How to Put Meaning in Your Marriage

Pastor, teacher, and author Adrian Rogers has introduced people all over the world to the love of Jesus Christ and has impacted untold numbers of lives by presenting profound truth, simply stated. Thanks for joining us for this message.

Here's Adrian Rogers. How to put meaning in your marriage. I want to move your marriage from monotony to the momentous.

I don't want you to have a ho-hum marriage. Now in Genesis chapter 18, in just a few moments, we're going to read, and this is really the story of the first family. In many ways, they were different from any other family. I mean, they were different. For example, they didn't have any in-laws.

Have you ever thought about that? He couldn't compare her cooking with his mother's. Not only did they not have any in-laws, they didn't have any competition. Eve could not tell Adam of all of the other men she could have married. One time I understand that Eve said to Adam, Adam, do you really love me?

He said, who else? Yet, there are some things in this story that are eternally and perpetually the same. There are eternal truths that will help you to put meaning in your marriage.

And how we need the truth that we're about to study today. Divorce is a national epidemic. As a matter of fact, a magazine has been printed with this title, can you believe it? Marriage and Divorce. In the March issue 1980, this magazine said that in America, so-called God blessed America, one out of three marriages is ending in divorce, but pay attention. In homes, in marriages that began in a church wedding, just a church wedding, one out of 50 ended in divorce. Now listen to this, according to this national magazine, where both husband and wife were married in a church where they attend regularly and have some kind of family devotions, one in 1,005 end in divorce.

So when all else fails, let's go back and read the instructions. Somebody has written a book before divorce, try marriage. Now let's see what marriage really is.

Okay? Beginning in verse 18, and I read here, and the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him and help meet our fitting helper for him. And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every foul of the air and brought them under Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all the cattle and to the foul of the air and to every beast of the field.

But for Adam, there was not found a help meet or a fitting helper for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. And he slept and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. And she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. And now notice the conclusion. Therefore, verse 24, Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh.

And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed. Now, my dear friend, here we have God's purpose and God's pattern for marriage. I want you to pay attention, but the real test of your faith is not how you act at church, but how you behave at home.

If you've been arguing around the breakfast table, it doesn't make any difference how pious you are around the Lord's table. Now, let's see what the Bible has to say about a home. Why did God institute marriage? What is the purpose of marriage? God gave marriage in the home to meet the deepest emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of mankind. Marriage did not originate in the swamps of evolution and immorality, but marriage is the first institution that God created there in the Garden of Eden.

Three things I want you to see. First of all, the purpose of marriage. Look in verse 18. God says, it is not good that the man should be alone.

I will make a fitting helper for him. Adam needed a companion. He needed somebody that he could fellowship with and he could not fellowship with any of the animals.

Look, if you will, in verses 19 and 20. And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

But now watch this. And Adam gave names to all the cattle and to the fowl of the air and every beast of the field. But you see the word but, but for Adam, there was not found a help meet for him. Now, what God did when God gave Adam the job of naming the animals, God was doing some psychology on Adam. God was creating a desire in the heart of Adam. Now, Adam is to name the animals.

God creates the animals and brings them to Adam. Here comes an animal with a great big long neck. Adam strokes his chin and said, yeah, that's a giraffe. Named him a giraffe.

I mean, what else would you name something look like that? And then here's a hippopotamus. Adam says, that's a hippopotamus.

Well, that's easy. Anybody can tell hippopotamus when they see him. And then then a skunk.

What else would you call a skunk but a skunk? So Adam is naming the animals one by one, the animals come, but not only do they come one by one, they come two by two. And Adam notices for Mr. Giraffe, there's Mrs.

Giraffe. And for Mr. Hippo, there's Mrs. Hippo. Only she doesn't want to be called that. And then for Mr. Skunk, there's Mrs.

Skunk. But Adam notices for Mr. Adam, there is no Mrs. Adam. There was not found a fitting helper for him. And so now God, therefore, having created the desire in Adam, creates woman. Verse 21, and the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh. Instead thereof, and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and brought her to the man. Now notice and in verse 23, and Adam said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Now, I don't understand the Hebrew language very well, but I read after those who do. And they tell us that what Adam said there is the counterpart of an expletive.

I don't mean dirty language, but something more like wow. I mean, when he sees Eve, I mean, he's been looking folks at giraffes and lizards. And then he sees Eve and he just explodes in joy as an expression of great joy. Now think of it, Adam has been in the garden face to face, one on one with Almighty God.

He has been walking with God and yet there is in his heart still an unmet need and a desire. And God gave to Adam a wife and God gave to Eve a husband. God did not give to Eve a father first to rule over her, not a brother to play with and not a son to watch over. But God gave to Eve a husband and that husband was there that God gave to Eve.

He was there to meet that deep need that he had and she would have for companionship and partnership. May I tell you that marriage therefore is the highest, the deepest, the most insoluble of all human relationships. Look, if you will, in verses 23 and verses 24, Adam says, This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. Verse 24, Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. Leave father and mother. The relationship between husband and wife is a closer bonding than between parent and child. Now, when the Bible says leave father and mother, that doesn't mean geographically doesn't mean that you've got to move out of town or they have to move. You can live next door to your father and mother and fulfill this command or your father and mother can be a thousand miles across the country. And you can still be emotionally bound and tied to them. The cause in many marriages going down, very frankly, is that people have failed to understand the priority of the marriage relationship and they have failed to emotionally cut the emotional umbilical cord of leaving father and mother.

And the surveys tell us that in-laws are a great problem in modern marriages. One man went into the veterinarian hospital and said, I want you to cut this dog's tail off. And the vet said, Well, how far do you want to cut off? He said, I want it all cut off. He said, Well, we don't normally do that. He said, I know. But he said, My mother-in-law is coming to visit. And he said, I don't want any sign whatever of welcome.

I just want you all just cut off right on down to the end. Well, you know, many times it's really not the mother of the bride. It's the mother of the groom that causes the problems. Two women are vying for the affection of the same man. Sometimes a woman has not found the love that she ought to get from her husband. And so she gets not a normal but an unnatural attachment to her son. And so you have two women who are vying for the affection of the same man. One woman said, My mother-in-law has an interferiority complex. She's always interfering that you're going to find it two times when in-laws are a real problem in marriage. When husband and wife first get married and they're trying to establish their independence, the first part of their marriage, and then in the last part of their marriage when their parents are becoming more and more dependent upon them.

Those are times when you really need to pray. Now, when I say that you to leave your father and your mother, that doesn't mean you're not to honor your father and your mother. The Bible tells us in Exodus chapter 20 and verse 12 that we are to honor our fathers and our mothers. And yet at the same time, we are to leave because, you see, God made man and woman for one another in a very special way. And so you see there, first of all, what I want to call the purpose, the purpose of marriage. It is not good that the man should be alone. God made marriage that man might have a companion that would meet his deepest emotional, spiritual, physical, psychological needs and vice versa for the woman. Now, second thing, I want you to see coming out of the purpose of marriage, the partnership of marriage. Now, God says also in verse 18, I will make for man a fitting helper.

Now, that means really a helper like himself. We sometimes laughingly call our husbands or our wives the other half, but that's quite apt. Adam without Eve was like a violin without a bow. And so God gave Eve to Adam to make up that part of Adam that was lacking. She was to be his completer, not his competitor, his completer.

A problem today is that we've tried through the battle of the sexes to get men and women in competition with one another rather than in cooperation with one another. Now, the Hebrew word for woman here is ishah, I-S-H-A-H, if you're going to write it down, it's transliterated. And the word for man is ish, ish, ishah, ish, man, ishah, woman. Now, ishah, the word for woman comes from an Arabic root, which means to be soft. See, God built femininity into a woman.

Now, the word ish, the word for man comes from an Arabic root, which simply means to exercise power. God put masculinity in men and femininity into women. And the Bible teaches that God made them different that he might make them one. Now, I want us to think a little bit about that difference. And after this message, you're going to understand 200% more about women if you're a man.

But may I tell you that 200 times zero is still zero. You'll think about that later on. My friend, let's learn something about the nature of man and woman. You see, there is not only the companionship, there is the partnership. And by the way, there are those who are moving heaven and earth to remove this difference between men and women. Dear friend, listen, God made men to be men.

God made women to be women. And the difference in the sexes is right here in this story, right here in the Word of God. You see, it's obvious that man is to be the provider and woman is to be the encourager. In John chapter 2 verse 15, the Bible says, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Now, God said to Adam, Adam, you are going to be the provider.

You're to dress the garden and keep it. Then God made the woman and God said to the woman, you are to be a fitting helper to him. You are to encourage him and to stand by his side. Man is the provider, woman is to be the encourager in God's original plan. Man is to be the protector and woman is to be the nurturer.

Look, if you will, in chapter 3 and verse 16. And unto the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception and sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. So the woman is to be the one who brings forth children and thy desire shall be thy husband and he shall rule over thee. That is, the husband is to be the one in charge. The man is the protector and the woman is the nurturer.

The man is to lead, to guide, to protect. And therefore, God made the man physically strong because that's the realm that he lives in. But God made the woman to be soft, to be gentle, to be tender because she's the life giver. And you just see that in the nature of men. It's bred into the nature of men. It's bred into the nature of women. Have you ever watched a man change a diaper?

Bang. Watch how a woman changes a diaper. It's just different. Just different the way God made them. Therefore, listen, men tend to think logically with their heads. Women think, you think I'm going to say illogically, but I'm not.

I've got better sense than that. Women think emotionally with their hearts. Now, I didn't say that what they think is not logic or not right, but they just think different. They think differently. A man by nature as the breadwinner and the protector, he is goal oriented. A man will see the goal and he'll see the steps in order to get there in his mind.

And that's the way he works. He doesn't necessarily consider how people will feel. If he does, it's a secondary issue, but not the woman. The woman, not only will she see the goal, but beyond the goal and overriding, she thinks, how are people going to feel about this? You know, if he does that, somebody might get their feelings hurt.

Somebody might be hurt. You see, women, they just think with their hearts. Men think with their heads. Who is right, who is wrong? Neither is right, neither is wrong.

The point is they both need one another. A woman has what we often call intuition. A woman knows what's going on without knowing what's going on.

It's incredible. It's a gift from God. You see, they are to be partners. God built something into the man where the man wants to take risks. Why does he take risks?

Because that's the way to achieve in life is to take risks. So the man says, let's try it. Let's go for it.

Let's do it. But the woman, being the homemaker that God made her to be, being the nurturer that God made her to be, she's not nearly so interested in taking risks as she is in creating beauty and gentleness and security and most women had rather have security than to have even greater success because God has given her a nesting instinct but God has given him a productive instinct. So men take risks. Women want security. Men have a propensity to see the big picture. Women see the details.

Let me show you how that works. Here's a guy, somebody presents to him a new product and says you can buy the franchise for this product and you can do this and such. He said boy, I think that's what I've been waiting for and so he takes their savings without consulting his wife, buys the franchise, resigns his job, comes home and tells his wife, said look, we're going into a new business.

It's going to be fantastic. We're going to make all this money and we're moving to Cincinnati. Boy, she begins to cry. He says what's wrong with you?

This is what we've been waiting for all of our lives. She says we can't move. Well why?

Because the kids are in school. What about the dental appointments? And also we just redecorated the bathroom. Now I mean she sees the thing from a completely different viewpoint than he sees it. Now which one is right or which one is wrong? Well he certainly told her the wrong way. I mean had he first of all told her I've thought about this detail and this detail and this detail and had he told her how he was going to provide security for her and the children, it would have been somewhat better and of course he should have consulted with her to begin with but what I'm trying to say is this, that men tend to be goal oriented and they see the big picture and take risks. Women are nurturing and soft and nest builders. They see the details and they see the impediments in between. Now a man therefore tends to be more insensitive. The woman tends to be more sensitive but there's a sense in which God gave man a thick skin.

You see because we say it's a jungle out there. I mean it's tough and man has to make decisions. He has to be able to take abuse. He has to do even physical jobs that hurt.

I mean that his back carries loads. He has things that God puts on him and so he has to have a sense of insensitivity. I'm not talking about being insensitive to the things that really matter but a woman on the other hand is very empathetic. She's very sensitive and God made her that way because she is a fitting helper for a man out there in that jungle who might get hardened a little bit and she needs to learn how to be more sensitive. You see he's like a nuclear sub on the prowl but she's like the sonar and she'll say to him that guy that you're doing business with, he's a phony. Her sonar is just working. He's a phony, don't trust him.

Oh he's all right, no I'm telling you don't trust him. Nine out of ten times she'll be right. She's just the sonar to tell that sub just turn right. God just gives her that special sensitivity. Now the man therefore he tends to be more defensive and he tends to be suspicious. Why is this? Because you see he's the protector but the woman tends to be more trusting and to be more open.

Why is this? Because she is the nurturer. She is the life giver and therefore the woman she knows how to forgive. She'll forgive the children over and over again. She'll even forgive her husband when he does her dirty. She will forgive but the husband says why do you trust that person? They've already hurt you once.

That's stupid to trust them again. You see he's defensive because he must protect his family. Now you might as well face it folks men and women are different. I think it's best summed up with a story I heard years ago about a boy and a girl who were sitting on the front porch of the old country home. Down in the valley was the country church and they were having choir practice. There's a big yellow moon in the sky and the air was fragrant with a blossoming of the honeysuckle and the choir was practicing and the yellow light was streaming out of the windows of the little church and the strains of the music of the choir were making their way over the valley to where this couple was sitting on the front porch in the old swing.

Underneath the porch were some crickets who were chirping. Now she had her mind on the choir practice and listening to that music he thinking about fishing had his mind on the crickets. She said isn't that beautiful? He said it really is. She said I don't think I've ever heard anything quite as lovely. He said yeah.

Said you know they make that noise by rubbing their hind legs together. It's just the way men think the way women think. I mean friend God, now I realize, listen, I realize that everything I've said this morning is a generalization and when I preach a sermon like this I'll get letters from people out there and boy I mean they'll say you said that women didn't have any brains or you said that men weren't. No, no, listen, all of these are generalizations first of all. Okay, just generalizations. Secondly, I'm not talking about strengths and weaknesses.

In each of these qualities male and female there is a strength and a weakness. But what I'm trying to say is that we need to understand that God made men to be men and God made women to be women and God says it's not good that the man should be alone. I will make a fitting helper for him. There is to be a partnership. Now we've talked about the purpose of marriage which is companionship. We've talked about the purpose of marriage which is a partnership and now let's talk a little bit about the permanence of marriage.

All right, the purpose, the partnership and the permanence of marriage. Look with me in verse 24, chapter 2 and verse 24. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife. Do you see the word cleave?

Now the word cleave there is actually a Hebrew word which means to weld or to glue like you would glue two pieces of paper together. Now here God is talking about the future of the family. A man will leave his father and his mother. He will cleave unto his wife and they too shall be one flesh. Here is God's principles to keep us from having broken homes and God doesn't want broken homes because broken homes produce broken humans and broken humans produce broken homes and broken homes produce broken humans and on and on we go. Now if you are in a broken home from a broken home, I don't want you to despair because my dear friend there is hope we can break the cycle. But let me tell you something friend that God's plan is one man for one woman till death do them part. Do you know what the cause of most divorces is?

Better Homes and Gardens did a survey. They got back 300,000 respondents, 300,000 and of those 300,000 they said what is the number one problem in marriage and what is the number two problem in marriage? Number one, are you ready for it? Immaturity. Number two, selfishness. Number one and number two, immaturity and selfishness. Men and women asking when they come to marriage what's in it for me?

Rather than asking what is best for both of us? You see incompatibility and irreconcilable differences. Let me just rename those. You want me to tell you what they are? Immaturity and selfishness. That's all they are. Incompatibility and irreconcilable differences.

Just rename it and name it by what it really is. Immaturity and selfishness. Well, you say I don't love anymore. My friend, may I say this with all of the unction, function and emotion of my soul, love is a choice. Love is a choice. You choose to love. Love is a commitment.

The emotion may follow but love is a commitment and if you don't make that commitment when the crisis comes you're going to walk away. But the Bible says you're to cleave to your wife. You're to glue yourself to her.

She's glued to you. You ever glue two pieces of paper together? When you try to separate them you're going to damage both pieces of paper.

There's no way that you can unglue something that has been welded and glued together like that. The problem is that many who say I do don't. They stand at the marriage altar and rather than saying so long as we both shall live they translate that so long as we both shall love. And when it says till death do us part they translate in their mind till disagreement do us part. But my dear friend it is so long as we both shall live not love and till death not disagreement do us part.

There has to be a commitment. Now God's plan is one plus one equals one. They become one flesh and what God has joined together let not man put asunder.

The Bible says and they were both naked and were not ashamed the last verse in this chapter. What does that mean? It means they were so much one that there was no shame no intimidation they were willing and able to share everything with their partner therefore no threat. If I could leave you with one thought today if you're married, let me give you this thought. There is no way possible that you can win in a war with your mate. I'm going to tell you why in a moment, but you listen. There is no way possible that you can win in a war with your mate.

Why? Because you and your mate are one and if you damage her you don't win you lose because you're damaging yourself. If you damage him, you don't win you lose. You are one flesh. Any man at war with his wife is at war with himself. And so therefore you cannot win. That doesn't mean that you can't have discussion so as to help her and that is to help you and to help you and that is to help her but to damage her is to damage you.

Be good to yourself my dear friend and love your wife. Let me just say this that Jesus Christ built this first home in the Garden of Eden. Are you listening? Jesus Christ builds the church home because he says the church I'll build. Jesus Christ builds the heavenly home. He has gone to prepare a place for us and Jesus Christ builds the family home. Jesus and Jesus alone can build the kind of homes that we need. Jesus is the greatest home builder. Satan is the greatest home wrecker. And Jesus intends that everybody have three homes. A family home, a church home, and a heavenly home. And he's the key to all three. If you would like to learn more about how you can know Jesus or deepen your relationship with him, simply click the Discover Jesus link on our website, lwf.org. For a copy of this message or additional resources, visit our online store at lwf.org or call 1-800-274-5683. Thank you.