The Eternity of Marriage
The Rev. Brett D. Buick
Lessons: Genesis 1:27, 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6; Conjugial Love 32, 33,
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“What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matthew 19:6)
T
his morning we are going to spend some time going back to the basics. We
are going to go to the Word and back to the basics on marriage. And we are
going to do this the same way the Lord did it on earth when He was challenged
by the Pharisees regarding the nature of marriage. Just as the Pharisees sought
to destroy the Lord’s definition of marriage more than 2,000 years ago, the
hells are at work today trying to do the same thing.
“The Pharisees came to Him, tempting Him” we read in Matthew. They
asked Him, “Is it lawful for a man to send away his wife for every cause?” They
were referring to a law in Deuteronomy regarding divorce and trying to use it
to make marriage basically meaningless. They were trying to get the Lord to
bless what they were doing with marriage in their culture.
The Lord responded to their quest for a loophole big enough to destroy the
institution of marriage, saying: “Have you not read that He who made [them]
from the beginning made them male and female?” And “On this account shall
a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall
be one flesh. Wherefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. What, therefore,
God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matthew 19: 4-6)
When we, like the Pharisees, look around us and are tempted to ask the
Lord to make marriage conform to what is actually going on in the world,
the Lord responds the very same way. This is the Lord’s message for us, today,
regarding marriage. This message was not just for the Pharisees who were
playing legal games with the Lord. It is a message for all time and all challenges
to marriage.
The Lord explains what marriage is in the Gospels because He wants more
than anything to join together each one of us with a partner in an eternal
marriage of one man with one wife. And if we let Him, He will lead every one
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