Made to Flourish #2 - Marriage (Dr. Kurt Bjorklund)

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund explores Genesis 1-2 and Jesus' teaching in Mark 10 to reveal how God designed marriage as a picture of Christ's relationship with the church, showing that even imperfect relationships can flourish when we understand this profound mystery. Whether you're single, married, or struggling in your relationship, discover how God's perfect love through Jesus transforms our ability to love others and gives us hope that transcends our earthly circumstances.

Message Summary and Transcript - https://www.orchardhillchurch.com/blog-post/2025/6/9/made-to-flourish-2-marriage

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Transcript

Alright. That's cool, isn't it? To see how some of the generosity of, this group of people over a couple of different years, year end campaigns, has helped to provide for the Bible College in Haiti, and we just wanted to take a moment just to say thank you and to let you see that what you gave to has produced, a work where there are some 110 pastors being trained, really, in one of the most, desperate places in our hemisphere, and they will go into all kinds of strong witness to who Jesus is in those communities. And so let's just pray, together, and, then we'll jump into our teaching.

God, thank you for just what you've done through, the generosity of people here at Orchard Hill, for Hope Baptist Church, Hope, Bible College in Cap Haitien, Haiti. And God, we just pray that that that so many of those pastors, who are being trained would have ministries in places that would just reach people who aren't being targeted or reached by other groups right now. And so we we thank you for a chance to be a part of that. And God, as we're gathered this weekend at Orchard Hill, around Pittsburgh and online, we just ask that you would speak to each of us. God, I ask that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Last week, we started a series that we have called Made to Flourish, and what we're doing is we're spending a few weeks just looking at some of the themes of Genesis one and two, and so last week we talked about this idea of our work and having dominion and and bringing things into, into order in our created order, and what that looks like, and today we're going to look at another theme, and this theme is is equally big in terms of how we live our lives, and in Genesis one and two, the way that that we see this introduced is that when God creates at the end of each day, it'll say, and it was good.

So God created and it tells us what he created and then it says, and it was good. And then he creates again and it says, and it was good. And then he creates again and it says, and it was good. And then we hit a point where it says that it wasn't good, and the thing that it says wasn't good is when it says, and he had created man and man was alone, and then it says, and it wasn't good. And then he creates woman, and the two of them are created to be in relationship and in a complementary relationship where they each bring something significant and again, it is it is good when God does this to create man and woman to be in relationship.

And what we read in Genesis two verse twenty four and twenty five gives us just a a snippet of this idea of romantic relationships and what it's made to be and how we can flourish in it. Here's what we read. This is why a man leaves his father and his mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. And then it says this, verse 25, Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. And the idea here is is the the couple comes together and they live without shame together because it is all good to be together.

And in our modern world, especially if you're here and you're single, either single again, single because you're at the stage of life where you're single, single by choice, whatever it is at this moment, one of the things that that has happened in our modern world is the narrative says that if you are single, you should act as if you have no desire for relationship, that you don't need it. And I just, just wanna say, in the Bible, it is said to be good when people are in relationships. So if you are in a place where you have that desire and you're not in a relationship, it is good to say very simply, it is something I want, that is a God given desire and it is something that God has made me for, created me for. Now certainly in the New Testament, in first Corinthians, there is a gift of singleness that is given to some, but to those who it's not given to, to be able to say, this is a good thing and I desire it is healthy, and here's what's true about relationships, romantic relationships, marriages, and that is when they are good, it makes everything else in your life manageable.

And and here's what I mean by that. If you are going through a day and you know that you have a great dinner waiting for you later in the day, you can endure any kind of lunch or breakfast if you know you have a great dinner. Right? I mean, if you ever pack that that, you know, peanut butter and jelly on, you know, two old bread and it sits in your your your lunch container and you go to eat it and you're just like, this is, but if that's all you had, that that would be be sad. But if you know you're going to have a good dinner, the peanut butter and jelly is manageable.

And when you have a relationship that is good, other parts of your life are manageable, but conversely, when when romance is tough or it's not going well, it makes everything else in life challenging. If you have a toothache, you understand this. A toothache makes everything else miserable and when this part of your life isn't working, then it's miserable. And Jesus takes this this statement in Genesis chapter two verse 24 and he quotes it and it shows up twice in our New Testament from Jesus, once in Matthew 19 and once in Mark chapter 10. Both times when he's being queried about divorce might be the same incident, but we get slightly different details from Jesus in those accounts that help us get a picture of marriage.

And what I'd like to do today is look specifically at Mark's account and talk about how we can flourish in romance, flourish in marriage, specifically how Jesus talks about this in this account. And so, we're going to to talk about three different elements, but just as we do, I want to tie these, to the wedding rings. So this is my wedding ring, it's actually not my actual wedding ring, that's in a snowbank in Wisconsin somewhere. My wife was with me when it was lost, but but but when you get married, in our culture, you typically exchange rings, and the idea of exchanging rings is tied to several big ideas that are really from the scriptures, and one of them is the idea of permanence because the idea is that as the ring is unending, the commitment that you make when you get married is unending. Now now Jesus, when he was addressing this, was actually addressing it in the context of a question about divorce.

And what Jesus says is this, I'm going to read verse nine. This is after he's quoted Genesis two, so so he quotes it in verse seven, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. Then verse nine he says, therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. And then they come to him again, verse 10, and they asked him about this, and he answers, verse 11, anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. Now, if you only had this and not Matthew 19 and and you didn't understand the context, you may become really harsh on any divorce, but Jesus allows divorce when the covenant of marriage is broken.

He allows it for sexual immorality, Matthew 19, and it's allowed in first Corinthians seven for desertion. And even the way that this is written, this is not written to say there's never an out, but but but the problem in our culture often is that people look for outs and they don't go into marriage with an idea that this is a permanent commitment. My wife and I were talking about this and she has a friend who lives in California and her friend was, was telling her that she had seen an advertisement where she lives for renting wedding rings. And I saw that, I heard that, and I thought, that's kind of a funny comment because, I mean, you know, hey, this isn't permanent, we're just gonna rent, make sure it works out, and then maybe we'll invest, rent to rent to own maybe is the idea. But but the the the thought of Jesus, the thought of the Bible is that you enter into this and you make a commitment that says I'll never leave, I'll never cheat.

Now, that's a pretty low bar in some ways, but it's a bar that if you violate it, destroys everything in the marriage. When you leave or when you cheat. It reminds me of a woman who was at a checkout line and she was talking about how she was gonna get married, and the woman in front of her had been married for fifty years, and in the course of conversation she just mentioned it, and the younger woman said to the older woman, I can't imagine being married for fifty years. And the older woman just kinda stopped and looked back at her and said, don't get married until you can, because marriage is not intended to be something that you decide upon year after year, month after month, but it is something that you decide upon once, and barring the breaking of the covenant before God, you say I am in, I won't leave, I won't cheat. Now, most people don't intend to cheat, and yet it happens.

This is a song lyric from Craig Finn. It's called Luke and Lena, and I'm just gonna read part of it because it paints a picture of how easy it is to lose your way on this. Here's what he writes, or sings, he says, she came home crying. He asked her what happened. She says it's just nothing, it's just something at work.

They live in the city six blocks from the subway. He sells spots on TV. She works as a nurse. Luke and Lena, he's from Indiana. She's from Minnesota.

They met at their church. They moved to the city to have an adventure ten years together. Hold on till it hurts. On weekends, they visit the bars and the restaurants that come recommended by websites and friends. On weeknights, they stay in, take out and watch TV, red wine and Chinese and early Tibet.

Luke and Lena don't have any children. They said they didn't want them. But lately, she's thinking, what's the point of the whole thing? Go to work for the weekend, wake up early on Monday, and start it over again, and again, and again. At work, there's a doctor, said she looks pretty.

It started as just nothing. I guess they just became friends. They'd take the same lunch breaks. He understands what her day's like. Made her ask a few questions, like what she wants out of life.

Happy hours and coffee, and then that holiday party. Then on Tuesday, he texts her, says he's back with her as his wife. She was kind of surprised when she just started sobbing, had to hide in the bathroom and take some time to herself. She came home crying and he asked her what happened. She said, It's just nothing.

It's just something at work. You know, I don't know where you find yourself today, but if you're married, the, the ring reminds you the unendingness that, that it is a permanent decision. So there's a second element here, and I'm just going to call it partnership, and the idea here of the ring is there's two and you give one to to the other, and in giving the ring to the other you're saying I'm committing to you to do life with you. And we see this in this in this word in Mark chapter 10 verse nine where it says, therefore what God has joined together, and and the word joined here is a word in the original language that that has a a noun form that that this comes from, and this is in William Donker's little lexicon of the New Testament. I just tell you that because sometimes when people are like, Hey, the Greek says and you're like, I don't see that in here, so William Donker, it's not just me.

Okay? And, here's here's what you see, and I think that people would have heard because of the proximity of these words, because the other two times that it's used in the New Testament, it's used of a pair of oxen and a pair of turtledoves. And this, if if people read this into this or heard this and said, oh, I know a pair, and and how it's used, we see in Luke fourteen nineteen a pair of oxen. And I think this communicates the idea of working together because oxen, when they're yoked together, are partnering to get something done. Luke fourteen nineteen says, I have just bought five yoke of oxen.

I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me. And the idea of being yoked together says, we're partners to to do life together. I I've been told that when an ox is by itself, it can pull 5,000 pounds but when it's yoked to another ox, it can pull 12,000 pounds but when the two are related, they can pull 19,000 pounds. In other words, part of the idea of being a partner is to say how can we together do the things that we're doing in life?

Two are better than one. But then there's a second time this word is used and it's used of doves or pigeons or turtle doves. This is Luke chapter two and and the significance of this in Luke chapter two is that turtle doves are are potentially in view here, or doves, pigeons, are ones that really go through this ritual every spring where they come together and they strut for one another. It's almost like they play together. This is Luke two twenty four.

It says, an offer, a sacrifice in keeping with what the Lord said, by bringing a pair of doves, two young pigeons. So if this is is correct, what it means is is that the partnership is both a practical partnership to work together and a fun partnership where you play together. Now here's what I'm guessing happens for a lot of couples, and that is you get together initially because you play together and you enjoy the same things, you have fun, you enjoy each other, and then as life happens you become business partners who work together and forget to play together. And you wake up one day and you say, I don't know if this is what I signed up for. And part of it is you haven't been a partner in fun but just in work.

Now some couples might play together and forget the work and never support each other and that that can happen too, but the idea here as a pair is to say, we will be all in through, through health and sickness, through times of abundance, times of scarcity, through times that are are good, times that aren't as good, but but we're in this life together and we will do life together and sometimes we can lose our way in this. The other day, my wife and I went out to dinner. I went into the city, and, while we were there, I had asked her to, to put the key fob for our car in her purse, because I had on pants, and I had done the little slim wallet to go in the front pocket, and I didn't want a bulky key thing in my pocket. So I said, Would you just put this in your purse? And we have the car that's paired with that.

And so, we pull up to the restaurant, they had a valet, I didn't want to pay for the valet, it was raining, so I just said, why don't you go ahead and go on in, I'll park and I'll come in. Yeah, and I I pull away, and the car starts to go nuts. Key not detected, key not detected. And and and I don't know how far it could have driven, I quickly pulled around, paid for the valet, and just said, alright, I am here, but but but the car and the key fob need each other to function. And the idea of being a pair is that you become intertwined in such a way that you need each other to function and when you give a ring to somebody, what you're saying is, I will be that for you.

I'll be your partner. So we have permanence, the unendingness of the circle, the partnership, giving it to one another, but there's one more thing that's in this text, and this is unique to Mark and to Matthew. It's not in the Genesis account, and this is where Jesus was being asked about divorce, and here's what he says in verse five. He says it's because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote this law. In other words, one of the reasons that you end up in a place where where divorce seems like it's an option, and a lot of times it might not be divorce, it might be a version of just saying I've had it.

And maybe you're in a relationship today where, where divorce isn't on the immediate table, but you feel alone and isolated. Maybe you feel hurt in such a way that even as you're sitting next to somebody, you don't want to talk about it. You don't want to acknowledge it to friends, but down inside there's a piece of you that says, this is not what I wanted. And what's happened is your heart has become hard. William Mounts in talking about how hard is used in the bible, says this.

He says, it's a wide range of activities that go on within the inner self. And then he gives biblical references, he says, such as thinking, grieving, rejoicing, understanding, and decision making. That they're all part of what it means to have heart in something. And so when our heart gets hard, what happens is we forget how valuable the relationship is. You see, part of the idea again of the ring is that the precious metal is intended to remind you of the value of the commitment and the relationship that you have.

Yesterday here at Wexford, we had a, a car show, and I'm, I'm not really a car guy in that sense of the words, I think I could become one because it's pretty cool when you, when you look at it, but my approach to cars has basically been, how does it get me from point A to point B and how efficient and cheap is it? That's kind of been my approach to cars. But here's what I noticed as I walked around and looked at some of these cars. Some of these cars were probably very expensive when they were bought, but many of them were regular, routine cars that somebody bought back in 1969 or 1978, and then somebody took the time to restore it and care for it and tend to it, and if somebody else has a car, a person who treats them as, like, functional point a to point b as cheaply as possible, what happens is they get run down. That there's a huge difference between somebody who says, this is valuable and I'm going to treat it like it's valuable, I'm going to to to care for it like it's valuable, and somebody who says, this is just a thing.

And here was my thought. What happens for many marriages is that we start to treat it like it's just a thing, and we let our hurts and our hardships keep us from saying, I'm going to treat this like it's precious. But what if you had one car for the rest of your life? Do you think you would take a little better care of it? If you didn't think, hey, when this gets a little dinged up, rusty, worn down, I'll just go get another one?

You would treat it with much greater care and the idea, of the preciousness of the metal again is saying I will treat, or the stone, I will treat you with the kind of care that this deserves. Now what happens a lot of times is people will say, okay, but if you don't feel like it, just just do it. Just just try harder. And what they'll often do is they'll say, Well, the reason you try harder is because love in the bible is often a verb. That means it's a choice.

So since love is a choice, what you need to do is just try harder, and if you try harder, then you will have a better relationship, but the problem with that is many of us have tried harder, and we still find ourselves in a place where where where it's difficult to to feel as if what we're doing matters. But here's what's significant. In the Bible, love is both a noun and a verb. It's a noun 116 times in the New Testament. It's a verb 143 times, and what that simply means is this, and that is love is both a feeling and a choice.

There are times you say, because I love you, I'll do the right thing even if I don't feel like it, but if you never get the feelings to accompany it, you will find yourself in drudgery and unable to sustain it. And so it's important to understand that love is both a noun and a verb. Now I just want to say something for a moment here to those of you who are single, because you may be right now saying, Well look, I'm not in a relationship right now, so, you know, I'm I'm not in this spot. Can I just say to you that how you deal with your mom and dad, how you deal with your brother and sister, how you deal with roommates, coworkers, are all parts of how you can let hardness of heart get into you rather than tenderness? How you can let your hardness of heart get into your relationship rather than tenderness and when you do that, you are actually preparing yourself to be hard hearted toward a spouse.

I've told one of my college roommates that he was the best preparation for marriage that I could have had. And the reason I said this is because he and I became great friends but as we were in the process of becoming friends, we had a lot of, back and forth that could have easily turned into hard heart but somehow we ended up still still getting past that. Here's just one incident and this is how I remember it. He might remember it differently but I have the microphone. There was there there was a day where I decided I was gonna clean my dorm room.

This wasn't frequent but I said, Okay, I'm gonna go get the vacuum and when I was doing this, he said to me, Hey, that's a good idea. When you're done, leave the vacuum and I'll clean my room. We had a suite between us, we had, in a bathroom and we each had rooms. And and so I left the the vacuum in the bathroom for him and when I got done, or when he got done, the vacuum went back in the bathroom. Now, the vacuum closet was across the hall.

And so, I had gone to get the vacuum, brought it in, and I assumed since he said leave it here, he would take the vacuum and put it back in the closet, but instead he put it in the bathroom for me to put back in the closet. And I said, oh no, you don't. You're not gonna get the better of me like that, so I moved the vacuum a little closer to his door. He took the vacuum, moved it a little closer to my door. I took the vacuum and I put it on the counter by his sink.

He took it and put it on the toilet, I put it in the shower. I opened his door, I put it in his bed. He took it and put it on my desk. I I mean, and then, this was all without a word being spoken by the way. Just every time we'd come back, the vacuum would be more aggressively placed in the other person's space.

And then we had this blow up over this vacuum. And here's my point, and that is, that pattern of saying, Oh no, you don't, and I'm going to become hard, rather than I'm willing to acknowledge my wrongs and forgive and, and ask for forgiveness is, is a part of any relationship. And if you have a real relationship, finding your way past hardness of heart is essential. And if you develop the pattern of getting hard hearted with mom and dad and roommates and siblings, it will be really easy to do in a romantic relationship. And what happens in romance, friendships, but romance, is sometimes our pain just causes us to feel this hardness.

Maybe it's it's a true hardship and betrayal, maybe it's just an annoyance, a vacuum that that that didn't get put back, but we let this kind of thing get the better of us. Sometimes it's, well, I thought that he would always inquire of my soul the way he did when we were dating. I thought that he would always pursue me the way we did, the way he did when we were dating and he doesn't and so I'm just, I'm done. He's not going to get the best of me anymore. Or maybe you're, you're here and, and you think, well, I thought she would be sexually interested more than she is, more like she used to be, but now it just feels like, you know, always asking for something that's way out of bounds.

Or whatever it is that you fill in the blank and say I thought and he doesn't, she doesn't can leave you with a with a feeling of pain and a hard heart if you're not careful. And sometimes it's a it's a mismatch of withdrawals that outpace our deposits. And what I mean by that is we keep taking from the other person, maybe because we're we're we're people who work together really well and by taking and taking and taking, we find ourselves in a place where the other person just says, I don't feel like you've invested much recently. I remember when my wife and I had the four young children all under age seven. I remember a couple of times having really strong heart to heart conversations because she was home taking care of the kids, and she was working really hard and wanted more from me than I felt at times like I could give with everything that I had going.

There were times where I wanted more from her than I felt like she could give and it was a season but, but, but, but here's my point, if you're not careful that can become not just a season of, of extended withdrawals because you both can't make deposits at the level you might want to and there has to be a tenderness that says I'm gonna treat you with care rather than a hard heart. Or maybe it's a case of overexposure. Naomi Ruth, who has written a celebrated article called The Porn Myth, she's not a follower of Jesus to my knowledge, But in this article she talks about how many people believe that pornography can actually, or soft porn can actually enhance people's desire and she just talks about how in our country, how how ubiquitous images are and how that overexposure actually decreases our capacity for passion. And in the article she talks about a friend of hers who moved to the Middle East, Married a Middle Eastern man, and how she had traded her jeans and her t shirt for a full robe, for a headdress, and the only person who sees her hair anymore is her husband.

And she said, as as strange as it is to me, she said, I thought how beautiful she must feel to only have one man who sees her. And our husbands, our boyfriends in this country walk down the street and are exposed to images everywhere, and then we wonder why at times it doesn't feel as if we can recapture the passion. So, tenderness, choosing a soft heart. Now, I said this earlier, but you may say, okay, do I just try harder? Is that kinda the answer?

I've tried, and I don't know how to find my way in this. Let me just give you one more text. This is Ephesians chapter five verse 31 verse 32, and this is after Paul now has given instruction on marriage. Here's what he says, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. Have you heard that anywhere before?

Genesis, Jesus, now Paul. And what does he say next? Listen to this. This is a profound mystery. I am talking about Christ and the church.

What? What does that mean in this context? Well what it means is that is that as Paul's talking about this, he says, he says God's given you marriage so that you would flourish but it isn't just marriage, I'm talking about something more and here's here's where this becomes so significant for you and for me and that is when you understand that Jesus Christ is the savior, that our sin separates us from God, but Jesus has made a way and that the mystery in the Bible is that one day Jesus will be the bridegroom and the church will be the bride. What happens is you begin to say that marriage isn't just marriage to to say give it your best effort and it's for us to flourish, but it's a picture of something that's eternal. It's a picture of God.

And when you understand God's love for us through Jesus, those of us who who sin and are imperfect and bring less than our best and Jesus loves us anyway, what it means is that then we're able to love God's love for us through Jesus, those of us who who sin and are imperfect and bring less than our best and Jesus loves us anyway, what it means is that then we're able to love better imperfectly as imperfect beings because we're loved perfectly by God. That is the mystery that he's talking about here, and it changes everything for us. If you're here and you're unmarried and and you're saying, this this feels like just, you know, something that's out there and I'd like it maybe someday or whatever the the case may be, you can say with confidence, I have a a perfect husband, a perfect spouse that is waiting for me. I can live now without because of what's coming. If you've lost your spouse, maybe through divorce, maybe through death, you can say I have a perfect spouse that's still ahead.

It doesn't take away all the pain, but it gives it context. If you're here and you're unhappy in your marriage, knowing that there's a perfect wedding ahead, perfect marriage ahead allows you to say this isn't everything. And what it actually does is it helps you not to load so much into your marriage that you demand from your spouse what they're unable or unwilling to give you and instead what you do is you say as I've been loved by Jesus, I can love you. Happy marriage, a relatively happy marriage, what you can do is you can say, this is a taste of what will one day be. This isn't everything and it means that, that, that you can live with a sense of an open hand because the reality is one of you will die before the other and you can say, or, or something may happen that that may make that marriage less than you want it to be and you can say this isn't everything.

It is a taste of what will be. It is a profound mystery, Paul says. I'm talking about Christ in the church. It's bigger than even you realize. And as a result, we can flourish now because we have hope.

Jesus before the fall, or God before the fall, says I I made you man and woman, complimentary pieces so that you could live and thrive together. And after the fall, there is a different kind of marriage, or after the restoration, excuse me, not after the fall, that that will be complete. And as a result, you can live now wherever you are with hope because of what is instituted and what will be. Let's pray together.

God, I'm sure we come here this weekend with a lot of different experiences and desires around marriage, relationships, and God I ask that you would bring healing to those that are hurting or sad or going through a difficult time.

God, I pray for those who are who are seeking a relationship or in the midst of a relationship that you would bring beauty and flourishing to those relationships. And God, even more, I pray that you would help all of us to see that that even the best of romance is a taste of what will be, and because of that, we can, when it isn't all that we want it to be, live with hope, and when it is good, just say it's a taste, pointing to something even better that's ahead. And we pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.

Thanks for being here. Have a great week.