The family provides an opportunity for us to learn how to relate to others. If their parents are functioning properly, children very quickly learn the meaning of authority. And they soon learn from brothers and sisters that they are not the only pebbles on the beach. They learn to give, to take, to adjust. They learn that the same people who dirty dishes are capable of washing them. Thus social skills are learned in the family. And if the family is falling apart because marriage is failing, society most likely will reap a harvest of misfits.

Thirdly, God ordained marriage for profound theological reasons. The Old Testament repeatedly uses the idea of marriage to illustrate a theological truth as does the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God promises or covenants to be our God eternally and invites us to respond by being His family. But we have difficulty grasping that truth and we need a model or an illustration. The Old Testament uses the model of marriage. In exactly the same way that a man makes a covenant with his wife (and the wife to her husband), God commits Himself to His people.

In the New Testament, the marriage model is used to show that Christ is the head, the "husband" of the church, which is His body. Christ so loved the church, that He gave Himself for it. He is the model husband. We learn this as we study the Scriptures, seeking a model for the divine institution of marriage.

Marriage Recognizes Divinely Ordained Sexuality

Sexuality has been part and parcel of humanity from the very beginning. If we are to grasp the meaning of our humanity, we need to understand our sexuality. This is where the problems arise. Look at what has happened. There is total confusion about sexuality in our day.

Some of our so-called "traditional" norms no longer work. The old idea of male-dominated marriage is not valid in a world where more than half of the work force is made up of women. The man as "king of his castle" is as outdated as most monarchies in our fast-changing world. Wives and children are no longer expected to submit to a "lord-and-master" mentality where the husband and father rules like a tyrant.

The "everything-goes" approach is equally invalid. How can you have "open marriage" in a world where AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are spreading like wildfire? More and more people are beginning to recognize and recommend the biblical norm of monogamy in a world going mad in its pursuit of pleasurable sex.

If our marriages are to function properly, we cannot base them upon traditional norms that have departed from Scripture, nor can we base them on radical concepts that reject Scripture. We must take a closer look at what the Bible teaches about the nature of men and women and how they are to relate to each other. One reason we are having such terrible problems in our marriages is that most of us have not come to grips with a biblical understanding of sexuality.

We preachers are usually not considered too wise in these matters. In fact, we're considered naive and out-of-date by most young people today. But I've been around a while and have learned some things.