Covenant Marriage: A Sacred Bond

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Is it just a piece of paper, a contract, or is it something much more serious?

Find out today in Pastor Jeff's message entitled, A Covenant Marriage.

And now, here's Pastor Jeff.

And I hope, above all else, that you walk away from this place hearing this above everything else.

God loves you so much that He sent Jesus to die for you. And we're going to

be talking and we're going to be continuing this morning.

And what we're going to be talking about is having a covenant relationship,

a covenant relationship. That's what marriage is all about. And here's today's big idea.

Marriage is a sacred covenant designed, witnessed, and modeled and honored by God.

Well, that sounds great, Pastor Jeff. What's a covenant?

What does that mean? How do we live this out? As with everything else in life,

we need to turn to Scripture to get a picture of what marriage is supposed to look like.

And I want to preface this before we dive in, because we're talking about marriage.

And obviously, when you talk about marriage, it's the union we've talked about,

it's the union of two sinners, right?

After sin came into the world, it's not pure bliss and harmony when you get married.

It's the union of two broken and sinful people.

And so I think before we dive into what a covenant relationship is,

there has to be a foundation of love, and there has to be a foundation of forgiveness.

You need to know this morning that there is no limit to God's forgiveness.

In a room this size, there's people in this room who have been through divorce,

and I recognize that that happens.

People sin in this world.

People sin against you and have hurt you, and divorce happens.

And I want you to know that there's not an ounce of judgment coming out of my mouth this morning.

At the foot of the cross, it is level ground.

I heard a pastor just say last week, listen, God is the judge.

It's God's job to judge. It's the Holy Spirit's job to convict. And it's our job to love.

Okay? Now, here's where the rubber meets the road. Yes, it's our job to love.

Why am I a little harsh about baptism or harsh about giving?

It's because I love you so much that I want you to know God's hand of blessing on your life.

And this morning, I want you to know the blessing of having a covenant relationship.

And here's what I want to do. If you're single, I want you to determine in your

heart to do things God's way.

In all you do, at work, at school, in your relationships, in class,

with your sports, with your families,

even with those hard to live with siblings that get on your nerves,

resort to honor God and do things God's way.

If you're married, here's what I want you to do.

Determine in your heart to do things God's ways.

If you're divorced, here's what I want you to do.

Determine in your heart to do things God's ways.

That's what I want for your relationships. That's what I want for your families.

That's what I want for you.

Isn't that what life really is all about? Living out God's purposes in obedience for Him.

And so today we're going to talk

about being covenant keeping in our relationships and how we live it out.

If you have your Bibles with you, I want to invite you to turn to the book of Matthew.

It's the first book in the New Testament. and let's look at chapter 19,

and we're going to read together verses 3 to 6.

Matthew 19, verses 3 to 6. Here's what it said. Some Pharisees approached him, talking about Jesus.

Matthew 19:3–6

Why did they approach him? It says to test him. Most of the times in the New

Testament, when you see the Pharisees or Sadducees, it's not like they're coming

to Jesus just to hang out and to have a good time.

They're coming to trap him. They're coming to illegitimize him as the Savior.

They're coming to test him and hopefully find some fault in him, which they never do.

But it says the Pharisees approached him to test him, and they asked him,

is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife on any grounds?

Sounds like these guys are looking for a loophole in their marriages.

They're looking for a way out.

And he replied, haven't you read?

I love that. Have you not read? Like you, you're the religious people.

You don't know what scripture says about it.

Haven't you read that he who created them in the beginning made them male and

female and also said, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother

and be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but

one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.

Again, the Pharisees are here to trap him. And let me give you just a little

historical or cultural context.

During this period of time, the Jewish law was guided by teachings of two rabbinical schools.

There was the Hillel and Shammai schools. Now, the school of Hillel was more

lenient, and they basically permitted divorce for any reason.

You burn your husband's toast? Divorce.

You bleach his red shirt? Divorce.

She's not making you happy anymore. Divorce. So basically any reason you could

get a divorce for, and they were fine with it. Your wife nags too much.

Divorce her. Whereas the Shammai, they held a stricter view,

and they only allowed it for very significant transgressions.

And so the Pharisees' question here is an attempt to get Jesus to pick sides.

Are you going to support our school of religion or are you going to support

our school of religion? And what does he do?

Every time Jesus, not every time, but most of the time when Jesus was talking

to the Pharisees and Sadducees, or even when he was tempted, what did he do?

He always pointed back to Scripture.

And if Jesus answered cultural questions by referring to Scripture,

then don't you think it would be a good habit for us to get into when things

of today are brought to us that we go back to Scripture to define right and wrong?

Always go back to Scripture. Why? Because for followers of Christ,

Scripture is the final authority over our lives.

And if it's not, you might not be a Christian because a Christian submits to

the authority of Scripture.

And so here in Matthew, Jesus is referencing two passages in Genesis.

He's talking about Genesis 1.27, and then he also quotes Genesis 2.24.

And he points back to these passages to emphasize the original divine intention for marriage.

So let's look and see what the created design for marriage is.

This is what he was quoting, Genesis 1.27. So God created man in his own image.

He created him in the image of God. He created them male and female.

We talked about this last week. If you missed it, go listen to it on the podcast

or the church center app.

God created two genders, male and female.

Again, my intention is not to stir up emotion or division.

I'm simply doing what Jesus did. And I'm pointing you back to the authority of God's word.

And we see that marriage is between a man and a woman. Scripture defines marriage.

Culture does not define marriage. Governments do not define marriage.

Schools don't define marriage.

Republicans don't define marriage. Democrats don't define marriage.

Not even you or I can define marriage because it's already been defined.

God defined marriage himself. Again, this isn't just my view or just my opinion.

It's what scripture says.

And that's why we're able to speak with authority on it.

You should speak with authority on the thing scripture speaks about with authority. Okay?

Don't shy away. Look at the second verse, Genesis 2.24.

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife,

and they become one flesh.

The first thing we need to understand about marriage this morning is that God

is the creator of the marriage covenant.

Marriage began and begins with God's design to become one, not just physically,

but spiritually and emotionally.

And I've heard people argue, but that's just the Old Testament and we're under

the New Testament. We're under grace. Listen to me.

Everything in the New Testament is built on the law and the prophets,

even though we're under grace.

So yes, we are under grace, but Jesus doesn't just dismiss the Old Testament.

He points people to the authority of the Old Testament.

In Matthew 19, he points back and says, this is your authority.

This is the place to go when you want to know and learn about what marriage is.

And before we move on, I think it's important to pull out two important teachings

from this passage also that Jesus is quoting.

You're going to have a successful marriage if you understand these two things,

that marriages involve, number one, a leaving, right?

You have to leave, and then a cleaving or a uniting.

How many marriages have been torn apart because one or both of these things never happen?

When two people are married, there's a new family that is created.

You are the new family. It doesn't mean you forget about your old family.

Don't use this as an excuse to never come home at Christmas again,

but your primary family unit is you and your spouse and your children. That's the primary.

How many marriages have been torn apart because the mother-in-law's involved

or the father-in-law's involved or Aunt Susie, if you're Susie, I'm sorry.

They, no, there's gotta be a leaving and a cleaving.

There's a new priority. There's a new family identity.

Secondly, you're no longer two, but you are one. You're one flesh,

the Bible says, which means there's a permanent bond, not a temporary arrangement.

Marriage is a permanent bond, not a temporary arrangement. Man, man.

Quickly, I just want to give you three different approaches to marriage,

and we see these all around us in our culture. The first one is this.

There's the casual approach.

Marriage, it's not a big deal. It's just a piece of paper. It's casual.

The second one would be a contractual approach. Marriage is a contract.

We sign on the dotted lines. Here's our agreement.

There's a casual approach, and there's a contractual approach.

And then thirdly, the covenantal approach.

And that's the idea that marriage is a holy covenant established by God.

Let me talk about these three and unpack them for just a moment.

So a casual approach to marriage, a marriage isn't that big of a deal.

I mean, if I get married, I get married. If I don't, I don't.

I might get married somewhere in the future.

It's just a piece of paper anyway, so it really doesn't matter.

And whenever we have a casual approach to marriage, guess what?

It usually is closely aligned with a casual view of sex.

And if you look at someone with a casual approach to sex, then that would probably

say something like this.

As long as we're two consenting adults and we agree, then it's nobody's business

anyway. We're not hurting anyone.

And so we can do whatever we want with whomever we want, because really it's

not that big a deal and marriage isn't that big a deal.

Then the thinking tends to evolve. And since marriage isn't that big a deal

and sex isn't that big a deal, why don't we move in together?

Let's just live together.

It's convenient, might save us some money.

After all, doesn't matter that much. It's interesting that they did a study,

the Barnas group did a study in 2017 and reports that 57% of all people said

they've either currently or previously have lived with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

And it's easy to say, you know, this is just the most convenient thing for us to do.

We can, you know, it just makes sense for us. We're testing things out.

We plan, hopefully this will go well and we'll be able to get married in the future.

Essentially, you're doing married things even though you're not married.

But if things don't work out, you take your toothbrush and you take your clothes

and you break up and you go along and you find somebody else until things don't work out with them.

And so you move out from that relationship.

And then maybe one day you find the perfect person and you're like, oh, this is the one.

And we get married. But then you find out that the toilet paper that's supposed

to go over is not put on the right way.

And they squeeze the toothpaste from the middle, or they do this,

or they leave their socks everywhere. And they look like they just exploded

instead of, you know, they look like our kid's room. you're just like, what happened?

Are they okay? Like, I don't know.

Because divorce becomes so common.

It's just associated with breakups. I'm not happy.

Let's just break it off. Let's just get a divorce. And so if marriage is only

a piece of paper and sex isn't that big of a deal, we can live with multiple

people as we go through life and we end up divorced.

It could be a consequence of casual approach to marriage. Then there's what

we'd call contractual approach.

If you get married in most states, you have to have a pastor sign off,

right? And you have to have the witnesses sign off.

But the problem with a contract, have you ever read a contract?

Like most contracts say, if you do not fulfill this obligation,

this contract is null and void, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But that's what we go. We're like, okay, we're contractually going to be together.

However, you know, if you break the contract, we're done.

And that's not really a biblical view of marriage either.

They limit our commitment, and they limit our obedience to God and each other.

Now, I'm not saying if your spouse goes out and has an affair that you should

never get divorced. I'm not saying that.

But I will say in the life of a Christ follower, there are specific circumstances

when you should remarry and should not remarry.

And I was talking to Jen about this yesterday. I was like, man,

there's so much I need to say about this, but I don't have time.

So you're lucky. so I'll save it for another day.

So what is the covenant view of marriage?

Covenant, it's not a commonly used word today, but it's a very important biblical

word that we need to understand and we need to talk about when it comes to marriage.

The word covenant comes from an Old Testament word called breathe.

And breathe, it means a cutting, a bleeding.

And when you see a covenant established in scripture, there's always a shedding of blood.

In the Old Testament, if two people were to enter into a covenant,

they're going to get married.

There would always be the shedding of the blood of a bull or maybe even seven lambs.

But if two people were entering into the covenant, and I know this sounds really

gross, but this is what happened.

They'd have a bowl and they would cut it down the middle.

Just think about that. I could have put pictures up. You're welcome. I didn't.

They would cut the bowl in half, and this is gross, but here's what they do.

They'd cut it in half, and two people would walk around the bowl,

both of them seven times.

Seven times, and this is what they're essentially saying. What happens to the

bowl, what happened to this bowl should happen to me if I don't live up to my

oath and my mate and my God.

That's a little bit more than shoving cake in people's face do you catch the

seriousness of what a marriage covenant is,

is. This is a covenant of bloodshed, giving my word that I'll stick by it no matter what.

If you were to go to an Old Testament Hebrew wedding, you'd see a powerful covenant ceremony.

And some of Jewish people will still do this, where the priest,

or I guess it would not be a priest, the rabbi would cut both the husband's

hand and the wife's hand so that they're both bleeding.

And then they would put the hand, he would put the hand together,

and he would tie a cloth around it, signifying the oneness of flesh and blood.

Covenant is always involving bloodshed.

So we see that God is just not the creator and the designer of the covenant,

but number two, he is the witness who holds us accountable.

Malachi 2.14 says this.

You have to excuse me i'm still fighting a little bit of stuff,

you cry out why doesn't the lord accept

my worship i'll tell you why

because the lord witnessed the vows you and your wife made when you were young

but you have been unfaithful to her though she remained your faithful partner

the wife of your marriage vows here malachi confronts contemporary tendency

to treat commitments lightly.

And he's urging the people of Israel to return to faithfulness,

to return to the covenant.

Did you know that if there's sin between you and your spouse or your sin or

you and anyone else, it affects your worship?

It affects your worship.

That's why the prophet says, why doesn't the Lord accept my worship?

Maybe you're here and he's not accepting your worship and you feel so distanced

because there's still sin between you and him or sin between you and your spouse

or sin between you and someone else.

In the New Testament, didn't Jesus say, hey, if you've got sin,

leave your offering there at the altar.

Go make things right with your brother or your sister who you've sinned against

and then come back so that your offering will be received.

Your relationship with your spouse matters to your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The way you treat your spouse or even your ex or anyone else affects your relationship with the Lord.

In Scripture, we see that a covenant is a solemn agreement or promise between

a man and a woman witnessed by God.

God is the witness of the marriage covenant.

Marriage isn't private. It's a vow before God.

Think of it this way. What if you're having your wedding and you come down and

Jesus Christ is right there and he's marrying you and he signs your certificate?

He's witnessing this covenant decision.

He's the creator of it. He's the witness of it. And number three,

Christ is the model of the covenant.

Ephesians 5, 22 through 25 says this.

We touched on it last week a little bit. Wives, submit to your husbands, how?

As to the Lord. Because the husband is the head of the wife,

as Christ is the head of the church.

He is the savior of the body. Now, as the church submits to Christ,

so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

And I joked last week, hey guys, not a big assignment. Just be Jesus.

Just be Jesus to your wife. Love her.

And here Paul addresses the relationship between husbands and wives,

and he's setting a framework for a Christian household that reflects the relationship

between Christ and the church, the bride of Christ.

I want to read from one exegetical commentary that I think really addresses

these verses so much better than I could do, especially regarding verse 22,

which often can be a hard verse.

Husbands and wives. There are some preachers, there are some husbands that will

degrade their wife and push them down below them as if they are better and higher than their spouses.

Yes, there is an authority dynamic there.

Yes, the husband is the head of the household, but this is just going to—let me just read it.

I'll stop mumbling. Read this. I put it up there for you.

It says, this verse often stirs significant dialogue concerning the role and

status of women in Christian households.

The Greek term for submit is hypotasso. It's not hippopotamus.

Hypotasso, which implies a volunteer readiness to support.

Hear me? Support? When I read this, what did that sound like?

Sounds like Genesis and the King James Version.

A help meet. Do you remember that?

Eve was created as a helper, a supporter, a helpmeet.

Readiness to support rather than a forced subjugation, a keeping down, right?

That's not what marriage is. The phrase, as you do to the Lord,

denotes a spiritual parallel indicating that this submission is part of one's service to Christ.

It is crucial to understand that this directive is contextualized with a larger

framework of mutual submission prescribed in verse 21.

What did he say in verse 21? Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, you are called not to be subjects, but rather supporters and partners with your husband.

Are wives supposed to submit to the husband as the leader? Yes, it's biblical.

But the picture is that both husband and wife mutually partner with each other.

They mutually submit to one another.

I submit to Jen in some things that she wants to do. I sacrificially love.

That's what sacrificial love is, right?

There are times I'm gonna want to do something other than she wants to do. a lot of times.

But guess what? Because I love her, I'm going to serve her, and I'm going to,

support her in that way, and I'm going to do what she wants to do.

And there are other times when we both are kind of like, eh,

and she'll say, you're the leader, you make the call.

But guess what? I would never make a call if I didn't have her full support

on that Because we're a partnership.

We are best friends and we are partners in that together.

We're equal, but different, equal in value, equal, equal in worth,

different roles, different roles.

And guys, like we said yesterday The role to be the leader In loving The role

to be a leader in sacrificing That falls on us We have to lead the way In loving

and sacrificing For our wives and for Our families And then number four.

All to honor the covenant. Marriage matters to God, and marriage should matter to us.

So does the gift of sex, which is a gift from God to his kids.

Read this verse with me. Marriage is to be honored by all, Hebrews 13 says,

and the marriage bed kept undefiled because God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.

Who will judge them? God will judge them.

We love them. We absolutely love them.

God will judge them. I'll speak truth because I'll say, hey,

this is what Scripture says, and this is what I believe because Scripture says it.

But again, I'm not the judge. God's the judge, and so we love them.

There's a difference between loving and accepting. Marriage is to be honored

by all. What does that mean?

It means if you're a kid, you honor the covenant of marriage.

If you're a teenager with raging hormones, you honor the covenant of marriage.

If you're 22 and single, you honor the covenant of marriage.

If you're 31 waiting and dating and hoping to be mating, you honor the covenant of marriage.

If you're 57 and divorced, you honor the covenant of marriage.

At every aspect of your life, you honor the covenant of marriage and you keep

the marriage bed pure because marriage matters to God.

A covenant demands fidelity. A covenant demands that we honor the marriage bed.

We honor God's view and the biblical view of sexuality.

Not only that, but we honor God by honoring our marriage covenants.

This morning, I just want to challenge you to see marriage as a covenant that

God designed, God modeled, God witnessed, and God honored.

And I want to give you a challenge this morning.

Regardless of where you're at in life, I want you to see marriage as holy.

It's not always going to be times of joy. There's going to be some road bumps.

There's going to be times where you want to give up. There's going to be times

when you want to throw in the towel and quit.

But it's a commitment between you and God.

I don't want to get too far into the weeds, but there are times when I've seen a husband cheat,

on a godly woman,

and I've told her you need to stay you will win that person to Christ and guess what,

it happened,

God's.

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And because he died and he sacrificed his life for us, I want to give him my best.

I want to honor him. I want to love him with the way I lead my family.

I want to love him with the way I treat my spouse.

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I want to model for my kids.

And again, I am human and I make mistakes.

Poor Lisa. Lisa just rode in a van with our kids. All the way down to Texas.

And it was snowing in Texas and snowing in Missouri and snowing in Iowa.

I'm surprised she's even at church today. We may never see Lisa again.

But I hope over the past four weeks that you've taken more out of this than

just, I'm supposed to be marrying a godly person or I'm supposed to do things right.

I hope you understand that God is the center of it all.

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And it's because he died for us and loved us.

He is the center. And when you do things his way, your life is so much better.

There's a protection that happens and comes by submitting to the authority of

God in God's word. Would you bow your head and close your eyes?

If you need prayer if you're just struggling with your marriage or if you're

struggling with singleness or you're struggling with whatever,

I want you to know that there are people that would love to pray with you would

love to talk with you I'll be here as well down at the front if you need prayer,

the teams are going to come and they're going to close out.

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Heavenly Father, we love you and we thank you for being here this morning.

We thank you for each person here.

We pray that you would motivate us, that we would be motivated to live for you.

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Out of the incredible love that you have for us.

We want to please you. We want to live for you because of what you've done for us.

And I pray that you would be with each single person here, that you would convict hearts.

Holy Spirit, it's your job to convict I just tell him what you say,

You convict, so you do the job of convicting And we'll continue loving Be pleased

with everything we say and do this week And bring us back next week We love

you We're so thankful for all that you've done In Jesus' name,

amen You've been listening to the Generations Church Podcast If you'd like more

information about Generations Church,

feel free to get in touch with us at info at generationchurch.us or head over

to our website www.generationchurch.us.

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