The Key to a Magnificent Marriage | Part 1

It takes a teen to obtain love. Well, it is a ministry. We must be a part of a team.

Welcome to Love Worth Finding. The key to a magnificent marriage is found in Exodus, Chapter 20, Verse 14, which says, Thou shalt not commit adultery. And as we just heard from beloved pastor and Bible teacher Adrian Rogers, Christians have a responsibility to uphold this commandment, whether or not you're married. The modern world tells us the Ten Commandments, especially this they're out of date. They're old fashioned generations come and go. The Ten Commandments remain. They don't need to be amended or revised, and we are broken upon them if we try to break them.

But if we obey them, they will liberate. That's why we have to teach the next generation God's plan for a magnificent marriage. Turn in your Bible if you can to Exodus, Chapter 20, Verse 14.

Once again, here's Adrian Rogers. Clearly and plainly, God says in His Word, Thou shalt not commit adultery. I want to speak to you today on this subject, the key to a magnificent marriage. I heard about an old couple. They'd been married for many, many years, 50 years.

They were sitting by the fireside. He looked over at her and had a romantic thought. And he said, to her, after 50 years, I have found you tried and true. Her hearing wasn't very good. She said, eh? He said, after 50 years, I found you tried and true.

She said, after 50 years, I'm tired of you, too. Now, I want to show you how to have 50 years and more by the grace of God that will be magnificent and wonderful. God wants our marriage to be magnificent, and the key to a magnificent marriage is found right here. The commandments of the Word, we are broken on them if we try to break them. Now, the commandments, and this one is not given to be painful or onerous or to bind us in, but really to liberate us, to set us free. The Bible says His commandments are not grievous. God's laws for liberty when God says, Thou shalt not commit adultery.

But here's what we need to do. We need to take the law and put it in our hearts, because if the law of God is only on the outside, it will be a rule, a regulation, a restraint. But if it's on the inside, if the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us, then what liberty, what release there is there. And God wants that wall to keep the enemy from the north from invading. And it was so high and so great and so wide that chariots could ride across the top of that wall.

They say it's one of the few man-made things that could be seen from the moon as you look back to the earth. But you know that wall did not keep the enemy out, and do you know why? All the enemy did was to bribe a gatekeeper. And so, in spite of the wall, the enemy did not keep the gatekeeper.

In spite of the wall, there was an enemy on the inside that let the enemy on the outside in. And so, the gatekeeper must be in your heart, in your life. The walls of restraint and the laws of God's Word do no good unless the gatekeeper is on the inside. Now, this seventh commandment deals with all immorality. And what it says in a nutshell is this, that sexual involvement outside of marriage is a grievous sin.

This means premarital sex, extramarital sex. It is a sin against Almighty God. Now, we're told today that the Ten Commandments, and especially this one, are out of date, old-fashioned. There's a new morality.

And in the meanwhile, homes are coming apart, and young people are being sucked down into swirling sewers of sin, and venereal disease is rampant. We'd better go back to God's Word. Acts 15, verse 29, abstain from fornication. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 8, neither let us commit fornication. Colossians 3, verse 5, mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 3, for this is the will of God, even your sanctification that ye should abstain from fornication. Now, the word fornication means any sexual immorality before or after marriage. And if you're sexually active before marriage, you're breaking the command that says, Thou shall not commit adultery. You say, Well, I'm not married. If you are sexually active before marriage, you are sinning against the person you will marry. And you're building obstacles and barriers that you will have to overcome after you get married. So many of us who have children and grandchildren are wondering, Who will I have children marry? Will there be a person sexually clean and pure? Will there be a person that our children can marry? How are our children going to find the right person?

Well, we must teach them to be the right person because if they are the right person, they will have such a greater potentiality for finding the right person. I want you to imagine a mountain. Down at the bottom of that mountain is a beautiful valley. There's a road that comes down the mountainside. And on that road there are steep cliffs and sharp precipices and there are obstacles on the road and few, if any, guard rails. At the top, there's a line of automobiles and they're starting down that road. Two people are in that automobile and they're heading toward the happy valley. And they pick up passengers. But all along that road there are wrecks and these automobiles are careening over precipices or running into obstacles and the people who are in these automobiles are being broken and maimed and passengers that they picked up along the way are being broken and crushed. When they start out to the happy valley, they think it's going to be wonderful. But along the way something happens. It's an illustration, a picture of marriage in America today. And what should we do?

What should we do? Well, number one, we need to have compassion on those whose automobile has been wrecked. We need to have a heart full of love and compassion and say our hearts are open and our church is open, our arms are open, the Word of God is open, the love of God is there.

And God is a God who forgives and restores and he does not hold grudges. We need to teach that because there are a lot of broken people and they don't need somebody pointing a finger in their face. They need somebody to get down alongside of them and bind them up and help the bruised and the broken because, friend, there are plenty of them in America today. There's something else we need to do, though. We need to be building some barricades, some safety rails. We need to be removing some of the obstacles that are causing some of these disastrous wrecks, don't we?

I mean, it's dangerous for kids today to live in America because everything is against marriage, it seems. As I've said before, the devil has leveled all of the artillery of hell against our homes. We need to be removing obstacles. We need to be removing obstacles and building guardrails. You know, I think the main thing we need to do is to teach the drivers how to drive. Teach the drivers how to drive to give them some instruction, to give them some help.

And very frankly, that's what we're trying to do in this series on a perfect ten for homes that win. We're trying to help young people. Did you know that young people who get married today, they don't get a lot of help. Did you know, speaking of driving, that it's easier to get a marriage license than a driver's license?

Think about it. It is absolutely easier to get a marriage license than a driver's license. It's easier to get married. All you have to do is have some notary public or somebody say a few words over you and they say you're married.

Put down your money, get the license, ipso facto, you're married. Now, what we have today in America is a vicious cycle. Broken homes produce broken people.

That have more broken homes that produce more broken people that produce more broken homes. Now, that's not an irreversible cycle. What we need to do is to break that cycle. What we need to do is to teach young people today how to have a godly marriage.

How to get from the mountaintop to the valley below. Now, you may be happily married, but the message still applies to you. You may be unmarried. But the message today still applies to you.

Why? Because we have a responsibility before God, whether or not we're married or happily married, to help other people. It is a ministry. We must be a part of a team to help young people today prepare for marriage and to help those who are married to arrive safely. Now, here are three things I want to point out to you. Number one, we've got to teach our young people how to plan for a magnificent marriage. Now, look, if you will, in Genesis chapter 2.

You're next. Just turn left to Genesis chapter 2, if you will, please, for a moment. And in Genesis chapter 2, I'm going to read a few verses of Scripture to you. And in these few verses of Scripture, every problem that marriage will ever face is alluded to here and the answer to every problem. Genesis 2, verses 21 through 24. It tells about the first marriage in the Garden of Eden. It tells about God's plan for the home and for a magnificent marriage. And it says this, Now, notice the therefore in verse 24. Any advice that you can give would simply be an enlargement, an extrapolation of that one verse. That one verse speaks of the priority of marriage.

The highest priority of human relationships is not parent to child or child to parent, but mate to mate. And therefore, we as parents must be preparing our children to leave us. We must be coming to a place where as the eagle stirs her nest to get rid of those little eagles in the nest, we've got to be preparing to stir the nest to get rid of those children so they can go out and have a home of their own. Now, the little eagle doesn't want to leave the nest. It's so comfortable in the nest. And the mother eagle comes with little bits of fish or big, fat, juicy worms to feed that little eaglet there in the nest. But there comes a time when that eagle must fly and get out of the nest. Now, many moms and dads don't want to have the empty nest, so they keep the nest feathered and they make it easy for the little baby eagle and never really teach that baby eagle how to fly.

What a mistake. You know what we say? When we overly pamper our children and take care of them beyond the time when they ought to be out of the nest, we say, well, I want them to have the things that I never had. I want to be able to give to my children things my parents never gave to me.

Well, I wonder, are you giving to your children the things your parents did give to you? You know, I was raised in a home where we didn't have a lot of extra things, and I was born in the Depression and grew up in the latter years of that Depression. We didn't have money to spend on things that kids spend on today. I never had the money to spend on things that kids spend on today. My dad knew what it was to, quote, eat out or those kind of things. We never even thought about that.

That was ridiculous. We were having enough trouble eating in. But you know what we used to do sometimes with my dad?

I didn't have work to do. We'd go over to Singer Island, and we kids would seine for minutes for my dad to fish with. We'd build a bonfire there on the beach, and mom would bring two or three cans of pork and beans, and we'd get some Crisco to fry the fish.

And we'd catch those fish in and catch those fish. Hey, folks, those are my best memories, things that we did because we didn't have money to do anything else. Those were the times when we, because we didn't have things, we were forced together as a family. The question is, are you giving them not the things that your parents didn't give you?

Are you giving them the things that your parents did give you? There's a priority of marriage, and this is what the Bible teaches. Parents are not our supreme commitment.

Children are not our supreme commitment. Now, not only is there the priority of marriage taught in this verse, there's the permanence of marriage. The Bible says he shall cleave unto his wife. The Hebrew word has the idea of welding or gluing. It's not people who put themselves together. It's God that puts them together. Mark 10, verse 9 says, what therefore God hath joined together. What God hath joined together.

Let not man, let not man. Put asunder. Marriage is permanent. Marriage is till death do us part. Show me two kids who consider divorce as an option. And I'll show you two young people who have a greatly increased potentiality for a breakup of their marriage. You say, well, we got divorced because we had problems.

I have news for you. People who stay married and people who get divorced have basically the same kind of problems. The difference is not in the problems they have. The difference is in commitment. I mean, everybody has problems in their marriage. You have to watch a man get married. But just get rid of the idea of divorce.

Just take your scissors and cut that word out of your dictionary. Divorce is the only game in which both players lose. Everybody is a loser. And in no fault, divorce is a contradiction in terms.

There is no such thing. Everybody has problems in their marriage. But you have a wonderful marriage and 90% of the marriage is wonderful and 10% of the marriage is trouble.

So you throw out the 90% because of the 10% that's in trouble. That's because of a lack of commitment. This verse speaks of the priority of marriage. It speaks of the permanence of marriage.

It speaks of the purpose of marriage. They, too, will be one flesh. Now, this deals with more than simply a sexual union.

Though that is included. It means that they will be one flesh physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Two become one. Marriage is a romance. And in the first chapter, both the hero and the heroine die.

And then they become one new person. Marriage is very much like a violin. The violin without the bow, there's no music.

The bow without the violin, there's no music. But when the two come together, then there is that music. That's the way marriage is. God takes two. And God makes them one. Well, you say that's old-fashioned.

Yeah, it's old-fashioned, but it's still mighty good. Did you know that the latest poll results are in? And all of these people have been telling us we need to be liberated. Here's what the latest polls say. The best physical and sexual relationships, as well as emotional stability, come to those who wait upon God and keep themselves pure for marriage. A new survey commissioned by the Family Research Council, a pro-family lobbying group based in Washington, D.C., found that people most likely to report that they are very satisfied with their current sex life are married people who strongly believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong. The poll found out that 72% of these married traditionalists reported sexual satisfaction. This is 31% higher than unmarried non-traditionalists and 13% higher than married non-traditionalists. And then this poll went on to show that sexually happy people also tend to go to church. The poll found that two-thirds of responders who attend church weekly are very satisfied with their sex lives, compared to barely half of those who never attend a church. It's an amazing thing.

When all fails, just go back and read the directions. Marriage is for more than the mere propagation of the race. It's for mutual love and comfort and joy. Look, God loves you.

I've said this over and over in this series. When God says, Thou shalt not, He's just saying, Don't hurt yourself. When God says, Thou shalt, He's saying, Help yourself to happiness.

You are not smarter than God. God loves you. And when God says, Thou shalt not commit adultery, He's not trying to keep you from sex.

He is trying to keep sex for you. It is a wonderful gift of God. Marriage is honorable and the best yet undefiled. But adulterers and homemongers, God will judge. So what we have to do, first of all, if we get these kids down from the mountaintop to the Happy Valley, we have to show them God's plan for the home, for a magnificent marriage. And God's plan is very, very simply the priority of marriage, the permanence of marriage, the purpose of marriage, that they become one flesh and achieve that happiness, that satisfaction, that gentleness, that joy, that fulfillment that God has intended in spite of all of the difficulties along the way. Now, the second thing we need to do is not only teach them, but we need to warn them.

We need to warn them. And this message today is going to be very solemn and very stern because there's no equivocation here when God says, Thou shalt not commit adultery. To adulterate means to make him pure. And when you adulterate, you adulterate marriage.

You have made him pure, something that God values so highly and so wonderfully. Let me tell you why adultery is a sin. First of all, it's a sin against one's own self. Do you know what the Bible says? Here's an interesting verse.

And I hope you'll jot these verses down. 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 18. The Bible says, Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body, that is, outside of his body. But he that commiteth fornication sinneth against his own body.

There's no sin that will do you more personal damage spiritually, mentally, and physically than immorality. We'd love others to pray for something that has been broken in your own life. If you go to the website, lwf.org slash radio and scroll down, you'll find our prayer wall. Now, this resource is one of our favorite ways to keep the ministry and the community praying continually for one another. If you're going through a difficult season, let us cover you in prayer.

We can't wait to hear from you. Again, go to lwf.org slash radio and scroll down to our prayer wall. If you'd like to order a copy of today's message in its entirety, call 1-877-LOVE-GOD and order The Key to a Magnificent Marriage.

This message is also part of the powerful series, A Perfect Ten for Homes That Win. For that complete collection, all 10 insightful messages, call us at 877-LOVE-GOD or go online to lwf.org slash radio. Or you can write us at Love Worth Finding, Box 37.

Or you can write us at 38600 Memphis, Tennessee 38183. Well, thanks for studying in God's Word with us today. Before we go, a reminder, remember that beautiful metaphor Pastor Rogers shared, marriage is very much like a violin. The violin without the bow, there's no music.

The bow without the violin, there's no music. We hope you'll join us next time for more timeless truth from Adrian Rogers right here on Love Worth Finding. A Facebook friend reached out and posted this on our wall recently.

Listen to this. I began listening to Dr. Rogers in the 1980s. When God called me to seminary, the testimonies of my colleagues who attended his church further spurred my admiration of Dr. Rogers. To this day, I listen to Love Worth Finding whenever possible, and I'm so glad these messages did not go away when Dr. Rogers passed into glory. At Love Worth Finding, it's our greatest desire to be a part of the gospel and our desire to equip you with resources to share the light of the gospel through these messages and through the resources that we offer on the website and right here. Right now, if you give a gift of any size, we'll send you our 2020 Christmas cards. Request a packet of 2020 Christmas cards when you call with a gift right now at 1-877-LOVEGOD or give online at lwf.org slash radio. Thank you.