TRANSCENDENCE: THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE

For far too many people, the subject of marriage is like a three-ring circus. First, there is the engagement ring. Next comes the wedding ring. Then, there is suffering.

One lady said that she got married because she was looking for the ideal but it quickly turned into an ordeal, and now she wants a new deal. One man said that he and his wife were happy for twenty years ... and then they got married.

Many people today are disappointed with marriage. They wake up one morning only to discover that the reality they live in looms far from what they had once dreamt or imagined. Because of this, some are getting out of marriage almost as quickly as they got into it.

On top of that, the breakup of a marriage these days doesn't seem to carry the same gravity that it did in the past. So-called "no-fault" divorces offer the option of an amicable split. My question is, if things are so amicable, then why not stay married? What we are experiencing today is the ending of marriages without even a hint of remorse.

It reminds me of a guy who went to the Super Bowl. The stadium was packed, but the seat next to him sat empty. The man behind him questioned him about the empty seat. He answered, "That seat was for my wife. She would have been here, but she died."

The other man offered his condolences and asked him if he didn't have a friend that he could have asked to come with him rather than let the seat remain empty. The man replied, "I do, but all my friends said they wanted to go to the funeral instead."

Now, I realize I'm making light of a weighty subject, but I'm doing so to illustrate how the seriousness of the wedding vows seems to no longer be honored. Statistics remind us what we already know, either from personal experience or from our friends, and that is that over 50 percent of all marriages will end in divorce. Over half of all promises made that "until death do us part" get broken.

Because of this, what I would like to examine is the nature of the agreement we make when we get married. If we do not understand this agreement, then we will not be prone to protect it. What's even worse is that neither will we be apt to benefit from it.

One day a boy lost one of his contact lenses. He spent a significant amount of time trying to locate it, but he couldn't. Eventually, he told his mom. The boy's mom began looking for the contact lens with him and found it in only a matter of minutes. The boy asked, "How could you find that contact lens in just a few minutes when I must have looked for twenty minutes?"

The mom said, "That's easy. You didn't find it because you were looking for a contact lens. I found it because I was looking for two hundred and fifty dollars."

It all depends on how you view it.

Our marriages today are deteriorating at such a high rate, not because we no longer get along, but because we have lost sight of the purpose and prosperity of the marriage covenant.

Most people today view marriage as a means of looking for love, happiness, and fulfillment. Make no mistake about it, those things are important. Those things are critical. They are just not the most important, or the most critical. Yet because we have made second things first, as important as second things are, we are having trouble finding anything at all.

Marriage is a covenant. It is a covenantal union designed to strengthen the capability of each partner to carry out the plan of God in their lives. Marriage matters.

GOD'S DESCRIPTION OF MARRIAGE

Let's begin by looking at Malachi. In the book of Malachi, God is complaining against His people because they have wandered away from Him. They have taken a detour from God's plan for their lives.

One of God's complaints is found in chapter 2, verses 13 and 14. We read,

This is another thing you do: you cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with groaning, because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. Yet you say, "For what reason?" Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

Did you catch that? The passage specifically identifies marriage as a "covenant." The term "covenant" used to be regularly attached to the concept of marriage. The word has gotten lost in our contemporary language, but it is the biblical description of marriage used throughout Scripture.

The problems come when we don't realize that marriage is a covenant, nor do we know what a covenant is. Because if we do not know what a covenant is, then we do not know what we are supposed to have, develop, or protect over time. It's like trying to hit a bull's-eye without a target.

For most people, a covenant is simply some sort of formal contractual arrangement. While this is true about the nature of a covenant, a covenant is also much more than that. In the Bible, a covenant is a spiritually binding relationship between God and His people inclusive of certain agreements, conditions, benefits, and effects.

Whenever God wanted to formalize His relationship with His people, He would establish a covenant. There are a number of these agreements in the Bible such as the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the new covenant. These are formal arrangements that are spiritually binding in a legal capacity between God and His people.

Marriage is another form of a covenant that God has established.

What we are going to do throughout this and the remaining chapters is to delve deeper into the purpose and practical aspects of marriage, as well as the three fundamental facets that make up a covenant: transcendence, hierarchy, and ethics.

If you can grab, own, and apply these truths in your life, you will have a God-centered perspective on marriage that can impact not only the rest of your life but future generations to come.

FIRST COVENANT FACET: TRANSCENDENCE

The first facet of a covenant is a big theological word called transcendence. (We'll cover the other two facets, hierarchy and ethics, in later chapters.) Transcendence simply means that God is in charge. Covenants are both initiated and ruled by God.

Now, that might seem like an obvious statement and one that we don't need to spend too much time on, but transcendence is a key principle in a covenant. In order for a covenant to successfully function, carrying with it both the benefits and security that a covenant supplies, it has to be set up according to God's expectations and regulations.

Covenants can never operate without the ongoing involvement of God. Biblical, spiritual, and theological covenants assume God's integration into every aspect of the covenantal relationship in order for that covenant to work.

When the practical realities of God are dismissed from the marital covenantal relationship, it becomes an invitation to the Devil to create havoc in the home. This happens because there has been a departure from transcendence.

Since God is ultimately in charge of the covenant of marriage, the first place to look...