In this article, we will be discussing the basics of marriage. And I want to encourage you, if you’re married, if you’re contemplating marriage, if you are divorced, if you are separated or you don’t even want to marry, you need to read this article because you would need it even if it does not apply to you. You can use it to prepare for when you are ready or when somebody you know really needs information. You can help them to build a good foundation for marriage. You know, marriage is a very sacred institution and it is the foundation for human society. When we get it wrong marriage, we get it wrong at the family. It affects children. It affects society. So we need to get it right. And I want you to get the basics.
Getting the basics of marriage is the key to understanding the whole concept of marriage. We will get deeper into marriage later. And that’s when we would deal with these things. But we need to get the fundamentals right. Because if you don’t get the fundamentals right, you will not get the details right. So for whatever we do, we must make sure that the basic fundamentals are right. And when we get the basic fundamentals right, everything else will be OK.
Normally when you talk about marriage and say you’re going to do a teaching on marriage, people immediately think you are going to talk about sex. And so they get ready for a lecture on sex. Having sex will have help you to have a good marriage. You can have the best sex and have the worst marriage because the two are not mutually compatible. You have to get the fundamentals of marriage right. And marriage is not fun, It’s hard work.
Let’s go to the fundamentals. So, go back to Genesis chapter one. And we’re going to look at the first marriage, Its institution, how it was established, and the first couple, who they were.
Genesis Chapter two from verse 18. “The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs g and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib h he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”
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In this passage, we find the reason why God established marriage. God created the earth. And he created living creations on the earth, animals, beasts of the field, birds of the air. Each one of them was created, male and female. God just created one entity, which was called Man. And God gave Adam responsibilities. He had to take dominion over the animal kingdom. He started naming the animals, exercising dominion. Adam began to feel that something was missing in his life. Because the cows were male and female. The monkeys were male and female. The alligators were male and female. The cockroaches were male and female. Everybody was male and female. And he looked at himself and he was one. He couldn’t share a friendship with the animals. He could command them. He could use them. He could direct them. He was their boss.
God says Adam cannot have a relationship with the animals because he’s the boss. So I’m going to do something for this guy. I’m going to give him a companion but the companion I want to give him will be a helper that is comparable to him. Not somebody to boss over. Because he was already boss over the animals and he was still alone.
God recognizes that man was alone. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely. You can be lonely when you’re alone. And you can also be lonely where you are not alone. And you can be alone when there are people. And you can’t be alone when there is nobody.
Because sometimes in life, you can have a thousand people around and still feel very lonely. Because you feel nobody understands me, nobody cares for me nobody loves me so I can have many people around and still feel lonely. Adam was not feeling lonely. He was alone. He was alone because there was no means of sharing fellowship.
There was no means of communicating. Whatever he had did not have an object for him to share with. Then God says I need to create a partner for this man so he can share with that partner and that partner can share with him. So, the first reason why God established marriage was for man and woman to share life together. That’s the first reason. God did not say, It is not good for man not to have children. That’s not what God said. Because the fact that Adam didn’t have children was not a bother to God. It was the fact that he had nobody to share his life. And that is very important. Having children is essential. But marriage is not primarily to have children. Children are a byproduct of marriage. But they are not the reason for marriage. So anyone who goes into marriage because they want children are starting on the wrong footing. God says it’s not good for man to be alone.
If you don’t get what God had in mind, you would think your need was the reason why God created marriage. God didn’t create marriage because Adam asked for a wife. God created marriage because he wanted man not to be alone. So you can’t be selfish and get into marriage.
The second reason why God created marriage. He says, let us make a helper. The second reason is to support one another. The first reason is to share. Everybody needs to share. That means you can’t be selfish and marry. Anyone who is selfish is not a candidate for marriage. You may be physically grown, but you’re not ready to marry until you have gotten to a place to share.
The third reason for marriage is honor. God said I want to create another person that Adam can share with, can be supportive of, and can receive support from. And a person who can honor and be honored by. That’s the reason for a person to be able to share. That person must have a sense of personal ownership. Because you can never share. Until you are convinced. What you have is yours. Have you ever seen a child who has a toy?
You tried to get the child to give you the toy. Say hello, hello, hello.
Could you give me the toy to move the shoulder up and down indicating no? And you coax him, I’ll give you Toffy. No. I’ll give you this. No. But as the child holds onto the toy for a very long time, he walks to you and offers you the toy.
Now, what changed between the time you first asked and the time he gave by himself? He had a sense of ownership. He believed that the toy belongs to me. And because he had this complete sense that a toy belongs to me, he was ready to share it. That’s why people who have ownership are the people who share. If a person doesn’t have a sense of ownership, they can’t share.
You have to share your love. And for you to share your love, you must have love. Because you can’t share what you don’t have. If what you have is anger and frustration and bitterness in life. You cant can share love. If you go into marriage because you want to prove a point to somebody, you can’t go there and share love. You can only go and share proving of point. Because that’s what you have. Because you see, although God intended marriage differently, we are using marriage for our own purposes. Some people use marriage to prove a point to their parents. Some use marriage to prove a point in their step-parents. Some use marriage to prove a point to their classmates. Some use marriage to prove a point to the church
If you’re married because you felt frustrated with your growing. That’s what you’re going to say. Because what you have is what you give. What you own is what you share. If you own peace, you share peace, if you own love, you share love. If you own frustration, you share the frustration. The second one is supporting. And the support is mutual.
You don’t get into marriage to disgrace one another. You don’t marry your husband to disgrace him and you don’t marry your wife to disgrace her. You marry to honor. And that is how God Intended it.
It’s important also to note from the passage we just read that the man and the woman were not created together. That’s very important. They were not created together. The male and female hippopotamus was created together. But male and female human was not created together. Secondly, the men and their women were not created to be the same. God didn’t create another man for Adam. He created a woman, so they are not physically the same.
And thirdly, the man and the woman were created to be part of each other. They were not created at the same time. They were not created to be the same. They were created to be part of each other.
Most marriage problems are located in the three statements I just made, because the fact that they were not created the same is the basis of every misunderstanding and the fact that they were not created together is the basis of misunderstanding. And the fact that these people who are not the same were created to be part of each other is a basis for misunderstanding because normally It’s not easy to live in the same house with your own brothers and sisters whom you grew up with from childhood. But if you ate together and everything else close together, bath together, and you grew up, by the time you hit about 16, 17, you start fighting seriously because of each one’s space.
Now, can you imagine people who didn’t grow together, and who are also not living together in the same place. The same house. You are not the same. They come from different places that they are supposed to be part of each other. And because of these differences, there are problems we need to deal with. For any marriage to work, we must first understand the differences between male and female. Males are not females and females are not males. A man is not a woman, a woman is not a man.
We must understand the responses of male and female to each other. The first is the differences. Because of that, the men don’t understand the women and the women don’t understand the men. Because they look at leach other from a totally different perspective, it’s like the two faces of a coin. It’s the same coin but one face is different from the other face.
However, if they learned to work together, they will understand that if they put the two faces together, they can purchase whatever they want to purchase. But if they don’t learn to put those differences together, they will begin to fight one another and destroy one another, although they are a part of the same coin.
It’s two different ways of doing things, but it produces life for all of us. Naturally speaking, God created women to be more sensitive. So when men meet women, men easily get attracted. Women, most of the time take time to nurture attraction. It’s the way they were made. Whatever a man says the woman works with. So if, for example, the man says to the wife, I love you. One little word. The whole day the woman will be working with it. Although the man who released that seed from his mouth has forgotten. That’s how they were made. So he’s forgotten he said I love you and then they meet later in the evening and the woman is all over him and she’s so happy.
He wonders, what’s happening. I mean, what happened? And he’s forgotten that he said, I love you. Meanwhile, the woman, on the other hand, nurtured, cultivated, developed, meditated, brooded over what was said. And at the end of the day. She’d begin to manifest the word that has been spoken to her. In the same wing, If the man said one nasty word; Oh, leave me alone!. And he forgot about it. The woman takes that word and works with it.
So while you are away, she is working with it. She grows in it. She’s developing it. She’s incubating it and is becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And then when you meet, the man leads the woman, and tries to show some affection then the woman shows an unusual behavior. Then the man starts wondering what happened? I haven’t done anything.
And if that man was to complain to somebody about his marriage. He would say, I don’t understand my wife. I haven’t done anything, but she is angry. The problem is that men don’t understand that the little things they do become big things in women.
So they feel I haven’t done anything. What you consider not anything gross. And that is why for a successful marriage to happen, I consider that the men are the key to how things will turn out. I am not saying it’s a general rule and I’ll come to talk about very specific things, but I’m giving you general principles.
Well, what we’ve tried to do in this article is just trying to lay down the foundations because it’s always important to know where we’re coming from. God created marriage for purposes that have been abused over the years. He created it for sharing, for honoring and for supporting one another. If we get these three items right, we can build a marriage. If we get it wrong, then our efforts may not be very successful. So I trust that you have been able to place yourself at the foundation.
Very informative ?