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When couple come together to make a decision to get married, I am sure they envision what their marriage is going to be like. Some couples plan to have children right away, other couples want to wait and to home build for a while or perhaps travel together before settling down. Some may even decide not to have children. But my main point is when couple get married they usually have some kind of vision, some sort of anticipation as to what that marriage might look like. 

The question I would like to ask this morning is, when God contemplated the concept of marriage what did he have in mind? Did he have a plan and what was it? What I’d like to do this morning is begin to work through some verses in Genesis Ch 2 and over the next 5 episode make 5 points based on the passage about what the Bible teaches about marriage. 

I think it is particularly important to look at this issue because in the most very recent years we find the whole concept of marriage as described in the bible is being challenged. Which why I believe it is important as Christians to look and see what the Bible and most importantly what Jesus said about the concept of marriage. I believe this text in Genesis tells us five straightforward things to say about marriage Straight-forward but significant non the less. 

These 5 things I believe lay the biblical framework about the institution of marriage. The first thing we can draw upon is found in chapter 2: 18 where it tells us

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

(Gen 2:18)

Now, this verse says several things but included in those is the fact that it makes the primary statement that.

1.      God created marriage 

Or to say the same thing another way Marriage is God’s institution.  The reasons that important particularly because if God created marriage, then marriage was not instituted by some sort of elected government or legal institution. God created marriage and gave it to the whole human race. Marriage is even more than just a Christian Institution. Marriage is a gift to the whole human race and very importantly we should know that God instituted it even before the fall of man. God instituted marriage before sin had even entered the human experience and before he had even begun to establish ideas like human leadership or government. I told you my points would be very simple. 

Firstly, marriage is God’s Institution. 

The reason it’s important is because if God instituted it, then he determines what it should be. Governments are free to create contracts of commitment between people but that is not necessary the same thing as what is described in the bible. Not the same thing as the relationship called marriage He instituted here in Genesis. Legally governments come up with many ideas about how marriage should be instituted and codified. But no single government has a monopoly on describing what is a worldwide definition of marriage. Only God can do that. 

Let me give you one example of the difference in just one aspect of marriage worldwide. The legal age of consent for marriage varies world-wide. Equatorial Guinee 12, Djibouti 13, Colombia 14, Antigua 15, Turkey 17, South Korea 19 and Singapore 21. There are even difference in the age of consent for marriage within the UK with Scotland being 16 and the rest of the UK being 18USA 14-21 depending on the State and the circumstances. 

So, my first observation is God created Marriage and as an institution and God defined what it means and that is the first biblical decree of what marriage as described in the Bible looks like. The second Biblical guideline we shall look at in the next episode.