Sermon Tone Analysis

“Drink water from your own cistern,

flowing water from your own well.

Should your springs be scattered abroad,

streams of water in the streets?

Let them be for yourself alone,

and not for strangers with you.

Let your fountain be blessed,

and rejoice in the wife of your youth,

a lovely deer, a graceful doe.

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;

be intoxicated always in her love.”

[1]

Valentine’s Day is almost upon us.

This has become a special day for many people, especially for retailers.

Men, in particular, are targeted to do something special for the woman who accepts them.

As result of excellent marketing, some businesses generate a great deal of business as we approach this day.

I would like to say that it is because at heart, so many of us are hopelessly romantic; however, I suspect it is more likely related to social expectations and excellent marketing.

Men, especially, are urged to show their love through giving gifts to that special woman, especially if she has consented to share her life with him.

Flowers, chocolates, gift certificates for spa dates and candlelight dinners are means by which we have traditionally marked the day.

In this present year, marketers are pushing Vermont Teddy Bears®, “Pajamagrams”® and “Hoodie-Footie”™ sleep wear, any of which are supposed to show that we really care, to say nothing of giving the illusion that we really put some thought into showing our devotion.

Such advertising leaves me with the disquieting imagine of a woman pouting as he looks throws a box of chocolates on the floor while shouting, “If you really loved me, you’d get me a teddy bear!” Or, the image of a women with fiery eyes, throwing a vase of roses at her husband as she shouts, “You clod!

What a girl really wants is something romantic, like a Hoodie-Footie!”

Showering our one true love with gifts to reveal our devotion is fine; but what if there has been a succession of “true loves” that mark the years?

What if marriage is no longer honoured?

Unquestionably, marriage is under assault in our day.

Our contemporaries, including far too many fellow Christians, profess to “fall in” love, and just as easily appear to fall out of love.

Few pastors stress that a marriage vow is made not just to one’s bride or groom, but rather the marriage vow is made before the Living God.

Increasingly, those being married pledge to love one another as long as love lasts, tacitly admitting the impermanence of the act.

Increasingly, marriage is not seen as permanent.

A startling number of evangelical believers have been married multiple times; or Christian couples adopted the attitude of the contemporary world and simply began living together.

It is no longer thought strange that a couple should set up housekeeping with benefits; rather, this seems to have become the norm.

If things work out, then the couple will make the arrangement permanent—or not.

Complicating the issue is a redefinition of marriage concomitant with a redefinition of family that is being imposed on society by well-intentioned, if woefully ignorant, politicians.

Divorced from biblical moorings, these political savants want to show their commitment to the new social ideal of toleration.

Knowing that an increasing number of people choose to live in relationships that defy biblical morality, they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and so they redefine what has defined civil society for millennia.

Consequently, it can no longer be denied that marriage is in crisis.

I suggest that at the heart of the crisis lies a failure to recognise and/or to embrace Christian values.

Though I cannot expect the world to adopt Christian values, I am astonished when the professed people of God not only eschew such biblical values, but appear genuinely ignorant of what pleases the True and Living God.

If Christians ever hope to have an impact on society, we who name the Name of Christ must first accept His instruction so that our lives will be transformed.

There is a desperate need to again define marriage and accept God’s ideal for our relationships together.

THE PURPOSE OF MARRIAGE — I sometimes fear that people are convinced that God is some sort of cosmic bully seeking ways to make our lives miserable.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, however.

God longs to give us what is best, and His gifts are always for our good.

This is the foundation for James’ statement that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” [JAMES 1:17].

One of the good gifts that God gave to mankind was the gift of marriage.

Let’s go back to the institution of this covenant relationship.

After we are given the overview of God’s creative activity, we receive a more detailed presentation that focuses on the apex of God’s creation—mankind.

“The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” [GENESIS 2:7].

This is the opening statement in a clear account of the crowning glory of God’s creation.

We are given a tender picture, as the LORD God dirties His hands to form the man from the dust of the ground.

Then, having given man him form, the Living God bends down and kisses the man whom He has created, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life.

Thus, it is said, “the man became a living creature.”

The man was not merely “a soul” (nephesh), but he was a “living soul” (nephesh chayah).

He bore the image of God.

We then read, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’

“Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’”

Pay particular attention to what follows.

“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.

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” [GENESIS 2:18-24].

Within this account, informing us of the creation of the man and the woman is found the purpose for marriage.

Underscore in your mind that God performed the first marriage ceremony.

He brought the woman He had created to the man; and when he saw God’s handiwork, the man exclaimed, “Wow!

You got it right this time!”

This somewhat humorous statement actually reflects what is written in the original language.

“Lord, You hit a home run!”

Remember, Adam had just completed naming all the animals.

God’s purpose in having him review the fauna that would share the earth with him was so that the man would realise that there was no helper that corresponded to him.

The man was not complete as an entity alone.

God determined to make “a helper fit for him,” or “a helper that would make him complete.”

Intuitively, perhaps even perceptively, the man recognised that he might stroke a cat or play ball with a dog, but these were not his complement.

It would be necessary that one be created that made the man complete.

The one whom the LORD God created for the man was named “Isha”—“wo-man,” for she was taken from “Ish”—“man.”

It is significant, and especially in the efforts of modern attitudes toward social change, that God created male and female.

He did not create a man for the man, or a woman for the woman.

The divine intention was that man and woman should be united in love for one another.

It was never in the divine plan that people would focus solely on gratifying their own desires, but rather than they should strengthen one another through uniting in marriage.

The divine intention was that man and woman were created for one another.

Marriage is for partnership; the woman would make man complete—she would complement him.

The first purpose for marriage is to make the two stronger that when they are one.

This may well be the intent of Solomon’s insightful statement that “A threefold cord is not quickly broken” [ECCLESIASTES 4:12b].

Let’s read the entire portion of what Solomon wrote so we capture the intent of the Wise Man.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.

For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.

But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!

Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?

And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken” [ECCLESIASTES 4:9-12].

A wife complements her husband; and a man complements his wife.

He is stronger because of her presence; she is stronger because of his presence.

Did you note in the passage in Genesis that details the first marriage that the divine commentary states, “A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife?”

Scope in especially on the statement that “they shall become one flesh” [GENESIS 2:24].