Myths of Marriage #4: "I should not pursue a spouse, because God will provide one for me."

Tonight's myth is that you should wait for God to send you somebody.

Rather than searching for a spouse, you should wait for God to send you one. Now, sometimes

I've preached some pretty hard things. Like last time, I feel like that was probably more new to people. But this time, you all are here.

You all are already coming to a myth. It's for marriage, mind, and singles. So maybe I'm just preaching to the choir tonight.

However, it's also possible that you came here with some degree of hesitancy and reluctance, not knowing whether or not this was the right thing to do to come here and see who would be here, etc.

Or maybe you've got a friend who has this mindset. The best way to pursue marriage is not to pursue marriage.

Well, I'm here to tell you that that is just as ridiculous as it sounds. That if God has said that marriage is valuable, if he says it's not good for man to be alone, if he's said that it's right for those who don't have this gift of sacredness to pursue marriage, otherwise it will burn in their desire, then it is something that you should value and it is something that you should pursue.

Now, there are a few reasons why people think this. There's a couple of very biblical things that people attach onto to arrive at this conclusion where they say that because God provides,

I shouldn't be looking for a spouse. And so those are God's sovereignty and his providence.

His sovereignty and his providence. So that first one, his sovereignty, that means that God is sovereign.

He is in control of all things. He has ordained all of human history, right?

And this is something that's true. Just a couple of verses to remind you of this biblical truth.

Ephesians 111 says, In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

God works all things according to the counsel of his will. Now, if that's true, that he works all things according to the counsel of his will, it seems like we could just put marriage in that and just say, well,

God has decided who I will marry, what's going to take place, why would I bother doing anything about it?

Another verse, Romans 8, 28 says, God works all things for good to those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

That's true also. You know, if you are one who loves God, then all things,

God is going to work them out for your good. Now, one more verse, even matters of chance.

Proverbs 16, 33 says, The lot is cast in the lap, and every decision is from the Lord. Everything comes from God.

Ultimately, he is in control of all things. Now, if that is true, then why is it that we shouldn't just say, well, you know,

God's going to decide who I'm going to marry, let's wait for him to send that person to me.

First of all, no one thinks about that for anything else in life. If God is in control of all things, he's in control of whether or not you'll eat today, if he's in control of whether or not you'll live somewhere, if he's in control of whether or not you'll have a job, why pursue any of those things?

No one thinks that way about other things, right? They don't say, well, God's going to decide whether or not I have a job, so I'm not going to look for one.

God's going to decide whether or not I'm going to have a house, so I'm not going to go on Zillow, because Zillow is for those with little faith.

This isn't how people think. And consider, too, like the levels of importance. You know, eating today, you could skip a meal, so you put a little bit of effort into that.

You know, it's not the end of the world if you miss a meal. And then finding a place to live, well, that's significantly more important, so you spend more time on that, you put more effort into that.

And then having a job, well, you know, that's really important, because that determines whether you get to eat and whether or not you get a house, so that's more important than the other two combined.

And so people dedicate years of their life just to studying in order to get a job.

Now, where does marriage fall in that? Is it not really, really high up there, maybe even higher than all of those?

And so for someone to say that, well, the more important it is, the more effort I'm going to put into it, and then suddenly cliff right on that graph when it comes to something as important as marriage, where does this come from?

Why do people think this? Yes? Your effort into looking for a spouse is out of your control.

The difference is if we're looking hard for a job, it's within your control, right? So that's why, because people think, oh, it's out of my control anyway, it's a fate, so that's why we can't leave it to God.

Right, and so that's the idea that people have, is that not of God's sovereignty, where he has made an orderly world so that he has ordained the means as well as the end, and the means to connect to the end, but rather that he's only ordained the ends, and the means don't matter, you can do what you want, but it's this pagan notion of fate where you're just going to land there regardless.

There's nothing you can do. The fact of the matter is there's a lot you can do. For example, you know, there's this event.

You've come here to see what God might have for you here. Ruth, she didn't just say, oh,

I'm going to be poor, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to, I'm just going to be lonely for the rest of my life.

She put herself in Boaz's field, right? So there are some steps that you can take. If this is something you value, then

God will show you what steps to take. If this is something he values, then you should value it, and he will show you what steps to take. So the other thing is

God's providence, right? God's providence. So he's sovereign, he's in control of all things.

He also provides for his children. He provides richly. Let me give you another verse about this one.

Matthew 6, 25. This is a longer passage. I'll read it to you. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.

Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air.

They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to a span of life?

And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow.

They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is stirred in the oven, will he not much more clothe you,

O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink?

Or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly

Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

So someone might read that and say, Well, I shouldn't be anxious about these things. I shouldn't be worrying about what I will eat, what

I will wear, what I will drink. God will provide. But consider what he said right there at the end.

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Now what does that mean? That means that we should make God's priorities our priorities, as I said a minute ago.

It doesn't mean that we shouldn't worry about these things in any sense. Now certainly we shouldn't be anxious because God will provide.

But real faithfulness is not, yeah, it's not faithless to pursue these things if God has told us we should pursue these things.

It's only faithless to pursue these things when they are at the expense or in substitute of what

God has said that we should value. So consider, for example, 1 Timothy 5a. It says that if anyone does not provide for his home, for his own household, he is denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

So here you have someone who's not worrying about what he's going to wear, how he's going to put food on the table. What does

God say? That he's worse than an unbeliever. He has denied the faith. So that passage doesn't mean we shouldn't consider these things at all.

It means we shouldn't be anxious about them because we trust the Lord. And consider what

God's priorities are. Proverbs 18 .22 says, He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the

Lord. You know, one of God's priorities for man, if he has not especially gifted them for a perpetual single life, is that they pursue marriage.

They pursue marriage. So that is what we should do. However, so those are some biblical reasons people gravel onto to come to this conclusion.

There are some less biblical reasons people use offset, right? One is defeatist theology, what

I'm going to call defeatist theology. It's the idea that, well, you know, I tried looking for someone that I might marry, but it's just too hard.

It's just too difficult. I'm just too unsuccessful at it. And so I'm going to use all these past failures as indications that God doesn't want me to even try.

Right? This is God telling me, it's okay. Just don't bother.

Once again, you know, if this is the case that God values this thing, he hasn't changed his word.

His word still remains. First Corinthians 10 .13 says,

No temptation has overtaken you, but it has not come to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

But with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

You know, there's nothing too hard for the Christian, not because the Christian is strong enough, but because God provides sufficient strength for the

Christian. Now, another thing that people gravel onto is what

I'm going to call anecdotal theology. Anecdotal theology. So they hear people tell stories of how it worked in their life, and regardless of whether or not it's coming from any biblical principle, they grab onto it.

Right? Like they hear someone say, well, you know, I was just really idolatrously pursuing marriage, trying to meet people, trying to find that right person, and the second

I let go of that, the second that I stopped looking, that's when God dropped my current spouse right into my lap.

Now, how many people here have heard that story? Yeah, a few people. And it's a really common story.

It's a really common story. Now, maybe it's true that their priorities were out of whack. You know, maybe it's true that they were idolatrously pursuing a spouse.

Maybe they were overly anxious. But none of those things mean that the final conclusion is the right conclusion.

Even the fact that God worked it out for their good doesn't mean that it's the right conclusion. You know,

Sarah and I, when we look back at our dating experience, there were all kinds of things we did wrong. The fact that it worked out does not mean that those things we did wrong we actually did right.

You know, that's what's called survivor bias. Have you ever heard of that before? So, you know, the scene where the person who just won the lottery is being interviewed by a reporter, and the reporter says,

Wow, that's amazing that you won $18 billion on the mega ball whatever. What's your secret?

What's the secret to success? And the lottery winner says, Well, I just really believed in myself. And you know, if you believe in yourself too, you can also accomplish great things.

Right? So you take the advice of the survivor because you assume that they know something the others don't.

That's just not necessarily how it works. God is very merciful to his children. He provides often, even when they haven't taken the right steps of faith.

So I don't assume, just because something worked out for someone, that they did it the right way.

Now, the next one is what I'm going to call quibble theology. These are little quotes that people throw out that some people even think are

Bible verses, but aren't in Scripture. Like, let go and let God. Ever hear that one?

Let go and let God. Now, there's some truth to that, that we shouldn't be striving of our own nature and not relying on the

Lord in prayer. However, the idea that we should just let go and let God and God will figure out whether or not we're supposed to get married,

God will figure out who we're supposed to get married, that's just as ridiculous as the things

I was describing earlier. And if we're going to discuss this topic on the basis of fake

Bible verses, let me throw in another fake Bible verse. God helps those who help themselves. But this isn't supposed to be decided on the basis of fake

Bible verses. So let me give you Proverbs 13 .4.

It says, The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.

So if this is something that God has told us we should value, and it's something that we should value, it's something that we should be putting effort into.

We should be preparing ourselves for the possibility of having a lifelong partner. We should be pursuing that prospect of marriage.

And once again, I gave that example of Ruth. Ruth didn't just say, Woe is me, I'm doomed to be lonely and poor for the rest of my life.

She put herself in Boaz's field. Now, once again, a lot of people think that it's faithless to pursue something, that real faith means just waiting for God to do it.

But like Scripture says, Faith without works is dead. If someone really believes that God is going to provide, they're going to use all the means that God has given them.

If someone really believes this, they will pursue it. Now, there's all kinds of faithless ways of pursuing marriage.

I acknowledge that, right? You can be overly anxious. You can just be racked with anxiety.

That's not right, right? That would be faithless. You can lower your standards beyond what God has said.

You can marry an unbeliever when he has said to marry in the Lord. It's what Scripture calls being unequally yoked, right?

So that would be another faithless way of pursuing marriage. You can try to find someone on one of those awful apps like Tinder.

Look, that's not where you should be trying to find a spouse for all kinds of reasons, and I'll probably make one of these messages about that.

But anyway, yeah, there's all kinds of faithless ways of pursuing marriage, but that doesn't mean that pursuing marriage is in itself faithless.

And there's all kinds of faithless ways of not pursuing marriage. In fact, not pursuing what God has told us to pursue is definitionally faithless.

And how do we do that? Well, by feeling defeated or by latching on to these little quips and these anecdotes and being lazy about it.

But let's get rid of the defeatist theology, the anecdotal theology, the quippable theology, and embrace biblical theology.

And consider also what God is accomplishing in his provision for man, right?

People think that, well, if God loves me, he's going to provide for me. That is absolutely true.

But why does he provide for his children? It's not so they can be happy without him, just having received something from him.

But rather, he's in the process, while we are on this earth, of transforming us to have our priorities more in line with his, so that we more understand him and are able to appreciate him and have true happiness.

True happiness isn't found in just giving stuff without understanding the Lord. There is no real happiness apart from understanding the

Lord. And so his purpose is, in providing, and even providing Jesus Christ, who died for us and gave us his spirit, is to transform us to have our priorities grow more and more in line with his, so that we become more and more holy like he does.

And so the attitude that says, well, I'm going to let God figure out these things rather than take myself to his word and be transformed so I'm pursuing the things that he values is missing half the gospel.

If you've got the forgiveness but not that transformation into holiness, you've missed half of the work that God is doing through Jesus Christ.

And so I want to encourage you today that if you had hesitations about coming here, if you've got friends who feel similarly about these things, then you should go to the word of God and be encouraged to pursue the good things that God has said to pursue.

And I hope you can take some of these things to your friends who may have such reluctance. Let me pray for us.