Healthy Marriages Start Here, Part 1

In a cultural climate that's grown hostile toward the biblical model, how should husbands and wives proceed in strengthening their home?

And here's another question. Given the pressure on couples today, is there really any hope for the traditional family to survive? Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll presents message number two in a brand new teaching series called Restoring Your Family's Foundation. In today's study, Chuck restores our confidence that God's plan really works when we apply the time-tested wisdom in His Word. Let's begin together in Genesis chapter two. We've begun a series on the family, covering some of the basic areas that relate to family life. Today, we begin with a more basic area of family life, and that would be with marriage itself. We're looking at it in Genesis chapter two. If you brought your Bible with you, please turn to verse 18 of the second chapter, this book of beginnings. We're not surprised to find the beginning of marriage as originally designed by the architect of marriage, God himself. Genesis 2 18. Then the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper who is just right for him. So the Lord God formed from the ground, all the wild animals, all the birds of the sky. And he brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And the man chose a name for each one. He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals.

But still, there was no helper just right for him. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man's ribs and closed up the opening. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib and he brought her to the man. At last, the man exclaimed, this one is bone of my bones and flesh from my flesh. She will be called woman because she was taken from man. This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife. And the two are united into one.

Now the man and his wife were both naked but they felt no shame. You're listening to Insight for Living. To study the Bible with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures Studies by going to insight.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck titled Healthy Marriages Start Here. We all admire strong and healthy families.

When we come across one, we sort of pause and let the wonder in. Can't speak for your family, but I know that Cynthia and I and our family, when we see another family that's happy with one another and enjoying each other and kids talking with each other and relaxing and finding delight in each other, we sort of pause, take it in. It never just happens. No family just darts out on its own and winds up like that. It's a result of a lot of teamwork, a lot of let's call it personal commitment and effort.

It never just happens. Back when Professor Nick Stinnett was the chairman of the Department of Human Development and the family at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, he launched a fascinating Family Strengths Research Project. This study included strong black families, white families, other races, as well as single parent families, including husband-wife families. He and his research team observed and interviewed strong families in South America, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, South Africa, and the United States. It was quite a study.

There was only one criterion for being included in the sample of strong families. All the families had to rate themselves high, very high, in marriage happiness as well as great satisfaction in their parent-child relationships. I should also mention that the project was not limited to Christian families. The goal of the project simply to discover what makes families strong. Dr. Stinnett later wrote of his findings, and I quote, altogether we studied 3,000 families and collected a lot of information. But when we analyzed all we found, there were six main qualities in strong families. It might not be a bad idea to jot these down. It makes a great list to stick on your refrigerator.

You may want to look at it later on. Here they were. Strong families, one, are committed to the family. Two, they spend time together. Three, strong families have good family communication. Four, strong families express appreciation for one another. Five, strong families have a spiritual commitment. And sixth, strong families are able to solve problems in a crisis.

And a list, isn't it? What's interesting is that each family began at the same place. They had to rate themselves very high in marriage happiness. Healthy, strong families start with healthy, strong marriages.

It should come as a surprise to no one, really. That leads me to the obvious question. Where do we start if we hope to have a strong and healthy marriage?

I think most of you would agree that the most reliable answer is this. We need to seek the advice of the one who originated marriage, God himself. He was the architect. He drew up the blueprint. Since marriage and family are in such a need today, it seems to me it would be wise to blow the dust off that original blueprint and look at it again and see what it has to say to us as we live our lives centuries, centuries after these words were first written. Not surprisingly, we find them in the Book of Beginnings, the Book of Genesis.

It's almost as if everything on earth has its start here. In the second chapter of Genesis, we find the first detailed reference to the first man and the first woman as they are brought together in marriage. So what we're about to read is known among theologians as a passage of primary reference.

You can't go to any other earlier section of scripture to find something that was said before this. This is the first, which adds to its significance, I think. The very first things God said about marriage, he says in Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 to 25, most specifically in verses 24 and 25 where he looks ahead beyond the first marriage to the many, many millions of marriages that would take place in the centuries to come. Interestingly, for the very first time, something is set forth in Genesis that is not good.

First time. Give you a little background for that. If you go to chapter 1, you'll see that chapter 1, verse 3, God created the light and he states it was good. Chapter 1, verse 10, he created the dry ground and the seas and he states in that verse those were good. Chapter 1, verse 12, the fruit bearing trees and plants were good, according to God's estimation. 1.18, the sun and the moon having been created, he says, were good.

The list goes on. All sea life and bird life were good. Chapter 1, verse 21, 1.25 says animals that produced other animals were good. All of it good. Good, good, good. Verse 31, at the end of the chapter, we read everything that he created very good.

It's all good. Until you get to chapter 2 in verse 7 where we hear the breaks screech and in the Hebrew it's emphatic, not good is man's aloneness. God evaluated man as he sees him alone and he says it's not good that he remain alone and as a result, he not only declared that, he did something about it, obviously.

He created one whom he first identified as man's helper. Now, hold on before you get ruffled over that word. Sounds servile.

It isn't at all. The word helper in the Hebrew means one who assists another to reach complete fulfillment. Sounds like a pretty important role to me. The New Living translation says that she was just right for him in the new American standard. She's suitable for him. So she was made for him to fulfill something missing. I call it bringing the pieces of the puzzles of his life, the puzzle of his life that were missing and adding them so that there's completion.

And it's reciprocal. They add to one another's lives. She would provide the missing pieces. Each one would have distinct, unique roles to fill just as God planned it. Each would need the other to find that fulfillment. Adam couldn't find it alone.

That's why it wasn't good that he remain alone. In God's original plan, he performed the solution. He took a rib and from it, he made the woman.

That word made is incredibly important in the Hebrew. Beautiful term. And by the way, when he brought her to Adam, he's ecstatic. He says in effect, this is it. This is the one. This is what grooms think when they see the bride break through that door and come down the aisle for the first time in her white gown. And they have these incredible, this rush of feelings. This is the one.

This is the one. It's a great moment for me to pause and remind you that God brought her to the man. Remember that while we're rebuilding from this original plan, you didn't just reach out there in humanity and find some available woman. You didn't just notice a man here or there and choose. God knew what he was doing. And knowing you as you are put together and knowing what the other could provide that you would need, God brought you together for fulfillment.

Remember, it didn't just happen. I find in this passage of 24 and 25, no less than four essentials. And you'll read them also when you read through them.

Let me point them out. These begin a healthy marriage. This explains why a man would leave father and mother. Obviously, Adam doesn't have either.

He's been created. But in the marriages to come, this would be the standing procedure for all marriages. There would have to be, to start with, severance.

Severance in leaving father and mother. I'll come back to each in a moment. Second, there's permanence. He will be joined to his wife, and she joined to him. Third, there's unity. We read further, and the two are united into one remarkable statement to, I'll come back to this, but just for a moment, two completely different individuals, different in every way, joined as one in the marriage union.

So there's unity. And fourth, there is intimacy. Intimacy.

They were naked, and there was no sense of shame. What an interesting way to put that. Again, I'll come back to that. At the risk of oversimplifying marital conflicts and complications, I want to tell you something from my own experience. Of the hundreds of difficult marriages that I've had a part in helping to resolve as best I could sometime unsuccessfully. Other times, thankfully, those things helped. I discovered that almost without exception, in those difficulties, one or more of these four essentials was either violated, compromised, or ignored.

That's how basic they are. Either the couple had not severed the emotional ties with mom and dad, or they had not committed themselves to permanence in the union, or they were not truly a unit as a couple. And fourth, there was ongoing shame that interrupted and crippled the intimacy. Intimacy, not just having sex together, but intimacy in the sense the word means to lay bare.

I'll come to that in a moment. They were unable to lay themselves bare before one another. That takes a lot of trust, a lot of vulnerability, and an absence of shame. So I noticed that the couple either had not fully separated or they were not mutually committed to permanence in their relationship, or they had not really taken it further to become a union with one another, or there was an interruption of the intimacy. Many couples never know this kind of intimacy that God has in mind. If you're married or if you are considering marriage, and I know that leaves a number of you out, but we're dealing with marriage today, so bear with us. If you are in the category of one seeking marriage or one engaged in it, I urge you to keep these four essentials in mind. Without them, your marriage will never work.

Never. They are essential for the survival of a happy, healthy, strong marriage. Let's take them one at a time. First, severance.

This is the first directive God gave the first couple, so I guess there's priority in numbers, so this is first. As you grow up, you find your security, your emotional strength, your protection from your mother and father, and that's essential for a healthy childhood. Without it, you're not healthy. You sort of grow up on your own, and if you've done that, you know the fallout from that. But when you marry, you separate from that tight emotional tie that was essential to you during childhood and adolescence in order for the marriage to grow, and this doesn't mean we abandon our folks or we mistreat them or we cut them off of all relationship.

That's not what's meant by severance. It means we sever the emotional dependence we've had on them throughout our earlier years. It's a little bit too general to put it like this, but I'll say it. We don't need them any longer.

We don't rely on them for our physical or financial or emotional or social strength. We're adults. We're moving toward maturity, and we're doing this with another individual in marriage. We're just getting started with Chuck Swindoll's four essentials from our study in Genesis chapter 2. He's talking about cultivating a healthy marriage. This is Insight for Living, and if you'd like to learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org.

What you heard today represents a small portion of a brand new teaching series. It's called Restoring Your Family's Foundation. This seven-part study embodies the culmination of Chuck's wisdom on the family, accumulated over the decades as a husband, dad, granddad, and great-granddad. I'm pleased to remind you that Chuck wrote a helpful book on this topic as well.

Actually, it's a classic. His book is called Marriage from Surviving to Thriving. Let's face it, marriage and the family have changed drastically through the years.

Men afraid to be men, women ashamed of being women, and yet the Bible upholds a much more hopeful design for your marriage and home. In Chuck's book, you'll receive wise biblical counsel on how to move your marriage relationship from surviving to thriving. To purchase Chuck Swindoll's book called Marriage from Surviving to Thriving, call us.

If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888, or go online to insight.org slash store. Bear in mind that your gift to Insight for Living, large or small, will help cultivate healthy families. There's hardly a day that passes when we don't hear from a grateful couple, a relieved husband, or a forgiven son or daughter.

Biblical wisdom is timeless, and lives are changed when we learn to apply what God taught us long ago. To join us in this mission to help families and make disciples of Jesus Christ around the world, we invite you to give a generous donation. By giving a donation today, you'll be doing for some young family what someone once did for you. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888, or go online to insight.org slash donate. We look forward to hearing from you soon. Once again, the web address where you can give online is insight.org slash donate.

Take it from Chuck Swindoll. There's nothing quite like the beauty of the great frontier. Wide open skies, pristine glaciers with various shades of blue and turquoise mingled within them towering pine trees and all manner of wildlife. I'll tell you, Alaska is truly a masterpiece of God's creation. I've been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things, but honestly, nothing compares to the beauty in Alaska.

God is awesome. Come with us on the inside for living ministries cruise to Alaska, July 1 through July 8, 2023. When I'm in Alaska, I feel like I'm in an amazing painting created by God. Let yourself get lost in the majestic beauty. Spend quality time with those you love. Allow God to refresh your soul as you reflect on his word and his goodness in your life. To learn more, go to insight.org slash events or call this number 1-888-447-0444. The tour to Alaska is paid for and made possible by only those who choose to attend. I'm Bill Meyer. Chuck Swindoll continues his brand new series called Restoring Your Family's Foundation next time on Insight for Living.