COHABITATION
TEXT: Gal. 5:16-26
INTRODCUTION
1. While conducting a pastor’s seminar on how to cut the divorce rate in the Tampa Bay area, Religious writer Mike McManus asked, "How many couples who come to you to be married, are living together?" In a chorus, they replied: "70 to 75 percent!" Similarly, clergy in Cleveland, Richmond and Fond du Lac in recent weeks told him over half are cohabiting.
2. Then he asked, "How many of you have preached a sermon on it?" Only one in 20 had.
3. Today we are going to examine a much needed, but little examined subject – cohabitation.
4. It’s really what one writer called fornication squared. But we are going to use language that recognizes the presence of children in the audience.
5. If you are a teen listen closely. Because the odds are very high that someone will ask you to move in with them. You need to decide now how you will respond then.
DISCUSSION:
I. The nature of the problem
A. According to census figures – cohabitation has soared ten-fold, from 430,000 in 1960, to 4.l million couples in 1997.
B. It has replaced marriage as the dominant way male-female unions are formed in America.
C. In America 4.1 million adults are cohabiting at any moment of time. Over a year’s time, probably six or seven million people are shacking up. It is the dominant way male-female unions are now formed in the United States.
D. Yet only 2.3 million couples marry a year, and more than half are cohabiting at the time.
E. The University of Wisconsin reports that those who marry after cohabiting are 50 percent more likely to divorce than those who never lived together. St. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 7:18 that we are to ’’flee fornication.’’ Surely, cohabitation is fornication squared.
F. Sadly, these young people are mistaken. The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University published a report last year confirming earlier studies that those who cohabit before marriage are 50 percent more likely to divorce than those who do not live together.
G. These ’’trial marriages’’ should be called ’’trial divorces,’’ because the vast majority will either learn the pain of ’’pre-marital divorce,’’ breaking up before there is a wedding, or will divorce afterwards. This sex-drenched culture has resulted in a doubling of never-married Americans, soaring from 21 million in 1970 to 46.6 million in 1998, according to Census.
H. It creates a problem for preachers. "How do we graciously tell a cohabiting couple: (1) that according to biblical standards, they are living in sin, (2) they are endangering their current and long-term relationship, and (3) need to separate before marrying in the church all without offending them and having them angrily walk away from the church forever?"
I. "Either we lower the standards and marry everyone who asks (hoping that something spiritual rubs off in the process), or we raise the standards so high that we marry an even smaller percentage of couples each year (missing excellent and rare opportunities to evangelize). Neither choice seems very appealing or appropriate."
II. Some good reasons not to cohabitate
A. Those who live together before marriage are the least likely to marry each other.
A Columbia University study cited in New Woman magazine found that "only 26 percent of women surveyed and a scant 19 percent of men" married the person with whom they cohabited.
B. Those who live together before marriage have higher separation and divorce rates. The National Survey of Families and Households, based on interviews with 13,000 people, concludes, "Unions begun by cohabitation are almost twice as likely to dissolve within 10 years compared to all first marriages: 57 percent to 30 percent."
C. Those who live together before marriage have unhappier marriages. A study by the National Council on Family Relations of 309 newlyweds found that those who cohabited first were less happy in marriage.
D. Those who are sexually active before marriage are much more likely to divorce. A study of 2,746 women in the National Survey of Family Growth found the non-virgin brides increase their odds of divorce by about 60 percent. Here is secular evidence for St. Paul’s injunction, "Flee fornication."
E. Those who live together are at high risk for contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Three million teenagers alone contract one of five dozen STDs. If untreated, STDs can lead to brain damage, heart disease, infertility and even death. Women who have three or more sexual partners in a lifetime are 15 times more likely to get cervical cancer.
F. Those who live together do not experience the best sex. The best sex is found in marriage. Couples who abstain from sex before marriage are 29 to 47 percent more likely to enjoy sex afterwards.
G. Those having premarital sex may be fooled into marrying a person not right for them. Sex can be emotionally blind. Real love can stand the test of time without physical intimacy. The sexually active lose objectivity and actually cheat on the test of time.
H. Those who live together before marriage often suffer guilt and fear due to the dangers of STDs or unwanted pregnancy. Guilt can lead to frigidity and impotence
III. What the Bible says.
A. God Loves us.
(1 John 5:3 NKJV) For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
B. God intended us for marriage (Matthew 19:4-9 NKJV) And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ’made them male and female,’ {5} "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’? {6} "So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate." {7} They said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?" {8} He said to them, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. {9} "And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery."
"Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral." (Heb. 13:4)
(1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 NKJV) For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; {4} that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, {5} not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; {6} that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. {7} For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. {8} Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.
(Galatians 5:19-26 NKJV) Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, {20} idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, {21} envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. {22} But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, {23} gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. {24} And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. {25} If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. {26} Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
(1 Corinthians 6:9-12 NKJV) Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, {10} nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. {11} And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. {12} All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.
C. Listen to what a person is not saying when they ask you to move in with them
I Joel take you Jill to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, ’till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge you my faith.
I Jill take you Joel to by my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish ’till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge you my faith.
