Affirmations of the True Woman Manifesto, Part 2A God-Sized Picture of Marriage

Leslie Basham: Nancy Leigh DeMoss says, “Marriage vows matter because they reflect God’s commitment to His people.”

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Because God is a covenant-keeping God, that’s why it’s right to reflect that heart of God by keeping our covenant in the marriage relationship.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Monday, May 10.

Several weeks ago a group of women met together at the True Woman conference to affirm the True Woman Manifesto.

Marriage as created by God is a sacred, binding, life-long
covenant between one man and one woman.

Leslie: This year Nancy Leigh DeMoss is teaching through the True Woman Manifesto in several series. We launch another of those series today. We’re calling it, Affirmations of the True Woman Manifesto, Part 2. Later in this series we’ll hear from a strong woman who has learned to appreciate biblical submission.

Woman 1: I’m a quick decision maker. I’m an aggressive woman. I am happy to step into a leadership role when there is a void. I had to wrestle with this personally quite a bit.

Leslie: And we’ll hear a story of a marriage commitment that was severely challenged.

Woman 2: God designed marriage to last until death parts you, so I just prayed for God to kill him.

Leslie: And, of course, we’ll also hear the teaching of Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Here she is.

Nancy: A few weeks ago I was in a Christian bookstore looking for a card for some friends who were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary. After reading a dozen or more cards in the selection there, I decided that I think I’d like to start a whole new line of wedding and anniversary cards because I just couldn’t find one that said what I really thought was appropriate to say for something as special as a 30th wedding anniversary. It’s not that what these cards said was all wrong. It’s just what they didn’t say.

Let me read to you some of the kinds of things I’ve seen on anniversary cards.

“As you celebrate this special day, you’re wished God’s richest blessings and every happiness in your lifetime together.”

Another one: “Celebrating you. Have a beautiful anniversary.”

Or . . . and these are Christian anniversary cards . . . “Sending you congratulations on your special day. May your anniversary be a special time for you filled with cherished moments and heaven’s blessings, too.”

Or, “Thinking of you on this special occasion and praying that God’s blessings will continue to fill your lives with an abundance of love and happiness always.”

Here’s a wedding card that would be representative of many I’ve seen: “Wedding blessings for you. May your future be as happy as this day, as wonderful as your love, as great as your dreams.”

Now, after having looked at many wedding and anniversary cards, I’ve concluded that in most of them, whether it’s a Christian line or otherwise, that the focus is on you, the focus in on happiness. In many cases, although not so much in Christian card lines, the focus is on romance, the focus is on blessings for the couple. It’s all about you.

I will say that I want my married friends to experience happiness and romance and blessings, and lots of them, but I want them to experience a whole lot more than that. I just believe that happiness and romance and blessings for you are far too small a goal when it comes to marriage.

I can’t remember the last time that I saw a wedding or an anniversary card that said anything about having a mission or a purpose in marriage that is bigger than yourself, than your own marriage. I would love to see some cards that just express that this is about more than you. There’s a bigger picture here. There’s a bigger purpose here.

Now, I don’t know why you got married or what your hopes and expectations were that day, or what they may be today years later, but I have news—in case you haven’t discovered it already—and that is that marriage is not first and foremost about you. It’s not that you can’t enjoy a happy and blessed marriage. You can, and I believe that pleases the Lord for you to do that. But the greatest blessings of marriage come as a byproduct of seeking something else.

You see, marriage was intended by God to display in neon His covenant love. It’s supposed to be a Technicolor picture of redemption. Your marriage is supposed to point people to Christ. It’s supposed to draw them like a magnet to the gospel, to know the love of God, to see that love lived out in two imperfect people who have a great God at the heart of their marriage.

In the Gospels, whenever Jesus was asked about marriage and divorce issues—there were lots of questions then; there are lots of questions now about these things—He would often say, “In the beginning.” He would take people back to the Genesis account of the first marriage, the starting place. “In the beginning, this is how it was. Yes, it’s this way now, but it was not always so. This is what God intended.” He would take people back to the pattern, the model, the template, the institution of marriage, why God ordained it.

Now, we come today in the True Woman Manifesto to the first statement about marriage. I realize that many in our audience are married, many are not married, and so let me just say, if you’re not married, don’t tune me out and say, “This is not for me.”

I’m not married. I’m a single woman, but all of us need to understand and grasp and embrace God’s heart for marriage. We have married friends; we’re dealing with other people’s marriages; we have a contribution to make to marriages, even as single people, even in the selection of an anniversary card and how to help a couple celebrate their 30th anniversary or their 1st anniversary. I’m contributing to helping them have a biblical, God-sized redemptive picture of marriage.

So this is about reflecting to the world the beauty and the wonder of God’s ways as we not only talk about but live out a biblical perspective on marriage.

Now we come to the affirmation in the True Woman Manifesto that says

Marriage, as created by God, is a sacred, binding, life-long
covenant between one man and one woman.

Now just about everything about that statement is counter-cultural today and, sadly, it’s counter-cultural even within some parts of the church. “Marriage, as created by God, is a sacred, binding, life-long covenant between one man and one woman.”

We get a lot of questions in emails from listeners about marriage, divorce, and remarriage. Many of those people are in extremely difficult and painful circumstances, many who are listening to this program today. The tension as we address these kinds of topics in a program like this is: How do you minister grace and encourage the hearts of people who are in genuinely difficult circumstances, who are struggling, while at the same time faithfully pointing them to the truth that is what will set them free? That’s a balancing act. It’s something we try to do with grace and mercy, but also pointing people to truth.

So in the context of the True Woman Manifesto, I just want to give you a brief overview. There’s no way to answer all the questions that relate to marriage and divorce and remarriage or to deal with every situation, but I want to encourage you to hear my heart, more than that, to hear God’s heart, and to ask the Lord to show you how to apply the truth of God’s Word to your situation or to the situation of someone that you know, something they may be walking through.

So, just some basics here.

First of all, we know that marriage was the first human institution ordained by God. Marriage is not a random idea. It’s not an unimportant concept. It’s not something that some cultural guru or anthropologist dreamt up. It’s not just a sociological phenomenon. It is God’s idea, and it is foundational to many other aspects of God’s redemptive story.

Marriage was created by God. It’s not a human institution, and, as a result, polls and politicians cannot define marriage, and they cannot redefine marriage.

• God is the one who invented it.
• He is the one who designed it.
• He is the one who determined what it is.

I saw a headline in the news recently that said, “A flurry of pro-gay marriage rulings and votes this year has reversed a trend toward banning them. Most U.S. states do not allow same-sex marriage, but both sides are gearing up for renewed battle, mostly at state ballot boxes.”

Now, that headline is only going to continue to be true, and the time will likely come when most states will allow same-sex marriage. I pray God not, but that’s the direction we’re headed at this point. And yet, it really doesn’t matter what happens at the state ballot boxes, in a sense, or what happens in a state legislatures or in our courts because ultimately we can pass laws trying to redefine marriage, but marriage is what God says it is.

Genesis 2:24, “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Then in the New Testament, Jesus quotes that same verse in Genesis, and then He adds, “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mark 10:7-9).

Marriage is a sacred covenant between a man and a woman. It’s sacred. It’s holy. It’s set apart. It used to be in the marriage ceremonies that we would talk about holy matrimony, holy matrimony. It’s set apart for God.

In the Scripture you see that there is a correlation between human marriage and spiritual issues. When there is adultery in the marriage, God uses that as an analogy for spiritual idolatry, for unfaithfulness. So faithfulness in the marriage relationship is a picture of faithfulness in our relationship with God and His relationship with us. Unfaithfulness in the marriage relationship is a picture of a broken covenant spiritually, of spiritual idolatry, spiritual adultery. So you see idolatry and adultery go hand in hand in the Scripture because earthly marriage or the breakup of earthly marriages pictures spiritual realities.

It’s not only a sacred covenant, it’s a binding, life-long covenant. Marriage is a covenant. It’s a pledge to be faithful unto death regardless of what circumstances may arise. A covenant is very different than a legal or business contract.

In a contract, when one party fails to fulfill their obligations, the contract can be broken, and the other party can be freed from their commitment.

But a covenant, which is a word you see all through the Scripture . . . I wish we had time to trace that. It’s a rich word. It’s a word that’s at the heart of our salvation, the covenant that God has made with us. A covenant in the biblical sense transcends the legal requirements of a contract. A covenant cannot be broken regardless of whether or not the other party fulfills their obligations.

You see, God is a faithful, covenant-keeping God. He keeps His promises even if we are faithless, He remains faithful. Marriage is supposed to picture the covenant-keeping character of God, the faithfulness of God, the love of God. It’s that Old Testament Hebrew word, Hesed—the faithful, covenant-keeping love of God.

It’s supposed to picture the plan of redemption, Christ’s love for His Bride. Marriage is supposed to picture that. Because God is a covenant-keeping God, that’s why it’s right to reflect that heart of God by keeping our covenant in the marriage relationship because God never breaks a promise, because Christ will never forsake His Church, even when she is wayward or spiritually adulterous, or sinful. That’s why it’s never right to break the marriage covenant.

Now, I know that’s radically counter-cultural. I know that runs contrary to much of what is being said even in Christian circles today. That’s because we’re so culturally driven. In our culture, a marriage lasts as long as the feelings and the attractions and the desire remain, as long as they’re compatible, as long as two people are happy in the marriage, or until one does something that crosses a line. But when we break that marriage covenant for any of those reasons or any other reason, we distort the picture of God’s redeeming love for His people.

You see, marriage is a sacred, binding, life-long covenant, binding. There is something about marriage that is binding, and I suppose there is not any married person who hasn’t at some point thought, “Yikes! I am stuck in this! This is, like, for keeps.” In fact, probably a lot of couples within just moments or hours or days of getting married have these thoughts cross their mind: “What have I gotten myself into?”

But there is a sense in which God designed marriage to be a vise, a binding vise, a context for sanctifying the man and the woman, for conforming both to the image of Christ. It’s a context. It’s one you can’t escape from, unlike college roommates or other situations where you could move in and out from each other, or move away from each other.

This is intended to be a permanent, life-long relationship where God uses the frustrations, the challenges, the difficulties, the incompatibilities to humble, to break, to chisel, to shape, to cut away at things in your life and that of your mate that are not like Christ, all for an ultimate, holy purpose of your eternal sanctification and the glory of God.

John Piper has written a terrific book called This Momentary Marriage. He says in that book,

Marriage is more than your love for each other . . . The meaning of marriage is the display of a covenant-keeping love between Christ and his people. . . . Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to His redeemed people, the church. And, therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage [get this] is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists.

If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream [to display to the world the covenant relationship of Christ to His Church].

So staying married is about keeping a covenant and divorce is about breaking a covenant, and in the process gives to the world a wrong opinion of God.

Now, I know that no-fault divorce laws in this country have incredibly complicated this whole situation, and I know there are many, many stories, and we’ll hear them from listeners about how you ended up where you are, but I think we just need to at least come back to agree that God’s ideal, God’s plan is that marriage is a sacred, binding, life-long covenant between one man and one woman.

The Scripture talks about the solemn binding nature of a vow. Ecclesiastes chapter 5:

When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for He has no pleasure in fools. [Pay what you vow.] It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake.

“Oops, I shouldn’t have gotten into that.” And then listen to this:

Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? (verses 4-6).

Listen, ladies, breaking a vow is a very serious thing before God, and there is no more serious or binding vow in the human realm than that of the marriage vow.

Did you know that when you make a vow to God and then break it, God says, “I will be angry at your voice, and I will destroy the work of your hands”?

That is why, in this culture, I believe we have such widespread dysfunction and pain and brokenness because there has been so much breaking of the marriage vow.

Now, that may be already past tense for you, and let me tell you, if you get to the cross, there is grace; there is forgiveness; there is hope; there is a fresh start, but you’ve got to get to the cross and acknowledge to the Lord, “This was not the way You intended it should be.” You’ve got to agree with God in order to find hope and mercy to go on.

Some years ago I received an email from a friend who, ten years earlier, had been through a very painful season of major upheaval in her marriage as a result of her husband’s sinful choices, and she wrote me. I had not seen her for years, and she said,

During that time when we were going through that, I received a letter from you which I still cling to these ten years later. May I quote from your letter something that I hope you will share with others that has proven so real and so true?

Here’s what I had written to her ten years earlier when she was in the midst of that horrific situation:

“Part of the mystery of marriage is that you are ONE, not only in your joys, gains, and victories, but also in your humiliations, losses, and brokenness. Part of your lifelong unconditional commitment is to bear reproach with him. The consequences of his choices will deeply affect you as well. But, in your willingness to share in his losses, you become a living illustration of the heart and spirit of JESUS, enabling Him to extend GRACE and healing through your wounded body. Yours is a high and holy calling. And in embracing and fulfilling it, you will experience a greater intimacy and oneness with the Savior, than most will ever know this side of heaven.”

My friend said,

I’ve nearly memorized these words as I’ve read them over and over again through the years, and have shared that wisdom with other people.

Ultimately, marriage is not about starry-eyed feelings of romance. It’s not about intense passion, finding your soul mate. It’s about a desire, a commitment to show the world what God is like, that He is faithful, the God who says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I will not let you go; I will not abandon you.” Though we are faithless, yet He remains faithful.

Leslie: Marriage vows matter. A marriage reflects the gospel itself. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been explaining this in a series called, Affirmations of the True Woman Manifesto, Part 2. It’s one of several series this year on the True Woman Manifesto. You can get more details on the whole series at ReviveOurHearts.com.

A listener from Texas appreciates this kind of teaching. She wrote not long ago to say,

I just wanted to say, "Thank you for your program today." Women need to know the true Word of God. We’re so bogged down with women who believe their place is above men, ruling over churches, and God’s Word does not permit that. Satan has done his job in manipulating us into going against the True Word. I listened intently to see if you believed as many other women believed, yet you stood your ground, solemnly on the uncompromised Word of our Lord.

If you appreciate hearing the uncompromised Word of the Lord, would you consider helping us continue on the air in your area? We evaluate our effectiveness on each radio station, monitoring the response we get from each listening area. We especially pay attention to this at the end of our fiscal year.

At the end of May we close our books for the year. If we end the year in the red, we have to make some touch choices about cutting ministry outreaches and station partners. Nancy, we’re praying that we don’t have to make these kinds of tough choices in the months ahead.

Nancy: That’s right, Leslie. We’re asking the Lord to make up a budget shortfall that’s been developing over the past several months. In order to end this fiscal year in the black, we’re trusting the Lord to provide $350,000 or more in donations during the month of May.

Would you ask the Lord what part you could play in helping to meet this need?

If you’ve never donated to Revive Our Hearts before, we especially need to hear from you. Some friends of the ministry have offered to match every gift from new donors this month up to $105,000. What a great blessing that is, and if you’ve never supported us before, this is a great chance to double your gift.

Whether you’ve donated before or not, we’d like to say “thanks” for your gift of any size, by sending you the new book, Voices of the True Woman Movement: A Call to the Counter Revolution. This book is a great resource for individuals or for small groups that would like to do a study on what it means to live out biblical principles as women in our day.

Thanks so much for your prayers and your support during this critical time.

Leslie: Ask for Voices of the True Woman Movement when you call with your donation of any amount. The number is 1-800-569-5959, or donate online at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Revive Our Hearts is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version.