There has been great confusion sown into our world about what happens when two people are married because our enemy, the devil and the father of lies (John 8:44), has done everything possible to sow that confusion. This is because he knows just how powerful a married couple on fire for God can be. This is why ever since the Garden of Eden he has sought to destroy not only God’s creation but the institution of marriage. With this in mind, I thought I would share over the next several posts some concepts on marriage and what it means from a Biblical perspective.

To begin with, God created the concept of marriage all the way back in the Garden of Eden when after creating Adam he looked at him and said, “there was not found a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:20) God decided at that moment to create Eve and presented her to Adam and he was overjoyed. It was at this moment that God said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24) From that moment to now, men and women have been doing just that leaving their parents and entering into the sacred bonds of holy matrimony and if the story ended there all would be right with the world and with the marriages that people were entering into. But that is not where the story ended.

Satan, who had been expelled from heaven because he rebelled against God, entered the garden and deceived the happy couple by first convincing Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit and then she convinced Adam.

Now, I know that the above passage says that Adam was with her and I am sure that he was, but later when God rebukes them for having eaten of the fruit. He said the following:

As you can see, God clearly says to Adam that his mistake was that he listened to his wife. In addition men, thanks to Adam we have to work hard for our wages. Apparently, from what we read in the text, the ground was not cursed and it did not take toiling to bring forth what was needed to survive. However, after the fall of man, God punished men by cursing the ground so that we have work hard and toil all day long and all the days of our lives to receive our sustenance and our wages.

Another interesting note is that as punishment to women, for Eve’s mistake, God says that your husband will rule over you. By this, God meant that the husband would be the one that God would set in charge or as head of the household and expect that to be so and if it was not so then God would declare that house out of order and not be able to bless it. And all of this was because of Eve’s mistake in being deceived and brought that punishment upon all women. So all the women who have desired to be the head of household have Eve to blame for the fact that God will not allow it.

But as you can see, the devil was quick to come in and make a wreck of what God created. After his little visit to the garden, the ground was cursed, men have to work hard, women have great pain in childbirth, the husband has to be the head of the household and responsible for providing before God even if the “modern” woman does not see it that way and we were permanently expelled from God’s garden as a race. And don’t think for one moment that Adam and Eve didn’t have a fight about that somewhere down the line. Just think about that for one moment. Eve made a mistake and then Adam followed suit. Neither were in the right and both were equally wrong, but when God came back to find them what was the first thing Adam did? Did he own up to his mistake? Did he do the chivalrous thing and protect his wife? No, instead he said the following, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:12) Adam immediately ratted her out and tried to toss her under the proverbial bus in the hopes that would somehow lessen his punishment just like a little child caught with his hand in the cookie jar would do. And I am sure that came up at some point after they left the garden.

Humanity expelled and the marriage of the first human couple strained and you might think that was enough to make the devil happy, but no. He kept at it and we read his further exploits throughout the Bible. We see King David, who was already married, take another man’s wife in his bed and manages to get her pregnant. Instead of coming clean and telling the truth, he has the man, who was one of his best soldiers, sent to the front lines so that he would die. Talk about a slam dunk for the devil.

And he continues his attacks on marriages even today. Our divorce rate is the highest ever and it is just as bad inside the church as it is outside the church. There is no excuse for that because we are supposed to the city set on a hill for all to see. But if the city is a garbage dump and a rumble heap, who would want to come and find out why we are what we are? This is the plan of the enemy. If he can take down God’s basic unit, the married couple that he first instituted in the garden, than he takes out happy parents and destroys children and makes a mess of lives left and right. And God’s heart breaks.

God designed marriage for a specific purpose and that was so that two can became one could strengthen each other and support each other and lift each other up to new and greater heights until the one couple was so strong and so secure and so solid in Christ that they could take on the world for him. Following out of that couple would then be the blessing of children whom God would set of fire with a passion and thirst for him that will ignite the world in a blaze of glory to God and set the captives free. God desires to bless the couple beyond belief as they keep their focus on him. This is God’s will and plan for marriages.

If your marriage is experiencing trouble don’t give up don’t let go. Hang in there and pray and see how God will move to empower your marriage with strength from on high. I know that the easy way out is to walk away, but after 18 years of marriage I can tell you that there is a whole lot more joy waiting for you if you work it out than there is if you walk out on it.

Coming up on the next post, I am going to go in depth on the topic of two becoming one. What did God mean when he said that he joins together people in marriage. Stay tuned because I really believe that this series is going to impact and touch people and help to raise up a set of marriages that the enemy can not touch and God can empower.

Love in Christ.

Tags: adam, eve, fall, garden, genesis, god, institute, introduction, marriage, unit

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Insights, Marriages, Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.