Marriage And THe Nulcear Family Unit

I’d like to make a sort of initial suggestion that this discussion of marriage and the family has its most significant application to people who are married, okay? Some of you don’t qualify and you need to get married, so my opening word is, if you’re not married, get married. This is the grace of life. This is God’s best gift. If you haven’t found someone willing to marry you, ramp up the intensity of your effort. Get married, and if you are married, have children. This is God’s wonderful gift. Now, there are some people who have a gift for singleness.

That means a unique spiritual capacity to remain single for the purpose of serving the Lord. Unless you have that gift and it’s clearly defined for you by no desire at all for marriage, then you need to be married. I don’t need to remind you that in biblical times people were married by the time they were 15 or 16. Some of you are way overdue. Get married. Many of you are focused on pursuing a career. Pursue a spouse. This is a very good place to find one, because we have a huge number of single people who need to be married.

They need to be married, for every reason that you can think of, but mostly for the reason that this is a gift of God called the grace of life. I’m not sure why, in this particular Christian culture in which we live, that we are prone to follow the habits of the world and remain single for long periods of time. But that is a worldly kind of life. Taking people who should be married and having them try to survive as single people when they are wired, hardwired, and even given the opportunity by God to be married.

Stop waiting for the Messiah, ladies. He came and went. Settle for somebody less. And men, stop looking for the Proverbs 31 woman. That is an ideal to which women aspire. And the truth of the matter is, find another Holy Spirit-led loving Christian and get married. Now, on that basis, you can listen to what I’m going to say, because if you’re not married, you’re going to be getting married. And if you’re married, and you haven’t had children, and the Lord enables you, you’re going to be having children. So this is all very urgent for you.

I’m asking you to do something very foundational, and you laugh, because it sounds humorous, but there’s so much truth in that, that we have a society of people who way over exaggerate singleness, who way overextend singleness, and make it very difficult on themselves, and develop habits of singleness that make it harder to come together with another person, because the groove keeps getting deeper and deeper, out of which you have to get yourself to walk together with someone in unity and love. Your singleness should be as short as possible, marriage as quickly as possible, and once you’ve picked the right one, engagement as brief as possible.

And all of this, of course, is against the grain of our culture. Why? I’ve been around long enough to know that people used to get married in their late teens and early twenties. That was the norm. And now the society perpetuates singleness out of its own selfish preoccupations, and it’s fraught with all kinds of things, not the least of which is immoral behaviour. And we are living in a time when way too many people are single, and single because they are selfish, and because either no one can live with them in their selfishness, or they’re not willing to give someone else the opportunity to intrude into their agenda.

We are watching the death of marriage, and you could say, well, we’re watching the death of marriage because of divorce, and you would be right. Or you could say, we’re watching the death of marriage because of homosexuality, and you would be right. And we’re watching the death of true marriage because we’re watching the rise of homosexual marriage, and you would be right. You could say, we’re watching the death of the family because of sterilisation, abortion. But we are also watching the death of the family because of an overextended preoccupation with selfish desires and personal agendas that push people into some perpetual singleness.

I suppose if I had my way, I would just line up all the single girls on one side and all the single guys on the other and say, pick one and let’s have a wedding. But I’m not a matchmaker. I can only give you a general perspective that it gets harder and harder for some people the longer they perpetuate their singleness to give themselves to another person. Now there are exceptions to that. The Lord may keep a person for many years, many years into their thirties and later, because there is a person that God has designed for them.

But for a general trend, when you reach the age for marriage, then you need to ask the Lord to make you the kind of person you should be, so that you’ll recognise the one that the Lord draws into your path. We have a disastrous matter in our culture, and that is the destruction of the family, and people running around alone or divorced or in abusive relationships. And the family is being lost to us. And all of these are presented as if they are alternate lifestyles that have as much merit as marriage and the family.

But God has designed that through well-ordered families, righteousness would be passed from one generation to the next. There’s no way to, for the world to fix these problems. They aid and abet these problems. The world is fine with divorce. Divorce, no fault divorce. Any time for any reason. The world is fine with homosexuality. They advocate it. The world champions single isolated, kind of self-centredness and serial kinds of partners. All of this, the world aids and abets. And the church must rise up and stand for the wonder and the beauty and the joy and the fulfilment of marriage and the purity of marriage.

It is such a noble union that it pictures the union between Christ and his church. We’re going to look at marriage here in Ephesians chapter 5 together, over a few Sunday nights, as I said. But beginning this little series, we draw our attention to chapter 5 verse 18, because here is the foundation. Be filled with the Spirit. Be being kept filled with the Holy Spirit. We’ve already talked about that. We know what that means. It means to be under the control of the Holy Spirit, to be moved along by the Holy Spirit.

It’s not a glass filled, because that’s a static kind of filling. It’s a sail filled, because that’s in motion, and that’s this kind of filling. Be born along, moved along, carried along by the Holy Spirit. That is essential to Christian living. And then we see what Spirit-filled people do. They speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. In other words, they worship. Spirit-filled people worship. Verse 20, they give thanks. Their lives are marked by thankfulness. And then in verse 21, and this is what triggers the rest of the section, they submit.

They submit. You could break these things down. Singing is a personal expression of joy for what’s going on in one’s own life, by the working of the Holy Spirit. Saying thanks is directed at God, and submitting is directed at others. So self is involved in the Spirit-filled life, and out of one’s own heart comes praise, and thanks is involved in a Spirit-filled life directed toward God, and submission, verse 21. And I want you to notice that, because it’s a very important spiritual concept. Be subject, or submissive, to one another in the fear of Christ.

In other words, if you reverence Christ, if you are in awe of Christ, if you desire to honour and please Him, then be a submissive person. A submissive person. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of marriage and the Nuclear Family Unit. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].