Introduction

Maintaining God’s way of marriage
Everyone agrees that a good marriage is more pleasant and beneficial than an unhappy one. But equally important, a good marriage is a model of the heavenly union of God with the believer. In other words, your marriage might win someone to Christ or cause him to turn away from a life in fellowship with God. That in itself should be reason enough for us to learn to be godly mates and live the abundant life in the context of a Christian marriage!

If you ask the average man or woman what God has said about their responsibility to their wife or husband, to their children, and to themselves in the home, they will often admit they don’t know or give an answer that demonstrates they don’t know. And instead of looking to God for answers, these husbands or wives either listen to their friends on the corner or adopt standards from TV. Because they don’t know God well enough, they base their personal identities on clothes, cars, cash, or romantic conquests. That reduces manhood/ womanhood to a primitive level. No amount of strength, good looks, or assets can improve their performance from God’s perspective. A biblical spouse is a person who has learned to submit their personality underneath the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It is then that they will experience all of the fullness that a healthy marriage has to offer.

Marriage is a covenantal union designed by God to enable both partners to fully live out their divine purpose for being. Only when husbands and wives understand their responsibilities underneath God will they maximize this unique union!
Statistics remind us what we already know, either from personal experience or from our friends, and that is that over 50 percent of all marriages will end in divorce. Over half of every promise made that “until death do us part” gets broken.

If we do not understand the nature of the agreement we made when we got married, then we will not be prone to protect it. What’s even worse is that neither will we be apt to benefit from it.

Our marriages today are deteriorating at such a high rate not because we no longer get along, but because we have lost sight of the purpose and prosperity of the marriage covenant.

Most people today view marriage as a means of looking for love, happiness, and fulfilment. Make no mistake about it, those things are important. Those things are critical. They are just not the most important, or the most critical. Yet because we have made second things first, as important as second things are, we are having trouble finding anything at all.
Marriage is a covenantal union designed to strengthen the capability of each partner to carry out the plan of God in their lives. You cannot leave God at the altar and expect to have a thriving marriage. God must join you in your home according to the aspects He has set up in His covenant. When He does, and when you abide by His authority, your marriage will not be a statistic, but rather it will be a satisfying tool used by God to advance His kingdom both in you and through you.

Main Message: The main guiding principle is in God’s Word.

Exploration

1 Corinthians 7:39 ESV
A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.
Ephesians 5:25 ESV
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
Mark 10:8-12 ESV
And the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Genesis 2:18 ESV
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Ephesians 5:33 ESV
However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Genesis 2:20-24 ESV
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.

Malachi 2:13-16 ESV
And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favour from your hand. But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So, guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So, guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”