Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

In today’s passage, Jesus puts marriage on the divine level. He looks each husband and wife in the eyes and says, “God has joined you together. Don’t mess it up” (My paraphrase). Marriage is not about a man and woman going through a ceremony, moving into a home with a white picket fence, and having a family. Marriage is not about you … it’s about honoring God with the relationship he has given you. Here’s the way Jesus explains the commitment of marriage.

Mark 10:6-9
But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

Husbands and wives, you have been joined together by the eternal God! C. S. Lewis noted how God orchestrated your relationship. He wrote:

In friendship … we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another … the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for the Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work …. “You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.”

There are no chances or coincidences in the Christian life. Like a “secret master of ceremonies,” God has brought you together as husband and wife. “…What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Father, remind us often that marriage is about you. As husband and wife, help us honor you together in a way we could never honor you by ourselves. In Jesus’ name. Amen.