Marriage As It's Meant To Be Series

I enjoy hearing what kids say about love and marriage.

• When asked why people fall in love, 9-year-old Mae said, “No one is sure why it happens, but I heard it has something to do with the way you smell…That’s why perfume and deodorant are so popular.”

• When asked what falling in love is like, 9-year-old Bart commented, “It’s like an avalanche where you have to run for your life.”

• Alan, age 10, remarked, “No person really decides before they grow up who they’re going to marry. God decides it all way before, and you get to find out later who you’re stuck with.”

• Carey, age 7 said, “Love will find you, even if you’re trying to hide from it. I been trying to hide from it since I was five, but the girls keep finding me.”

• Another young boy was asked what role good looks play in finding a mate: “It isn’t always just how you look. Look at me. I’m handsome like anything and I haven’t got anybody to marry me yet.”

• Lori, age 8, was asked what her mom and dad have in common. She quickly replied, “Both don’t want no more kids.”

• And Gavin, age 8, gave his insight into why married couples often hold hands: “They want to make sure their rings don’t fall off because they paid good money for them.”

In his Breakpoint Commentary this week, John Stonestreet opened with some good news and some bad news. The good news is divorce is at its lowest rate in 50 years. The bad news is marriage is at its lowest point in 150 years. According to a Pew study, barely half of U.S. adults are married and nearly 4 in 10 believe marriage has become obsolete as an institution.

If you’re married, how do you make sure your rings don’t fall off? Today, we’re going to look at marriage as it’s meant to be because marriage was the very first institution of society. Here’s a one-sentence summary of where we’re headed: Because marriage matters to God, we must do marriage His way.

If you have a Bible nearby, please turn to the very first book, the Book of Genesis. Context is always important when we study the Bible. Genesis 1 gives us a complete narration of creation; Genesis 2 retells the account in order to fill in the details concerning the creation of man, the creation of woman, and the construction of marriage. The first chapter portrays God as powerful, using the name Elohim, the God of Creation; while the second chapter pictures God as personal, using the name Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God.

I don’t think I’ll ever read Genesis 2:18-25 the same way after learning that my future son-in-law Lucas read this passage to our daughter Megan right before proposing to her earlier this month.

Let’s give our attention to God’s Word: “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

The teaching of Scripture on human origins and of marriage is foundational to the rest of the Bible. Adam and Eve were real individual human beings from whom all humanity can be traced. In Matthew 19:4-5, Jesus speaks of Adam and Eve as real people and their marital union as the basis for the sanctity of marriage: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?”