“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”- Mark 10:8-9
Over the course of the weekend, many of us will be celebrating the person we love. While it’s a man-made “holiday,” it’s never a bad thing to acknowledge the person who has a special place in your heart and life. In fact, hopefully they sense they are loved by you more than one day a year.
Here’s the reality: Marriage relationships have never been easy, but they seem to be getting tougher as time goes by. While the pain of separation and divorce seems to be a pandemic of its own, the challenges we face today were just as true in Jesus’ day. In fact, in the passage we'll be studying this weekend, some religious leaders tried to debate with Jesus on the subject in order to try and test Jesus and get Him into trouble with the legal experts. But true to form, Jesus turned the tables on them to explain the impact of marriage.
Jesus reminds them (and us) that marriage is not based on feelings. Marriage is the amazing and mysterious miracle in which two persons, a man and a woman with different backgrounds and families, become one unit. According to God, when two people come together in marriage, they create a new living thing: they become one flesh. When we promise, “I do,” to our spouse, life is no longer about just the individual; it’s about us.
To hold this beautiful vision of marriage is tough in a world that is so focused on the individual. Messages bombard us from all sides to try to convince us that the self is most important. Life is all about what I feel, what I want, what I need. For those of us who are married, Jesus invites us to die to that selfish spirit and work to build up and bless our spouse. For those of us who know the pain of a broken marriage, God invites us to experience the forgiveness, grace, and healing that give renewed peace and joy.
This week we’re excited to start a new sermon series together called “Family: Putting the Pieces Back Together.” While we’ll start with the foundation of marriage, we’ll also look at how we should order our family lives by following the Shema, a Jewish prayer based on Deuteronomy 6:4-5, and how we can raise future generations. I truly believe that God is going to bless us through this series.
