10-Word Theology for Marriage and an Abundant Life

God never intended for us to be alone.  During creation, the only thing that was not good was the man being alone (Gen. 2:18).  Having created women as one of His marvelous gifts to the children of men (Ps. 107:8-31), God puts people in families and He expects people in families to take care of each other and work together (ps 133:1) using each members gifts to bless and support the family and the church of the Living God:

God setteth the solitary in families:  Psalm 68:6a

By the time we were married in 1971, most of our friends were already divorced.  We realized that our marriage was a precious gift from God, but when her sister got a divorce and my brother got a divorce, we had nothing to say.  We were convinced that our joyful marriage was a gift that God intended for all couples to enjoy, so we’ve spent decades writing down the secrets of a joyful, fulfilling marriage.

Consider God's Simple Plan of Salvation.  Although a lost person may be attracted to Christian virtues, salvation starts with humility.  You have to humble yourself by admitting that no matter what you do, you can't be good enough to get into heaven (Ro. 3:10-12).  You have to admit that you need God's help, you have to ask for it, and you have to accept it.  Your life changes completely when you do that (2 Cor. 5:17).

Consider God's Simple Plan of Marriage. Marriage God’s way starts with a man humbling himself enough to admit that he is incomplete by himself, that he doesn’t want to be alone, and that he must let God place him in a family (Ps. 68:6).  He must humble himself to accept his wife's help as God intended (Gen. 2:18).  He must suffer the humiliation of bringing forth children in his own image (Gen. 5:3).  Children are perfect mirrors.  They reflect all our faults and all our sins back in our faces.  As we try to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4), we must repent from any leftover sins that they show us.

Although a woman may enjoy attention from a man, marriage God’s way starts with her humbling herself to let God give her to her husband as God's gift to him (Pr. 18:22).  She must give up her independence, submit to her husband, and follow where he leads.  The Bible says four times that a man humbles a woman (De. 21:14, 22:29, Eze. 22:10-11), and she must accept that.

God knew we would have trouble with His Simple Plan of Salvation.  He knew we couldn’t handle two plans, so He made one plan for both salvation and for marriage.  Jesus told Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again.”  The Bible often compares Salvation, that is, our relationship to God, to marriage.

Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.  Romans 7:4

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.  Ephesians 5:31-33

Many people don’t want to die to their former lives, they want to cling to their old ways and have Christ too.  That doesn’t work.  Similarly, many married people stay independent instead of weaving themselves into a unified family.  That doesn’t work either.  Paul expected Christians to understand marriage so he said marriage was like salvation (Eph. 5:25).  How did Jesus explain marriage?

And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.  Matthew 19:4-6

The only way two people can be “no more twain, [that is, two,] but one flesh” is for both of them to die to their former independent selves and give up their individual wants in favor of the family God creates for them when they marry.  Your life changes when you do that.  It’s not as complete a change as when you accept salvation (2 Cor. 5:17), but it’s a huge change.  God now expects you to live to give to your family and to Him.

Nobody deserves salvation; nobody deserves marriage.  A man is not worthy of his wife's submission or her reverence (Eph. 5:33).  Those are undeserved gifts from God and from her as she serves God by serving him.  A woman is not worthy of her husband's dedicating his life to taking care of her or leading her by serving her (Eph. 5:25-30), those are undeserved gifts from God and from him as he serves God by serving her.

Learning begins after we accept salvation.  We work out our Salvation in fear and trembling (Phi. 2:12) for the rest of our lives.  Learning how to be one begins with marriage and takes the rest of our lives.  We must be humble enough to learn about God while working out Salvation, we must be humble enough to learn about each other while working out marriage.

Faulty theology causes marriage problems because beliefs about God drive pretty much everything we do.  Just 10 words can give us enough knowledge of God for a happy marriage if we believe them and act on them.

The First Three Words

The first three words – “God is great” are obvious.  Atheists who say the world came about by random chance from nothing speak of the marvels of creation.  If God existed, they say, He would be great.  The Bible begins, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.”  We see God in His works:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.  Psalm 19:1

God knew that unbelief would come and that people of “science falsely so called (1 Tim. 6:20)” would tell Christians that the Bible is full of unscientific fairy tales.

But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.  2 Timothy 3:13

To encourage us, God arranged many scientific discoveries to agree with what He wrote in the Bible.  You don’t need to understand much of the science, I don’t, but you should be able to tell others that the Bible account of creation and Moses’ laws have information nobody knew until recently.  That shows that the Bible came from God.

Sir Isaac Newton, who wrote down God’s laws of motion and invented calculus, said, “When I see a watch, I think of a watchmaker.”  If you found a wristwatch on the ground, you wouldn’t think the watch had formed by little bits of metal, gears, springs, and whatnot coming randomly together to form the watch.  You would think a watchmaker made it and someone lost it in the field.  Sir Isaac knew that random creation of anything as complicated, precise, and as orderly as our solar system was ridiculous, but he thought his “watchmaker God” wound up the universe and left it alone.

Sailors could predict high and low tides; astronomers could predict eclipses and keep the calendar lined up with the seasons by following the lights God gave “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years (Gen. 1:14).”  He believed that every planet was completely predictable - once you knew how God started the solar system, you could predict where planets would go for all time to come.

Sir Isaac was wrong.  Physicists later learned that if there were only three planets in the entire universe, just three, and you knew where they were and how fast they were moving, you cannot predict where they will go.  We cannot solve this “three body problem.”  Sir Isaac didn’t know that the universe is not predictable from his laws of gravity.

Colossians 1:17 says, “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”  “Consist” describes an action that was completed in the past but emphasizes the ongoing results in the present.  The universe wouldn’t work without Jesus’ power (Heb. 1:3).  Jesus’ power created the universe, and His action continues to the present, He keeps it going “by the word of his power (He. 1:3).”  God is great indeed.

It seems that the universe operates automatically.  Rivers run down to the sea, water evaporates and comes back as rain (Ecc. 1:7).  Stars and planets stay in their orbits.  Sir Isaac’s idea of a watchmaker God who wound it up and let it go seem reasonable, but the Bible teaches that God keeps the universe going; He didn’t set it up and let it go, He stayed involved.  That helps us understand prayer.  If God wound the universe and stepped back, there would be no reason to pray, but that’s not what He did, He stayed involved.

I don’t understand the proof that nobody can solve the three-body problem, but physicists who do understand are convinced that we can’t use the laws of gravity to predict the motions of just three planets.  Our solar system operates smoothly because God keeps it in order, not just gravity.

We don’t understand gravity.  On November 9, 2016, Science Alert wrote[1]:

“Our current ideas about space, time, and gravity urgently need to be re-thought. We have long known that Einstein's theory of gravity can not work with quantum mechanics”, the author the new paper, Erik Verlinde from the University of Amsterdam, told Dutch news site NOS.

We have both gravity and quantum mechanics but we can’t fit them together.  Don’t worry about the term “quantum mechanics,” very few physicists understand it, but we can see what it does just as we know what gravity does even if we don’t understand it.

We can’t predict the motion of planets and we can’t predict hydrogen atoms.  Hydrogen has the simplest atoms of all.  One hydrogen atom has one proton with a positive charge and one electron with a negative charge.  You know about electrons.  When you plug a cord into the wall, electrons flow out of the socket into your appliance.  The power company works hard to keep electrons flowing so they can bill you for electricity.  The electron part of hydrogen atoms powers your appliances; the proton part of hydrogen atoms powers the sun.

On Sept. 15, 2017, Forbes Magazine published “Proof of 'God Playing Dice With The Universe' Found In The Sun's Interior.”[2]  Under high pressure at the center of the sun, electrons are stripped off hydrogen atoms.  There’s a soup of protons and electrons in the center of the sun.  Our sun’s energy comes from billions and billions of protons smashing together at high pressure and temperature to fuse into helium and release energy.

A hydrogen atom has 1 proton and 1 electron, a helium atom is 2 protons stuck together and 2 electrons.  When two hydrogen atoms fuse into 1 helium atom, a tiny bit of energy is released.  That powers the sun.

Yet despite these incredible energies, [Forbes says] the protons in the Sun's core would never be able to begin this chain reaction if the Universe were completely deterministic. It requires the wave nature of quantum mechanics to make it possible, proving that Einstein's famous statement, that "God does not play dice with the Universe," was false.

Einstein, like Newton, believed the universe could be predicted from Newton’s laws.  He didn’t believe that God put chance into how the universe works.  Our sun is powered by the energy released when two hydrogen atoms, the simplest atoms in the universe, stick together, make a helium atom, and release energy.

Protons repel each other; they don’t want to stick together.  You’ve played with magnets.  Magnets have a north pole and a south pole.  If you try to push two north poles together, the magnets repel each other and push back; if you put a north pole and a south pole together, the magnets attract each other and stick.

Protons have positive charge.  They repel each other powerfully; they do not want to come together.  Pushing them together hard enough to make them stick takes huge pressures and temperatures.  That is why fusion power research has failed despite billions of dollars spent – we can’t get temperature or pressure high enough to generate energy as the sun does.  Forbes wrote:

So we do our calculations, we calculate how the protons in the Sun’s core have their energy distributed, and we come up with a number for these proton-proton collisions with sufficient energy to undergo nuclear fusion.

That number is exactly zero. The electric repulsion between the two positively charged particles is too great for even a single pair of protons to overcome it and fuse together with the energies in the Sun’s core.

Our sun isn’t big enough for the pressure at the center to overcome protons pushing each other apart.  How, then, can the sun give off light?  It’s because protons aren’t particles.  This gets to “quantum mechanics” that makes my head hurt.  I don’t understand the details, it’s the conclusions that matter.  Forbes explains:

Each proton is a quantum particle, containing a probability function that describes its location, enabling the two wave functions of interacting particles to overlap ever so slightly, even when the repulsive electric force would otherwise keep them entirely apart.

You and I have exact locations and the GPS in your smart phone will tell you exactly where you are.  A proton doesn’t have an exact location.  Its location is a fuzzy ball of probability and the proton could be anywhere in the ball.  It’s most likely near the center, but it could be anywhere.  That’s the part of quantum mechanics that Einstein didn’t want to understand.

If protons were small particles as Einstein believed, they would repel each other too strongly to stick together in our sun because it isn’t big enough to generate enough pressure or a high enough temperature.  Protons aren’t particles, they’re fuzzy probability balls which can overlap enough that sometimes, protons in our sun fuse into helium atoms.  “Probability fuzzball” doesn’t sound scientific, so physicists say that protons are wave functions, not particles.

It’s the power of quantum mechanics that allows the Sun to shine. [Forbes says] In a fundamental way, if God didn’t play dice with the Universe, the nuclear flame that powers the stars would never light, and the life-giving fusion that occurs in our Sun's core would never come to be.

If hydrogen atoms in our sun were particles, they couldn’t come close enough together to fuse into helium and our solar system would be a cold, dark place where we couldn’t live.  Instead of particles, however, God made protons and electrons as wave functions whose future we can’t predict.

When two wave functions overlap, the protons can fuse and create energy even if the particles repel each other.  The sun is a probability system; we can’t calculate it.  Probability systems aren’t stable because they don’t operate in a predictable way.  They may not be likely to explode or to shut down, but over time, that’s what a probabilistic system will do.  God has to stay involved to keep the sun’s output in a range to keep us alive.

God lets the sun’s output vary.  Sometimes He has out sun put out more heat, this makes our climate get warmer, sometimes it puts out less heat and our climate gets colder, but God keeps it in a range so that we can live on the earth He made, just as God limits the sea:

Fear ye not me? saith the LORD: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?  Jeremiah 5:22

The more scientists study the heavens, the more they learn about the glory of God even if they won’t admit it.  Our theories about gravity don’t work with quantum mechanics, but the sun couldn’t light without quantum mechanics.  Scientists are trying hard to explain gravity, but so far, they can’t.

My point is, the universe could not work as it does if it were predictable.  It’s not a deterministic system that God could wind up and ignore.  Probabilistic systems aren’t stable, so God has to stay in control to keep the universe running smoothly and keep the planets in their orbits.  Colossians 1:17 says, “And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”  Science proves that even if the scientists won’t admit it.

Christians can affirm six-day creation as taught in the Book of Genesis.  On July 8, 2014, Carnegie Science reported[3] that there is a lot more light in the universe than the light generated by the stars.

“Either our accounting of the light from galaxies and quasars is very far off, or there’s some other major source of ionizing photons that we’ve never recognized,” Kollmeier said. “We are calling this missing light the photon underproduction crisis. But it’s the astronomers who are in crisis—somehow or other, the universe is getting along just fine.”

A “photon” is one little piece of light, by “underproduction,” he means that stars don’t make enough light to match the light we can see.  He has one thing right – “the universe is getting along just fine,” it’s the scientists who are messed up.  Rejoice!  We know there has to be more light than the stars make because God made light before He made stars.  On June 30, 2017, Forbes Magazine wrote “Science Uncovers The Origin Of The First Light In The Universe[4].”

After centuries of investigating the origins of the Universe, science has finally uncovered what physically happened to "let there be light" in space. …

So where did this light — the first light in the Universe — first come from? It didn’t come from stars, because it predates the stars.  [emphasis added]

Forbes tells us that light came before the stars!  They explain that light “quanta,” one little piece of light just as a proton is one little piece of matter, interacted with each other and produced bits of matter.  This is like particles colliding in an atom smasher – collisions can create any particle at all if they have enough energy.

When little bits of light bumped into each other, little bits of matter were produced.  Genesis starts with “Let there be light” on day 1; the stars weren’t created until day 4 (Genesis 1:1-15).  Who told Moses to write that light came days before the stars?  Who could imagine that?

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.  Psalm 19:1

The more scientists study the universe, the less they understand how it works.  Sir Isaac Newton thought his laws of gravity could predict how planets would move.  As instruments got better, we saw that the planet Mercury moved in ways his laws did not predict.  Einstein’s theory of relativity explained those differences, but Einstein’s theories of gravity won’t work with the quantum uncertainties which let the stars shine.

In high school, I was told that religious people believe in the “God of the gaps.”  We said God caused whatever science couldn’t explain.  They said that as we understood how things worked, the “God of the gaps” would get smaller and smaller until He disappeared.  Remember the “God is dead” movement in the 1970s?

That isn’t true; gaps are getting bigger.  We don’t need to understand the details, what’s important is that everything scientists learn about light and gravity confirms the creation account in the Book of Genesis, light first, then stars, just as God told Moses.  They know gravity doesn’t predict the motion of the planets or stars.  We know that God keeps the stars and planets in place, but they haven’t a clue.

Medicine and Public Health

Besides telling a bit about creation, God’s rules for public health also confirm the divine nature of the Bible.

And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.  Exodus 15:26

For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.  Mark 7:3

Is washing hands before eating mere religious ritual?  My mother thought there was a practical purpose.  The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  Why do I wash my hands before eating?  Because my mother trained me to do it.  It wasn’t just a command to her, she knew the germ theory of disease.  God always expected obedience even if His people didn’t know why they should wash their hands.  Consider this:

This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.  Numbers 19:14

And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even.  Numbers 19:19

Being unclean as Numbers 19 describes meant you couldn’t touch other people and you couldn’t cook food for others.  After a week, you purified yourself, washed your clothes, and took a bath to be clean.  We now understand the health benefits to following these laws, but Jews obeyed by faith; nobody knew why thousands of years before we discovered germs.

In 1847, doctors’ wards at Vienna General Hospital had three times the death rate from childbed fever than midwives’ wards.  Dr. Semmelweis suspected this was because doctors cut open dead bodies for autopsies and midwives didn’t.  He proved that washing hands between patients reduced fever to less than 1%.

Semmelweis couldn’t explain.  Doctors were angry at the idea that they carried death on their hands and didn’t want to wash.  His results weren’t understood until Louis Pasteur proved the germ theory of disease years after Semmelweis died but God’s laws of washing worked.  To this day, most infections in hospitals are caused when doctors and nurses don’t wash hands between patients!  They see it as a rule, not as a command of God!  It’s in their heads, not in their hearts!

God knows the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge.  A mother must be very careful to pay very close attention to her newborn to keep it alive.  The hormones of pregnancy work on a mother’s brain to make her ears more attentive to a baby’s cry and on her emotions to get her really involved in the child[5].  God puts care for newborns into mothers’ hearts through hormones.

God also commands that new mothers be given physical rest.

Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean. And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled. But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.  Leviticus 12:2-5

Why should giving birth, a natural and honorable process, make a woman unclean?  Why?

An unclean woman couldn’t wash dishes – they’d be unclean and nobody could eat off them.  She couldn’t do laundry – clothes would be unclean and nobody could wear them.  She couldn’t do housework; she got time to rest and to get to know her new baby.  She stayed home instead of coming into the sanctuary.  Staying home protects new babies and mothers from infections.

Nursing was the only way to keep a baby alive.  I’ve been told that girl babies often have a harder time nursing than boy babies and that girls are a bit smaller at birth than boys.

It’s a big deal for a mother when her baby holds enough milk to sleep through the night.  If girls have a harder time nursing and they’re smaller, it would take longer for a baby girl to sleep through the night.

If this is true, God knows all about it.  What did He do?  A mother got 70 days off when she gave birth to a girl and 40 days when she gave birth to a boy.  That extra month made it more likely that the newborn girl would sleep through the night before the mother had to resume her normal routine.

Most American babies are born in hospitals which are expensive!  Mothers are sent home after a day or two, and everybody expects her to get back to the housework.  My mother got a week of help from her mother and a week from my father’s mother.  That was 14 days of help, not 40 days of no housework at all.

The Jews also fasted – the Pharisee described in Luke 18:11-14 bragged that he fasted “twice in the week.”  Christians have always believed that fasting gives medical benefits and some studies are beginning to show that fasting can help with certain medical conditions.

What about the feast of leaven?  God said that yeast represented sin, so:

Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born in the land.  Exodus 12:19

To get rid of all the yeast in your house, you have to clean to white-glove inspection levels as the army does.  This means you pass a white glove over everything.  You fail if there’s any dirt or dust on the glove.

What happens when an entire village gets rid of all the yeast in every house for a week?  That cleans out all other food – seeds, crumbs – and critters starve.  Cleaning came at the time of Passover, the time of year when rats and mice breed.  Villages have a lot fewer insects, rats, or mice if there’s nothing for them to eat.

Christians had the Old Testament during the Middle Ages; Jews could have talked about the “none of these diseases” benefits of obeying God’s laws.  The Jews didn’t give God the glory for their better health; they did not spread the word that God’s laws meant “none of these diseases.”

In the 1340s, the Black Death spread by fleas carried by rats.  Jewish customs of washing and cleaning leaven out of their houses meant that the plague affected them less in the sight of the nations just as God had promised.  Gentiles thought Jews must have caused the plague because they were immune!  There was persecution because Jews didn’t give God the glory!

What about circumcision the 8^th day?  A newborn’s blood has clotting factor which comes from the mother.  Her clotting factor decays and is replaced by the baby’s, but it takes about six days for the baby’s bone marrow to build clotting factor to the normal level.  The cut heals best after the baby’s clotting factor comes.  The 8^th day gives time for boys who’re a bit slow to get ready to clot after the operation.  We now know that circumcision reduces certain kinds of infection.  This confirms what the Bible teaches about public health.  Studying the works of God confirms the Word of God.

Who inspired the Bible writers with this knowledge?  Did they do a double-blind study of circumcising thousands of boys on different days, measure outcomes, and use statistics to determine the best day to do it?  Of did they just do what God told them to do?  God is not only great; He wrote some of His greatness in the Bible for our learning and for our benefit.

The “Theory” of Evolution

Don’t worry about the “theory of evolution.”  The more scientists study genetics, the less they know about how different species “evolved.”  Non-Christians have written books showing huge problems with evolutionary theory.  Evolutionists stopped debating creationists years ago because the creationists had better arguments.  Everything they learn about how critters are born, live, reproduce, and die shrieks of intelligent design, which is another way of saying “God.”

The works of God confirm the Word of God.  God is great, and we need not yield one jot or one tittle of His Word in the face of science falsely so called!  God is great, we can proclaim it!  We’d better proclaim it:

Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.  Mark 8:38 see also Luke 9:26

I don’t want Jesus ashamed of me when He comes back.  I try to spread His Word, and I stand behind it all.

The Second Three Words

The next three words are trickier – “God is great, God is good.”  Christians who have no trouble with the idea that God is great don’t seem to act as though they think that God is good.  People who believe in the goodness of God read the Bible carefully, seeking keys to happiness.  The Bible contains many commands to do this or not to do that.  Why?  Did God write His laws to keep us from having fun?  Or are His laws for our benefit?  Does God love us?  Many writers have found God’s love for us hard to believe:

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?  Psalm 8:4

That question is repeated in Hebrews 2:6 – God’s love for vile sinners really is hard to believe.  God did four things to convince us that He cares for us.  First, He gave us laws telling us how societies should operate.  Except for the supremacy of God, the 10 commandments are found in all religions and in many bodies of law.  Don’t steal, don’t mess with someone else’s woman, don’t tell lies, don’t kill each other – these are the foundations of civilization.  We can’t run a stable family, tribe, or nation without these laws.

Mahatma Gandhi tried to unite Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians; the rich stew of India.  Many of his ideas came from the Bible.  He wrote, “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ” and “If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today.”  He died without Christ and went to Hell.  Gandhi knew Christ’s teachings, but could not accept the human frailty that is so evident among Christians.  He had the Bible which teaches, “they are without excuse.”  God drew Gandhi but he let Christians reject and repel him.  God’s teachings show that He loves us and wants our lives to go well.

Second, God made mothers. You’ve seen mothers care for their children even when their children disobey.  A mother’s love shows us the love of God if we look.  Third, God sent a Savior.  John 3:16 says that God so loved the world … God created salvation because He loves us.  Fourth, God created marriage.  Question:  God loved us enough to send His Son to die in our place.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Romans 5:8

Would our God who loved us enough to create salvation which required the death of His Son and turning His back on His Son (Mt. 27:46, Mk. 15:34) to bless us create marriage to curse us?  Or did God intend marriage for our good?  If a marriage is not good, who’s at fault?  God or the couple?

God listed a few of His laws in His Word, but He wrote most of His laws in His works.

Suppose I jump off a building.  I’ll fall.  Suppose I break my leg.  Can I complain, “How could a loving God let me get hurt?”  Would you sympathize, or would you call me a fool for trying to break God's law of gravity?

The Bible says “by Him all things consist,” and “all things” includes gravity.  You wouldn't sympathize if I got hurt trying to break God's law of gravity, but lots of people break God's laws of marriage which He wrote in the Bible and wonder why they get hurt.

Do we understand God's law of gravity?  No, gravity baffles physicists.  They have no idea how it works, but we had better follow the law of gravity.  Do we understand God's laws of marriage?  No, but we can follow them through faith.  We don’t understand His laws of Salvation either, but we’d better follow the laws of marriage and of salvation if we want an abundant life.

God created salvation; we must be saved His way or we go to Hell when we die.  God created marriage. We have to do marriage His way or we can make life Hell on earth.  I know many marriages which don’t show the torments of Hell, but they aren’t getting nearly as much blessing as God intended when He created marriage.

People must relate to God to get His full blessing.  After they left Egypt, the Israelites wouldn’t talk to God; they wanted Moses to talk to God and tell them what God said.  God was disappointed.  He told Moses:

O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!  Deuteronomy 5:29

God didn’t write commandments to keep us from happiness.  He wants us to obey because keeping His commands blesses us.  Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (John 10:10b).”

There’s a catch to receiving the abundant life Jesus offers – we have to follow His rules.  We know the story of the man who built his house upon the rock, there’s a song about his reward for obedience, but how many of us work to do what the Bible teaches?

The keys to abundant life in marriage and to abundant life in general are found in the Bible, but how do we read the Bible?  People tend to make it more complicated than it is.  Does the Bible lie?  Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (John 17:17).”  No, the Bible doesn’t lie.  God gave us the Bible “for our learning (Romans 15:4).”  If God lied to us in the Bible He wouldn’t be good and when we found out, we’d stop trying to learn from the Bible.

We know that God cares deeply about Children.  Does the Bible lie to children?

There are many things in the Bible children can’t understand, and many I can’t understand, but God is not the author of confusion (I Cor. 14:33).  God didn’t write passages with a simple, false meaning that must be explained through appeals to grammar, history, or writings that aren’t in the Bible.  Anything in the Bible a child can understand is true in the way a child would read it.  If this were not so, children would be confused, which God doesn’t do.

Consider the story of the man who built his house on the sand.  We teach kids a song about it.  We tell them that obeying God’s Word is a wise thing to do and that someone who doesn’t obey is a fool.  Let’s look at passages which kids understand:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.  Ephesians 6:1

Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.  Colossians 3:20

Can children understand those verses?  Yes, but “obey” is often a bad word.  How old do children have to be to understand that it is as hard for their parents to obey God as it is for them to obey their parents?  God expects us to teach His Words to our children:

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.  Deuteronomy 6:7

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  Ephesians 6:4

Where does a father find the “nurture and admonition of the Lord?”  In the Bible.  Your most effective way of teaching the Bible is to let your children see you obey it, even when it’s hard.  What you do in following the Bible speaks so loudly that your children can’t hear what you say about the Bible.  Your words and your actions must say the same thing.  What has this to do with marriage?

Children can understand most marriage verses; your kids see whether you’re obeying them or not.  There are also marriage-related verses which children know without having to read the Bible:

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD.  Proverbs 18:22

Where does a child go whenever anything goes wrong in the child’s universe?  Right to Mommy.  A child knows that his father’s wife is a good thing indeed.  Adults should learn from this.

I’ve met men who complain about their wives instead of appreciating them.  Philippians 2:14 says, “Do all things without murmurings and disputings.”  Murmuring about a wife makes her unhappy; Proverbs says five times that an unhappy wife makes her family unhappy.  God doesn’t like murmuring either (1 Cor. 10:10).

Parents who don’t follow these oh-so-obvious commands teach their children that the Bible is only a stick for parents to beat kids; it says nothing about adult behavior.  Is it any surprise that so many walk away from the Word of God when they grow up?  They’ve been taught that adults don’t follow the Bible, so why bother?

Believing that God is good has been the foundation of our marriage.  From her youth up, my wife wanted to be a wife and mother.  She knew she would have to find a husband who would pay her expenses.  As she read the Bible, she realized that God expected her to obey her husband and to follow him.

Instead of complaining about how irrelevant the Bible was to modern customs, she knew that obeying God would bless her somehow because God was good.  She realized that she would have to find a man whom she could obey.  While she was in college, she met a man she expected to marry.  When she asked God, however, God told her not to marry him.  She pulled away from him because she was convinced that God had her best interests at heart.

When I told her I was going to date her, she said okay, but she set out terms and conditions.  “God made me to be a treasure for my husband,” she said, and insisted that I agree that the purpose of dating was to decide whether she and I would marry.  From my point of view, this was good - she took God seriously!  I knew that if she was serious about following God, if she accepted everything the Bible tells wives to do, marrying her would be a good idea if I did my best to do what God tells husbands to do.

Indeed, it has been.  We had no idea where marriage would take us, but we knew that God would get us there if we followed His rules.  We trusted Him to order our lives together because we knew that God is good and had seen that He had ordered our lives while we were single.

The next three words are “God is good.”  Do you believe that enough to obey the Bible because obeying God will be good for you?  How can you trust God with your salvation if you don’t trust Him to order your life?

Last Four Words

Years ago, I asked a Junior Church class, “Is your home better when your mother’s happy or when she’s unhappy?”  They looked at me like I had a hole in my head.  They all knew that mother’s mood affected the whole house.  Why would I ask such a silly question?

Then I asked, “Would it make your mother happy if you thanked her for cooking or doing dishes or laundry or anything she does?”  They said “sure,” they knew that thanking mom made her happy.  I said, “You can make the mood in your home better by praising your mother.  You’re alive because she changed your diapers.  You’d have died if she hadn’t.  Have any of you thanked your mothers for changing your diapers?  Would that be a good idea?”  I mentioned the advantages of an “Attitude of Gratitude” often over the next few weeks.

When I checked with their mothers, not one of those kids had thanked their mothers for anything.  They knew in their heads that thanking mom would make life better, but they didn’t do it because it hadn’t gotten into their hearts.  “Praise ye the Lord” appears 24 times in the book of Psalms.  They know the story of the foolish man who built his house upon the sand.  Can kids understand, “If ye love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15)?”  Why don’t kids praise the Lord?  Same reason we don’t.

God knows that husbands are cement-headed when it comes to wives.  Kids know that when mamma ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy, but God had to warn husbands 5 times in one book that an unhappy woman is a hardship.  Kids should be taught to appreciate their mothers:

Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.  Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.  Proverbs 31:28-29

Her husband praises her, and the Song of Solomon teaches that he praises her in detail many times per day.  Kids are born selfish; they don’t appreciate anyone or anything unless they’re taught.  A father has to teach his children by command and by example that they have the most wonderful mother in the world; she “excelleth them all.”  He has to teach them to appreciate what God has given them instead of worrying about what God has not given.  He has to teach them to appreciate their mother instead of complaining.

He needs to teach them to appreciate the rain that waters the earth and gives us drink.  They need to appreciate the glories of God’s creation, the birds and the beasts, in all His marvelous wonder.  Kids who spend too much time talking to other kids via smart phones grow up to be self-centered and unappreciative.  They need to be taught to appreciate what they have so they won’t whine about what they don’t have.  They need to be taught the value of hard work to get what they want instead of complaining.

Moses warned God’s people that they would be carried into captivity unless they served God and loved God with grateful hearts and appreciated everything He had given them:

Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; ⁴⁸Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.  Deuteronomy 28:47-48

They didn’t love God, they didn’t appreciate the blessings He had given them, so He took everything away, “they were in want of all things.”  If we aren’t grateful for what God gives, He may take it away, but we tend to take His gifts for granted.  “We never miss the water ‘til the well runs dry.”

This brings us to the last 4 words.  God is great; God is good, let us thank Him.  The Bible speaks of the wonderful works of God 9 times.  “Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!” appears 4 times in Psalm 107.  God wants us to keep His commandments for our good.  The Psalmist wants us to praise God for our benefit!  Kids know in their heads that praising mothers will make their homes happier; fathers need to help them hide that principle in their hearts so they’ll do it.  The Song of Solomon teaches married people to praise each other and how to praise each other.

Even lost people can learn God’s laws about the blessings of praise in a marriage by looking at His works:

“Expressing appreciation to your partner, noticing the things you love about them and telling them that you love those things about them,” said Ms. Joel, “just has wondrous effects. They feel appreciated, and then in turn they feel better, and just expressing the gratitude makes you feel better, and then they want to reciprocate the gratitude, so then they appreciate you more which makes you feel better.”[6]

Ms. Joel understands that “just expressing the gratitude makes you feel better.”  Of course it does!  If you think of all the wonderful things God has given you, you’ll be grateful for what God has given you and not worry about what God hasn’t given you.  We praise God for salvation, but how many of us praise God for marriage?  How many of us praise God for giving us spouses?  Thanking my wife for letting God give her to me and for all the work she does makes her happier!  Ya think?

Kids don't need the warnings in the Bible about an unhappy woman making people unhappy; they know without being told.  Here’s another Biblical concept children know without seeing it written down:

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD.  Proverbs 18:22

Kids figure this out early.  When kids find that the universe is even slightly out of line, what do they do?  They scream for mommy or, if they can walk, they run and find mommy.  They know that mommy is a good thing and that she can right most of the wrongs they encounter.

Kids know that it’s important to them that their father sees their mother as a good thing.  My youngest son was about six months old when he started clapping whenever I kissed or hugged his mother.  I don’t know how he knew that my loving her was important to him, but he knew.

This is all the theology you need for a Godly marriage in 10 words:  God is great, God is good, let us thank Him.  God’s people didn’t appreciate the “land flowing with milk and honey,” He exiled them to Babylon and they lost the blessing of His gift.  If a husband doesn’t appreciate his wife, she’ll be unhappy.  If a wife isn’t grateful for her husband, he’ll be unhappy.  Having an unhappy spouse makes everyone unhappy.  If both are unhappy, the family is miserable.  Have an attitude of gratitude if you want God’s blessing!

So husbands, can you tell your wife, “For God so loved man that He gave him woman; for God so loved me that He gave me you?”  As the kids knew that appreciating their mothers would make life better, just about every man knows that saying that and meaning it would make life better, but that’s only head knowledge.

Men, it’s in your heads, but will you put it in your hearts?  Look at your wife and repeat after me, “For God so loved man that He gave him woman; for God so loved me that He gave me you?”

Will you build your marriage on the rock of working to appreciate and give, or will you build on the sand of trying to get?  You know the story, which will you choose?  God is great, God is good, let us thank Him.

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[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-paper-claims-our-understanding-of-gravity-is-totally-wrong

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/09/15/proof-of-god-playing-dice-with-the-universe-found-in-the-suns-interior/?sh=2eff90203b03

[3] https://carnegiescience.edu/news/cosmic-accounting-reveals-missing-light-crisis

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/30/science-uncovers-the-origin-of-the-first-light-in-the-universe/

[5] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-science-motherhood-180977456/

[6] “Can Scientific Relationship Advice Save Your Marriage?” New York Times, Feb. 9, 2015, http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/can-scientific-relationship-advice-save-your-marriage/?_r=0