R.C. SPROUL: Just last week I went to a wedding,
and it was one of the most interesting weddings I've ever attended. There were over five hundred
people there, the bride was gorgeous, but the thing that grabbed my attention at this
particular wedding ceremony was the creativity of the wedding ceremony. The wedding lasted
over an hour, and the bride and the groom had brainstormed together with the pastor
in order to insert new and different and exciting elements into the wedding service. And I enjoyed
those, but right in the middle of the ceremony they inserted portions of the traditional,
classic wedding ceremony; and I noticed that when I began to hear the words from that traditional
ceremony, that my attention perked up, and I was moved; and I -- I thought to myself,
I thought, "There's just no way to improve on this. This is so beautiful. Those words
are so meaningful. Why can't we just stay with the traditional service?" Then I thought,
"Well, I'm probably just old-fashioned, one of these fuddy-duddy ministers, and so on."
And then I thought, "Maybe the reason I like that traditional service so much is that because
I've heard it so many times. Most people only really hear it once -- when
they get married or when they're participating in somebody else's wedding. But when you're
a clergyman you have the benefit of doing it over and over and over again so that the
words now become sharp in their definition. And as I thought of that traditional wedding
ceremony, I realized that a great deal of thought and care had been filled in each word,
and so we have a tradition that has developed in this wedding service. But we have all felt
the tension in our culture, as young people more and more are saying no to the traditional
wedding ceremony and to the whole traditional concept of marriage. People have experienced
pain in their own marriages and in their families. We know that more and more young people are
coming from broken homes, and there's a fear that's emerged, a suspicion about the whole
business of marriage. And so we see couples living together rather than jumping into marriage
for fear that the cost of that kind of a commitment may be too much. It may be too heavy and make
themselves too vulnerable. And so we're at a point in our culture where one of the most
stable and, what we thought once, permanent traditions is being challenged every day. I think most of us have seen the movie or
the Broadway play Fiddler on the Roof. How many of you have seen that? Okay? Remember
that? I particularly like the movie version of it where we have the story of that venerable
Russian Jewish patriarch, Tevye, who his whole life revolves around his daughters. Oh, how
he loves his daughters, and he looks forward to their future. He plans for their future,
and he gets involved with the matchmaker in the village who is supposed to establish mates
and the match for his daughters. But suddenly the girls, one at a time, come to their father,
and they say, "Papa, but we don't love that man that the matchmaker has chosen. I love
the tailor," or, "I love the butcher," or whatever, and these girls begin to pull at
the heartstrings of their father one by one, and they say, "Papa, please. Let me marry
the man that I love." And poor Tevye. He's torn apart by this because on the one hand,
he wants to make his daughters happy, but on the other hand -- he says, "On the one
hand, and on the other hand" -- he wants to maintain his allegiance to the traditions.
And so when he struggles with his daughters and says, "No, you can't marry the tailor
or whoever," the daughter says, "Well why not?" And he said, "It's the tradition." And that should have been enough. He thought
that was explanation enough. You can't do it; it's the tradition. But then they asked
the next question, "But Papa, why is it the tradition?" And Tevye scratches his head,
and he says, "Why is it the tradition? This is tradition! That's all. It's what my father
did, that's what my grandfather did, and that's what his father before him did. It's the tradition,"
but he couldn't give a reason for the establishing of the tradition in the first place. And there
was the crisis. They had a tradition that was hanging in midair. It was precarious. What was the title of the movie? Fiddler on
the Roof. What in the world did a fiddler on the roof have to do with this story of
this old man and his daughters who wanted to get married? Remember at the opening scene
in the movie, as the soundtrack gets moving, and we see this little man dancing and playing
his fiddle on a steeply pitched roof. That's the symbol for the entire movie. The message
is contained right in that because here is a man dancing and fiddling on a steeply pitched
roof in a position that is highly precarious. At any second we expect that fiddler to slip
and to slide down the roof and crash into the ground; and the whole point of that image
is this: that a tradition that is not understood, a tradition that is empty of its roots is
a precarious as a man trying to dance and fiddle on a roof like that. Sooner or later
it will fall, and it will be destroyed. Now the Christian has to ask this question:
Why do we have a traditional order for marriage? Why do we have marriage at all? One of the
things I like about the traditional wedding ceremony is that in the wedding ceremony words
are mentioned that explain to us why there is such a thing as marriage. We are told in
that wedding ceremony that marriage is ordained and instituted by God -- that is to say that
marriage is not something that just springs up arbitrarily out of social conventions or
human taboos. Marriage is not invented by men. Marriage is ordained and instituted by
God. Let's take a moment and look back at the origins
of marriage. We go to the earliest chapters of the Old Testament -- to the opening chapters
of the book of Genesis. And in the first chapter of Genesis, of course, we read the creation
account -- the narrative by which God creates the world, and He does it in stages. First
He cries out, "Let there be light," and then He divides the light from the darkness. And
then the next day He may divide the dry land from the seas and the oceans, and then He
begins to fill the earth with vegetation -- with flowers and trees and so on -- and then He
adorns His creation even further by making beasts of the field and birds of the air and
fish that swim in the sea. But then as we go through that narrative, we see that the
creation story reaches its crescendo with the crowning act of creation where God scoops
down into that earth and grabs a piece of clay, and He begins to shape it and form it
and mold it, and then He breathes into it His own breath, and we read that man becomes
a living soul. Now we also notice something going on here
- that at every stage of God's work of creation, God utters a benediction. Now we're all familiar
with this word "benediction." We hear it every Sunday morning in church. It's the end of
the service, and some of us can't wait for that to happen -- to see that minister raise
his hands and say, "The Lord bless you and keep you. Now we can go home and eat or do
whatever" -- particularly if the sermon was boring. So the benediction to us means the
end of the service, but what's going on in the benediction is, as we see in the word,
the root here "bene" means "well or good," and "diction" -- you know what it means to
have good diction or poor diction -- it has to do with speaking; so that a benediction
is a good word where someone wishes you well. And so we see God's benediction being pronounced
over each stage of His creation. As He creates the seas and the mountains, He looks at what
He's made, and He says, "That's good." And as He makes the animals and considers them,
He looks at that part of His creation, and He says, "That's good." And so we see this
benediction being repeated throughout chapter one and into chapter two of Genesis. But suddenly
something ominous comes into this story of creation in the middle of chapter two. There's
a very subtle mood shift. For the first time in the history of the universe, God notices
something that provokes from His mouth not a benediction, but what we call a malediction.
A malediction means speaking evil. A curse, for example, would be a malediction, a statement
of judgment. Now think for a moment and ask yourself, "What
is the thing that provoked the first malediction from the mouth of God? What was the very first
thing that God saw in His creation about which He said, "That's not good"? We find it in
the eighteenth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, where God looks down at His creation.
He sees man, He sees the animals, and He says, "It is not good that man should be alone."
His first malediction is directed against the situation of human loneliness, and so
we ask, "Why marriage?" God provides an answer to human loneliness. I remember the Danish philosopher Soren Kirkegaard,
who wrote frequently about the pain of human experience, and Kirkegaard said that there's
a -- there's a time for solitude. There's a time for when each person needs to get alone,
to be by themselves, to collect and gather his thoughts, to reflect, to meditate. We
remember how Jesus himself from time to time found it necessary to withdraw from the multitudes
and the groups and just get away by himself. And so solitude is something we need, but
we don't want it in larger doses. At the same time, as we need those moments where we have
our own space, and we can be my ourselves and think, still the worst punishment that
we can conceive of, of giving people who are incarcerated, apart from physical torture
and so on, is to consign them to solitary confinement, cutting them off from all human
fellowship and the warmth of companionship with another person. And I think it's also true, as we see in creation,
that God creates man and woman as sexual creatures. "Male and female created He them," so that
there was a certain attraction between the male and the female, a certain complementing
of each own individual humanity found in a relationship of intimacy between two people
-- a man and a woman. And so there in the garden, God, as a special act of creation,
makes the woman. She's not an afterthought. She's not inferior in dignity to her husband.
In fact, there's something special about the creation of woman. When God sees that it's
not good for man to be alone, God brings all of the animals and parades them past Adam,
and Adam is looking for a helpmate. Adam is looking for a partner, and he sees the kangaroo
hopping by, and he says, "That's not what I had in mind," right? And then God brings
this beautiful, well-groomed German Shepard, and God -- Adam looked at that, and he said,
"Wow!" He said, "That is a magnificent animal! I can see how that guy could bring my slippers
to me in the morning, and on a cold night I could snuggle up against him, and we can
call it a one-dog night. If it's really cold, I can have a couple more and call it a three-dog
night." He said, "But it's still just not quite what I was looking for." So then God
brings this palomino pony riding down the street, and Adam says, "Now that's interesting.
I could ride on that one -- save me a lot of labor -- can pull my plow, get me from
one town to the next. That would be a tremendous labor-saving device, but God, this -- I don't
want to be picky, but it's still not what I had in mind." And so God said, "All right.
You don't like anything here. I'm going to put you to sleep." And God puts him to sleep,
and while Adam is experiencing anesthetic, okay? He has open chest, thoracic surgery,
and God takes from his side a rib, and He fashions that and creates a woman. And t hen
Adam awakens, and he looks at this special act of creation, and I don't know what his
exact words are, but I'm thinking they went something like this: He saw her, and he said,
"Hoo-hoo-hoo." He said, "Whoa! Wooo-man!" And that's where the name came from. "I'm
make --" That's apocryphal. I'm making that up, folks, but I think -- he was beside himself
when he saw that first woman. And he said, "That's it! That's now bone of my bones, flesh
of my flesh." And God said, "And the man shall leave his
father and his mother, and he shall cleave to his wife." God ordained marriage, not as
punishment, not as ball-and-chain bondage, but for human fulfillment, for intimacy -- the
finest expression of what it means to be a human being in this world. Now I notice that when young people come to
me, and they want to write their own wedding ceremonies -- and I appreciate the spirit
behind them when I ask, "Why do you want to write your own ceremony?" They say, "Because
I want my marriage to mean something. I don't want it to be an empty tradition. I don't
want to just say meaningless words and sign a piece of paper and have that be that," and
so I say, "Fine." I say, "Great spirit. Go ahead; try your hand at it. Be creative. Write
the wedding ceremony, but the only proviso I give is that it must be an authentic ceremony.
All of the elements of real marriage have to be there, or I can't perform the ceremony."
And I've seen wonderful wedding ceremonies written by young people. They come back with
all kinds of creative things, but you know there's one thing I have never seen in a homemade
wedding ceremony. I've seen them say -- everyone acknowledge that marriage is instituted and
ordained by God, but I have yet to have a couple express that marriage is regulated
by God's commandments, which of course, is an integral part of the traditional ceremony,
where we acknowledge that not only does God create marriage and give marriage to us as
a gift, but when He gives it to us for our well-being, He does not abandon thereby His
sovereign authority over marriage. God regulates marriage, and He institutes it in a certain
format. The first thing we have to understand about
this regulation is that God creates marriage in the form of a covenant. Now dear friends,
the whole idea of a covenant is rooted very, very deeply in biblical Christianity. In fact
we even divide the Bible, don't we, between the old covenant and the new covenant. Our
redemption is based on the concept of a covenant; but what is a covenant? A covenant is simply
an agreement, a contract between two or more persons, and at the heart of a covenant is
a promise. Now in biblical terms, every covenant had stipulations. It had provisions -- rules,
if you will -- that had to be kept for the covenant to stay intact. And there's something
else I want to denote in terms of biblical covenants. In the Bible there was no such
thing as a private covenant. A covenant was something that was undertaken in the presence
of witnesses. How many times have you heard young people say, "Why do I have to go through
a marriage ceremony? Say a few words, sign a piece of paper -- what difference does it
make? Why can't I just have an agreement with my girlfriend?" Friends, it's one thing for
a man to whisper into the ears of a woman in the backseat of an automobile where nobody
hears it, where nobody is going to call him into account for what he has promised, and
to stand up in a church or in city hall, where in front of your parents, in front of your
friends, in front of the civil authorities, and in front of the ecclesiastical authorities,
in front of every authority structure in your life, you stand there and publicly, before
God and these witnesses, make a promise. You take vows -- sacred vows, holy vows, and you
make a commitment that if you don't take it seriously, maybe your parents will take it
seriously, or your friends. I once was involved in counseling a divorce
case that involved a triangle, and I was pleading with this woman who was involved in this triangle
to break this relationship and return to her husband, and she says to me, "Hey, who am
I hurting? I want to be happy. This is just between my husband and me and my lover. The
church doesn't need to be involved with it," and I showed her my appointment book, and
she couldn't believe it that I had spoken to and made appointments with twenty-eight
people who were directly affected by this relationship. I had to meet with both parents
-- both sets of parents -- the children, the next-door neighbor, the friends, uncles and
aunts, employers who were all upset about the sea of devastation that was going on with
one broken marriage. And in this case, this woman's friends cared enough about her, her
church cared enough about her to get involved. But she wanted it to be a private matter;
but covenants aren't private, and we need to understand that -- that there's a big difference
between whispering something privately and signing a piece of paper and doing it formally
in ceremony at a significant moment and a significant occasion where we mark that moment,
and we make that sacred vow. Then, you see, we have a covenant. I would say that marriage is the most precious
of all human institutions we have. It's also the most dangerous. It's dangerous because
it's into our marriage that we pour our greatest and deepest feelings of expectations. That's
where our emotions are on the line. That's where we are most vulnerable, as we will see
in the lectures that will follow this one. That's where we can achieve the greatest happiness,
but it's also where we can achieve the greatest disappointments, the most frustration, and
the most pain. That's why, if I am going to enter into a relationship where there's that
much at stake, I need something more than a superficial, "Hey, yeah. I'm committed.
Yeah, I'll love you. Stick with me, honey," you know? Because even with the formal ceremonies,
even with the authority structures being involved, we're at the place now where roughly fifty
percent of those who are married dissolve the marriage, and the statistics are much
higher if we would ask this question, "If you had it to do over again, would you marry
the person you're married to?" It's tragic to hear how many people answer that question
without even hesitating and say, "No. I mean I realize I'm in it, and I'm stuck. I'm going
to stay. I'm not going to get…but boy, if I had it to do over again. If I could just
be free." But something has been lost about the sacred and holy character of the vow and
of the covenant that is regulated by God's commandments. It's for our happiness, but it's also
for His glory.
