Love Worth Finding

Guest (Male): Are you faithful to God's idea of family? Listen to Adrian Rogers.

Adrian Rogers: Now, I know that the intellectuals of our day have different ideas. They have taught us that homosexuality can be accepted as normal. What they call today an alternative lifestyle.

We've been told today that unmarried motherhood really poses no serious problems. And we've been taught that marriage is not sacred because really nothing is sacred. And our great commandment today is, "Thou shalt not be judgment." And so the new God in America is the God of tolerance.

I believe it's time that somebody spoke up for the family and for family faithfulness.

Guest (Male): Welcome to Love Worth Finding. Pastor, teacher, and author Adrian Rogers said this, "Real marriage did not come from the swamps of immorality or by evolution, but marriages are made by heaven."

But in this day and age, it seems the institution of marriage has become so polluted by the world, it's hard to see it for what it is and remember God's original design. In Matthew chapter 19, Jesus speaks about marriage. If you have your Bible, turn there now as Adrian Rogers reminds us of the sacredness of marriage.

Adrian Rogers: I want us to read here from the Word of God, Matthew chapter 19, verses 1 through 6. And it came to pass that when Jesus had finished these sayings, He departed from Galilee and came into the coast of Judea beyond Jordan. And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them there. The Pharisees also came unto Him, tempting Him and saying unto Him, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?"

And He answered and said unto them, "Have you not read that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female? And God said, 'For this cause, shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain, or they two, shall be one flesh.' Wherefore, they are no more twain or two but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

Now, I want to talk to you about the sacredness of marriage. We see marriage as we know it, as God intended it, to be unraveling, and experts tell us that soon half of all children will grow up in single-parent homes, and most mothers will work outside the home. Much of this problem is caused by divorce.

The first three verses of our chapter, the matter of divorce comes out. And the disciples ask Jesus, "Can a man just divorce his wife for any reason?" And Jesus, in answering that question, tells us about what marriage is intended to be: one man for one woman until death do them part. "For this cause, shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife. They twain shall be one flesh."

"And what God hath therefore joined together, let not man put asunder." Divorce is an American tragedy because divorced parents produce broken children, and broken children produce broken homes, which produce broken children, which produce broken homes, which produce broken children.

It is a vicious cycle. God has said in His Word in Malachi chapter 2 and verse 16, that He hates divorce. God literally hates divorce.

Now, I know that the intellectuals of our day have different ideas. They have taught us that sexuality between unmarried people really is incidental. It causes no moral problem. And you young people in the choir, let me tell you, God absolutely, totally forbids any kind of sexual liaison outside of the bonds of holy matrimony.

We've been taught also that homosexuality can be accepted as normal, what they call today an alternative lifestyle. We've been told today that unmarried motherhood really poses no serious problems. And we've been taught that marriage is not sacred because really nothing is sacred. And our great commandment today is, "Thou shalt not be judgment." And so the new God in America is the God of tolerance.

I believe it's time that somebody spoke up for the family and for family faithfulness. So I want you to see first of all that real marriage did not come from the swamps of immorality or by evolution, but marriages are made by heaven.

Look in verse 4. And He answered, these are the words of Jesus now, and He answered and said unto them, "Have you 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 unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.'"

Now, all marriage counseling, all marriage preaching, all marriage design can be summed up in three words that Jesus just gave: leave, cleave, and one flesh. Leave, cleave, and one flesh.

Now, what your job is as a parent, and many of you are parents who have children who are getting to be marriageable age, or you have little children who one day will be marriageable age, your chief assignment from God, so far as that child is concerned, is to prepare that child to leave home. That is, to work yourself out of a job to where that child no longer needs you.

I'm so grateful for the home. I'm grateful for the home that I have where I never, never ever entered in my mind that my father might leave my mother, and of course he did not. I cannot tell you the security that I had as a child.

Now, I did not come up in a wealthy family. As a matter of fact, I suppose our family would be classified as lower middle class. I was born during the Great Depression. And the Great Depression that began in 1929, I was born 1931. I have a real good idea that I was not planned. As a matter of fact, I got bold enough to ask my mom about it one day, and she just smiled, and I knew the answer. I was not planned.

But I was in God's plan. And I came along back in those days, and work was hard to find. Money was hard to come by. Some of you who are older know something of what it was like in the Great Depression in those days. And it still bothers me to death to go into a restaurant and have one of my children order a hamburger and take a bite out of it and leave the rest on the plate. It just it gets all over me. Not because I'm stingy, not because I don't want to spend money. I just cannot bear to see things go to waste. That's the way we were raised.

But, we had some wonderful times as a family. We lived in Florida, which was wonderful. I was born and raised in paradise and didn't know it. And really. I mean, I was a grown man before I'd seen snow. The first time I saw it, I thought it was grits all over the ground. I didn't know what it was.

But because my dad sometimes did not have work - he was never a lazy man - but there would be times when we would go over to a place called Singer Island, right off the coast of Florida there, with the Lake Worth Lagoon between West Palm Beach and Singer Island. We would go over there to the most beautiful pristine beaches you've ever seen. And we kids would seine for minnows, so my dad could fish. My mother would bring some Crisco and a big black frying pan, and some bread. And my dad would catch fish.

We'd build a bonfire there on the beach and fry those fish, eat those pork and beans or whatever they called it, Van Camp pork and beans. I remember one time we had a can in the fire and it exploded and hit us all with hot beans. I'll never forget that.

But you know, I look back on those experiences. The best times I ever had as a child, I had because my parents didn't have much. When we were together as a family, when dad worked, mom stayed home, we sat down at the table together and had a meal together and had family fellowship and lived together as a family. Now, those are wonderful times. But you can't live that way all the time. And so my father taught reliance. He taught us to work. We had to work. He didn't give us a lot of things.

So many times parents are saying, "You know, I want to give my children things I never had." Well, if you can do that, I'm happy for you. But I hope that you can give your children the things you did have, that you learned from your parents. Those things of honesty and decency and industry and fidelity and faithfulness. And know what it is if you do wrong to be carried out to the woodshed and have the board of education applied to the seat of knowledge. That happened in our home.

But a parent comes to the place where that parent has to work that child out of a home. The child has to learn to leave father and mother and cleave to his wife. That's difficult. Ann Amau, M.O.W. is her name, wrote an interesting article that I read one time and I've never forgotten it. She said there are in child-parent relationships two kinds of love. There is need love and there is need to be needed love.

A little baby is going to love father and mother not because father and mother are wise or gentle or kind or anything else. The baby just loves the parent because the baby needs the parent. And that is need love. Parents have children because they need to be needed. And so we come into this world with need love, and need. And parents have children, they need to be needed. And so when you get need love and need to be needed love, that is a wonderful relationship between parent and child, and that's the way God intended.

But then that child will grow. When a young man begins to assert his independence, his autonomy, sometimes, and it mostly is the mother, but sometimes the father, we have this need love. And so we begin to create artificial needs to keep them dependent upon us, to keep the apron strings tied. And we don't want them to go off and find somebody else and marry somebody else.

And mothers sometimes just commit emotional incest to keep that child dependent. Because while the child no longer has the need love, the parent still has the need to be needed love. And so when the child is trying to break away, to grow up, to assert his or her independence and autonomy, the mother is making rules now that are maybe unnecessary. And the father is building hedges that ought not to be there. Now, there are some restrictions that ought to be there.

A man told me one time, he was a businessman, he said, "Adrian, raising children is like building executives in business." You let them make mistakes, you just don't let them make any big mistakes. Now, you have to allow your children. If he wants to buy that old clunker car with his savings, and you know it's wrong, maybe that's the lesson he needs to learn, that he's he's about to pour money down a rat hole. You need to let him make some of those small mistakes like that. But you don't let him marry the wrong girl if you can help it. My wife, Joyce, prayed my kids away from some.

And, but there's that need to be needed and there is that need love. Now, when a child doesn't have that need love as much as he or she ought to, and they begin to assert themselves, sometimes a parent will say, "You are rebellious." And they're not rebellious. But by calling it rebellion, you sometimes engender rebellion and make rebellion out of something that ought not to be rebellion at all.

Folks, I'm telling you what we do as parents, and it's something contrary to human nature, is this, that we work ourselves out of a job, but not out of a relationship. The tighter you hold them, the more they're going to want to get away. But when you release them, they don't want to get away. Oh, they may go off and get married, that's what you want. But when you release them, they will come back as the best friends you've ever had.

You work yourself out of a job, but you don't work yourself out of a relationship. Now, "for this cause, shall a man leave his father and his mother." The highest relationship, the highest relationship in human relationships is not parent-child. The highest relationship is not child-parent. The highest relationship of human relationships is husband and wife. God says that is one flesh. We leave father and mother, but we cleave unto our mate.

Now, this is God's plan for us. Parents are not the supreme commitment therefore. Your parents are not your supreme commitment. Now, you honor your parents. And if your parents are old and feeble, and there's no one else, and they don't have the means, it's your responsibility, your duty to take care of them. And the Bible says if you don't do it, you're worse than an infidel. But your parents are not your supreme commitment. And your children are not your supreme commitment according to the Bible.

Mate to mate is higher than parent to child or child to parent. I want to say to you businessmen, your business is not your supreme commitment. I'm sick and tired of seeing these corporations move people around to the hurt of the home. A man is not a success when he has a divorce at 28, and another at 35, and a cardiac at 50. He may have a pocket full of money. But God's plan is that a man puts his wife first of all human relationships. "For this cause, shall a man leave father and mother." Leave is the first word. "Cleave unto his wife." That's the second word, "cleave unto his wife."

The word "cleave" means to weld or to glue. You know, when a thing is welded together, it's many times stronger at that part than it is at any other time. Divorce is never even to be thought of. When you get on the matrimonial airplane, you throw away your parachute. You show me couples who think of divorce as an option, and I will show you a couple that have already a great potential for the disintegration of the marriage. But you show me a couple who have just as it were, clipped the word "divorce" out of their dictionary, and I'll show you a couple who are going to stand together.

Now, people whether they are stay married or whether they get divorced, they all have problems. I tell our young people when I counsel with them, there are no problems too big to solve. They're just people too small to solve them. So our job is to leave father and mother. Our job is to cleave to our wives. That is, we become mentally, morally, psychologically, and spiritually one flesh. And then the Bible says that we are one flesh. That's the third word, "one flesh."

To leave speaks of the priority of marriage. To cleave speaks of the permanence of marriage. And one flesh speaks of the purpose of marriage, that we come to be one flesh. Now, we're one flesh. Why? What does that mean? Why one flesh? This is why homosexuality, at least the homosexual marriage is such a misnomer. One reason for the one fleshedness is for multiplication. God said, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth."

Malachi chapter 2 verse 5, "and wherefore one, that he might seek a godly seed." I tell our young people, when they are planning to get married, I hope you plan to have children. Children are meant to be a blessing. We have something happening in America today with a growing number of young married adults who have decided not to have children. Do you know why they've decided not to have children? They think they're going to have more freedom. They think that they're going to have more possessions if they don't have children. They say, "Children are too costly. And if we have children, we're going to have to decrease our standard of living."

Friend, there is no higher standard of living than to have blessed children. What a blessing children are. They call these people who are doing this, "dinks", D.I.N.K.S. Double income, no kids. That's right. They've named it. That's their philosophy.

No, why are we one flesh? For multiplication. Be fruitful and multiply. Not only for multiplication, but that's physically, but psychologically, we are one flesh for communication. Not only are we to be lovers, we're to be friends. Your wife is not to be your competitor, she's to be your completer. She is your helpmate. A husband and wife are like a bow and a violin. Separate, they don't make music. Together, they make wonderful music.

And then we're to be one flesh not only physically and one flesh psychologically, but we're to be one flesh spiritually. Joyce is my soulmate spiritually. We pray together and we have that communion and that love, that spiritual love. If people don't know that, I feel sorry for them. These kids who are having sexual liaisons and they talk about going all the way, that's the one thing they don't do. They don't go all the way. You haven't gone all the way until you have that commitment, that love that leads to that physical, psychological, and spiritual union and communion together, the spiritual communion.

I feel sorry for these people who think they're smarter than God. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was a famous atheist. She acted so self-sufficient. But they found her diaries and somehow they became public property. As a matter of fact, her diaries were auctioned off to pay her tax bill. But in her diary, many, many, many times was this statement or something like it, "Somebody, please love me." Isn't that sad? "Somebody, please love me." Now, here was a person who acted so self-sufficient, but she needed love. Somebody somewhere love me.

Now, there are many reasons that people give for divorce. And they're fallacious reasons. They will not pass at the judgment bar of God. For example, there are people who say, "Well, we're getting divorced because the love has gone out of our marriage." Now, if you don't hear anything else, I want you to hear what I'm about to say now. It is not love that keeps your marriage together. It is your marriage that sustains your love. Now remember that.

Don't just simply get the idea that because something called love has gone away, then you are free to get a divorce. Jesus has commanded us to love. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 25, He says, "Husbands, love your wives. Even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it," or literally, "gave Himself up for it."

Sometimes a man will come to me and say, "I'm going to get a divorce." I say, "Why?" "Because I don't love my wife anymore." He doesn't get any sympathy from me. I say, "Well, choose to love her. Learn to love her. God has commanded that you love."

Guest (Male): And coming up tomorrow, we'll hear part two of this important lesson. In the meantime, maybe you have a prayer request that you'd like to share. At Love Worth Finding, it's a great honor to come alongside you and pray with you and for you. If you can, go to our website homepage at lwf.org/radio and scroll down to our prayer wall. There you'll find the option to either submit a prayer request or pray for others. This resource is one of our favorite ways to keep the ministry and the community praying continually for one another's needs. Let us hear from you today.

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I want to share some encouraging words a listener wrote recently, "I'm thankful to God for having found Pastor Rogers' sermons on YouTube. His sermon struck a chord in my heart when I was at my worst state and gave me the confidence to live a righteous life for God from then on. God bless your ministries further."

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