Text: Malachi 2:10-16 (ESV)

Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?

Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god. As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the Lord remove him from the tents of Jacob—even though he brings an offering to the Lord Almighty.

Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.

Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.

“The man who hates and divorces his wife, ” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty.

So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

II. There Are Three Divine Purposes for Marriage.

II. A. Marriage Is for Companionship.

Now we find in verse 15 one of the three reasons for marriage. And I want us to look at that third one in a moment. If you look back at Genesis for a moment, the very beginning, when God creates man and woman, and when he creates them to be married, notice what is said here. And we find here in Genesis 2, and we read here in verse 18 these words: “The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him'” (Genesis 2:18).

And so God creates a woman for man. Remember, when does life begin? Life began only one time on our planet, when God breathed into Adam, the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul. That living cell from Adam in the form of a rib, God took surgically without pain while Adam was asleep and formed of Adam’s rib the woman. So we have living tissue. Life only began one time, and that living tissue is passed down through the generations. The life you carry in your physical body today goes back to the act of God, breathing the breath of life into your ancestor, Adam.

Do I believe that that is exactly how it happened? And my answer is: “Absolutely, I believe that.” My major was philosophy. I took a lot of science. I have never found anything in all of my studies that has ever caused me to say that the Bible is not absolutely true.

Now faith is a choice. But unbelief is also a choice. God created man and from man, he created woman. And God institutes marriage for one reason there. It is stated in Genesis chapter two, for companionship. So there is a fundamental reason for marriage.

We will look at a second reason for marriage. Let’s turn way over into the New Testament to 1 Corinthians 7, second reason for marriage. Here it is. “It is not good for a person to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). God creates marriage so that we would have someone.

You know, this year I kept thinking of a Beatles’ song that I remembered back in the 60s, because my wife still needs me and she still feeds me and I am 64. Companionship … I can tell you this: as I age and as my wife ages — she is on Social Security now, and I am not because it is set up to keep you from enjoying the fruit of your labor until you are too old to enjoy it. But anyhow I have to wait because I make too much money and don’t take that too seriously. But I paid in to Social Security ever since 1961, the spring of 1961, when I went to work for Shell Oil Company’s gas station in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina over 50 years ago — as my wife and I age, I am very grateful for the companionship of a marriage, a friend who is with me, somebody who cares about me, somebody who still needs me and somebody who still feeds me, even though I am 64.

II. B. Marriage Is a Tool that God Uses to Help us in our Struggle with Sin.

Here is a second reason for marriage, 1 Corinthians 7: “Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:1-3).

And so notice here there is a second reason for marriage, and it has to do, as he says, very plainly in verse two, because of sexual immorality. God instituted marriage so that we might be able better to observe the Seventh Commandment which is “You shall not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 5:18).

And so he says here that marriage is instituted for that reason. Now, here is a test of whether you are ready for marriage or not. When you marry, you give up your rights. King Self abdicates, and it allows the wife to be the one who tells you what to do. No, it really does. It also allows the husband. Notice there is a kind of equality here. It is not absolute equality: Ephesians 5 makes it plain that the husband submits to what he knows his wife’s needs are. And the wife is to submit to what she knows her husband’s desires are — two different things. So that submission, mutual submission, is expressed differently in man, in terms of a loving head like Jesus is of the Church, than it is with a woman.

But notice in verse four: “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Corinthians 7:4).

So in this second reason for marriage, when you say, “I do,” you give up the right to say, “I won’t.” And I say that: when you say, “I do,” you give up the right to say, “I won’t.”

He says that if you are a woman, you don’t have the say so over your own body. Your husband does. But wait a minute! This isn’t some male chauvinist pig rubbing it in because look at the next statement. He says: “And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Corinthians 7:4).

There is an egalitarian demand here. Now then notice what he says here and, again, this is reinforcing the second reason for marriage, verse five: “Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time” (1 Corinthians 7:5).

Notice that consent. That is mutual consent. You both agree on it. Notice that it is limited in time. It is for a time. It is for a season. And notice how it is limited: “… that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer” (1 Corinthians 7:5).

The word fasting is found in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts. There were a few manuscripts that scribes regarded as corrupt, and they put them on the shelves, and one of them was found at Saint Catherine’s Monastery — where I happened to be renting a camel to go up Mount Sinai, several years ago, but — at Mount Saint Catherine’s Monastery, one of these manuscripts was found, Codex Sinaiticus. It was an old manuscript that had never been used, and that is why it wasn’t worn out. The vast majority of Greek manuscripts have the word fasting there. But, of course, fat monks don’t like to fast, so someone thought, well, I had better just leave that fasting out (that is said tongue-in-cheek): “… that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer” (1 Corinthians 7:5).

So here is the deal. You decide to have a prayer retreat. You decide that for three days you are going to get away from home. You are going to throw the cell phone in the drawer and pull the battery out so it can’t be traced, and you are going to travel off by yourself to spend time in prayer and fasting. You are going to skip breakfast. You are going to skip lunch. You are going to skip supper, and you are going to skip physical relations with your spouse. And you are going to devote yourself to seeking the Lord. And then, when that is over, you can eat some food again, and you can come back home and enjoy your relationship with your spouse. And notice he adds this in verse five. He says: “… and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (1 Corinthians 7:5).

So a marriage, while not everyone’s duty — he makes it plain in the next verse: “But I say this as a concession, not as a commandment” (1 Corinthians 7:6) — marriage is something that God uses to protect us from sexual sin. And he goes on and says in verse seven: “I am not saying that everybody is supposed to marry,” verse seven. He said, “I wish everybody were like me, but there are particular gifts of the Holy Spirit and no one gift does everyone have.” And so he says: “For I wish that all men were even as I myself. But each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that” (1 Corinthians 7:7).

II. C. Marriage Is Divinely Instituted to Produce Godly Children.

Now let’s turn back to Malachi to see, Malachi 2, the third reason for marriage. We have seen from Deuteronomy 22 that marriage is a blood covenant, and like all blood covenants, when it is broken, it involves a blood curse. And like all blood covenants, when there is a blood curse, blood must be shed to remove that curse. We have seen just how seriously God regards marriage and sexual relations: adultery, death penalty — homosexual acts, death penalty. Accusing your wife of not being a virgin when, in fact, she was: you are going to get whipped, and you will be paying a fine. But if she said she was a virgin, and she wasn’t, she is going to be stoned to death at the threshold of her father’s house. Very serious!

Now, why does God get involved in the marriage relationship? Verse 15: “But did he not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one?” (Malachi 2:15)

Notice here is the third reason for marriage: “He seeks godly offspring” (Malachi 2:15).

Wow, that is the third reason for marriage. And that is why I find most opposition to gay marriage to be hypocritical because this is the third reason for marriage. Marriage is about having babies. Marriage is not just about having babies; it is about raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That is what it is about. And that is hard work. And lo and behold, I have lived in my brief life through the greatest cultural revolution that the Western world has seen. What have I seen in my lifetime?

I have seen that World War II ended with great prosperity that came to the United States, but along with that prosperity, we got fat and sassy. The “Greatest Generation” was the greatest betrayer generation of Christian civilization. It is a fact. The “Greatest Generation” is the generation that took prayer and Bible reading out of our schools. The “Greatest Generation” is the generation that removed the Christian foundation for our legal system and that is the Ten Commandments.

Remember that our US Constitution recognizes the Ten Commandments in it because the president has 10 days to sign a bill, “Sundays excepted” (Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 7, Clause 2). Why not the Jewish Sabbath excepted? Why not the Muslim Friday excepted?

You know, the President has told us about the great Muslim contribution to America. I think it was the Barbary pirates whom he must have been thinking of, and Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Quran, which was provided so he could understand the irrational people we were dealing with in the Mediterranean Sea.

So here is the deal: we also, in the 60s, removed a basic purpose — I didn’t say the purpose — a basic purpose of marriage, which is procreation. We reduced it to recreation. And if the purpose of marriage is simply recreation and companionship, then, you know, it is very hypocritical to oppose gay marriage. Well, is it? Well, in a sense, I guess.

The Bible is absolutely unambiguously clear that there is only one sex act that has the blessing of God. That is between a man and a woman, after they have entered into the covenant of marriage. All other sex acts are under the condemnation of God. But here we see a fundamental purpose for marriage. And like a stool with three legs on it — we have a four-legged stool here — but a three-legged stool is stable. What are the three pillars or the three legs of the stool of marriage?

Companionship,

The prevention of sexual immorality, and

To bring godly children into the world.

It is not just to reproduce. Monkeys can reproduce. Dogs can reproduce. Cats can reproduce. But only creatures created in the image of God can raise children to known and love the Lord. And that is what is involved in it. God expects you, when you marry, to bring children into the world. He doesn’t leave it up to your choice.

“It is my body, my choice.”

Where is that in the Bible?

When you marry, you marry for those three reasons. And unless there is some extraordinary reason, God expects you to bring children in the world, but not simply to bring them in the world and abandon them at somebody else’s doorstep. I want you to see here that the family, as it is the family, that is the basis for marriage, not the Church, not the State, so it is the family, not the State and not the Church, that has responsibility for bringing children in the world and nurturing them.

Do I have responsibility for the children of this church? Of course, but I don’t have fundamental and primary responsibility. That is your responsibility. It is your responsibly for which you will answer to God, to take children and raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

You see, this passage of Scripture tells us something very profound. It says the purpose of marriage is to being godly people into the world. It is to take children and see they are converted.

Bob Vincent has served for over 36 years as Pastor of Grace (formerly Jackson Street) Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Alexandria, Louisiana. This is taken from a sermon he preached on September 25, 2011, and is used with his permission.