Now there are those who would say, “That is the position that historically, traditionally and biblically has been held in Western Civilization.” There are others who are saying, “It’s time that we redefine marriage and the family.” So the lines of demarcation are clearly drawn, and it is incumbent upon each one of us to arrive at some very, very specific convictions and conclusions as to what we personally believe in this matter.

Because of this situation that we confront in our culture, I want to spend a few weeks with you looking into the Scriptures to find out what the biblical, historical and traditional view of marriage and family is.

G. K. Chesterton said, “Never remove a fence until you understand why it was erected in the first place.” I want to spend some time helping you remember why the fences were erected in the first place. From this passage of Scripture we can draw out four simple propositions.

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The first thing I want you to notice is this:

Marriage is a God idea!

Now you may have thought that that was a typographical mistake. I did not intend to say that marriage is a good idea, though it is! I want to go further than that, and I want to say, marriage is a God idea. This is a point of basic contention. The contemporary view that is abroad in our culture, and is leading to the demands to change the definition has been around for some time in academia, but has recently been embraced by the man on the street.

I remember approximately twenty years ago, when our daughter Judy was doing her doctoral studies at New York University in sociology and psychology, that I was enjoying reading some of her textbooks. In one of the textbooks, I was shocked to read what academia really believed about the institutions of marriage and family. In a nutshell, this is basically what they were saying: Over the course of the millions of years of human experience, human beings have looked at the whole business of living together, and over the course of time, have developed different theories as the best way to do it. Over the course of time, they eventually arrived at marriage as an idea. For a considerable amount of time it worked very well. However, if you look at contemporary society, they said, it is perfectly obvious that marriage is no longer working.

Look at the incidence of divorce! Look at the number of people who are going through multiple marriages. It was a good idea, it worked very well for a long time, but clearly, it’s now “broke.” Now if something is “broke,” you fix it! They said: Because human experience evolves from one stage to a higher and better stage, we have to recognize not only that marriage is a human idea, but it is in the process of evolutionary change, and we must embrace the changes which are coming because they will enrich our experience.

That was what academia was teaching twenty years ago. It was simply regarded as an established fact. Well, we’re no longer simply dealing with academics in ivory towers. Now we’re dealing with ordinary people who are saying, “My parents had such a bad experience in marriage, no way am I going to go into that!” So they “shack up!” They simply live together without the benefit of marriage; eventually they may get married, but if they’ve lived together before they get married, the chances of their marriage surviving are much slimmer than if they did not do it that way. So the situation is this: that the general consensus of so many people is “marriage is broke, so let's fix it and move on to different lifestyles.” Compelling arguments are being made for that approach.