it means a corresponding strength and appropriate power to walk with you. Come on now. Somehow in there, she's supposed to be my helper and so we get this weird on her Lord kind of saying, "Christians did traditionally out of this." You know, the other only other place that that Hebrew word, "Ezzar connecto," is used, is of God. He is our strength, appropriate strength for us. He is our Ezzar connecto and so is our spouse. And so, of course, then we are created for partnership. It is so like God to have this kind of intimacy and this kind of connection. That's the image of God, isn't it? The Trinity in relationship. Marriage is the sort of pinnacle of human intimacy and connection because of the physical one flesh idea. So this reflects God's heart for us to be in relationship. So one of the reasons why God wrote marriage into your story is to give you that suitable partner. Not like the animals, it's not even like friends. God has a heart for us to be in relationship. So if you're single, you know the power of that. It's beautiful, but marriage becomes this intimate of all intimate relationships. And so it's one reason God has that suitable partner to come along with you, not the same as you, but corresponding to you equal to you in power and strength. Love that. Just go to a challenge and reminder, isn't that, shouldn't it be to us? If you're living with somebody who is equal to you in power and strength, a corresponding presence, this is not gonna be easy. But that's what makes it so rich, is your partnership, that equal. Now we're gonna highlight that in a couple of ways. These two that I wanna do before I run out of time and we quit. Third reason God wrote marriage into your story was for purification. For purification or for transformation. If I was trying not to stay with peace, I would say something along the lines. If he did it for your transformation to be like Christ. We know guys, we get the idea that if two people live together in fellowship, then iron will sharpen iron.