Skip to content Well Versed - Chapter 8 - Marriage Jun 9 · 13 min ...more
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Dr. Jim Garlow is a lifelong pastor who most recently served in San Diego, California, and now leads Well Versed, a ministry dedicated to bringing biblical
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Marriage Bookends the Bible 0:00 Chapter 8 in the well versed small group series is marriage.0:08 Let me ask you a question. What's the big deal about marriage? Why on earth is there so much argumentation about the definition of marriage? Why would people care? What's the0:19 big deal? Does God have a view on all this? Let let me just walk you through several things. Let's start with just what the scripture has to say. God God really has some strong opinions about marriage, so let's0:31 check out what he has to say. When we start with the book of Genesis, we're gonna find it begins with a marriage. We go to the book of Revelation, it ends0:43 with a wedding. In Genesis, it's a marriage between a male and a female, a man and a woman. In Revelation, the great wedding is between a groom0:55 and a bride. And in between, well, it's an affirmation of marriage, 1 man and 1 woman. But why the big deal? Why would people care about this?1:07 The fact is that for 5000 years, people have affirmed 1 thing, the definition of marriage, being 1 man and 1 woman. In Genesis, it has some really interesting, very1:19 energizing understanding of the nature of it. Let's unpack it just a little bit. Let's use the word the letter theta from from the Greek as a symbol for God. God created1:31 humankind in his image, the Imago Dei. So God created humankind in in his image. Now let's take this a step further. No male1:43 by himself is a full spectrum of the full image of God. No female by herself represents a full spectrum of the full image of God.1:55 Is God male? No. Is God female? No. Neither 1 of those. In fact, God is the full spectrum of what both represent. Let2:07 me give you an example. The word El Shaddai, that's the name for God in Genesis 17. It's in the Hebrew Bible. El Shaddai. El means strength2:19 mighty like a mountain. It's what we historically associate with masculinity. Shaddai has the meaning its derivative is from breast, feeding a newborn baby. In other words, from that, the understanding2:31 of femininity. Even God's name depicts this. The Old Testament writers, sometimes they're not quite sure how to portray God. Sometimes they use distinctly masculine words2:43 and all kinds of phrases. And in other places like in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Psalms, we'll find them using distinctly feminine words. Like for example, God is depicted as 12:55 who is feeding a newborn baby, like the El Shaddai word as from a from a breast. Or another place is pictured as God giving birth as having a womb. So God3:06 is a depiction of all of this. So when God created humankind in his image, no male by himself is the full spectrum of the image of God. No female by3:18 herself is the full spectrum of the image of God. What's going on in Genesis? In Genesis, when God creates humankind, he creates and the word there is adam.3:30 Adam, don't think of Adam. We're not talking about Adam, the person, the male. We're talking about adam, which means really effectively humanity. So God3:41 creates humanity. Don't think of male versus female right now. The traditional view is God created a man, male. He took a rib and from rib created female.3:54 Now that might be the right view, but I think the Hebrew text let's go back to what's behind your English Bible. Let's go into the Hebrew text and unpack that a little bit, and we're gonna see a whole lot more. When GodHumanity's Complementary Design 4:04 created Adam, he created humankind. He created humanity. At that point, don't think of him pulling the rib out of a male. The Hebrew word there is4:16 salah. That word actually translates to mean half or translates to mean side. So God created adam, humankind,4:28 and then he took out salah, the half or side. Which half or side did he take out? By the way, if you have an NIV Bible or some translations, it'll actually have footnotes where it'll talk about adam4:40 or it'll talk about selah, the word being used there as opposed to rib. And so the half or side of you, God creates humanity in his image. He actually said an interesting thing at that point. He said, this is not4:52 good. It's the only time God said, not good. Everything else he said, that's very good. This was not good at this point. Why at this point? Because he says, he he's created5:04 he's alone. The word can be translated at as 1. As at 1 or as 1. The issue is humanity, as God originally created him, had no capacity for5:16 relationship. God is self constructed in a way. He has relationships, father, son, holy spirit. But as he made, humanity, he made Adam, he says it's not good5:28 because it's alone or as 1. At that point then, he moved Selah. He removed the half or the side. Once he did that, then we have femininity, and5:40 what remains is masculinity. And now we have Adam and we have Eve. We have male and we have female. Part of the reason for the5:52 tremendous attraction of male and female being so intense, so strong, is the desire to go back and complete itself once again as the full spectrum of the image of6:04 God. We call it the complementarity, means they complement each other, the complementarity of male and female. Males and females fit each other anatomically,6:17 physically, emotionally, spiritually. Humanity was made in complementary halves so they could come back together. They fit each other and they form once male and female come together in the6:29 covenant covenant of marriage. Once they do that, they now are a full expression of the image of God. What do I mean by this? Well, part of the image of God is his creativity. He creates6:40 things. When a male and female come together, they have procreativity. They have the capacity to create life. Nobody can explain why a sperm and an6:52 egg come together and it produces life. We know scientifically it happens. Nobody explained why, what really makes this happen. This is part of the full image or the full spectrum of7:04 the image of God. And so we have Adam and Eve coming back together, and that's why the issue of of marriage in the Bible is so critically important. Let me take you a step further. Let me7:16 take you also still in Genesis. The Hebrew word for ish, that's the word for man. The word ishah, that's the word for woman. Ish and ishah7:29 are used in Genesis in the Hebrew text to explain man and woman. There is 1 letter in ish that is not in shah. That's the letter7:40 yod or let's just put it in in English, it would look like this, yod. Like a kinda like a y. There's 1 letter that's in isha that's not an ish. It's the hey, let's just put it7:52 this way, hey. It's kinda like an h, kinda like a y and h. So the letters that are present in this 1 that are not in that 1 is a y. The letter that's present in a shah but8:04 not an ish is an h. That forms the foundation word for the name for God. Yahweh. That name for God is used8:15 6800 times in your Old Testament as a depiction of God. It's when man and woman come together, Ish and Ish that you have8:27 yod hey, you have Yahweh, you have now God stamped on them. That's part of the image of God. He has actually put on humanity. If we go to8:39 Revelation, the book of Revelation, let's show from Genesis all the way to Revelation. What do we have taking place there? Well, it it says in there that there's gonna be a culmination of history and it's gonna8:51 be the bride, which is church, and the groom, that's Jesus, coming together. Now, how does that happen? How does the bride and the groom, Jesus and the church come together? I don'tMarriage Pictures Christ & Church 9:03 know. I can't understand. I can't explain it well. And since the writers of scripture know that, guess what, Paul goes on in Ephesians chapter 5 and he explains it and he compares it9:15 to male and female coming together on earth in marriage and then you have this culmination of history, which is the grand marriage. I want to say it to you this way, The culmination of history is Marriage with a capital9:25 m. That's when Jesus and the church come together. The marriage we have on earth is a small m. This is real marriage. This is just an hors d'oeuvres of the main course. This is just9:37 an appetizer for the main course. This is a shadow of the real thing. This is just a glimpse of what's to come. Think of the best marriage you can think of on earth. Now I hope it's your own, if you're married. Think of9:48 the best marriage. They don't even do justice to this great picture. Why did why did Jesus set it up this way? Why did God set it up this way? Well, Paul explains it in Ephesians 5. He says it's a mystery. I10:00 can't understand it. It's a mystery. This whole thing of of the bride and the groom of the church and Jesus coming together, it's a mystery. I can't understand it. And so consequently, God established on earth now hear10:11 me carefully. Since it's such a mystery, this closure of history, God established on earth human marriage, small m marriage, so that we could understand understand what the capital m10:23 marriage is going to be someday when the bride and the groom when when the church and Jesus actually come together. How does how what's it like when when that final marriage supper of the lamb? I10:35 can't grasp it, but I do understand marriage on earth, and that is a picture. Paul writes about it, he says, you think I'm talking about a man and woman, don't you? No. I'm talking about the closure of history. And, you10:45 know, it's kind of interesting. You know what words we use to describe the closure of history? We use marital bed language. We use words like the climax of history. We use words like consummation of history. In10:57 other words, marriage is so important that God began the book of Genesis with a marriage of a man and a woman. And he closed out the book with revelation, with a wedding, a11:09 bride, and a groom. Now if I were Satan, if I were Satan, and I don't wanna mess this all up, I'd go in and destroy the definition of marriage all the way back in Genesis. I'd mess with that over. That11:21 way, the image of God on earth would be destroyed. And I'd go into Revelation, and I'd destroy that picture of a bride and a groom, And I'd make it 2 brides or 2 grooms. I'd11:33 mess with that. So the picture, the imagery of Christ and the church coming together gets destroyed. This is how important god feels about marriage. He started the book with it. He11:45 ended the book with it. And by the way, in the flyover zone of Matthew 19, Jesus says, don't mess with the definition of marriage because I made you male and female. For this reason, a man and a woman come together. And11:55 let me give you a loose paraphrase. When god has defined his marriage, let no supreme court mess with. Matthew chapter 19 verse 6, loose paraphrase of it. That's why marriage is so important toGroup Reflections on God's Design 12:07 God.12:11 The thing that stood out to me most in this chapter is God had it in his design that even in the original Hebrew that the letters speak to the fullness of his image in marriage.12:20 Absolutely. And definitions are important. And and the definition of traditional historical orthodox marriage has always been male and female. And 1 of the most beautiful sentences in this12:31 chapter is on page 69. It says this about marriage. It is about the desire to preserve the magnificent picture of the image of God.12:41 And being married, this part really stuck out to me. Male and female are created anatomically, emotionally, and spiritually for oneness. And being married, this has been 1 of the most beautiful things that I've12:53 gotten to experience.In this video 0:00 Marriage Bookends the Bible4:00 Humanity's Complementary Design9:00 Marriage Pictures Christ & Church12:00 Group Reflections on God's Design
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