Sunday, January 4, 2009

Marriage should be honored...

With the cultural climate against any traditional view of marriage, it seems prudent for all of us to understand the renewed significance and importance of the Scripture's view of marriage. The Bible says in Hebrews 13:4 that "marriage should be honored by all."

But from the very beginning of the Scriptures it is undeniably clear that marriage is between a male and a female (Genesis 2:24). I personally don't believe that there is any coincidence in the intent of the language early on in Genesis that you see over and over again phrases such as husband and "wife", and "male and female." In fact, by Genesis 7:16, the phrase "male and female" is used 12 times.

It's almost as if God is trying to imprint the idea that there is a design motif and we shouldn't try to mess that up. But we did. In fact you see in Genesis 6 that mankind's wickedness had become very, very great (Genesis 6:5). There are three hallmarks of this wickedness...1)every thought that man had was only evil all the time, 2)mankind was corrupt [Genesis 6:12] and 3) mankind was violent [Genesis 6:11].

The word translated "corrupt" has a notion of sexual deviancy attached to it. Sexual deviancy and violence. Hmmmm....sound like any culture you know? We have walked so far in a circle that we have devolved ourselves right back to the days of Noah...the very days which made God sad he had ever made man in the first place.

No matter what laws are passed in any statehouse, or declared from any rogue group of justices on any supreme court, the Word of God is true and unchanging. Marriage cannot be allowed to be redefined by any "corrupt" or "violent" group whose thoughts are only evil all the time!

I would challenge you, as we are coming into the month where we celebrate LOVE, to reaffirm your commitment to honor marriage as being between one man and one woman for life! Nothing else but that is what should be.

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