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Transcript December 27/28, 2014

Killer Marriage // Marriage Killer: The Blueprint Matt Hessel | Genesis 2:18-25

Well I hope you had a fantastic Christmas. If you are anything like me you are probably still stumbling out of a food coma caused by a combination of turkey, homemade noodles and just way, way, way too many Christmas cookies. So today is a little bit different for us, right? There are some volunteers here and there are some staff here but the majority of you are watching online from home, from another part of the country, or maybe another part of the world. If today happens to be the first time you are joining us I just want to say welcome. We are glad you are here. This is a little bit different for us. Today we are the church scattered but next week we are going to be the church gathered again back here on this campus next weekend. So if you are in the Indianapolis area I would love to invite you to come back next week on campus and join us then or in the near future. So let me explain what is going on here today. Christmas is over and we are still taking a break from our series in the Gospel of John and today we are starting a brand new, five part series called Killer Marriage or Marriage Killer. That is going to hit everyone differently depending on where you are in your experience, right? For some of you immediately it is killer marriage. Maybe you just recently got married, you are in the honeymoon stage and you haven’t set the bathroom rules yet. You don’t even know there are bathroom rules. They are coming. You just think everything is awesome right? You get excited about the little stuff. You say, “Yeah, we’ve got a killer marriage.” It is because you are in the honeymoon stage. It is killer. It is killer until you have to experience eight different family Christmases in a 36 hour period. Then it goes from killer marriage to, “Why didn’t somebody warn us about this in pre-‐marital counseling?” Then some of you, you have been married for quite a while and you would say, “You know what? I identify with killer marriage too. That is us.” There have been highs and lows but your marriage – it is tracking, right? It is good. You would say, “Our marriage isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination but we’d say we have a killer marriage.” And some of you when you hear that title your mind immediately goes to marriage killer. Maybe the title itself makes you a little bit uncomfortable because you know what kills a marriage from first-‐hand experience. It is painful to hear that. Some of you think, “Okay, I’m not married so I guess this series isn’t going to be for me. See you guys in five weeks.” However you respond to that title, however you respond to it, let me just say this. Whether you are married or single, engaged or divorced, whether you are a widow or a widower, maybe you will be married one day. Wherever you are in marriage, if you are struggling, if you are growing, if you are in pain, if you are in joy, if you are separated or committed, wherever you are on the relationship

Killer Marriage // Marriage Killer: The Blueprint December 27/28, 2014

Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2

continuum, wherever you fall on that continuum this series is going to be for you. It is going to be for you. Here is why. We are going to look at different passages of the Bible to talk about marriage and what can make up a killer marriage and what can actually kill a marriage. Wherever you are, whether you are single, married, engaged, divorced, or you have lost a spouse, here is why this series is going to apply to you. The Bible is timeless truth and timeless truth is always timely. So the passages of Scripture that we will look at in this series, whether you are married or not, are going to be timely for you. That is what is awesome about God’s Word. That is what is awesome about It. But where do we start? Do we start with the dos and don’ts? Do we start with all the application? Do we start with the list of do these ten things and then you will have a killer marriage? Is that where we start? Now the 20 something, single guys they are like, “Please can we start with sex? Can we start there?” Relax guys we will get there. Actually go take a cold shower. Where do we start? Where do we start a series on marriage? A couple of weeks ago my family and I moved into a brand new house. I say “moved in” and I use that term loosely. We are in the house and there are boxes everywhere but we are technically moved in. This is extremely exciting for us because we built this house. Now I know some of you have done that before but this was a first time thing for us. What I learned about this was that maybe the most important piece in the entire process, after what seemed like we had signed our lives away, maybe the most important piece in the entire process was the blueprints. The blueprints are not the most exciting piece of the process. They don’t get a whole lot of pub but they were vital. If you have built before you know what I am talking about here. While the house was being built I was over there, at the house, probably every single day, just checking out things, getting excited, watching, acting like I knew what I was looking at. I was just getting excited and I noticed there were so many different sub-‐contractors. I had no idea it was going to be like this. There were so many different sub-‐contractors coming in and out doing very specific jobs at very different points of the process. There were so many different people who were just coming in and out doing different jobs and I wondered, “How are they going to stay on the same page? How are they going to build my house without major flaws? How are they going to build my house without skipping major steps?” Well you and I know that is because of the blueprints. Before the house ever existed the blueprints did. The blueprints told us everything. Nothing happened outside of the blueprints. This is how we stay on the same page. Everybody was on the same page no matter where they were in the process and what they were doing. Anybody who came in to build in my house knew exactly how the house was supposed to be built and what it was supposed to look like. Now if the contractors would have come in and said, “You know what? The blueprints, they are just a suggestion. We’ll just do whatever we want.” If that would have happened bad things were going to happen along with that. Chaos would have ensued. There would have been destruction to some extent and, at some point, maybe even irreconcilable destruction. But the blueprints were what kept us on the same page. It is what told everyone, “Here are the guidelines on how to build a safe and what turned out to be a pretty awesome house.”



Just like you have to look at blueprints before you can build a house, you have to do the same thing with marriage. You have to look at the blueprints. Marriage was created and designed by the God of the Bible and He also gives us a blueprint for what marriage is supposed to look like. It is a blueprint found in Genesis 2. That is where we have to start. It may not be the most exciting piece. It may not be the most attractive and the most fun to talk about but it is vital. That is where we have to start. So if you have a Bible go ahead and open it to Genesis 2. If you don’t have a Bible with you we will put these verses up on the screen. So everything the Bible teaches about marriage comes out of this blueprint in Genesis 2, everything. Jesus affirms this and He actually quotes it in Matthew 19, verse 5. Paul uses it in Ephesians 5 which we’ll jump into later on in the series. Paul uses this blueprint as the foundation of that passage. Everything the Bible teaches about marriage is found in this passage. It comes out of this well. So before we dive in we have to look at the context. This is Genesis 2. This is the Garden of Eden. God is wrapping up Creation. He is wrapping up all this Creation and He looks around. Genesis 1 tells us after everything God created was made that He looks around and He sees that it is good. God is pretty pleased with His Creation. He walks around and looks at His stuff and He is like, “You know what? I am a fan of palm trees and mountains. The blueness of the ocean – nailed it. It is awesome. It is good stuff.” Then God moves on to His masterpiece. It is man. Man is the pinnacle of Creation. Not the focus but the pinnacle. The focus of Creation is God’s greatness and God’s greatness is most reflected in His creation of man. Genesis 1, verse 31 gives us an idea of everything all wrapped up. This is what it says. It says, “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” This is perfection. It is perfect. It is paradise. God looks at everything. He sees and the only thing He sees is good. Everything is good. In Genesis 2, verse 18 all that changes. It says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good.’” “Okay what is not good? What are you talking about? I mean this is paradise. It is perfection. We’ve got perfect weather, coconut drinks, and peace. The only thing lacking is snow plows, junk mail, and Christmas shopping. All that stuff is part of the fall. What is not good about this? Not good and paradise, those two things don’t belong in the same sentence. I don’t get it. What is not good?” “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone.’” So God looks out at His creation and everything is good. The only thing He doesn’t like, the only thing He looks at and says, “That is not good,” is man being alone. That is because isolation was never the design for humanity. Community was. That was always the design. You are I are not created for isolation. That is not the design. That is not the design at all. God looks out at everything He created and the one thing, the only thing He says is not good is man being alone. Yes this passage we are jumping into, this is the blueprint for marriage. Yes today we are starting a series on marriage and relationships but let’s get one thing clear first. Marriage is not the end-‐all be-‐all. It is not. It is not the only answer to isolation. You can be married and completely alone and some of you know what that is like. You can be as single as they come and not be alone. If you think another person is the cure for isolation then a part of you is always going to be alone. Verse 18 is also a painful reminder for some of you. “It is not good for man to be alone. Yeah, I know because I am. What am I supposed to do? There just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of hope for me right



now in this whole alone thing. Yeah, it only gets worse around Christmas.” Maybe you are single. Maybe you are separated. Maybe you are going through the most desperate time in your marriage. Maybe you are divorced. Maybe you have lost a spouse. You know first-‐hand that it is not good to be alone and you just want to know what to do. Let me just say this. That pain is very real. As a pastor I have gotten to see it way too much. We are going to hit on this throughout the series but let me just say this. This is meant to be a little piece of comfort. If there is pain in this area for you this is just meant to be a small bit of comfort. This won’t alleviate all your pain. This won’t be an answer to all of your loneliness. I know that. I am just trying to get us started. Before there was ever a problem, before there was ever pain, before you and I could ever experience what loneliness felt like God was the first to recognize that, “It is not good for man to be alone.” He didn’t have to have that pointed out to Him. He saw it. He recognized it and He said, “Okay I’m going to do something about it.” God wasn’t asleep at the wheel. Maybe it doesn’t feel like He is doing anything about it. Maybe it feels like He is asleep at the wheel but Scripture promises over, and over, and over again that God will never leave us or forsake us. That same God who designed what a spouse is supposed to look like, that God who designed and created marriage, that same God, He will never leave you alone whether you have a spouse or not. So if you are in Christ, whether you have a spouse or not, you will never be alone, never. Verse 18 is the start of the design. It says, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that 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.” Okay so what is up with the animals? You know we are talking about it is not good to be alone and then we get to this animal part. What is that all about? Is the Bible saying, “Okay you are alone so just go get a cat.”? Is that what the Bible is saying? That is not what the Bible is saying. Plus cats are part of the fall. That is a joke, maybe. I know somebody is at home right now holding their cat saying, “I cannot believe he just said that. Don’t listen to him. That is not true.” What is up with the animals? What is this all about? This isn’t just some random detail that is thrown in there so we would have more stories to fill up Bible coloring books. No, this is a very important detail. It says, “But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.” So what God is doing here is He is allowing, for the very first time, He is allowing Adam to realize that he is alone. Adam never asks for another person. For all we know Adam never even realized he was alone. But God knew he was alone and now he is letting Adam realize it too. And He is bringing all creation before Adam. He brings it all in front of Adam and He is like, “Okay Adam do you see anything you like? Anything you want? It is all yours.” And Adam gets to see it all. Personally I think it would be pretty awesome to have a tiger and a bald eagle on my shoulder. I know that sounds a little bit weird. But, you know, that would be awesome. They would be awesome companions. Adam gets that chance and he looks at them and he says, “No, there is nothing here suitable for me.”



And here is the thing. God knew that the whole time. God knew there was nothing suitable for him. He is allowing him to realize he is alone and now God is building into Adam this desire for relationship, for connection, for community, and for intimacy. All of us, we all desire relationship, connection, community, intimacy. God has wired that into us. God is allowing Adam to go through this awareness process. He is allowing him to feel like he is alone. He is building these desires. What God is doing is He is building up this anticipation, this great anticipation in Adam so that He could unveil His creation, for God to bring forth His design blueprint. Verse 21, “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.’” So God allows Adam to realize he was alone. He is building into Adam this desire for intimacy and connection. Then He brings all the animals to Adam continuing to make him aware that he was alone, asks Adam to name them: Zebra, Lion, Kangaroo. Then God unveils what He wanted to unveil. And God is excited at this point. He is giddy. He brings woman up to Adam and here is his response, “I want one. Forget the tiger, forget the bald eagle thing, I want one of those. She is perfect.” She was. And then Adam launches into this poem. That is what this is. This is Hebrew poetry. This “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,” Adam sees the goodness in God’s design for him. He sees the goodness in God’s design for woman. Then he launches into a poem. That is exactly what we did guys when we first saw our brides. We launched into poetry, right? Guys who are married do you remember what your bride looked like on the day of your wedding when you saw her for the first time? If you are sitting with your bride say yes audibly. I remember this vividly. I am standing there at the front of the aisle and the double doors fly open and there is my bride just beaming. She was just gorgeous. I am never going to forget that. That moment, the image of her at that moment is going to be forever etched in my mind. I remember the kind of smile she made. I even remember the slight angle her face was tilted at. Then all the emotions start to rush over you, right guys? Again say yes. I am just trying to help you. These emotions start to rush over you. Your heart starts pounding. You get anxious. You get nervous. You are excited. You are happy. You do that weird laugh-‐cry thing at the same time. Whatever that thing is. You do all that because you are overwhelmed with that emotion and all that joy. That is exactly what Adam is experiencing right here. God the Father is bringing forth the daughter in joy, bringing her down the aisle to present her to her groom. Here is the result in verse 24. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” So this is the design. This is it right here. This is God’s design for relationship, for intimacy, for marriage. And here is the thing we can’t forget. This design that we see right here, the blueprint for marriage, this is pre-‐fall. There is no sin yet. So we know God’s blueprint for marriage, we know it is good, we know it is perfect. We know it is meant for God’s glory and our joy. It is actually meant for more as we’ll get to in a minute. This blueprint, this design for marriage that we see right here in Genesis 2, the same one that all of Scripture affirms, that all of Scripture teaches from, the blueprint the design for marriage here it is. It is one man and one woman brought together by God to become one.



Marriage isn’t made up of two different individuals. Two individuals becoming one make up a marriage. Maybe you are pushing back on the design. That is fine. It is okay. It is okay to ask questions. But know this, there is nothing about God’s design that would rob you of your joy but instead only deny you pain. You have to know that. It is vital. So the natural first question is why? Why is this the design? Why is this the blueprint? Genesis 1, verse 27 says, “God created man in His own image.” That had to take great intentionality and great purpose for God to create man in His own image. If we know God had great purpose and intention for the creation of man He must have used the exact same intention and purpose to create marriage. If we know that, we know God had great intentionality and great purpose. He wasn’t just saying, “Okay I am going to throw an idea up here. Here is the blueprint. We’ll see if it works and if not okay.” No, He had an intense and precise purpose and intention for this design. We can trust in that. And if we can trust in that the next question is okay what is it? What is the design? Why is it this way? Let me just give you a couple handles. Go back to Genesis 1, verse 27. It says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” So we are created in the image of God. It takes both male and female to represent the image of God. So God is most fully and most beautifully represented with the union of a male and female. Man is created in the image of God. Woman is created in the image of God. But God’s image is most fully displayed, most fully represented in the union, when a man and woman come together as one in marriage. Are you tracking with me? So I am created in the image of God. My wife Kelly is created in the image of God. Alone, as individuals, we are. But we more fully represent, we more beautifully represent the image of God when we come together as one in our marriage. So one of the reasons, one of the purposes of this design is that God’s design for marriage showcases the image of God. Here is another. Jesus often taught in parables and a parable was an earthly illustration trying to convey a heavenly truth. One of the reasons, one of the purposes behind God’s design for marriage is that it is a parable. Marriage is a parable lived out illustrating the eternal marriage between Jesus and His church. So the New Covenant, the relationship between Jesus and His people, Christians in the church, that New Covenant, the design for it, is extremely precise. It is thought out, it is purposeful, it is beautiful. We can’t alter it, we can’t change it, we can’t add to it, nor do we ever want to because the New Covenant was designed to give God maximum glory and give us maximum joy. That is an awesome equation. That is why the design for marriage matters. Just like the design for the New Covenant, marriage, the blueprint, is extremely precise, it is thought out, it is purposeful, and it’s beautiful. Disregarding or altering the blueprint is like trying to disregard or alter the Covenant. If you change the parable you change the truth the parable points to. And the parable of marriage points to the truth of the New Covenant found in Jesus. We wouldn’t want to change the parable of the prodigal son, would we? What if the father, instead of welcoming his son in and blessing him, what if the father instead killed the prodigal son when he returned? And he could have legally done that. Or what if he just made him earn his way back into his family? Or at the very least just let him do what the son requested which was to be a hired servant. What if that is the parable. Well if that is the parable then works win out, not grace. If you change the parable you change the truth it points to. What if the father listened to the older brother? Then religion wins out, not the relationship the father desired to have with his lost son.



If you change the parable you change the truth it points to. If we change the parable it ruins the story, which ruins the truth, which robs the joy, which denies grace and invites pain. I love what Jeffrey Brommer says about that. He says, “As God made man in His own image so He made marriage in the image of His own eternal marriage with His people.” God’s design for marriage is a living parable of the marriage between Jesus and His church. Here is one more. This design for marriage is a signpost. It is pointing to all things coming together again, God bringing all things together again. We get the blueprint in Genesis 1 and 2 and then in Revelation 21 and 22 the blueprint is fulfilled. There are two common threads in the first two chapters of the Bible and the last two chapters of the Bible. In Genesis 1 and 2 and then in the last chapters of Revelation, chapters 21 and 22 there is a wedding and there is perfection. That is why when your marriage is tracking you experience this incredible joy that is meant to represent the same relationship we’ll have with the King of Glory when all things come together, when all things are made new, when the blueprint is fulfilled in Revelation 21 and 22. That is why this joy you experience when your marriage is tracking – I can’t describe it. If you’ve experienced it you know exactly what I am talking about. It is just a taste, it is a teaser, it is pointing to what is going to come. But we are not living in perfection right now. We are living somewhere between Genesis 2 and Revelation 21. We are all affected by sin. Our relationships are affected by sin which includes, sometimes especially, our marriages. So when this design that was created in perfection, when it is off and it is frayed by sin, that is why, sometimes, we can feel the most devastating pain around marriage. This design, this blueprint, it is so intimate. It is so purposeful. It has such great intention that when it is broken the consequences are often traumatic. They are just traumatic. That is why things like separation, and adultery, and divorce are so incredibly painful because they take intimacy and connection and rip it apart from a design that was always meant to be intimate and connected – always. Marriage can offer some of the greatest joys that we will experience in this life and at the same time marriage killers can bring some of the most devastating pain. Those two ends of the spectrum are so far apart but that pain, that pain is the product of a world broken by sin, not a product of the design. The design was created in paradise, in perfection. In paradise everything is literally perfect including marriage. In paradise intimacy is at its deepest and relationship connection is at its highest. We all crave that right? We all crave intimacy. We all crave connection. If you don’t you probably don’t have a pulse. We all also crave paradise to some level. That is every single advertisement. It promises to deliver and fulfill paradise in some shape or fashion. So maybe if marriage, the design or the blueprint, is made in perfection, if it is created in paradise, maybe, just maybe, the closest we will ever get to touching Eden is this lifetime is by experiencing the only thing we can still touch that was in Eden. That is God’s blueprint for marriage. It is the only thing we can still put our hands on that was in Eden. Your marriage will never be perfect. It never will. Because it is made up of two imperfect people becoming one imperfect person. But maybe it is worth the struggle. Maybe it is worth the sacrifice to get to experience a glimpse, just a glimpse, of what paradise is going to be like. To taste the joy God



designed us to enjoy, what our relationship with Jesus is supposed to be like, what it is going to be like, when the blueprint is fulfilled. God’s design for marriage is a signpost pointing to the coming paradise. So what is the signpost supposed to look like? What is it supposed to look like? We are going to spend the rest of the series working through that. Let me just start it off today. Let’s just get the ball rolling. Wherever you are, personally, whether you are married or not, know this. The most important day of your marriage is not the first day of your marriage. The most important day of your marriage is the last day. Whatever that day is, when Jesus comes back or one of you dies. Will that be a day filled with tears of regret? Or will it be a day filled with tears of joy? Will you be able to say, “I loved my spouse unconditionally. I served my spouse. I laughed with my spouse. I encouraged my spouse. I put my spouse’s needs and wants above my own. I worked with my spouse and helped them grow in his/her relationship with Jesus and we worked together for His glory.”? If you can say those things on the last day of your marriage what a success your marriage will have been. Yes, there will be hard times. Yes, there will be pain. I promise. But if you can say those things on the last day, I promise you will have a marriage filled with joy, a marriage filled with a purpose that can only be found in Jesus. Finishing your marriage well starts today. It is a daily process. Here is how that plays out. Despite popular opinion men did not create women, God did. And He did it in a very specific way. God did not take the rib from the man’s back. So guys our wives are not to be behind us. We are not better than they are. We are not superior to them. Men we are called to be the leaders of our families, not emperors. Ladies, God did not take the rib from man’s front either. You are not called to be out in front of your husband. You are not better than he is. You are not superior to him, “Anything he can do I can do better.” It is just not true. There are plenty of things my wife can do much better than I can, no question. But there are also things I can do better than she can. But that doesn’t make me better than her. It doesn’t make me more superior. And it doesn’t make her superior to me. It doesn’t make her better than me. God didn’t take the rib from Adam’s front, He didn’t take the rib from man’s back, He took the rib from man’s side. Husbands and wives are to be side-‐by-‐side. We are to go through our lives and go through our marriages as teammates, as partners. Husbands and wives are called to different roles absolutely. But both are equal in value and in worth because both make up the image of God. Some Puritan writers would also point out that the rib was taken from man’s side underneath his arm reminding us guys that one of our responsibilities is to protect our wives. That doesn’t mean just physical protection. That is the easy part. Anybody can protect his wife physically. Just go get a gym membership and a baseball bat. The hard part is protecting her heart, it is protecting her spiritually, it is protecting her emotionally. The rib also came from near his heart reminding us again that one of the most common commands in Scripture for husbands is to love our wives and to love them sacrificially. That is Ephesians 5. That love is never a feeling. Whenever love becomes a feeling then anything goes. It can be all over the place. I can’t believe I am going to use this illustration but shows like the Bachelor and the Bachelorette those are train wrecks for a lot of reasons. One of the main reasons they are train wrecks is because everybody comes in searching for love. Everybody is searching for love but what they are really



searching for is a feeling. They are searching for a feeling that they call love. Love isn’t a feeling. Love is a choice and love is a sacrifice. You think Jesus felt like loving the disciples when they bailed on Him? Do you think Jesus felt like loving the Roman soldiers when they beat Him, and they mocked Him, and they spit on Him, and then they nailed Him to a cross? No, I doubt He felt like loving them but praise God He chose to love them just like He chooses to love us every single day. Don’t ever base love on a feeling because feelings change. Instead make the decision, not just on your wedding day, make the decision every single day to love your spouse. If you make the decision to love your spouse every day that is how you start finishing your marriage well right now. Day by day it is a process and the best way for you to love your spouse is to love Jesus first. If you love Jesus first that is an indication that you love your spouse. If I love Jesus first, if He is my first priority, my wife will be the biggest beneficiary of that and then my kids. And if my wife loves Jesus more than she loves me, if she loves Jesus first ahead of me, then I will benefit more than anybody else from that, anybody else. If Jesus is our first love, if He is our first pursuit then our spouses will be blessed more than anybody else. That is a promise. In fact if you love Jesus first, if He is your pursuit, then it is impossible for your spouse not to be blessed by that, even if your spouse is as far away from Christ as possible. Jesus says in John 15, verse 5 – this is a pretty famous verse. He says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.” So if Jesus is our first love, if He is our pursuit, if we abide in Him then we are going to bear fruit. Well a tree that bears fruit, a tree that produces shade; does that tree get to enjoy the fruit that it bears? Does it get to enjoy the shade that it produces? No. Other people do. It is the people who are around the tree. Who are the people who are closest around you right now who will be able to enjoy the fruit that you produce because of your love for Jesus, the shade that you produce? Well the first person is your spouse. Along with choosing to love our spouses every day another part of the design is to extend grace to our spouses daily. Christians, part of our growth in Christ is to be conductors of grace from God to other people. Your spouse will always be at the top of that list. One of my primary roles as Kelly’s husband is to be a vessel of grace to her. And that is hard. It is hard not because she needs all kinds of grace even though she would say that she does. It is hard because sometimes I am not a very good vessel. The grace that I am supposed to extend to my spouse, sometimes I need that far more than she does. But that doesn’t give me an excuse. I am still called to extend the same grace I’ve received from Christ to her. That is why anybody who says that marriage is nothing but rainbows and lollypops they don’t know what they are talking about. Marriage is hard. Just because it is hard doesn’t mean it can’t be done well. And just because it is hard doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed. Anything worth enjoying is probably going to be difficult. Here is a good equation to remember. Love and grace, those are ingredients for a killer marriage but feelings and performance, those are marriage killers. Those are marriage killers. I want to wrap up by looking one final aspect of the design that really runs counter-‐cultural today. It is this idea of a contractual marriage versus a covenantal one. Our society, our culture has completely



shifted away from covenantal marriages to contractual ones. We treat our relationships like AT&T service contracts. You know if your spouse doesn’t live up to his/her end of the deal, if he/she doesn’t satisfy you, “Well you know what I am going to drop them like fourth period French and go sign a contract with a new person.” The contract is always focused on the inside, “What can satisfy me? What can fulfill me?” It is never focused on the outside “How can I bless the other person?” If our relationships, if our marriages are setup like contracts, those aren’t relationships, those aren’t marriages. That is consumerism. That is all it is. Those types of relationships, they are exhausting because they take constant marketing and self promotion, “I’ve got to keep up. I’ve got to keep the spark alive. I can’t let this get old. I’ve got to stay ahead of the competition. I’ve got to constantly sell myself.” It’s self promote, self promote, self promote because, “If I don’t, if I don’t continue to sell myself or if I’m not sold to then the relationship might be doomed. The contract is going to be void.” Why would you want a relationship like that anyway? It is not intimacy. It is marketing. It is constantly self sell, self promote. The types of relationships that are setup like contracts, they have a slim chance of ever surviving. God’s design for marriage, the blueprint for marriage, it is not a contract, it is a covenant. We don’t really use that word all that much today but a covenant is a commitment. It is bond that is not broken by dissatisfaction. A covenant is someone who says, “You know what? I am all in. I am all in. Whatever happens and wherever this thing goes I am in. I am not leaving.” That is covenant. That is the exact same thing Jesus says to us. Go back to verse 24. It says, “Therefore man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast,” that word right there in Hebrew actually translated to cleave, “hold fast to his wife.” And that is covenant. “And they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” That last verse that is pretty awesome right? But it is much more than just talking about being naked physically. So relax 20 something guy. That is what a covenant looks like. That is the makeup of a covenant. A contract marriage says market and self promote. Covenant marriages are openness, vulnerability, and security. Which one sounds better? We would all say covenant but the world is constantly selling contract. You’ve got to keep selling. But God’s design for marriage creates the space of security where we can be completely open. We can be real. We can be real and not have the fear of rejection, not worry about our spouse walking out on us. We don’t have to worry about that. We can be completely vulnerable to drop these masks of self marketing. We can drop all of our defenses and be completely naked in every sense of the word, not just physically, and be completely unashamed and still be chosen to be loved. That is intimacy – one hundred percent being known and still being loved. That is the covenant. That is the design. The design is one man and one woman both equal in worth and value who come together by God to become one together in a covenant, not a contract, both choosing to love, both choosing to extend grace, both trying to help the other person touch Eden, both trying to help the other person pursue Jesus as a signpost of what is to come. That is the blueprint. That is it right there. We are going to spend the rest of the series just working through that. What does a killer marriage look like? What can kill a marriage? And my prayer for this series is that this would be a time of renewal, this would be a time of edification, that we would look at the design, the blueprint, and the blessing that God offers us in marriage and say, “That is amazing God. Thank you for this gift.”



I pray that we would look at our spouses in a new way. That we would teach our children what marriage looks like. That we would circle around our brothers and sisters who are alone, who have been hurt, who are broken. And ultimately I pray that we would see that this gift of marriage is one we can experience right now. This gift, this blueprint, the design that God has offered us should ultimately open us up to the marriage that Jesus offers us. That as the church we are part of the bride of Christ. And one day we are going to be brought back together with Christ. Everything is going to be made new. Everything is going to be made perfect. We are going to bask in paradise. But right now maybe we just get a little bit of a glimpse of what paradise looks like. So my prayer is that we would be open, that we would seek out what God has designed for us, that we would be encouraged, that we would be convicted, that we would grow and that this is a blessing. Let me pray for us as a church. Father, thank You for marriage. God, You know how far short I fall as a husband but I thank You for my wife. I thank You that You’ve given us a gift in marriage that points to Jesus, that points to the cross, that points to the eternal union that we have with Him. It starts right now and then it continues to eternity. Father I pray that as a church that we would be open to Your Word, that we would seek Your Word, that we would be convicted and encouraged and edified and sharpened by Your Word and what You designed in marriage. I pray that this place will be a place of healing, and growth, and joy and that the marriages here would be a reflection of what marriages are supposed to be like. That other people would see the joy that You’ve blessed us with and that they would say, “I want that. I want their marriage,” and we can quickly say, “Our marriage is based on and founded in Jesus.” I pray Father that it is true for us. We love You. It’s in Your Son’s name we pray. Amen.

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