DISTURBING Things Are Happening and NOBODY is Seeing It...

If I believe that marriage is all about me and my happiness, then when I'm not happy, I walk.

The latest in the Adam Levine saga. The long and short of it is, he cheated on his wife, apparently, and the women that he allegedly cheated with are releasing all these DMs. So this is an adult with many, many millions of dollars, with a family, with kids, with another kid on the way.

He's like, oh wow, you're so effing hot. I've heard this so many times. I'm just, I'm leaving. Why are you leaving? Because I'm just not happy anymore. Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen appear to be a step closer to officially calling it quits.

The seven-time Super Bowl champion and his supermodel wife have each hired divorce attorneys.

Well, get unhappy. Well, I just don't believe that God would want me unhappy.

As long as the family's happy, the wife is happy, the kids are still talking to me, it's all good.

Sylvester Stallone might now be singing a different tune, as he and wife Jennifer Flavin call it quits after 25 years of marriage. Two purposes for marriage in the scriptures. Your happiness is not one of them.

Suck it up and go work it out. There is today an all-out attack against the institution of marriage, meaning of relationships in general.

I never believed the whole I'm happy single spiel. I was like, this is spiel. Yeah. This is totally spiel. Isn't it interesting the stuff that we take in and have to unpack? It took me a long time, but I'm very happy.

I call it being self-partnered.

Marriage as a Picture of Christ and the Church

Relationships and marriage are now all about each individual's personal happiness, rather than about sacrificial love. Instead of viewing relationships as one step towards marriage, and of marriage as a lifelong commitment, no matter the struggle or difficulties, relationships and marriage have become extremely self-centered, so that as soon as hardships or unhappiness occurs, people feel justified in simply leaving.

If I look at it selfishly, that's what happens. When I'm not happy anymore, when I'm not satisfied anymore, when I'm not fulfilled anymore, I'm ready to walk.

However, that is not at all how God designed relationships in marriage, which are meant to be a beautiful illustration of the eternal, unchanging love between Jesus Christ and his church.

But if I understand that our marriage is an illustration, a picture of the relationship between Christ and his church, then I understand that I am here for the long haul.

This means that anyone who engages in relationships and marriage without the goal of honoring God, and illustrating the relationship between Christ and his church through sacrificial love and faithfulness, is in direct rebellion against what God has designed for marriage and relationships.

Our culture today has an extremely low view of marriage. And this low view of marriage is simply sin and rebellion against the God who created men and women to have relationships for the purpose of marriage to illustrate the gospel message.

Instead of being so ready and willing to leave a marriage, as so many in our culture are doing, our priority should be to preserve marriage, no matter the cost.

I tell my wife all the time, girl, you leave me, I'm going with you. An illustration of the relationship between Christ and his church. This changes everything, folks.

The Temptation to Choose Looks Over Spiritual Maturity

The big problem in our culture is that people prioritize physical attractiveness over maturity, specifically spiritual maturity. This superficial mindset results in relationships and marriages that have absolutely no foundation other than feelings, which are temporary and easily go away.

This changes what we look for in a mate, doesn't it? I mean, if I'm just looking for, you know, somebody who just looked real good. By the way, two things about people who look real good. Number one, they don't stay that way.

I used to be skinny. Leonardo DiCaprio and Camila Morrone break up after four years. But people immediately started pointing out something about this story. And that's Camila's age. She just turned 25.

Google her here. Camila, here's her age, 25. She turned 25 on June 16th. And while that honestly shouldn't carry much weight, it does for Leo. Because Leo, even though he is 44 years old, he exclusively dates women who are under the age of 25.

Number two, they don't stay that way. There's so many more important things in life than that.

When looking for a potential partner and spouse, there are non-negotiable factors that nobody should ever compromise on, such as spiritual maturity and the goal being lifelong marriage. However, even for many Christians, there is a mindset that physical attractiveness is more important than boring attributes such as spiritual maturity.

I've met several people who have been willing to completely compromise on the more important things because somebody looked good. And whenever anybody around them would point out the fact that there were so many more important things that were missing in this individual, they accused them of being jealous because that person looks so good.

Again, if you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch. There's so much more than that.

Why Divorce Grieves God and Why Marriage Should Be Preserved

Of course, we should have utmost sympathy for those who have gone through the trauma of divorce. And we should support them through their sorrow and regret. At the same time, we need not view divorce the way our culture views divorce, as something that is just a normal thing that happens in an enormous percentage of marriages.

We should hate the very idea of divorce the way God hates it. God hates divorce.

And our Lord affirmed that as we saw in Mark 10. I'm giving you instructions that come directly from the Lord. Here he says, This doesn't come directly from the Lord, but I say if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her.

Now, some might hear this and say, Well, if divorce is that bad, then I may as well not get married in the first place. However, that's also not the right solution. Because for most people, marriage is good.

And it is God's will that they both get married and stay married.

The general rule is get married. The reason is simple. Because of temptation. Because of temptation. There is no place for fornication. That's the word there translated immoralities in the NAS. The fact of life is that if you try to stay single, as good as celibacy can be, marriage is the norm and marriage is better if being single results in temptation.

I want you to know that Paul doesn't say get married because you find somebody that you like. He says really get married because you're running at a very high risk of life if you don't.

And this is precisely the reason why so many in our culture today hate the idea of marriage. They hate the idea of marriage because marriage represents moral oppression. Marriage suggests the idea that fornication is wrong and that sex should be reserved for the marriage bed.

This is why so many are trying to destroy the very institution of marriage.

Cultural Rebellion Against Marriage, Family, and Biblical Gender Roles

We are living in a culture that is making a complete effort to destroy men, to destroy women, to destroy children, to destroy families, to destroy marriage. This is an all-out massive assault. This kind of animosity toward the Scripture is a virulent element in this culture.

They want nothing to do with the Word of God or they wouldn't be advocating the things that they advocate. I've never seen anything even close to this. And I can think back 25, 30 years ago when I was preaching on marriage and even then it was controversial because the world was taking steps to undermine everything God says about men, women, children, family, and marriage.

But now it is far, far beyond that.

In addition, the culture hates marriage because it hates what God has revealed in the Bible concerning the differences between men and women. The culture views marriage as an oppressive patriarchy that must be fought against and ultimately overthrown.

God has designed men and women differently and of course this culture wants to overthrow all of that with a level of insanity that shocks us all. But the headship of the man is built around this notion and this is how you have to look at it.

Not smarter, not wiser, not more experienced, not more insightful, not more spiritual, not more valuable. It is simply that God designed men to be physically stronger, constitutionally designed by God to work, to protect, to provide for, to secure the wife whom the Holy Spirit calls in 1 Peter 3, 7 the weaker vessel.

Not weaker intellectually, not weaker mentally, not weaker in wisdom or any virtue at all, but merely by God's design. We get that. That's why there's such a furor when men want to participate in women's sports.

Anybody gets that. It's obviously not a possible compatibility because men have a completely different system that makes them stronger than women. It's really nothing more than that. And so by divine design.

God’s Perfect Design for Marriage and the Pursuit of True Joy

But the truth is that it's God's design for marriage that is absolutely perfect and it's when people try to redefine their own way that human happiness is destroyed. The result of our culture's all-out attack upon the institution of marriage is a society that is filled with broken relationships and broken marriages filled with unhappy people who look first to their own interests rather than looking to God's perfect design for relationships and marriage.

It's only when we look to God's word and God's perfect design for marriage that we can live our lives the way God designed us to live them. And to experience the truest joy God designed us to experience in marriage.

Only a love that is an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object can survive these things. Now for those of you who argue, well okay I mean that's fine but man no romance.

You didn't hear a word I said. Let me just share something with you as I close. I'm leaving here tomorrow at 7 in the morning. Why? Because there was not a flight out to Houston late enough for me to leave tonight.

That's the first thing smoking going back to where I live. I'm gonna get up about 5 15, get ready for the plane. Why? Because my rule is always get on the first thing smoking to get out of where I am and back to where I live.

Why? Because when I'm through being away from my house and I only travel 10 days a month, I ain't traveling no more than that. That's it. When I get back on the first thing smoking, I fly to the Houston airport.

I carry the fewest bags possible and try not to ever check anything because I don't want to wait at the airport. I get on the shuttle, I ride to my vehicle. It takes me 22 minutes to get into my house from the airport parking lot.

I try to do it in 19. When I get to my house and open the garage, I try to make sure to remember to turn my car off before I get out of it. Because the first thing I want to do is open the door. Watch that beautiful, beautiful black creature that God gave to me as my wife walk across the floor and say, Come here, girl.

Not led by emotion, but certainly not void of it.

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