Marriage - The Exclusive Union Between Man and Woman

What constitutes marriage? We are living in a country that is having a difficult time defining marriage. Sadly, the proponents of same sex marriage are louder and more demanding than God’s people on this issue lately. Those who are willing to push legislation making homosexual unions legal are more than willing to, not only defy Almighty God, but also to ignore the rights of states to vote their mind and heart on the matter. There is a concerted organized effort to place same sex union into federal law by the highest courts of our land, to literally overthrow God’s order. Again we come to the question: what constitutes marriage? This weekend preachers throughout the country are making a bold stand to declare the biblical definition of marriage, thus revealing the mind of God on this issue. My prayer is these “voices in the wilderness” will follow the admonition from God to Isaiah who said, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob (America) their sins” (Isaiah 58:1).

1. God created and designed marriage.

It is only right that He who originated holy matrimony has the authority to define, detail and design this union. God said, “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18). Man was lonely; he was surrounded by the beautiful foliage of the Garden of Eden and a myriad of animals, all of whom were tame. He was encompassed by a pristine nature in a perfect, unfallen world, yet with all the perfection he was missing something, or I should more appropriately say someone. The Bible says that God “...brought her (the woman) unto the man” (Genesis 2:22c). The Lord Himself made man, then woman and performed the first wedding. The entire universe was made in six days and every day He declared it good. It was not until man and woman were made and united that he declared His creation very good! “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31).God set the motif and declared it very good. When anyone departs from this original concept of that which is “very good,” nothing remains except that which is very bad.

2. God designed marriage to be complementary.

The Bible says, “And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.” (Genesis 2:22). God put Adam asleep and formed a woman from that which he took from his side. Recently I came across a study explaining that when God removed Adam’s rib, He was symbolically removing half of Adam. The nature of man is not just a rib, but the very essence of who Adam was: bone, flesh, emotions and spiritual aptitude. God recorded Adam’s first remark after beholding his wife: “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” The word woman bears the connotation that she is “of” the man. In Old English our word woman is from “wÄ«fmon.” She is not man, she is wife/man. God said, “...I will make him an help meet for him” (Genesis 2:18b). The archaic word “meet” means: suitable, adapted, fitting or complementary for him. Two men or two women are the same side of the equation -- this human math will not work, it is not fitting, there is no complement. When a man and woman marry, the two halves make the whole; that is why the Bible declares: “Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:6).

You may call a giraffe a zebra, but it is and shall always be a giraffe. It does not matter if an apostate minister, a court or individual calls a union between two people of the same sex “marriage”; it is not a marriage unless the two members of the union are male and female. We do not have the authority to change the decree that God has given. “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2). This inspired, God-breathed passage of Scripture leads us to the next point:

3. God has ordained marriage exclusively between a man and woman.

I shall begin by giving you two defining verses: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created” (Genesis 1:27; Genesis 5:2). Man and woman are created for each other. As we stated earlier, the two complement each other and together they make the whole.

When the Lord denounced the homosexual lifestyle in the book of Romans, He said, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence their error which was meet” (Romans 1:26, 27). God said same sex union is not only unnatural, but He promises a recompense or judgment of their error. If God calls it error, you may be assured it is wrong. Anyone choosing this alternate lifestyle cannot expect the blessing of God. The Bible says, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil...” (Isaiah 5: 20a). God pronounces a “woe” or a curse against this form of presumptuous, high-handed arrogant sinning. The apostle Peter said these are those “...that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled...” (II Peter 2:10). They are “self-willed” and “self-governed” ignoring the governing principles of God that blesses all those who adhere to His Word.

When a nation embraces, endorses and blesses the lifestyle of homosexuality, they are in for great trouble. The Bible is clear in several passages of Scripture, for instance in I Kings 14:24, the Bible says, “And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.” This passage was in reference to Judah under King Rehoboam. Immediately following this verse it reads in I Kings 14:25-27, “And it came to pass in the fifth year of king Rehoboam, that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem: And he took away the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king’s house; he even took away all: and he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made. And king Rehoboam made in their stead brasen shields, and committed them unto the hands of the chief of the guard, which kept the door of the king’s house.” What a sad commentary! Because Rehoboam leads the people of Judah to endorse these illicit unions, the king of Egypt invades and steals the precious treasures from the Temple of God. The beautiful and valuable gold shields that Solomon made were taken and Rehoboam replaces them with cheaper less valuable brass. Anytime a nation endorses what God condemns we are doomed to be cheapened. Is it any wonder that along with America’s moral decline, so also is our dollar?

4. God has designed marriage as the union for reproduction.

The very first command in the Bible to the married man and woman is found in the first chapter of the Bible, “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth...” (Genesis 1:28). This is so important! Two men cannot do this. Two women cannot do this. Only a man and a woman. God wants children in His world. He tells us in Malachi 2:15, “And did not he make one?...And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed....”

This command is so obviously defining a great desire that God has in the marriage union that further ramification is not necessary. To ignore this truth is admitting either one of two things, 1) your ignorance of Bible teaching, and 2) your willingness to disobey holy mandate.

On this weekend Christchurch Baptist Fellowship joins the voice of our sister churches and pastors across the nation to say, we believe in God-ordained marriage. Let us all continue to pray for our national leaders in this hour of crisis. I love you all.

-Pastor Pope