Defining and Promoting Marriage & Family

Defining and Promoting Marriage & Family

Intro:

What is marriage? That’s a question that’s provoking huge debate today. Have you noticed that it’s in the news almost every single day?

An event happened in April in Indiana that underscores the amazing volatility of this issue. In 1993, President Clinton signed into law the “Freedom of Religion Restoration Act.” The law requires that government only restrict religious freedom when there is a “compelling state interest,” and then only by the “least restrictive means.” After the Supreme Court ruled that the law applied only to the Federal Government and not to the states, 21states have passed a similar law strengthening religious freedom in their states as well, one of the most recent being the state of Indiana.

Now, with the current same-sex marriage debate, these laws protecting religious freedom are being viewed by some as a way of allowing discrimination against homosexuals in the name of religious freedom. 

So, a reporter went to a tiny family-owned pizza shop in the town of Walkerton, Indiana and asked questions about Indiana’s new Freedom of Religion Restoration Act. One of the Christian owners said that they would serve anyone who comes in the door, but wouldn’t cater a gay wedding if asked because it would go against their religious beliefs.

A news report with a somewhat misleading headline was published and the business was immediately flooded with thousands of threatening phone calls and social media postings, some threatening to come to Indiana and burn the place down. The threats and media attention was so overwhelming, that the family closed the pizza shop, went into hiding in their home, and even considered leaving the state. 

Well, word of what happened got out through conservative news channels and a GoFundMe.com page was set up with a modest goal of $25,000 to support the family while their business was closed. Astoundingly, $842,200 was raised from 29,160 people in less than two days. The family plans to donate most of the money to other businesses that are fighting for religious freedom

Isn’t it amazing!  A news story is printed about a tiny pizza place in a small Indiana town that hadn’t even been asked to cater a guy wedding, but says that they wouldn’t do it for religious reasons, and they are immediately inundated with thousands of phone calls and social media postings, some threatening to burn their business to the ground. And then, when it becomes known what happened, within two days, $842,200 is raised in their support. Isn’t it stunning the amount of contention in our country over this issue?

Today we are going to look at the Christian view of marriage and how it relates to the changing definition of marriage in state after state around us. This is a contentious issue. I have no doubt that some sitting here today will have trouble with some of what I am going to say. The Bible’s view on this subject is in direct conflict with the flow of culture around us. We Christians need to know what God says on this subject. And, even those of you who agree with what I’m going to say, need to be able to interact on this subject in a winsome and persuasive way.  We need to be able to defend the ways of God while not unnecessarily offending those who disagree. 

Someone has said, “Christians are great at picketing, but not so great about being persuasive.”

God’s Plan:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27, ESV) 

We were created — we didn’t make ourselves, we didn’t come into being through random natural processes, God made us. That has profound implications. We don’t belong to ourselves. We can’t just do whatever we want.  We have a Creator and we belong to Him.

Secondly we were created in God’s image — We are a communication of God, a representation of Him.  In a way, we are a message from God, revealing what He is like. We are made in His image.

Thirdly, we see that He made us male and female — The essence of maleness and femaleness is not up to us. What it is to be male or female doesn’t change with cultural whims. God is the one who created us male and female.  God designed us this way.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28, ESV) 

Here we see why God made male and female.  It is through the gift of maleness and femaleness that we are able to multiply. And this is God’s desire, that men and women multiply and fill the earth and tame it and bring order out of the disorder that remained outside the Garden of Eden. In a very real way, God created man to be a fellow ruler, under His overall rule. But we also see that He created us to be fellow creators.

Stop and think about the significance of this for a moment!  A man and a woman come together, male and female, as God designed them to be and through their union, they create another human being out of nothing! They create a tiny human baby simply out of the union of their bodies, a sperm and an egg. 

Is there anything that we can do in this world that is more miraculous?  More significant? More world changing? Another human being comes into existence when male and female come together.

This doesn’t mean that those who are single or couples who are childless cannot live significant lives.  Jesus, Himself was never married.  Paul, perhaps the greatest Christian of all time, was single. 

Yet as far as the significance of any one event, creating another human being would have to be right at the top. 

So here, right at the beginning of God’s revelation, we see the reason for male and female and one of the foundational purposes of for marriage: reproduction.  It’s not the exclusive purpose of being male and female, but certainly the foundational purpose.

It’s so obvious we ought to wonder how we can miss it. We call our sexual parts “reproductive organs.” That’s what they do.  That’s what they are designed for.

Now, we live in a fallen world that contains disease and many different kinds of disabilities. And the reproductive process is incredibly complex. And in our fallen world some men and women are not able to have children. 

And, just because the reproductive process sometimes doesn’t work as designed, that doesn’t negate the purpose of the design. That would be like saying that become some people’s legs are paralyzed, the purpose of those legs wasn’t for walking. 

So we see that God designed us male and female so that we could reproduce. And that is a foundational purpose of marriage. And, indeed marriage is designed not only to create children, but to create an ongoing environment in which they can best be nurtured as well.

So, let’s look at some of the other foundational aspects of marriage.

Let’s look at Genesis 2:24:

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:24–25, ESV) 

In chapter 2, we see another purpose in marriage—oneness, companionship, intimacy.  Earlier in the chapter God said that it was not good for the man to be alone. So God made him a helper suitable to him. What does God say about the nature of this union?

He is to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. This implies that marriage is to be permanent. And, we see this confirmed in later portions of the Bible. Jesus, when quoting this verse puts very tight restrictions on divorce, only allowing it in the case of adultery. The prophet Malachi goes so far as to say, “God hates divorce.” 

Permanent — for life.

This word “cleave” also implies exclusivity.  And, this is also confirmed later in the Bible.  The sixth commandment says, “You shall not commit adultery.”  Adultery is sexual activity outside of marriage with another person’s spouse.

Exclusive.

Finally, it’s clear from this verse that marriage is to be between a man and a woman.  A “man” (male) shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife (female).  

Marriage permanently and exclusively unites one man and one woman in conjugal love, and in the children such love naturally and probably produces, in furtherance of the well-established public good of binding fathers to mothers and their children.

This is the traditional view of marriage.  This is the view of marriage that has served our nation well for 200 years and, indeed, has been the foundational unit that has been the bedrock of every successful culture worldwide for as long as we know the history of humans. 

What has happened in our nation to bring such a redefinition of marriage?

37 states now have legal same-sex marriages. It’s interesting to look back and realize that the attack on marriage has been going on for a long, long time, over 50 years. One by one, each of the foundational pillars of marriage have been knocked down.

First, it was Permanence. Between 1970 and 1985 every state adopted no-fault divorce laws. Do you remember which was first?  California? Who was the first governor to sign it into law? Ronald Reagan.

No fault divorce – either spouse can dissolve the marriage without having to prove that there has been a breach of the marriage contract by their spouse. What this means is that no couple in the US can make a legally binding covenant with one another. You can make legally binding covenants and agreements in almost every other of life, but you can’t make one with your spouse, other than a pre-nuptial agreement, which doesn’t really bind you to your covenant. All it does is tell in advance who gets what assets if there is a divorce.

What was the rational for this change? One court opinion had these reasons, along with others: “Reduced animosity, increase personal dignity and autonomy.”

Exclusivity — although there are still laws against adultery in 21 states, ranging from a $10 fine to three years in prison, they are rarely enforced. Most Americans would be shocked to learn of their existence. 

Rationale? “With marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing . . . the Constitution demands the autonomy of the person in making these choices.”

Procreation  

For 100 years, contraceptive devices were banned by federal law and by laws in most states.  Now they are handed out to school kids.

And, of course, it is legal to destroy babies while still in the womb if they are not wanted. So reproduction is no longer seriously promoted as a purpose of marriage.

Rational? “The right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Complementary (same-sex marriage). This is the fourth area that is under attack. Same sex marriage is now legal in 37 states; 26 from judicial rulings and 11 from legislation.

Rationale: The “consent-based” vision defines marriage as the solemnization of mutual commitment—marked by strong emotional attachment and sexual attraction . . . . gender differentiation is not relevant to this vision.

Did you notice the common philosophy in the rationale for these changes? The highest possible good is as much individual freedom of expression as possible, particularly freedom in sexual expression. As I was studying, I found this statement from news talk person:

“I feel horrible for those people who let that religion dictate their own lives so that they can’t act on their own sexual feelings.”

But what about the person who has angry passions? Do we say, “I feel horrible for those persons who let their religion dictate their own lives so they can’t act on their rage by destroying things. Or what about covetousness? “I feel horrible for those persons who let their religion dictate their own lives so that they can’t steal from others.

But sex has become god to so many people. For our culture, the highest possible good is no longer the glory of the God of the Bible, or the good of their fellow man, but the autonomous freedom of expression, particularly sexual expression. This thinking has so permeated our culture that it is now encoded in our laws.

Who loses the most when individual expression becomes the highest good?  Those whom government is particularly charged to protect—the weak and the helpless.

And in this case, the losers are children:

The traditional view of marriage has largely been child centered. Traditional marriage regulates sexuality for the benefit of children. 

We all know that children take an extreme amount of care. A provider and a nurturer. It takes decades to raise a child. Children need full time care takers when they are young and someone needs to provide for not only the child, but the caretaker. Hence the need for permanence. The Biblical vision of family is that the father be the provider and the mother the caretaker. 

Countless studies show that children thrive best with their own biological mother and father, who are together for life in an exclusive relationship. Children deserve both a mother and a father, and wherever possible, their own mother and their own father.

I remember one of the first counseling situations I had as a young pastor.  This husband was having extreme difficulty loving his wife’s oldest daughter who was from a previous marriage. He knew he should love her and wanted to love her, but he just found that his heart wasn’t in it.  There is a natural bond between a parent and their own biological child that should be preserved whenever possible.  

I’ve read that the incidence of incest and sexual abuse is much greater when a child is living with a man other than his or her own father, but a boyfriend or step father.  It’s more difficult for there to be the same love and care when it isn’t your own child.

That’s not always the case. Many, many adoptive parents love their children just as much as if they were their own.  But it can sometimes be more difficult.

So, this is one of the main reasons that Christians are against redefining marriage 

Because a redefinition of marriage is also a redefinition of parenthood. In a same sex marriage, it is impossible for a child to grow up in a family with his own father and mother. Obviously, it’s biologically impossible for a same sex marriage to produce children of their own, so it is impossible for any children raised in such an environment to have his own father and mother present in the home.

This woman is Heather Barwick, a 31-year-old mother-of-four from South Carolina. Heather’s mother left her father when she was 2 or 3 so that her mom could move in with the woman she loved. 

“'Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn't matter. That it's all the same. But it's not,” she writes.

“A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting. My father's absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I loved my mom's partner, but another mom could never have replaced the father I lost.”

“I'm not gay, but the relationship that was modeled before me was a woman loving a woman. So I've struggled as an adult figuring out how to be in a relationship with my husband.”

In an article in World magazine, several others, along with Barwick, expressed their belief that their same-sex upbringing left them longing for a missing parent, confused about their own sexuality, and rudderless in navigating healthy opposite-sex relationships.

Putting individual expression as the highest possible good leads to other expressions of “freedom” that are also hurt children and adults

Polyamory — if individual sexual expression is the highest good, then what about people who want to have three or four or more partners living together in marriage, sharing sexual favors? Again, this would be harmful to any children of such a relationship. 

Pedophilia — having sex with children: (if children are willing, and individual expression is the highest good, what arguments are there against it?

Finally, one reason to promote traditional marriage is that the radical redefinition of marriage promotes the gender confusion that is running rampant in our culture.

This is Bruce Jenner. People magazine reports that Jenner will pose on the cover of Vanity Fair as a woman. The former Olympian revealed in April that he is transitioning from male to female. Now, in my opinion, that is clearly impossible.  All he could possibly become is a hormone modified or surgically-mutilated man. Every cell in his body is male and always will be male.  No doctor or surgery could possibly change that.

To me it’s heartbreaking to see this kind of gender confusion.  It’s heartbreaking to see some people celebrating those who mutilate their bodies with trans-gender surgeries.

It’s heartbreaking to read that people who have procedures to switch genders have 20 times the suicide rate of other gay people. It’s heartbreaking to see the delusion and to see it ruining people lives

One of the purposes of our minds is to help us comprehend and adapt to reality. The goal is to attain truth. Yet we can sometimes be beset with persistent false beliefs about ourselves and who we are. 

An example is anorexia nervosa. Someone who is dangerously underweight believes falsely (but tenaciously) that she is, in actuality, overweight. We don’t celebrate such false belief.  We don’t laud such a person for having the courage to stand up against the reproaches of others. No! We call this a disorder.  They have a tenacious false belief that will end their life if not corrected. They are not in touch with reality.

Or, imagine that a seventy-year-old man comes to identify as a sixteen-year-old. Wouldn’t we think it absurd if people considered it “rude” or “bigoted” to tell the man: “You are not sixteen years old. You’re identifying as a 16-year-old doesn’t change this fact, and we will not indulge you in your strange delusions by not calling attention to your old age and by pretending that you really are sixteen years old”?

This can happen with sexual identity.  For many reasons, a person can develop a false sense of reality about his or her sexual identity and identify as a member of the opposite sex.  But no matter how much we may identify as such, that doesn’t make it so.  God created us either male or female and no one can change that.

So, if someone is confused as to his or her gender, it would only be loving to help him or her adjust to the reality of who they are and not celebrate any false beliefs no matter how persistent or tenacious that belief may be.

Now, let me make it clear that same sex attractions are usually not consciously chosen.  They are usually unwanted.  And, I believe there are many reasons for that. I believe developmental reasons, often related either to trauma or to problems in nurturing.

I, myself, have struggled at times with same-sex attraction.  It’s not been prolonged and certainly not as intense as my attraction to the opposite sex.  Yet it has none-the-less been real.

But a third reason that many people struggle is that there is so much gender confusion out there.  When someone “comes out” they are often celebrated. Is it any wonder that boys and girls get confused?

Accepting same-sex marriage only adds to the confusion and legitimizes a person’s distortion of reality that love would require us to challenge and help.

What should Christians do? 

We should accept and promote God’s plan for marriage in our personal lives, our families, our church, our community, and our nation.

We should advocate for the four foundational pillars of marriage.

We should promote the permanence of marriage.

We should promote exclusivity in marriage.

We should Love children, desire them, care for them, protect them — speak about their value, nurture them, make them a priority in your own family, career, etc.

And, we should promote complementary marriage — speak out against same-sex marriages and refuse to celebrate them. Speak out against homosexuality.  

This is not hate speech. This is love.

We should refuse to celebrate when any of these marriage pillars are violated.

I don’t think that we all need to go on a campaign against these things, although it is very good that some Christians are campaigning against them.

But refuse to celebrate whenever marriage is dishonored.

Don’t attend a same-sex wedding, even if it’s your own son or daughter or brother or aunt or sister or whomever.  Don’t celebrate something so destructive to those who are so deceived.

What about those of us who own businesses? Should I bake a cake for a same-sex “marriage”?  Should I serve someone who is in a same-sex relationship?

I share the conviction of the owner of Memories pizza. There is a difference between serving another human being and celebrating wrong behavior. If I was an auto mechanic and a Neo-Nazi wanted me to fix his car, I would.  But if I was a printer and a Neo-Nazi wanted me to print his literature, I would refuse.  It's one thing to help a fellow human, it's another thing to promote sinful folly. Helping to celebrate a sinful union (whether homosexual or heterosexual) is different from serving a homosexual in another way.

If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience— I do not mean your conscience, but his. . . (1 Corinthians 10:27–29, ESV) 

When to stand up and when not to will probably not be black and white. There will often be a lot of grayness in these things. Is this hateful? No, rather, aiding and assisting someone in doing evil is unloving and hateful. It's kind of like being an accessory to a crime.

With what attitude do we do this? We must do these things because we love these people and desire their good, not because it breaks the rules or offends our sensibilities.

These distortions of God’s ways are ruining people, destroying families, and harming children. We should grieve and weep and be angry that people are being harmed, not that arbitrary rules are being broken.

Deep humility: Don't put yourself up as better than anyone. I'm a sinner too.  I deserve the wrath of God just as much as anyone.

Hold Grace and truth together: Have Grace in one hand and truth on the other.

Preach the gospel – There is sin, Sin destroys, God judges, Christ came to take our punishment. He died. He rose again.  He will return to judge the world and set up His kingdom…

Counting the cost:

Be prepared to suffer.  In coming years, some of us may lose our jobs because we refuse to celebrate same-sex marriage.  Some of us may not be promoted. Some of us may lose our businesses. Some may have to pay a fine 

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. (2 Timothy 3:12–13, ESV) 

Hopefully, I’ve given you something to think about this morning.  Why defend and promote the Bible’s view of marriage?

God, our maker, set it up this way.  His ways are perfect. He knows what is best.  He’s given us the instruction manual on how and why we are here and what we are to do.  He is the one who determines what maleness and femaleness is.

It furthers God’s purposes of creating and fostering children.  Every child deserves to be raised by his own parents whenever possible.

Benediction

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, (1 Peter 3:13–15, ESV)