Dale Partridge - What Married Men and Women NEED to Hear - Dale Partridge

00:00:00.000 In this episode of Real Christianity, I answer the basic question,

00:00:03.180 what is marriage? It's a simple question, but an important one. All that coming up right now.

00:00:08.300 welcome to real christianity my name is dale partridge this is an audio and video ministry

00:00:31.680 of relearn.org today we're going to be answering an important but simple question what is marriage

00:00:37.660 But before we begin, I wanted to mention one thing. I updated the book, The Manliness of Christ.

00:00:44.600 It's one of my favorite books that I've ever written. And it is originally, it was one of

00:00:49.780 these small books right here. You can see the small, this is the first edition. The subtitle

00:00:54.480 of the book is How the Masculinity of Jesus Eradicates Effeminate Christianity. However,

00:01:00.360 this book was small and I wanted to make it a little bit longer. So we added about 20 to 25%

00:01:05.120 more i added a completely new chapter called the sin of effeminacy we also added a new forward

00:01:12.960 from my friend eric khan who is the president over at new christendom press i've also added

00:01:19.600 several editions and paragraphs and edits throughout the entire book so you can pick up a

00:01:24.880 copy if you haven't already or if you want to get an updated edition it's still a pretty short book

00:01:29.360 but you can get one at relearn.org forward slash man you can also pick up a copy on amazon all

00:01:36.080 right we're going to answer this question what is marriage now we live in this delightful era

00:01:45.520 where a documentary can captivate millions of people called what is a woman and where global

00:01:52.560 companies, politicians, presidents, even religious leaders, sports teams, they have seemed to

00:01:59.380 misplace their understanding of basic truths regarding gender and sexuality and family

00:02:05.040 and marriage. So I present to you in this episode, a marvelous idea, a brief episode that aims to

00:02:10.980 define the ever elusive concept of marriage for this generation, because clearly the world needs

00:02:17.600 a little bit of a refresher on the topic. Okay, so what is marriage? Well, marriage is a sacred

00:02:24.740 covenant between one man and one woman established and ordained and defined by God and therefore

00:02:32.660 cannot be redefined by man. Now, marriage is not just an idea in scripture. It's actually the

00:02:41.900 overarching theme of scripture. The first two chapters of the Bible are about God creating a

00:02:48.240 new world for a man and his wife. And the last chapters of the Bible are about God renewing that

00:02:57.040 fallen world for a man and his wife. Now, the man and his wife in the second example is Christ and

00:03:05.300 his bride. So marriage essentially is the enclosure of scripture. It's kind of a wraparound

00:03:11.400 theme of the Bible. And so it's something that isn't just scattered throughout the Bible as a

00:03:18.460 biblical theological theme. It's actually a pretty giant theme start to finish Genesis to Revelation.

00:03:24.200 We see marriage, not just in Adam and Eve, but also in Christ and his church and everything in

00:03:30.060 between. Ultimately, it's an earthly picture of God's plan for redemption. That's what marriage

00:03:36.700 is in the biblical understanding. Now, in a sense, marriage is a mirror of the gospel.

00:03:43.640 It's a mortal reflection of an eternal promise. It's a visual metaphor of the everlasting covenant

00:03:51.160 between Christ and his bride, the church that's displayed here on earth for everyone to see.

00:03:57.880 And this is why a distortion of marriage is such a big deal.

00:04:02.780 And it sits at the heart of today's culture.

00:04:05.240 If you can confuse marriage, you can also confuse the gospel or the promises thereof.

00:04:10.720 And so Ephesians 5.25-33 talks about the relationship between earthly marriage and its relationship with Christ and the church, the ultimate eternal marriage.

00:04:22.480 And I'm going to read this text.

00:04:23.980 It's a little bit long,

00:04:25.120 and I'm going to kind of off the cuff,

00:04:28.260 bring a little bit of teaching,

00:04:29.100 and then we're going to get back

00:04:30.060 into some basic points I have on this topic

00:04:34.280 of what is marriage.

00:04:35.580 So verse 25,

00:04:37.460 husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church

00:04:40.880 and gave himself up for her,

00:04:43.340 that he might sanctify her,

00:04:45.200 having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,

00:04:49.600 so that he might present the church to himself

00:04:52.080 in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.

00:04:58.880 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. I mean, we know that

00:05:05.340 we are the body of Christ. Christ loves us as his own body. So there's some similarities that

00:05:13.140 are happening there in verse 28. He who loves his wife loves himself. Verse 29 says, for no one

00:05:20.980 ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it. Now I'm going to just stop right

00:05:26.280 there for a second. This idea of no one ever hated his own flesh. I think about the passage

00:05:31.160 that says, you need to love others as you love yourself. Everybody always twists that passage

00:05:39.040 of scripture to support self-love. Well, if you don't love yourself, you can't love others. So

00:05:44.280 you need to have practicing self-love so that you can love others. Okay. That's a bad exposition. No,

00:05:50.980 What that passage means is that you love people

00:05:54.600 the way that you already love yourself.

00:05:57.840 We know that we love ourselves.

00:05:59.800 I mean, passage of scripture right here says,

00:06:01.260 for no one hated his own flesh,

00:06:02.600 but nourishes and cherishes it.

00:06:04.980 And we know that because what happens when you get cold?

00:06:07.180 What do you do?

00:06:08.020 Well, you put a jacket on because you love yourself.

00:06:11.060 And when you're tired, what do you do?

00:06:12.160 Well, you go to sleep.

00:06:13.660 When you're hungry, what do you do?

00:06:14.660 You feed your body because you love yourself.

00:06:17.880 And that passage of scripture is to say,

00:06:19.940 hey, love people like you already love yourself. Don't twist it and say, oh, I need to first learn

00:06:26.420 how to love myself before I can love others. That's just bad exposition. Okay, moving on back

00:06:31.520 into the episode about marriage here. Verse 31, actually the second half of verse 29, it says,

00:06:38.360 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church,

00:06:43.380 because we are members of his body. There's that connection. Verse 31, therefore, a man shall leave

00:06:48.840 his father and mother and hold fast to his wife

00:06:51.700 and the two shall become one flesh.

00:06:53.540 Paul is citing Genesis and the account of Adam and Eve

00:06:58.480 and the ordination of marriage

00:07:00.700 that happened early in the first three chapters

00:07:02.900 of the Bible.

00:07:04.040 Verse 32, this mystery is profound

00:07:06.840 and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

00:07:11.620 Verse 33, however, let each one of you love his wife

00:07:15.500 as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. There's debate on that word respects.

00:07:25.020 There's another translation that some of the older translations would have is reverence her husband.

00:07:29.420 I think the KJV talks about that or uses that word there, but it's not just an Americanized

00:07:35.860 version of respect, but it's really a reverential respect for the position of leadership that God

00:07:41.980 has placed the husband in. And so great passage of scripture and some key takeaways. And this is

00:07:49.300 where I'm really getting the doctrine for today's episode, and you can go back and study it on your

00:07:55.380 own. Now, but just stop with me for a moment. And I just want you to think about something.

00:08:02.700 Humans are forgetful. We need constant reminders. If you think through the Old Testament,

00:08:08.660 God was always calling them to memorialize certain experiences that they had with God,

00:08:15.900 to build an altar or to remember a certain particular action or moment in time.

00:08:23.180 And so we would, this is what Passover was essentially, right?

00:08:27.480 We are constantly looking for opportunities to remember the things of God,

00:08:34.600 the promises of God, the acts of God in our lives.

00:08:37.740 And so humans are forgetful and the power of symbolism is helpful to the weak minds of men.

00:08:46.260 And again, we need memorialization in the Christian life to help us remember what promises God has given to us.

00:08:55.700 We need those visual symbols to retain those spiritual truths.

00:09:00.200 This is why God gave us things like the Lord's Supper and baptism, head coverings, marriage.

00:09:07.880 These are physical actions that remind the church and teach the world something that's true about

00:09:16.280 God and his plan for his people. They're not just arbitrary practices that have no intention or

00:09:23.800 meaning. No, they're very important practices that teach or remind, teach the world or remind

00:09:29.900 the church of vital truths regarding the gospel or regarding order within the church and the family

00:09:37.040 or God's design for humanity or for righteousness sake, whatever it may be. And when you pervert,

00:09:43.120 distort or destroy the symbols, they lose their power to inform. And that's why it's so important

00:09:50.720 that we maintain the integrity of what marriage is.

00:09:54.920 It's also why I argue in my book,

00:09:57.400 A Cover for Glory, the argument of head coverings,

00:10:00.800 because head coverings are essentially the visual symbol

00:10:03.480 representing the spiritual truth

00:10:05.800 of the doctrine of headship, right?

00:10:08.240 You have head symbols for a doctrine on headship.

00:10:11.820 And when you lose the symbols,

00:10:14.200 you start to lose the doctrine of headship. 1.00

00:10:17.420 And this is why the feministic era 0.98

00:10:19.900 that we have been raised in and been saturated with has lost its understanding of the reason 1.00

00:10:26.500 for head coverings. And we've become an egalitarian society at large. And especially we have been

00:10:33.680 influenced in the church by that. And when you remove the symbols of station and authority,

00:10:40.420 the visual symbols like a head covering, you also begin to forget the qualifications for

00:10:46.660 leadership. And so we're starting to see greater ordination of women because, hey, if we're

00:10:52.660 essentially the same and there's no visual symbol there to remind us of our differences that are

00:10:57.900 according to the word of God and our station and authorities and roles and being how we're

00:11:03.900 different, then why can't women be pastors and why can't women preach? And we're essentially

00:11:09.200 the same, right? And so, again, when we remove the symbols, we forget the truths that we are

00:11:17.840 supposed to remember or be reminded by those practices. And so, essentially, this is why we

00:11:26.440 must fight at every level to protect the definition of marriage, gender, family, sexuality. They each

00:11:34.320 are contributing pictures or prompts that uphold God's plan for fruitfulness and faithfulness

00:11:42.940 and righteousness. Secondly, marriage is not just the most intense form of human relationship. I

00:11:51.980 think a lot of people think that marriage is just like another form of relationship on the

00:11:58.200 relationship continuum, right? Like if you have like over here, you have, you know,

00:12:05.400 co-workers like are on the far right. Like, Hey, we're, we're friends, you know, we're acquaintances,

00:12:09.960 you know, and, you know, then you have like, you know, maybe family relationships or best friends

00:12:14.060 and, and then, you know, a mother of mother and son and, you know, whatever it may be.

00:12:18.580 Then you have over here, you like the strongest human relationship is marriage. People think that

00:12:22.840 it's like on the continuum, it's the strongest form of human relationship. Honestly,

00:12:27.400 that's not true. I would say that marriage isn't even a relationship at all. It intersects

00:12:37.180 with relationship and romance and passion and all the things that come with marriage.

00:12:41.940 But marriage, like as a noun, is a covenant. It's a covenant between two people built on love

00:12:49.220 and faithfulness that catechizes the culture toward Christ. And so we got to think about,

00:12:56.640 I mean, you don't become one in a relationship with anyone.

00:13:03.060 So like, just think about that for a second.

00:13:05.420 If it is a relationship,

00:13:07.680 there's no other relationships that you become one.

00:13:10.980 Like marriage, you know, I become one with my wife.

00:13:14.500 You don't become one with your best friend.

00:13:16.380 You don't become one with your father or mother

00:13:18.520 or your brother or sister.

00:13:20.780 And again, so it has characteristics of relationship,

00:13:23.980 but marriage in and of itself isn't even in the relationship category. It's something

00:13:28.660 completely different. It is a covenant where two become one. And so just that's kind of an

00:13:35.640 offshoot understanding of giving you some basics of what that means. In his book, The Momentary

00:13:43.020 Marriage, John Piper writes, quote, the ultimate thing we can say about marriage is that it exists

00:13:49.900 for God's glory. That is, it exists to display God. Marriage is not mainly about being or staying

00:13:57.320 in love. It's mainly about telling the truth with our lives. It's about portraying something true

00:14:03.640 about Jesus Christ and the way he relates to his people. It's about showing in real life

00:14:08.560 the glory of the gospel, end quote. So yes, marriage intersects with relationship and sex

00:14:16.880 and companionship and family.

00:14:19.380 But its central purpose is to show the world

00:14:21.620 how a man's love will prevent him from leaving his wife

00:14:27.380 and how Christ's love will prevent him

00:14:32.860 from leaving his church.

00:14:34.500 So it's this covenant relationship

00:14:36.240 and it's demonstrating that for your children

00:14:38.380 to show the commitment,

00:14:41.100 the oneness that is occurring inside of marriage

00:14:44.620 for the procreation of children,

00:14:46.720 for the furthering of the gospel,

00:14:48.420 for the fruitfulness that's commanded

00:14:50.780 in the dominion mandate in Genesis chapter three. 0.93

00:14:53.920 And so it's also showing how a woman

00:14:56.540 will submit to her husband in all things

00:14:58.880 as the church submits to Christ in all things. 0.52

00:15:03.260 Marriage essentially is God's memoir to the world. 0.97

00:15:08.360 And we should, as a result, protect it at all costs

00:15:12.760 because we live in a time

00:15:14.300 where it's absolutely being distorted

00:15:17.260 at every possible level.

00:15:20.580 And so that's my short episode

00:15:22.480 on giving you a basic definition of marriage.

00:15:25.620 One day I will write a book

00:15:28.260 giving a full exposition on marriage.

00:15:31.920 I've been married now for 13 going on 14 years,

00:15:34.680 but I feel like it's one of those books

00:15:36.240 that you want to wait,

00:15:37.460 you have more years under your belt before you write it.

00:15:39.520 So anyways, thanks for listening

00:15:41.340 to this episode of Real Christianity.

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00:16:09.880 On that note, again, this is Real Christianity.

00:16:13.020 My name is Dale Partridge, and I'll see you guys next time. 0.87

Dale Partridge - June 17, 2023

What Married Men and Women NEED to Hear - Dale Partridge

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