Rick Warren - Fighting for an Awesome Marriage
Whether you have never been married or you're divorced or you're separated or you're widowed or you are currently married, regardless of what state you're in, the next verse applies to all of us. Look at this verse. Hebrews 13:4, "Marriage should be honored," read it with me, "by everyone..." Circle that, "by everyone". So, regardless of whether I ever marry or not, or whether I've been married in the past and I'm not now, I am to honor marriage. The Bible says, by God, everyone is to give honor to marriage. And now, sadly, marriage is no longer honored by everyone in our society. In fact, just the exact opposite.
Today, marriage is dismissed as irrelevant by many people as an archaic thing. "Who needs to get married"? That's something somebody made it in another generation or in another culture, a manmade lifestyle choice. And really, it's dismissed. Nobody needs to get married today. It's demeaned by many people. Marriage is demeaned as a career buster. "You're getting married? Well, there goes your career". Most people don't know why marriage matters. In fact, most people either, A, have an incredibly unrealistic view of marriage, which there's no way anybody could measure up to it, or, two, they're just flat out wrong about the meaning and the purpose and the design of marriage. Most people don't get it right. And so, let's look why God designed marriage.
Number one, write these down. First, God created marriage for the connection of men and women. God created marriage for the connection of men and women. Now, I wanna show you a verse up on the screen in just a second. 1 Corinthians 11:11 says this, on the screen, "...in God's plan men and women need each other". Do you know how radical a statement that is today? A lot of people don't believe that. There are a lot of people that say, "Women, they don't need men. Why would I need a man"? And a lot of men say, "Why would I need a woman"? Well, you do, and the God who designed you created, whether you ever get married or not, if you're a woman, you need men in your life. If you're a man, you need women in your life. Why? Because nobody holds the full image of God. Women get part of it, men get part of it, and we need each other.
You know the Bible says this in Genesis 2:18, "It is not good," this is God talking. "It is not good for the man," that's Adam, "to be alone. I will make a companion who is right for him". I'll make a companion who is right for him. I will make, now, notice, the first thing you need to realize is marriage, gender, sex, men and women, all the differences, this is a God-given thing and God intended marriage, one of the purposes of marriage, is as an antidote to loneliness. Look at the next verse. He says there, "It is not good for men to be alone". Now, there are many, he says, "I wanna make a companion," and many companions are important in life. You need companions in all your areas, but there's nothing like the companionship of a marriage.
Number two, God created marriage for the multiplication of the human race. For the multiplication of the human race. God populated the human planet through marriage. For thousands of years, billions of people have come into existence because men and women got married. Now, let me show you some verses. Genesis 1:27 says this. "For God created people in his own image; He patterned them after himself, creating both male and female with his image. Then", so not every, males don't have all the image of God, females, we both get parts of God's image. "Then God blessed them and commanded them," now, here is the very first command God gives to the human race. I want you to read it aloud with great gusto. Ready? Here we go. God commanded them, "Be fruitful and multiply! And fill the earth"! That's the second reason, the second purpose, of marriage.
Number three, the third reason God created marriage, for the connection of men and women, for the multiplication of the human race, third, for the protection of children. Now, every single study done has proven that kids develop best with a mom and a dad. Now, we're in a broken planet and not everything works right, we know that, but that doesn't mean that we say the ideal isn't real. It is, and the statistics bear it out. Children survive and thrive in families, not in institutions. That's why at Saddleback we don't believe in orphanages. We don't fund orphanages, we don't build orphanages, we don't believe in orphanages. Why? Because no kid deserves to grow up in an institution. They deserve to grow up in a family. It'd be more important to help finance a family to take that child in. Yeah, you can clap for that.
And so, we're working in Rwanda. Rwanda will become the first nation on the planet Earth by the end of next year, hopefully, to be the first nation with no orphanages because we've been using in the PEACE Plan churches, moving them into families. Children's interests are best perfected in an intact family. Notice this verse, Proverbs 14:26. "Those who obey and respect the Lord," in other words, do life the way God says to do it. "Those who obey and respect the Lord have a secure fortress; their children have a place of refuge and security". That's what every child needs growing up, a place of refuge and security, and not worrying, "Is dad gonna walk out"? "Is mom gonna walk out"? or whatever.
Now, you know in the past you used to hear about couples, they say, "Oh, they stayed together for the sake of the kids," and for many generations, when people stayed together for the sake of the kids, that was considered an honor, a compliment. They're unselfish, they're mature. They stayed together for the sake of the kids. Today, people laugh at that statement. "Staying together for the sake of the kids. What are you talking about? You gotta do what's best for you". Really? Do you always have to do what's best for you? That's called narcissism. Can you sometimes do something that's maybe best for somebody else? Can you sometimes do something that's best for somebody for the sake of someone who's more vulnerable than you are? That's called maturity. That's called unselfishness. That's called love. Today, in our narcissistic culture, we judge everything by, "I've got to do what's best for me". No, you don't. In fact, you'll never be happy trying to always do what's best for you. You'll be a selfish little clawed, clawed, that's a pastor's cuss word.
Number four. Okay, God created marriage for the connection of men and women, for the multiplication of the human race, it's how we all got here, for the protection of children. Number four, this is a big one. God created marriage for the perfection of our character. It is in relationships that we learn to be unselfish, we learn to be unloving, and no relationship has greater impact on your life than marriage, if you get married. Now, another one of the facts about when you were born, not only were you helpless, you were completely self-centered. Nothing on the planet Earth is more self-centered than a new baby. A baby does not even have the capacity to think about anyone else. All it can think about is itself. "I'm too hot. I'm too cold. I'm hungry. I just pooped. I need to be cleaned up," or whatever.
The first word a baby learns is "I" and it's all about me, as a baby. Maturity and the purpose of life is to grow up and realize it's not all about you. In fact, real happiness comes in giving your life away and being unselfish and being serving and being loving. And so, the whole goal of your life is to grow from your total self-centered self as a baby to being an unselfish adult. Do you know some adults who are still selfish babies? Yes, you do. Don't look at them, but you know who they are. Now, this is called maturity. Life is a laboratory of learning how to love. Why is love the most important thing in life? Because God is love and God wants you to become like him. He wants you to learn how to love, and we learn to love and learn to be unselfish.
Now, the Bible says this in Proverbs 18:1, "It is selfish and it is stupid to think only of yourself". And so, how do I get out of that? Well, marriage is a lifelong course in learning to be unselfish because once you get married I can no longer think about me, I gotta think about we. I can't think about just me, myself, and how many of you who are married had to learn pretty quickly that once you got married you couldn't always do whatever you wanted to do? The rest of you are liars because you don't get to do everything you wanna do once you get married. You have to learn to compromise, you have to learn to think of the other person, and marriage is the laboratory for learning how to love.
Now, listen. God wants to make you like Jesus Christ. It's the number one goal in his life. He wants you to grow up. He wants to build character. You're not taking your car, your career, your clothes to heaven. You are taking your character. So, the most important thing you can do in life is build your character. The number one tool that God uses in your life to build Christ like character, if you are married, is your spouse. Oh, no. Yep. Because every day you get hundreds of opportunities to not think about you. You get opportunities to think of the other person, to care about them. You say, "But my spouse, my husband, my wife is not even a Christian. They're not a follower of Jesus. They're not a believer". Doesn't matter. They don't have to be saved. They're still God's number one tool to make you like Christ because they're closest to you and they have that most impact. I want you to write this down in your outline. The number one purpose of marriage is to make me holy, not happy. That is so counterculture, but it's the truth.
Now, here's the interesting thing. Once you become holy, that's how you get happiness. Being holy makes you happy, but God's purpose in your life is to make you holy, not happy. And that's the purpose of God's marriage for your life, is that you become more loving, more giving, more serving, more sharing, more mature, more unselfish. And as you become that, guess what? You get more happiness. You'll never be happy if you make it the goal of your life. Happiness is elusive as a goal. It's never meant to be a goal. It's like a butterfly, you're always reaching for it and you never get it. When you start caring about other people, rather than your happiness, you're gonna get happy. It's just the way God wired the universe.
So God wants us to learn how to love in marriage. Romans 12 says this, "Love sincerely... Hold on to what is good. Be devoted to each other like a loving family. Excel in showing respect for each other". Do you do that in your marriage? Do you have competition of who can show the most respect? "I'm gonna beat you today in being more respectful to you. I'm gonna beat you today and be more loving". "Excel in showing respect for each other". You know, before I got married so many years ago, I really thought I knew how to love a woman. I knew nothing about love. Nothing. Now, after 39 years of marriage, I know that love washes the dishes. I know that love takes out the garbage. Shoot, when you're sick, love changes the bedpan. And out of that kind of love comes a connection and a companionship that gives you the strength and the stability to handle enormous amounts of stress when you know someone that well and you're just committed to each other because of that reason.
Number five, God made marriage for the connection of men and women, multiplication of the human race, protection of children, the perfection of our character. God created marriage for the construction of society. Marriage is the fundamental building block of every community, church, state, nation, society, and culture. If you know anything about history, you know that where marriages are strong, cultures and nations are strong, empires are strong. You know that wherever marriages and families are weak, cultures, nations are in decline. And we know that when marriages are devalued, the more a nation is in decline. It's real obvious what direction our nation is headed right now. America is not getting better, it's not getting stronger. It's going the other direction. Why? Because we don't value marriage and family anymore. We value, "It's all about me. I gotta do what's best for me". We've made individualism an idol. So, this is for the construction of society. Proverbs 14:34 says this, "Righteousness," that means doing it God's way, "lifts up a nation, but sin," not doing it God's way, "brings disgrace to any society".
Number six. This is the most important reason of all and many of you have never ever even heard this reason for marriage, but it's the primary, the deepest, and the most profound reason that God created marriage between a man and a woman and the unity of sex and all of that that involves. God created marriage for the reflection of our union with Christ. For the reflection of our union with Christ. Marriage is a metaphor. It is a symbol. It's a walking, living, object lesson of how much God loves us and how we are to be in relationship with him. Marriage is a model of a profound spiritual truth. I said it's a metaphor of showing us how we're to relate to God.
Now, let me show you one of the deepest passages in scripture, and Paul is actually talking about the church in Christ, but he uses marriage as a metaphor. There in your outline, Ephesians chapter 5 says this, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her..." How did Christ love the church? He sacrificed his life. He died for the church. He says, "Husbands, that's the way you're to love your wife. You're to die for your wife". That's the kind of love you're... sacrificial love. Where her needs are so before yours that you sacrifice your life.
"Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her... He," Christ, "died so that he could give the church to himself as a Bride in all her beauty... In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they love their own bodies... No one ever hates his own body, but he feeds it, he takes care of it. And that is what Christ does for his church, his body". See, the church is a bride and church is a body. Now, "The Scripture says," now he's quoting the verse in Genesis we just looked at, "And the Scripture says, 'a man is united with his wife, and the two become one body.' This is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ and the church"!
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Paul, I thought you're talking about marriage here. "Husband's", no, he says, "Yeah, I know I'm using marriage, but it's a metaphor of our spiritual union with Christ, and Christ and his love for his family, his body, his bride, the Christ, the church". So, he says, because marriage is a metaphor of Christ and the church, "So each husband must love his wife as much as he loves himself," as he loves himself. And it says, "Each wife must respect her husband".
Now, that passage is so deep, I'm gonna have to take a whole another message sometime and explain it in detail. Let me just say it this way. This is the most profound meaning of marriage. There's some benefits of marriage that are obvious and quantifiable like these. What it does to kids, what it does to women, what it does to men. The benefits of a intact marriage for life are incontrovertible, irrefutable, and there are a lot of benefits to marriage that you can just look at, you know, empirically, judging the scientific data. But this one, the most profound meaning of marriage, is not as easy to grasp. It's harder to understand, appreciate how marriage reflects our union with Christ and our relationship to him.
Now, listen. No other relationship on planet Earth, none, none, including parent child relationship, no other relationship can adequately illustrate our union with Christ the way a marriage between a man and a woman does. This is the strongest reason, this number six, why marriage matters. This is the strongest reason why marriage cannot be redefined. This is the strongest reason why it must be protected at all costs, because we are the body of Christ, we are the bride of Christ in union with Christ, and marriage is that metaphor.
Now, let me summarize. What I'm saying, before we get into the practical part, is that it really doesn't matter what other people think about marriage. It doesn't matter what public opinion says, it doesn't matter what the opinion polls say, it doesn't matter what's politically correct or incorrect, what really matters is what God says, who invented marriage. And you're gonna live in a culture where this is absolutely counterculture. You now live in a culture that has forgotten why marriage matters. You live in a culture that does not honor it, but actually demeans it, discourages it, ridicules it, redefines it, dismisses it, and on and on. And as a result, we can see what's happening in society.
We now have people who go to Las Vegas, get drunk, and in a spontaneous moment go to a wedding chapel, get married, and 24 hours later get divorced because it's no big deal. It's just a social contract. We have celebrities who spend a full year and millions and millions and millions of dollars on a wedding and the preparation for the wedding lasts longer than the marriage. We have people going from one relationship to the next to the next in serial marriages and they don't understand the meaning and the mystery. Now, what's amazing about all of this is that when we live in a culture that's forgotten why marriage matters, we still honor and it still makes big news when a couple makes it a long time.
And it's still big news when we hear on the radio or TV or in a magazine, "That couple has been married 60 years. That couple's been married 65, 70. That couple's been married 75 years". Why? Because in spite of all the public and political pressure, we instinctively, as human beings, inside know and we recognize the beauty and the sweetness of one man and one woman committing themselves to become one flesh and living together in love for their entire lives. That is a beautiful thing and we know it and we know it. And we know that deep, deep down inside of us, instinctively, we are wired to want this. Everybody craves the safety of a relationship where you are so fully known and known by each other and it lasts for life. Everybody wants that.
So, I'm gonna ask in just a second Kay to come out and we're gonna talk a little bit about this, but let me just end this section with this part. Twice in the Bible Jesus says there's gonna be no marriage in heaven. Huh? Nope. No marriage in heaven. Jesus said it twice, he knows more about it than you or me. Why will there be no marriage in heaven? Because you won't need any of the six reasons marriage exists.
In a perfect place, that you're not gonna need the multiplication of the human race. In a perfect place you're not gonna need the protection of children. In a perfect place you're not gonna need the perfection of your character. You're not gonna need the construction of society. You're not gonna need the reflection of Christ's union. You don't need a metaphor because you're gonna experience the real thing in heaven. But here on earth marriage matters and the Bible says we are to honor it, whether we're ever married or were married or lost a maid or whatever. We're to honor marriage.