15 minute read
My pulpit message notes: Re-centre your definition of family
from TT 176
by TIMES TODAY
Re-centre your definition of family
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The whole book of Genesis is punctuated with birth narratives, marriage stories, family genealogies, narratives of death, communicating the centrality of family from the first book of the Bible and continues to go on.
When the Bible begins, it starts with the biological family / the home, just to underscore the importance and the value of the family unity in Scripture. It is unfortunate that today marriage is dismissed. Many people consider marriage to be irrelevant. It’s being redefined, ridiculed, demeaned, discouraged and in some instances denounced.
We live in an age of the disposable -: disposable cups, plates, spoons, bottles etc. Have we come to the place where we now have disposable marriages?
Marriage is not a cultural invention. I learnt this the hard way. Immediately after our honeymoon, 19 years ago, we got home and were settling into our new home.
I don’t know how many have carried forward the image and character of our parents. My dad was very predictable. I could tell what my dad did from the moment he got home. He would walk to the door, remove his shoes, his socks, put his socks inside the shoes and put the shoes to the side, he would walk into the living room, go straight to his couch and sit.
Immediately after he would clear his throat to announce that he has arrived into the house, someone would bring him tea and place it on the side, either myself of one of my sister and he would sit and immediately put on the TV. And he would sit and drink tea.
After that when it is time for dinner he would stand up, go to the table, we would sit together, pray and eat. When he finishes eating, he would stand, go and take a shower and if he’s tired you would not see him come back. If not he would come back he would watch the news and after that he would sleep on his couch, a significant amount after news and after that he would go to bed. Predictably every single day.
When we got married, I followed the same pattern without even knowing. I didn’t even notice it. So one day after having a meal, I left my plate on the table and walked to back to sit. And I did that the next three days.
The fourth day my wife stopped me and asked me the question, how do you think this plate will move from this table into that sink? Just explain it to me like a two year old.
Immediately after that she said okay, second question, how do you think that plate in that sink will get clean and move from that sink into that cupboard so that tomorrow it’s clean enough for you to be able to use it? I looked at her and thought, what is the big deal?
And she said let me show you how: she held my hand and the plate, she walked with me to the sink and placed the plate in the sink, and she said, that is lesson number one. Tomorrow we will do lesson number two. Those lessons have been going on for a while.
My culture had already defined marriage for me and there are many instances that I could speak about.
Marriage is not a cultural invention. Culture did not invent marriage and so it should not dictate marriage.
Marriage is a gift from God. It is God’s idea. It is God Who invented marriage. As we reflect of re-centring our definition of marriage we need to go back to the Creator of marriage, the Creator of family and allow Him to challenge us about how to re-centre our marriages.
Four components of family
1. The likeness of family - Gender
2. The fullness of family - Garden
3. The harness of family - Guide
4. The oneness of family - Goal
The likeness of family - Gender (Genesis 2:7, 18-23)
- God made Adam, and God also made Eve. Then He brings Eve to Adam. He immediately we see God beginning to paint the picture of the Biblical concept of family. One man and one woman committed to each other before God for life. That is the Biblical image that God gives us.
- Marriage is between a man and a woman, nothing more, nothing less. It is only a woman that is God says is fit/suitable for a man. - Adam looked around all of creation and he found nothing that was suitable for him. So God created one that was suitable for him. A woman to be his companion/partner/helper who is suitable because God made her for him.
- God officiated this first wedding in the garden of Eden. We see God becoming the first anaesthetist where Adam falls into a deep sleep (v21). Where God becomes the first cardio-thoracic surgeon as He takes out that rib and forms woman out of it.
Then we see God becoming the first matchmaker where He brings Eve to Adam and He brings them together and they begin this new union.
- God is the One Who thought up marriage. It is God who thought up gender. It is God who thought up sex. It is God’s idea. It’s not ours.
The only union that has God’s stamp of approval is the union between one man and one woman in a marriage union so that they can start a family together.
- Male and female are both made in the very image of God. They are equally valuable to God, but they are different in how God made them. God did not clone Adam. God made Eve specifically to compliment Adam. He made a complimentary companion so that together they can form the beautiful family unit that we see today.
- Men and women are made to compliment each other.
I love a statement that Mathew Henry the commentator makes. He said,
We see that very clearly from the beginning, the very picture that God brings out in family.
The fullness of family - Garden (Genesis 2:8-15)
Man needed a residence/home/a place to live. God created a garden that was beautiful, bountiful. The word ‘garden’ means enclosed or protected, or sheltered. The idea is to be covered. But the word ‘eden’ means a place of delight/pleasure/bliss. It is a paradise. These two words together encompass what the family is meant to be. A place of protection, a place of sheltering, a place of covering, but also a place of delight, a place of pleasure,a place of bliss.
- The garden provided beauty, discovery, a place of possibility for man and God reminding us that the context where the first family unit was brought up is actually the context that God would like us to create around our very families.
Every tree, bush, shrub, flower, every plant imaginable was there. Each of them with its own size and dimension and colour and fragrance. Look at that amazing variety.
God’s beauty was designed to meet man’s mental, spiritual and emotional need and that environment was one where man nourished / nurtured.
- In that environment God provided food, shelter. Every species of vegetation and fruit and berry and nuts was there. Everything to satisfy the taste and the nourishment of man. The point is, the family is supposed to be just that. A place designed by God to allow man to be at awe of God at what He created as family and it would result in thanksgiving from man to God because my family is truly a place of protection, of nurture of beauty, of diversity. A place where my needs are met.
- Family is meant to be a place of blessing. A place where people are provided for and cared for and nurtured. Where we experience the very experience that Adam and Eve had at the garden of Eden. That’s what family was designed to be. A place of such richness/fullness.
The harness of family - Guide (Genesis 2:16-17)
Harness means to be controlled. When a horse needs to be fastened to a cart, harnesses / straps are used to connect the horse to the cart so that the horse can be controlled. So it is an item of control. But the word ‘harness’ is also used in the context of making use of something; to harness something’s use. To make the most of something e.g. to harness natural resources to produce energy.
- These two words combined reflect the essence of what God created family to be. A place where:
i. Has control. Because in verse 16-17 we see God immediately institutes controls/guidelines/boundary lines around the family unity and we see God placing control around the marriage and family, not just to guide it, but also,
ii. To harness and bring out the most of the family unit, because it’s context is for it to the productive/maximised. There is great potential in every family and God wants that potential to be maximised. Genesis 2:16 “ And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,…”
- Sometimes with think that the commands of God are restrictive. That living according to God’s Word is restricting us, or keeping us, or withholding us from what we desire, or what we really want, but it’s just an issue of perspective.
- If you looked at a river and how it flows towards the ocean, or sea, every river has banks. And when you look at the riverbanks you can have two perspectives.
1. The riverbanks are restricting the river from flowing out to either side. And you can perceive a riverbank as restrictive. Only if you don’t understand that the purpose of the river is not actually to flow out, but the purpose of the riverbanks are to guide and direct the river to where it is actually meant to go, to the ocean or the sea. So the riverbanks are not restrictive, but directive. They are guiding and directing the rivers towards where it is to go.
- It is in the guiding of the river by the riverbanks that allows the river not reach its destination, but along the way it allows the river to be productive in production of electricity, for transport, or irrigation etc.
- The point that God makes here is that a boundary less marriage / family is dangerous. It is dangerous not to have control/guidelines and God clearly institutes from the onset, guidelines of what we can or cannot do, what we should or should not do.
- Many of us detest boundaries, or limitations, but God has made it part of marriage, not to restrict us, but like the two banks of the rivers to guide us towards His intended purpose for marriage.
- Family life from the start can only experience fullness if it is lived out in the context of God’s Word. The riverbanks of what God has instituted for the family unit. It is through obedience that we experience fullness within a marriage or family.
- What is the source of authority within your family? Is it culture (not just where
you come from, or have grown up, even our modern day /contemporary culture, media etc)? Or is it Scripture, the Word of God that guides us in the right direction where family is concerned. - God needs to be the first and final authority so that I can experience the very fullness in my marriage and family.
The oneness of family - Goal (Genesis 2:24-25)
- The last two verses bring out God’s intention where the oneness of family is concerned / the goal of family, the unity that God so desires for us to have.
- Singles are told you, you are not complete because you are not married. That getting married will allow you to find the missing piece in your life puzzle. That getting married become the ultimate prize for you. Or this pending trophy that you need to achieve, or accomplish in life.
- Married couples are told that the reason why you actually God married was so that you can become complete. Because in marriage we find many people call, ‘your other half ’. - The Biblical formula for marriage is 1 x 1 = 1. One whole x one whole, equals one whole marriage. That is the Biblical equation for marriage. God expects us to begin as whole and be connected to another whole person for you to have a whole marriage.
- Marriage is actually a celebration of wholeness. This wrong definition of marriage of 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4. So if you get into marriage expecting your partner to complete you, what you are left with at the end is even less than what you had in the first place. No one can complete you, but God.
- The problem many times is when we get into marriage expecting another fallen, sinful, human being to complete you and at the end of the day you are left with less than what you got into in the first place.
- I’m not looking for the rest of me in someone else. I’m not setting myself up for failure to get less than what I had in the first place by expecting marriage to complete me. All you are doing is setting yourself up for disappointment.
- Marriage does not make people whole. All that marriage does is it exposes the holes in you. Marriage can never make me whole. The oneness in marriage assumes that I entered into marriage whole.
- There are many times where we leave pieces of ourselves maybe with our parents, our friends and our colleagues. We essentially offer our spouse, just a fraction of who we are. Our parents, friends, colleagues have more say in our marriage than us and at the end of the day that is where the problems in marriage begin.
- Verse 24, “24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
- Too many times we leave with a third of us and the rest is at home with parents, friends etc. We did not come into marriage whole, committed whole and hence we do not get the very outcome that Scripture promises. The most important relationship I have is with my wife.
- Too many times when we get marriage we do not cut some relational strings that need to be cut. We don’t clip some financial feathers that we need to clip. And there is an unhealthy connection because your spouse needs to be the strongest connection. Every other thing needs to support the connection you have with your spouse.
- Too many times, I do not give all of me and hence compromise the oneness that is in my marriage unit. - One of the hardest things is for the parent to let go of their children and the Bible instructs us to be gracious enough to be able to let that child cleave. Too many times it is the influence, the ongoing unhealthy influence. In all sincerity and goodwill, but it becomes unhealthy cause it becomes a competing centre of authority/affection.
- Too much involvement in our children’s marriages can compromise the oneness that God has called within the marriage unit. There are many marriages that breakdown because this significant piece of the spouse connecting with the other spouse as whole has not happened because there are pieces of us that did not come along.
Conclusion
- There are no silver bullets when it comes to building the family. A wedding is a piece of cake, all pan intended. It is just an event. It is easy. It takes a few minutes.
I remember driving away from our wedding venue on November 29th 2003 and I remember my wife saying, ‘That’s it? We are leaving the flowers, tents chairs, etc. Things we had planned for a whole year? That’s it? We are done?
The wedding day is just but an occasion. The marriage now begins. The family unit now starts being formed. It is hard work, but it is hard work that must be based on the right mindset. On the right understanding on the foundations that God has given us for the family.
