And that’s why it’s essential for you to set Jesus Christ apart as the Builder of your home. It affects God’s reputation on this planet. Marriage is far more important than most of us realize. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7 tells us, “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. God’s original plan called for the home to be a sort of greenhouse-a nurturing place where children grow up to learn character, values, and integrity. That’s why God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). Purpose #2: to complete each other and experience companionship. Because we’re created in the image of God, people who wouldn’t otherwise know what God is like should be able to look at us and get a glimpse of Him. What does it mean to mirror God’s image? Your marriage should exalt God and glorify Him to a world that desperately needs to see who He is. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Purpose #1: To mirror His image.Īfter God created the earth and the animals, He said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” The account continues, “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:26–27). When the Pharisees ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” Jesus answers by pointing them to God’s purposes for marriage:Īnd He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. It is interesting to note the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees in Matthew 19:3-9. God takes the wedding covenant seriously, even when we do not.Īnother reason God hates divorce is because it tears at the very heart of God’s redemptive plan for the world. Deuteronomy 23:23 says, “You shall be careful to perform what goes out from your lips, just as you have voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God what you have promised.” Jesus said that “every careless word that men shall speak, they shall render account for it in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36). In Proverbs 20:25 we read, “It is a trap for a man to dedicate something rashly and only later to consider his vows” (NIV).
Instead, we were entering into a covenant-the same type of sacred obligation that God made with His children on several momentous occasions, such as with Noah after the flood.Īny covenant-including the marriage covenant-is a binding, weighty obligation. When we spoke these words, Barbara and I weren’t agreeing to provide some personal services via a contract that could be terminated if one of us defaulted. I promise and covenant, before God and these witnesses, to be your loving and faithful husband to stand by you in riches and in poverty, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, as long as we both shall live.” “I, Dennis, take you, Barbara, to be my lawful wedded wife. The vows I shared with Barbara went like this: It should not be surprising that God declares, in Malachi 2:16, “I hate divorce!” And why does He hate divorce? One reason is that marriage is meant to be a special covenant between a man, a woman, and their God. Maybe my picture would stop people before it’s too late.” … I wish I could put on this piece of paper for all the world to see, a picture of what divorce feels like. One woman wrote after her divorce, “Our divorce has been the most painful, horrid, ulcer producing, agonizing event you can imagine. But Harvard sociologist Armand Nicholi III concluded, “Divorce is not a solution, but an exchange of problems.” In a more personal way, novelist Pat Conroy said of his own marriage break-up, “Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.” In our culture today many see divorce as a positive solution to a troubled marriage.