Message Notes
Marriage Matters - Pt. 1
Today's Songs:
The Way (New Horizons) - Housefires
Here's My Heart - I Am They
God of All My Days - Casting Crowns
Waiting Here for You - Passion (Christy Nockels)
Revelation Song - Kari Jobe
Remember, you can find all the songs from this week and previous weeks in a publicly shared, accumulating playlist on Google Play and in weekly playlists on YouTube (like this one).
Summary: Almost all women will become mothers at some point. As such, how we men treat women is of the utmost importance. In general, men sin against women in two different ways, active sin of commission and passive sin of omission.
Key Scripture (Ezra 9:1-2): After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. 2 For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race[a]has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost.”
1. The Sin of the jewish men
Passively, after returning from Babylon, the men of Israel forsook the women of Israel and sought wives for themselves from the foreign women.
They were attracted to their wordliness.
As a passive sin, this left the women of Israel to fend for themselves and either 1) not marry, a tenuous position in the ancient near East or 2) marry a pagan themselves, again, a less than suitable answer.
2. The Plan
The original plan from Gen. 1 to the NT involved godly men marrying godly women, having children, and bringing them up in the way of the Lord.
The Fall fractured this but in His grace, God provided provision for women as needed because as a result of the Fall, men naturally excel at the oppression of women.
From the Law to the NT, God provides protection and mercy for women in light of the tendency of men to sin against women.
3. Sin
From the curse of Genesis 3:16, women seek to usurp the man's godly position as the head of the woman/family while the man rules over her in an ungodly fashion.
Either he actively sins against her and oppresses her (we'll talk about this next week) or he sins against her passively.
4. Passive Sin
Godly women desire godly men to marry them and to start a family. We see the destruction of this largely due to the passivity of modern men. Increasingly, Christian men, like Israel, are marrying outside the faith leaving Christian women two very difficult choices.
Even in the covenant of marriage, men sin passively by 1) abdicating his role as the spiritual leader, 2) not washing his wife in the water of the Word, 3) not nourishing and cultivating the wife's gifts, and 4) neglecting her heart for the sake of a multitude of other things.
5. Affirmation
- We affirm the value of women, their absolute essential contribution to the advance of the kingdom.
- We affirm their worth, their value apart from their beauty but at the same time, we affirm their beauty.
- We affirm their grace, their love and nurturing spirit in motherhood, their selflessness, their forbearance and longsuffering.
- We affirm their pursuit of God and acknowledge their inherent intrinsic value.
- We affirm this and are moved to act by it. We refuse to stand passive any longer and allow our women, our wives, our mothers to languish for what they so desperately need, the active love of their men.
