Every spring along the streets of Delhi, huge processions follow an elegantly arrayed bridegroom on a white horse as he rides, sometimes for many miles, to the home of his bride. The horse is draped in colorful velvet. The groom sits tall, with the posture of a victor coming to claim the prize for which he has worked all his life. His attire is shining, with gold-intertwined threads falling from his turban and covering his face.Musicians, many of whom desperately need music lessons, serenade him with flutes and other instruments along his journey. These musicians rent out their services for such occasions, and though they try hard, their pathetic overestimation of their musical prowess is the subject of many jokes. Thankfully the added noise of congested streets drowns out some of the painful and off-key sounds that give the term “strain” when attached to music a whole different meaning. But frankly, amid such revelry, who really cares about these secondary matters? The musicians are there merely as accessories, not as the centerpiece.
Women carrying lighted kerosene lamps walk as part of the procession, providing a light along the darker roads and a brilliant symbol of the festive occasion.Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of guests shout and dance as they follow along toward the celebration that awaits them. As the bride’s home comes into view, the music reaches a crescendo and the procession comes to a halt. Awaiting their arrival are the guests of the bride, and the massive tent set up for the feast suddenly becomes a beehive of activity. At this moment, all the attention is on the bride, bedecked in her magnificent and radiantly colored sari, her face covered by a veil, her hands and arms painted with henna in beautiful patterns.
Wedding processions are a fun part of life in those teeming cities of India. As a youngster I stood on the side of the road and watched dozens of them from a distance. I must also make a confession. With the weddings as large as they are, nobody knows who comes as whose guest. Often, as we watched a wedding procession going by, my buddies and I would bring our cricket game to a halt, casually join the groom’s party of followers, and arrive along with them at the bride’s home, ready to enjoy a gala dinner. During wedding season we could have feasted every night and no host would have been any the wiser. In fact, it is customary for wedding invitations to read, “We invite you, your family, and friends . . .”
I have to admit that looking back on those days of youthful exuberance, I find my immodest self-invitations quite embarrassing to confess. Oh, but what meals we enjoyed, the best of Indian cuisine, justifying our participation as celebrants at a solemn ceremony! The truth is, we could not have cared less about the solemnity of the occasion. The food is what we came for. Priests chanted and recited incantations, but that was not for us. Weddings came and went, and I never stopped to think of what it all really meant beneath the exterior trappings.
That is why the first time I ever witnessed a wedding as an invited guest has remained etched in my memory. I accompanied my parents for the marriage of a close family friend. The ceremony took place in a church. The organ rolled, the guests rose, and the bride entered the church in a magnificent white-and-gold sari. She walked toward the groom waiting at the altar, where they pledged their vows to each other. Seeing this prompted a whirlwind of emotion within me. It was then that I began to ask questions about what it meant to be “man and wife.” How did they meet? When did they decide to be married? Who did the asking? What does it mean to be in love? Does anyone ever get turned down? Is marriage forever? What if it is a mistake? What happens now? Can marriage get boring I never doubted the sense of awe and beauty in the ceremony. There was charm in the air. But I wondered if this was all a veneer or the real thing.
Certainly the Christian world-view has a unique perspective on marriage; yet even then cultural aspects come into play— some good, some questionable, and others, however well intended, inflicting more pain than pleasure. I am convinced that marriage is at once the most powerful union and the most misunderstood relationship we can experience. Like everything of intrinsic value, its use or abuse determines delight or devastation. To understand marriage God’s way is to carry a cherished dream into reality. To violate its built-in pattern is to mangle beauty and plunder one’s own riches.
Let me therefore begin with a text of Scripture that carries all the essential elements of what God had in mind when He asked us to say, “I do.”
A heart-gripping story is told in Genesis, chapter 24. From this narrative I will build my entire framework for I, Isaac, Take Thee,Rebekah. I truly pray that you may find your heart enthralled by the truths we uncover and your mind stirred to think of this union in God’s way and not ours. If you will, this story is the lifting of the veil, showing us what goes on behind the scenes in the making of a beautiful relationship. Some of our most important decisions are made before we utter those words of commitment to someone else.
First, let me present the background to this story. The patriarch Abraham, a symbol of a life lived by faith, is in his last days on earth. He calls to his side his senior most servant. This servant is not named, but most Bible commentators believe he is Eliezer, who was mentioned in an earlier context. Abraham gives him a mission—indeed, his greatest one to this point: “I would like you to go back to the home of my fathers and find a young woman from among my people to be my son Isaac’s wife” (see Genesis 24:3–4).
That was the charge. Eliezer was in a quandary. He didn’t know how to meet this kind of demand. It was an enormous responsibility to place upon anyone. Lest you and I misunderstand this, Abraham and his servant had developed a very trusting relationship that had been proven over a protracted period of time. This was not just a menial task committed to someone who worked for him.
Time being a real concern due to Abraham’s failing health, Eliezer immediately prepared for his journey and began with a passionate prayer to God. This is how the Bible tells the story:
Then the servant took ten of his master’s camels and left, taking with him all kinds of good things from his master. He set out for [Mesopotamia] and made his way to the town of Nahor. He had the camels kneel down near the well outside the town; it was toward evening, the time the women go out to draw water.
Then he prayed, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water.May it be that when I say to a girl, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”
Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah, who was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor. The girl was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever lain with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again.
The servant hurried to meet her and said, “Please give me a little water from your jar.”
“Drink,my lord,” she said, and quickly lowered the jar to her hands and gave him a drink.
After she had given him a drink, she said, “I’ll draw water for your camels too, until they have finished drinking.” So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, ran back to the well to draw more water, and drew enough for all his camels.Without saying a word, the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the LORD had made his journey successful.
When the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold nose ring weighing a beka and two gold bracelets weighing ten shekels. Then he asked, “Whose daughter are you? Please tell me, is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?”
She answered him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son that Milcah bore to Nahor.”And she added, “We have plenty of straw and fodder, as well as room for you to spend the night.”
Then the man bowed down and worshipped the LORD, saying, “Praise be to the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who has not abandoned his kindness and faithfulness to my master. As for me, the LORD has led me on the journey to the house of my master’s relatives.” (Genesis 24:10–27)
This is the kind of story from which movies should be made— camels, a well, a devout man, a beautiful woman coming to draw water, a suspenseful encounter. A fleece is laid and, lo and behold, the sign follows. Ah, but that is only the veil. Let us remove the veil and catch a real glimpse of what is underneath.
The reason everyone enjoys a story like this is that each of us has a heart that beats for love and romance.When I first started preaching as a teenager, I remember quoting some humorous poetry that I can still recite from memory:
Love is like an onion—
You taste it with delight,
But when it’s gone you wonder
Whatever made you bite.
Love is a funny thing, just like a lizard,
It curls up ’round your heart and then jumps into your gizzard.
Love is swell, it’s so enticing,
It’s orange gel, it’s strawberry icing,
It’s chocolate mousse, it’s roasted goose,
It’s ham on rye, it’s banana pie.
Love’s all good things without a question;
In other words, it’s indigestion.
Although the poem sounded cute and I could always count on it to bring the response I anticipated, I knew that on the inside I was wishing the opposite to be true. Every teenager who laughed did so because it was “cool” to make fun of something you knew so little about. Only when it became something real did we know that hearts are built and torn on this thing called love.
Another poem went this way:
Slippery ice, very thin,
Pretty girl tumbles in,
Saw a boy on the bank,
Gave a shriek, then she sank.
Boy on hand, heard her shout,
Jumped right in, pulled her out.
Now she’s his, very nice.
But she had to break the ice.
With all of its frivolity and lightheartedness, this poem, too, brings a smile because we all remember the first time we set eyes on the one who attracted us this way. It is easy for a young man to imagine a moment of gallantry when by some daring act of courage he rescues a girl—whether it be from slippery ice or a burning building—who turns out to be the lovely young girl of his dreams, and he whisks her off to safety. That alone, he thinks to himself, would prompt her parents to say, “That man deserves your love.”
That word, love, is probably one of the most used and abused epithets that mankind has ever pondered. It has brought peace to many and yet, misunderstood and distorted, has broken many. And as you and I begin to look at this theme, I want to particularly challenge you who are unmarried with certain principles that the Bible gives us. These truths are undeniable if you are to build a successful home. If you are well on your journey in marriage, these thoughts, I trust, will light a fresh fire and bring your commitment back to where God intended it to be. Any human being who violates the laws of God only ends up proving them, not destroying them. The Word of God remains eternal. Those who have tried to bury it only find out that the Bible rises up to outlive its pallbearers.
The first book of the Old Testament, the Book of Genesis, speaks of our roots. It begins with the words, “In the beginning God . . .” and ends with the words, “So Joseph died and was buried.” I find that fascinating. The book starts with the creating God and ends with a man in a coffin. In those first few words, “In the beginning God . . .” lies the paradigm of how everything in this world of time and space began. God, in His power, brought it to be. I think it was Dr. Billy Graham who once said, “I have no problem believing that the whale swallowed Jonah. I would have even believed it if Jonah had swallowed the whale.” If you will pardon the pun, that is not flippant gullibility. That is the defining truth that underlies whether the supernatural is part and parcel of our lives or just a pipe dream. A.W. Tozer said, “Give me Genesis 1:1, and the rest of the Bible poses no problem for me.” Once you accept the reality of God as not merely an assumption but the undeniable foundation of our very lives, many other deductions for life follow.
The distinguished philosopher Mortimer Adler, who was coeditor of The Great Books of the Western World, was once asked a very obvious question. This compilation of books contains essays on every major subject addressed by Western thinkers over the centuries. The longest article is on God. When an interviewer asked Adler why this was so, he replied, “More consequences for life and action follow from the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.”1 Adler was absolutely right. The consequences of sacredness and profanity are worlds apart. If life is from God, then life is essentially sacred. If God is not necessary for life, then life is profane. The word profane means “outside the temple”—that is, God has no jurisdiction over life or part in it. “In the beginning God . . .”must be the generating dictum of all our choices and commitments.
From the beginning God positioned this relationship of man and woman in a unique context.Having created Adam, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18), so He created a partner for him.Man’s aloneness was an impediment to his complete fulfillment. I find that to be thought provoking, because in a very real sense man was not alone. God was with him. Adam experienced companionship in his relationship with God. God walked and talked with him. Their communion was nestled in the beauty of a garden. Yet God said that man was “alone.” Interestingly, He made this pronouncement before Adam’s disobedience ruptured his relationship with God. So when God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone,” He must have had in mind a kind of companionship uniquely human to help meet Adam’s human finitude in a way that God designed and orchestrated. In other words, God has made each of us with certain needs that are an intrinsic part of being human—needs that only a fellow human being can meet.We must step back and take note of that. Once we understand this, we realize that though God uses marriage to represent His relationship with us, the Church, that relationship with God is not identical to marriage. God has designed marriage to be a distinctly human relationship, different from all others. That is the first reminder in the creation of humanity.
There is another reality that is often forgotten. When God said that it was not good for the man to be alone, even though he was in a close relationship with God, He created a woman. The fact that God did not create another man ought not to escape our attention. The companionship and the complementariness in that created pattern is defining for all of the rest of procreation. The woman met the desire, the need, and the insufficiency of the man in a way that God precluded Himself from and that another man was not intended to meet. Neither the gender of maleness nor the man’s spiritual relationship with his heavenly Father was to provide this particular relationship.
Let me describe this in another way, in order to reinforce it. In Himself, God is all in all. There is nothing He lacks in His perfection. He is wholly sufficient for all our needs, yet He chose to craft a relationship designed so specifically that only a woman could complete the incompleteness of the man. It is the distinctive role of a woman, fashioned and splendidly made, to meet a need that could not be fulfilled by another man. This is an extraordinary order in creation made by God to “perfect” the entity He called Adam. The language reveals this: It is not just “the man”; it is now “the man and his wife” (Genesis 3:8; emphasis added).
G. K. Chesterton was once asked what one book he would want to have in his possession if he were stranded on an island. How to Build a Boat, came his immediate answer. Here in the garden, a magnificently designed companion completes the text on How to Live in a Garden.
According to the Scriptures, when Adam saw her, he said,“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man” (Genesis 2:23). She is part of him yet distinct from him. She is dissimilar in her physical makeup but complementary in her spirit. The man and the woman have a created distinction with an implicit codependence. The puzzle of the man’s aloneness is solved by the “forming and shaping” of the woman. In that perfect fit, the picture God designed is complete. I have purposely belabored this point because this design and supremacy of relationship has been maligned in our culture, which mangles male-female relationships. The entire fury over gender warfare and sexuality is because the issues are positioned purely in pragmatic terms, forgetting that in the first created order there was specific design and intended purpose. All the philosophizing and arguing by well-meaning people to the contrary will not explain why the biology is so distinctive, as is the chemistry that follows. The differences between men and women are not perfunctory; they are essential. The complementariness is not bestowed by society; it is God-given. The purpose is not just love; it is procreation. It is not merely a provision; it is a pattern.Woman is not a fellow man; she is a unique entity, part of man but separate from him. The difference matters and is sacred in purpose. In violating this we violate a transcending intent.
Philosopher Peter Kreeft, commenting on Francis Bacon’s Man’s Conquest of Nature, had this to say: “The term in the phrase Man’s conquest of Nature is a sexually chauvinistic term, not because all use of the traditional generic ‘Man’ is, but because we have a civilization that is in the midst of what Karl Stern called ‘the flight from woman.’We extol action over being, analysis over intuition, problems over mysteries, success over contentment, conquering over nurturing, the quick fix over lifelong commitments, the prostitute over the mother.”2
Kreeft goes on to remind us that Aristotle gave three reasons for seeking knowledge: truth, moral action, and power or the ability to make things (technology or technique). Francis Bacon and our modern pragmatists, says Kreeft, have inverted the reasons. Truth and morality are displaced by our desire to make things in our own image.
This flight from womanhood is the costly price we have paid in our gender wars by making difference synonymous with hierarchy. God made the differences, and those differences are purposeful. There is also difference in the Trinity without inferiority.
In human terms, romance, marriage, sexual consummation, and commitment became the very fabric of society. There is a primacy of relationship that is ascribed the ultimate commitment in human terms. The exclusive nature of the commitment between the man and the woman is made in a most profound pronouncement by God Himself: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). God designed marriage for union and communion. Adam and Eve had no mother or father to leave, but they were now to become father and mother and transfer the trust so that as God had made them separate yet one, marriage would continue from generation to generation.
This was the first home. This was the first family. From here, all of humanity emerged. The home was instituted before the Church was brought into being. May I underscore that God intended the home to be the seed from which culture flowers and history unfolds. It is not coincidental that a garden was the first setting for the first home.
Looking at the average home today, we see how much heartache has resulted because we no longer see marriage God’s way. We seem to be living more in a wilderness, isolated from one another. Self-centeredness and personal ambition have replaced the love of a man for a woman and the raising of the family. The seeds of selfishness have given root to the thorns and hurts of fractured families. If our homes fail, history collapses.
Five thousand years ago,Abraham saw the need to preserve his children and their descendants. Concerned about the generation to come and claiming the promise of God, he called upon his trusted servant and said, “I want you to help me in this. Would you follow these instructions and find the woman whom my son Isaac, this chosen seed, should marry?” (see Genesis 24:3).
Those of us living in the West will have difficulty understanding some of these concepts, but I will try to delineate how they hold true as a moral basis, whether East or West.We make a mistake in thinking that something is right or wrong because our culture deems it such. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, culture may approve or disapprove, but if there is no overarching umbrella of truth beyond culture, our times may wreak havoc in the name of culture. Slavery is a classic example of this. People did not flinch at the barbarous practice that was tolerated for so long, the ramifications of which are with us to this day. The abuse of marriage is no less a crime against humanity.
In Abraham’s time, there was a very real assumption in the mix of religion and societal interaction that the parents played a pivotal role in making the decision about whom their child would marry. Over time, this practice has been abused and the child often becomes the victim. But in the ideal sense, parental counsel was intended to be a voice of love and wisdom that could keep a young life from being swept away by the insincere guile of a suitor.
Abraham sent Eliezer to search for a bride from the land of his own beginnings. This is the first major fact that emerges. Isaac was not the only one involved in this selection process, and I think that’s pivotal. God was concerned. Abraham had prayed. Eliezer was sent. A trusted servant and a devoted father played a vital part in the selection of the bride.
We run into a mental debate within ourselves at this point. You see, when you or I first set our eyes upon the one whom we think we have always wanted and the heartbeat of romance begins to pound,we are very susceptible to many dangerous situations. Our emotions can take over and prevent our minds from functioning with legitimate objectivity. In our minds, our parents can become merely interrupters of a relationship rather than wise guides helping us find the right person.
Before you completely dismiss that warning, think about it— first as a child and then as a potential parent who one day will guide your own child in making the same decision. Young people, be immensely careful when you pledge your life to somebody if your parents are not in sympathy with your decision— particularly if your parents love God.
In my own personal experience I found this principle extremely difficult to apply when the test came. The struggle to honor this commitment to our parents was a deep one because of the unique situation in which we found ourselves. I came from one part of the world, born and raised in India. The girl I loved came from another part of the world, Canada, and when we first met and developed an interest in each other, none of our parents supported our relationship for various reasons. We knew this would be a mountain to scale if we were to ever see the light of their consent and blessing.
So I found myself in this emotionally weighty situation, wondering to what degree I was going to follow this singularly important guiding principle in our friendship. As much as there was a struggle within my soul, I had told Margie that if our parents, who dearly loved our heavenly Father, were not supportive of our relationship, there was no way I could seek the blessing of God upon us. Margie and I made this a matter of passionate prayer.We talked, we prayed, we wept, and we struggled. A love I wanted was potentially going to be taken from me. This commitment to receiving our parents’ blessing became an important proving ground in our relationship.
I fully realize that there are many contingencies that come into play in the issue of parental blessing. There are many questions that one may raise. Parental blessing is a highly desired ideal but cannot be considered in a vacuum. In our day and age, one may argue both for and against. Times have changed, cultures are now intermixed, and travel is prolific.
Interestingly enough, on a recent visit to India, a journalist asked me during an interview what I thought of common-law relationships. Quite surprised at this question in the context of India, I asked her why she asked it. “Because it has become very common here,” she said. Our world has changed in massive proportions from the world of a generation ago. More and more young people have economic and emotional independence from their parents, and as a result, they are making life choices—such as living together outside of marriage—without their parents’ input.
While not a guarantee, parental counsel and blessing is nevertheless the way of wisdom and must be seriously considered. While ideals are beacons that guide us, they do not always present themselves in ideal fashion. Parents must be certain that they are not trying to relive their lives through their children, and children must be certain that they are not dishonoring their parents with a dishonest self-justification.
The famed John Wesley, who preached and taught two continents into a powerful revival, nevertheless went against the wisdom offered by many in his choice for a wife. He paid a bitter price for having done so. He himself would have testified that his marriage was a colossal blunder, the biggest mistake of his life. All I can say is that the joy of receiving the blessing of both parents keeps the heart in tune with the spirit and makes the joy complete in this huge step forward.
One must be profoundly responsible when categorically presenting an absolute, so let me put it this way. The chances are thatif you marry somebody in violation of your parents’ will, you areplaying a high-stakes game as you enter the future. Any time youviolate an authority that has been put in place by God, you need tobe twice as sure you are doing the right thing.
That’s as carefully as I can state it.