Covenant Home Part 2： Defining Christian Marriage with Dale Partridge
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Summary
In this episode, we continue our series on Covenant Marriage and the roles and context of the Bible in relation to the covenant household. In this series, we will explore covenant marriage and the role of God's Word in it.
Transcript
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What a blessing it is to talk about marriage today.
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Imagine playing a game, maybe chess, maybe a card game, without any defined context,
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first it make the experience just unpleasant it'd be confusing second it would not permit
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any person a path to success rules in a game make it so that it's possible to win
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That's how many Christians approach marriage and family.
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They face conflict and frustration because they attempt to build a successful marriage
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and household without the understanding of the essential principles that would produce
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And that's the whole purpose in this series over the next several weeks.
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This is part two, is to define the Bible's identity around order and rules and roles
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So last week, we discussed the first part of this five-part series, and I walked us
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We learned that in the same way, Adam and Christ are representative heads of humanity.
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One is a representative head over the covenant of works, Adam, and the other is a representative
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head over the covenant of grace, which is Christ.
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In the same way, husbands are the representative heads for their home.
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We learned that Christian husbands should love their wives as Christ loves the church.
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But Christ demonstrated that love most clearly by representing and taking responsibility
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Now Christ was not guilty for the sins of His bride, but He took responsibility for
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the sins of His bride by dying for them on the cross.
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And so, this taught us that covenantally, a wife's condition is a husband's responsibility.
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So a husband is responsible for his wife's condition before the Lord.
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He's not guilty of her sin, but he is responsible for it.
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We also learned that authority is granted to those who joyfully accept responsibility
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That is, you know, if a husband wants authority in his home, he does that by owning the sin
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He shifts from it's their problems to those are my problems.
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And in a world where men often struggle to take responsibility for their own sin, getting
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a man to take responsibility for the sins of his family is difficult.
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Ultimately, we learned that in the same way that Christ makes his people godly and holy,
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And so today, I'm going to be discussing covenant marriage.
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I'm going to be discussing our marriage because I believe that much of our marital sorrows
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and difficulties come from a misunderstanding of the nature of marriage.
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And so when reading a book, if you look at your book, you have your Bible.
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When reading a book, the first and the last chapters of a book are crucial.
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The first chapters open up and they introduce the characters, the plot, the theme.
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The last chapters essentially resolves the plot.
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But it provides closure for the tension within the story.
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Now, when we look at the Bible, we're going to see that marriage is not just a feature
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Marriage is actually the foundation and the capstone of the entire Bible.
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Okay, it is the theme throughout the narrative.
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It's a wraparound narrative from Genesis to Revelation.
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The Bible opens with a marriage between a man and a bride living in a perfect world.
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And the Bible closes with a man and his bride living in a perfect world.
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In fact, we're actually going to see that Scripture, the entire narrative, the meta-narrative of Scripture is a wedding.
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that's really what's happening and so by emphasis alone if we just look at the
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emphasis God is communicating his valuation of marriage it's important
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it's an important theme it's an important component of his vision for
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the world now God is a God of symbolism he knows that our finite minds need a
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the power of visual metaphors so that we can remember spiritual truths.
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For example, God does this with the Sabbath, rainbow, circumcision,
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the Passover, baptism, the Lord's table, head coverings.
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God is constantly using symbolism to communicate spiritual truths.
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And marriage is another form of a spiritual metaphor.
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It's God's means for man to visually and experientially grasp the tenets of the gospel.
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It's like an earthly picture of a spiritual reality.
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Ultimately, what happens in marriage is that it communicates the relational aspects of salvation to you, to your children, and to anybody else that's watching.
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And this is why the world is so zealous on distorting and redefining marriage.
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When you confuse marriage, you confuse the gospel.
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And when the visual aid is distorted, the truth it conveys becomes unclear.
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And so when two men are in some sort of union or relationship with one another, it evangelizes
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And this is important because if you look at marriage as just like an isolated expression
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of love, rather than a means to experience and model spiritual truth, you're going to fail to see
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how your marriage or how a marriage and the behavior that is within it affirms or denies
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the truth of the gospel. So the way you act in your marriage either affirms or denies
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the truth of the gospel. When a woman fails to submit to her husband, she's telling herself,
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she's telling her children, and she's telling the world a lie about the church's relationship to
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Christ. When a husband fails to love his wife, he's telling himself, his children, and the world
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a lie about Jesus's relationship with the church. And so let's start just by backing up a little
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bit. I want to define marriage. So first, marriage is not simply an intensified expression
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of relationship. It's not like an intensified version of other human relationships. We often
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Some think of marriage as like it's on the spectrum, right?
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Acquaintance is over here, you know, best friend, siblings, and marriage has got to
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Marriage isn't even considered a relationship in Scripture.
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There's relational elements to a marriage, but relationship is different.
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It doesn't even really fall into the relationship category.
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They're based on mutual benefits that you can receive from that relationship.
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A covenant involves a moral commitment that's made before God to become one with a person.
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that covenant is there regardless of changing circumstances or relationship
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feelings or whatever that may be, you do not become one with your best friend. You
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do not become one with your child. You do not become one with your brother or
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sister. Well, the only relationship you become one with is your spouse. And this
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is why when we're at a wedding, we're not simply there as guests. We're not there
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as you know we call ourselves guests but we're actually there as witnesses before God observing
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two people ceremonially becoming one entering into covenant with signs and seals it's very biblical
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when you start to realize how we do weddings it's not just some random ceremony that we came up with
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this is important because society wants to reduce marriage to some sort of social construct
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Because when you can do that, people feel like they're entitled to modify it or redefine it.
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If it's just a social construct, there's no problem with redefinition.
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So the protection of marriage is not merely a preservation of traditionalism.
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It's a guard against the perversion of the gospel.
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That's why we are vocal against the onslaught of homosexuality and transgenderism,
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all the things that are going on in that world.
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But there's more to covenant marriage than merely understanding that marriage is a covenant.
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So to fully understand marriage, we're going to look at the passage of Scripture,
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Genesis 2, 18 through 24, which we read part of it.
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I'm going to read it again, and then we're going to follow along.
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I'm going to take seven observations from this passage that will help us understand the nature of marriage.
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And if I skip a verse in here and there, just don't worry, I know what I'm doing over here.
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Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone.
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I will make a helper fit for him or comparable for him.
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Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of
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the heavens and brought him to the man to see what they would call him, or what he would
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And whatever the man called everything, that was its name.
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But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
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So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.
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And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed it up with a place of flesh.
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and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man,
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Then the man said, this is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
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She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife
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And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
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I'm going to go back to Genesis 128 for a second and read another passage.
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And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have
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dominion over the fish in the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living
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So I'm going to make again seven observations that I think are important on the nature of
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What is the foundational, fundamental understanding of marriage?
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So number one is that marriage is a solution to singleness.
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many pastors have attempted to tell young people
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where Paul says he's a single man while he's writing this.
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And he's writing against marriage being a safeguard against sexual immorality.
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And he says, for I wish that all men were even as I myself am, but each has his own
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gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.
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So for about 40 years, pastors have been misunderstanding and misinterpreting this
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passage because they've made the object of Paul's desire, his singleness, rather than
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Okay, Paul is not desiring that everybody's single.
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Paul is desiring that everybody has his gift of celibacy
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And singleness is something that providentially
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And they typically have that gift for the purpose of full-time ministry.
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And having that gift means that they don't burn with passion.
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Number two, marriage is a human solution to loneliness.
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Notice when God says that it's not good for man to be alone,
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and so this is God indicating that God is not sufficient to solve human loneliness
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by himself that's a shocker to many people but it's not good God just spent saying it's good
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it's good it's good it's good the first thing he says that it's not good is that man is alone
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And he is not the solution to that problem completely.
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But is the ideal, is God's design, is God's intention
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that our singleness is found its complete resolution in God?
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And this is important because, again, we've told an entire generation
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that they should be satisfied in their singleness
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Again, they should be content in their singleness.
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But we don't need to be satisfied with our singleness.
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If you have a desire to be married, that is a great desire.
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And outside of those that are called to be eunuchs for the gospel, given the gift of celibacy,
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there's nowhere in scripture that it affirms that singleness is a blessing.
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Paul was likely married before he was called to ministry
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There are several of the apostles that were married.
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And so it is an absolute blessing to have a wife.
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He who finds a wife, according to the Proverbs,
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finds a good thing and so the truth is that we are interdependent beings
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we are interdependent beings that's like offensive in our autonomous individualistic
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culture that you as a woman might need to be dependent upon a man
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that's offensive target would not like that
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but that's what we are designed for that a man might not actually need some
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Some help? He's not sufficient on his own? That breaks the pride of many men.
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So singleness is not sinful. Know that. It is not sinful to be single, unless it's intentional
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so that you can indulge in sexual immorality. That's sinful. But singleness is also not the
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human ideal. No, the human ideal is seen in a world before sin. God makes a man and a woman
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and puts them together. Number three, marriage is helpful monogamy. So God says that he will
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make Adam a helper fit for him. Notice that he doesn't say helpers. He says helper in the singular.
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Now, in a world that's growing more and more interested in group marriage,
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or polyamory, or polygamy, or whatever it may be,
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at the fundamental level, this passage is actually an affirmation of monogamy.
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It also describes that he was going to make Adam a helper.
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Now, first, this identifies that man needs help.
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Okay? Just, we need to, as men, recognize that. We need help. And it identifies that woman was
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made to help. That's what she's made for. In a world that has eliminated this engendered
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interdependence and elevated personal autonomy.
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Men have to see their need for a wife, and women need to see how their purpose is dependent
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I can't tell you how many young people I've met
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who feel that they have nothing to offer a woman
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they got alarm systems and they have their own gun
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everything you know I'm just safe on my own and women and men can live
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independently there is no engendered interdependence for one another and the
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administrative help and the sexual dependence or companionship women offer
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to men in previous generations can now be attained by men on their own through
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internet and resources and pornography and whatever it may be. And so we've seen a generation
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drive a wedge between the actual necessity for men and women to thrive off of what one another
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can offer to each other. And so the individualism of this generation has really stripped away the
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mutual dependencies that God aimed for being expressed in marriage. That's what individualism
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does. It absolutely deconstructs the very fundamental nature of creational identity
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for men and women. And so we really need to raise up a generation of men who provide and protect
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and shepherd and a generation of women who won't go and seek to do those things on their own.
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Last night, Veronica and I were talking about how she was expected as a young lady out of high
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school to go get a job, provide for herself, move out. What is she going to do for her life?
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Like there was no, she was expected to be a man, basically. She wasn't waiting to be dependent
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upon a husband. She was planning to go do it on her own. And that very structure of how we raise
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children needs to shift so that we raise the next generation, that they are ready to embrace
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their biblical, creational identities. Is there anything wrong with a woman getting a job? No.
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I'm not saying that. I'm saying that women should certainly, in a generation that says,
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you know, women rule the world. A woman really does need to restrict herself and be willing
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to be dependent upon a man, longing for that. And men need to obviously restrict their access
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to pornography and help in all their various ways so that they can really see the value
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they really struggle to see the value of a spouse
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because we've made the world function without marriage.
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So the passage says that man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the
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heaven and to every beast of the field, but for Adam, there was not found a helper fit
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So God parades the animals before Adam, and he was aware of his aloneness.
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Now, if you put a modern day liberal in the garden, they would have been like, I'm not
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So, there's no other creature comparable for him.
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Again, this is a subtle observation, but animals are not sufficient companions for people.
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So, this is an anti-bestiality text, I guess you could say, too.
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but in a world where marriage has been diminished and distorted so much that it's leaving people
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single and childless the obsession with kind of animals as uh you know fur babies or four-legged
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family members um and people identifying as pet parents uh that's a grossly common reality
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okay cities are building dog parks faster than they're building parks for children
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hundreds of thousands of dollars are being invested the money is following
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the culture and again remember the culture is following the church and so
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we have an entire generation that has misplaced the affection that is
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reserved for spouses and children and grandchildren and redirected that
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affection towards animals. It's gross. Your pet is not your family member. It's an animal.
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Your pet is not sufficient for you. It's not your child.
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Number five, marriage is a setting for realizing creational identity.
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So the passage says, and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman.
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this is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
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She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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I've always appreciated Matthew Henry's commentary on this text.
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The woman was made of a rib out of the side of man,
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not made out of his head to rule over him,
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nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him,
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but out of his side, to be equal with him, under his arm, to be protected by him, and near his heart, to be beloved by him."
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I want you to catch some important symbolism here, because we're theologians, right?
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In the same way that a bride was first made from the side of the first Adam,
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Adam, the bride of Christ was made from the side of the second Adam.
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John 1934, it says, but one of the soldiers pierced the side of Christ with a spear and
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So the substance of blood and water represent the Lord's table and baptism, the sacraments
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of the new covenant and just as Eve's creation from Adam signifies their
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covenant in marriage Christ's side being pierced signifies the covenant of
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marriage between Christ and his bride the church there's some beautiful
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parallelism that's occurring between the first Adam and the second Adam it shows
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is also what's called an ontological truth. Now, ontological is just the word that we use for the
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studying of being or nature. So Dr. McFaul writes in his book, and I'm going to give a quote here.
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He says, in the case of man, he was created out of pre-existing non-human dust, and his breath
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comes directly from God's mouth. In the case of woman, she was created out of pre-existing human
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matter, Adam's rib. And her breath comes directly from man, not from God's mouth. So her manner of
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creation was not the same as his. He was made directly from God to serve God. She was made
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directly from man to serve man, end quote. Now, this is why 1 Corinthians chapter 11 says,
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verse 8 and 9, for man was made not, sorry, for man was not made from woman, but woman from man.
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Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man, end quote. That's a very offensive passage
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So that anything, any woman that adheres to the biblical position feels oppressed.
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And any man who adheres to the biblical position feels like a misogynist.
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And by the way, if we believe that men are responsible for the condition of women, then feminism is men's fault.
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Anything that happens in the feminine world, it's men's fault.
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It's the father or the husband of those women.
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It's either men who are too intense and have caused a reaction for women to desire freedom from the evil rule and dominion of a man.
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or it's wimp, lazy men who have not taken up leadership and a woman had to lead as a result.
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There's been a generation for about a hundred years where there was not the balanced men
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that could shepherd and lead and protect and care for the women in their world
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without being overbearing and without being a wimp.
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It'll be through balanced biblical leadership over generations of time to restore the loss of the last hundred years.
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When a woman can joyfully accept that she was made from man and for man,
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She can be a glorious helper, again, without buying into the idea that she's being oppressed.
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And lastly, this passage shows that God's design for marriage is not homosexual, but it's heterosexual.
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If you look at Genesis 2, this isn't duplicated sameness.
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Eve is the same species as Adam, but she has a different being.
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And again, we have a generation that at every level will try to convince women that what God made them for is evil and wrong.
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And so we need to be very adamant on loving our wives, our daughters well, and leading our wives and daughters well.
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Number six, marriage is a sanctuary from shame.
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The passage says, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
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It's God's way of telling us that we need to be clothed with the righteousness of Christ.
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In fact, the act of, if you remember the account of Genesis chapter 3, God slaughters animals
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and covers Adam and Eve, covers their nakedness and sends them out of the garden.
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And so that covering of their nakedness with the slaughtering of animals is actually a
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foreshadowing of God one day slaughtering Christ and covering them with the robes of
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But in Christian marriage, when a man and a woman are redeemed by God,
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and they're comprehensively loved by one another,
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they can be completely exposed and experience the shamelessness
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But without redemption, and honestly with the reality of the fallenness and struggles
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of marriage, the insecurities that creep in to marriage, if you're not regularly washing
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your wife's mind with the water of the word, if you're not regularly devoting yourself
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to scripture, the perversion of the thoughts, of the mind, of the expectations, of the impressions
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upon the marriage bed, you can easily get back into a place where there's shame within
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The responsibility to overcome that shame is laid upon the husband.
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and to remind his wife through a variety of actions
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you should expect 10 years later for her to be more lovely
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we could do the same thing because when we look at the church
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We expect the church in 1,000 years from today to be more lovely
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because Christ is coming back for a white, pure, beautiful, clean bride.
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And so when a man marries a woman, his job and duty,
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though we fail but we succeed also by God's grace,
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and to reduce any shame that they might have
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to restore a sense of shamelessness in a marriage
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with unconditional love and the washing with the Word.
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Number seven, marriage is a means for dominion.
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Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.
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This is referred to in theology as the dominion mandate.
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The second Adam will not fail at the dominion mandate
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Multiplying across the earth through the gospel
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But marriage is the means for Adam to fulfill that band-aid
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I don't think I could do this by myself. First, I need a helper. And even with her,
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this garden's big. I don't think I can take order over this thing without more of us.
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And so, the mandate is not just about reproduction.
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the reproduction is qualified it's to be fruitful and multiply it's not just multiplication
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it's be fruitful while you're doing it malachi 2 15 says that god is not merely looking for
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more heartbeats in the world he's looking for more godly offspring or children to fill the world
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who love him. That's the purpose of one of the purposes of marriage, is to reproduce
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godliness in our children. Furthermore, it's evidence that God wills that married couples
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direct their sexual reproductive activities or their sexual maturation toward reproduction.
1.00
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We got this stupid trend called dinks that's going on in society, right?
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These are people that are married that are not directing their reproductive capacity towards having children.
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It's actually instead reoriented towards selfishness.
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What we have to see is that God created sex not just as recreation, though it is that, but it is actually re-creation.
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And arguably, I would say that quantity matters. Arguably.
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To multiply mathematically requires three or more.
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Now not everyone is blessed with three or more children.
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I know plenty of families throughout my time in the pastoral ministry that couldn't have
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any kids and some that could only have one or two kids.
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Now, the issue I think is really going back to the heart.
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Are these individuals, couples that are having, are they willfully limiting their children
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Or is it just that the Lord has not permitted them to conceive?
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the Lord only permitted them to have one or two. The issue of the heart of this passage
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of scripture, I think really gets to what is preventing you from having kids? Is it
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selfishness? Is it faithlessness? Is it fear? Or is it just the reality that you have unique
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circumstances and you're actually facing challenges of being fruitful with the ones you have?
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a valid point you might have three or four kids and you realize i'm barely hanging on being fruitful
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with the ones we got and that's okay that's okay there is no number that we should be placing
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legalistically upon parents for children but there is something that the scripture does describe as
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we have a desire and love for children we should want children we should want
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many children we should want as many children as we can have as we can be
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fruitful with and that might be different from story to story my story
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is that we thought we were gonna have eight kids we wanted a lot of kids and
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then I got sick and honestly there was a season there that may be having a child
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in the face of me possibly dying was not wise and I made that call and I said I'm
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willing to stand before the Lord and go I think this was the right decision in
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this season of life and the man will do that and so you as a husband get to make
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that call at what point is your family exceeding in multiplication and failing
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and fruitfulness. Those are really important distinctions to make.
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So to conclude, marriage is at the center of God's work in the world. It's gospel imitation
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and it's evangelistic metaphor. It's helpful companionship in the work of dominion and it's
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a setting for realizing your creational identity. It's defense against sexual immorality and it's
0.97
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meaningful and fruitful reproduction. And again, I know that it can be when you study the nature
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of something, the definition of something, it can feel clinical and sterile. Like, okay, that was
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interesting. Thank you for all the facts about marriage. Next week, it'll be warm.
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Next week, we're going to get into the relational and the affectionate dimensions of marriage,
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the things that really are practical and hit. And it's going to take these descriptions that
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we learned today, and it's going to transform them into a more heartfelt and practical application.
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We thank you for the beauty of it, and we thank you for the clarity in a world that
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Lord, we ask that you would help our church to see the beautiful vision that you have
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Lord, that you would bless this congregation with spouses and children.
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Lord that you would give order and understanding Lord that we might be a
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light to a very confused world we pray for that in Jesus name