The Marriage Covenant

Few of us remember what the Marriage Covenant really means. And I'm likely not going where you think I might be going.

It's laid out pretty clearly in the Old Testament in several places, starting with Genesis 2:19-25. The six periods of creation have already happened (Genesis 1), in verse 19, the Lord brings all the creations to Adam and has him name them. There is no help(meet) for Adam, so the Lord creates a woman, and (this is the point most people know, but miss) joins them together as husband and wife in a marriage covenant.

Think about that. What kind of covenant is that? Death has not entered the world yet, so it is an eternal, everlasting, covenant of marriage, made so because it was performed by the Lord Himself. A covenant and the blessing pertaining to the covenant made by the Lord, is never broken by Him, but is often cast away by us. A covenant has fixed terms and blessings. When we choose to accept the Lord's covenant, and its terms, we receive its blessings.

In the original marriage covenant, the Lord extended eternal companionship, an eternal family unit, eternal offspring (multiply and replenish) among other things. But in order to obtain those blessings, one has to choose to come into the covenant, and be bound by it.

I'll accept that it's hard to get all that from Genesis 2. How do we know that this is true? We know that Adam (and Eve) were given authority directly from God to perform work and his covenants. Abel for example, was authorized by Adam to perform sacrifice, Cain was not, he had to go through his brother, which didn't sit well with Cain. You know the result. But I digress.

We know that the authority to establish and perform eternal marriage covenants continued down through Adam's descendants. We know this because the Lord extends the same covenant with Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 17:1-16). It continues through Isaac. Abraham is very concerned that Isaac not marry outside of the eternal marriage covenant (Genesis 24:1-7) and so he sends him to "his people" who are living within covenant, to choose a wife who has been brought up within that framework of authority. This is how we get Rebekah.

Later, Rebekah sees that of her two sons, Esau is not covenant minded, while Jacob is. Esau demonstrates this initially by selling his birthright covenant for food (the " but it's what I want " mindset). He then chooses to marry outside the covenant (Genesis 26:34-35). In doing so, he accepted his marriage would be a shadow of glory, rather than the eternal marriage he could have had by accepting God's terms in covenant of eternal marriage. Covenant marriage starts by marrying someone who is already living within (or willing to live) the terms of the covenant (duh.) The Hittites were not. This choice of Esau's caused his parents great sorrow.

A small segue. Years pass. Esau becomes a great nation. He becomes very wealthy. Eventually he becomes reconciled to the fact that he never was personally willing to abide by the terms of God's covenants and he and Jacob are reconciled. But this is the part we miss: all the reconciliation and long-term civil contracts made, still do NOT give Esau an eternal marriage covenant.

The story is repeated with Jacob. His parents, having learned they need to be more pro-active, send Jacob to an area populated by people already living God's covenants. There he meets Laban, and is married by eternal covenant to Leah and then Rachel.

Here's the point. Like Esau, you can call it whatever you want. You can get a piece of paper and call it marriage, but unless it is performed by God, or someone possessing His true authority, you can't call it a covenant, eternal marriage, nor can you expect to get all of the blessings from one.

Isaac and Rebekah didn't "sorrow greatly" because Esau married the girl down the road. They "sorrowed greatly" because they saw him rejecting God and His covenants, and by default, chose the consequences of that decision (Genesis 26:2-5.) They did everything they could to guide him into a different choice, but he still chose to "marry out." 

It's interesting that after this Isaac and Rebekah didn't just throw in the towel, saying, well, that's it. There aren't enough women living within covenant, so we'll just accept that our sons have to marry whoever they can find. Or take the position that covenant marriage was too difficult so we'll settle for a civil (non-covenant) marriage, or if that's even too hard, we'll just do away with marriage altogether.

No. They decided to dig in, and do all they could  to make sure that their other children had a chance of an eternal, covenant marriage. 

We have that same choice today. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of United States is going to hear cases to determine whether or not the civil marriages we perform in the United States are going to be thrown out entirely, by changing the entire definition of marriage. 

Before you read this blog, you might not have been able to see how far away we have stepped from what God established. God established the blessing of eternal, covenant marriage for us. Most of us have stepped away from that into a civil marriage which lasts only until "death do us part." Civil marriage nice as it is, is a shadow of what marriage could be. Most of us don't know how or where, or what we need to do in order to qualify for a covenant marriage. Far fewer of those who do know how, where or what, choose to do it.

So we have stepped from a knowing covenant, to a (usually) unknowing civil shadow, and now we stand poised to accept not even that. 

Personally, I want you to have the chance of a covenant marriage. Because I want you to have that opportunity, even if you don't know where or how to get it, or even if you're not sure you want it right now, I am not going to do anything to lower your chances of getting one. 

That means I'm not  going to support the entire rewriting of marriage as an institution. I'm not going to support replacing echoes of marriage glory with complete and utter darkness. I know that people will take their little slingshots and hurl big boulders my way because of that stand. I'm okay with that. My kids do the same thing when I say "no" to something I believe will cause them harm. 

I care about you enough to not help you hurl yourself off a marriage cliff. I just hope you care enough about yourself to come to a screeching halt, and realize just how close to the edge we all are.