ROLFTHIELEN

What Constitutes Marriage?

Episode Notes

The Bible nowhere directly states what God considers to be marriage ceremony.

We do know the following however:

• Marriage is a Covenant - Mal 2:14
• God joins husband and wife in marriage Himself - Matt 19:6
• Marriage is profoundly Spiritual - Mal 2:15-16
• God hates divorce - Matt 19:6,  Mal 2:16
• God married Israel in the Old Testament and the church in the New Testament - Jer31:31
• God a jealous husband - Deut 4:23
• Marriage is only terminated by death Rom 7:1-6 (and everywhere else in scripture)
• Jesus died and resurrected in order to save His wife, the Church

What God has joined

4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” 
” (Matthew 19:4–6, NKJV)

23 Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God which He made with you, and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the LORD your God has forbidden you. 24 For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
” (Deuteronomy 4:23–24, NKJV)

31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
” (Jeremiah 31:31–33, NKJV)

Take heed to your spirit

13  And this is the second thing you do:
You cover the altar of the Lord with tears,
With weeping and crying;
So He does not regard the offering anymore,
Nor receive it with goodwill from your hands.
14  Yet you say, “For what reason?”
Because the Lord has been witness
Between you and the wife of your youth,
With whom you have dealt treacherously;
Yet she is your companion
And your wife by covenant.
15  But did He not make them one,
Having a remnant of the Spirit?
And why one?
He seeks godly offspring.
“Therefore take heed to your spirit,
And let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth.
16  “For the Lord God of Israel says
That He hates divorce,
For it covers one’s garment with violence,”
Says the Lord of hosts.
Therefore take heed to your spirit,
That you do not deal treacherously.”
” (Malachi 2:13–16, NKJV)

What we do know about the married ceremony:

• God is a witness and the officiator.
• God makes the Two One
• It includes consummating the marriage sexually.
• There are vows and witnesses.
• God Hates Divorce
• Only Death Ends a Marriage Covenant