The Matchmaker in Action

• In my previous talks this week, I’ve established the fact that in his teaching on marriage, Jesus went right back to God’s purpose in creation. He refused to accept any lower standard. In the pattern for marriage set by God in creation, we find four successive phases, four distinctive features of marriage as God originally ordained it.
• First, it was God’s decision, not Adam’s. It was God who saw that Adam needed a helpmate. Second, it was God who formed Eve for Adam. Adam had nothing to do with that process. Third, it was God who brought Eve to Adam. Adam didn’t go out and look for Eve. Eve was brought to him as his appointed mate by God himself.
• Fourth, God established the terms of their relationship. In essence, it was leave and cleave. The man was to leave all other associations that would interfere with his commitment to his wife. And they were so to cleave to one another and be united that they would become one flesh. Let me just quickly recapitulate that.
• First, it was God’s decision on Adams. Second, God formed Eve for Adam. Third, God brought Eve to Adam. And fourth, God established the terms of their relationship. Now, I believe that all these four principles still apply today in the outworking of God’s purpose for marriage in our lives. In other words, I take my stand with Jesus. Man may have changed, but God has not changed.
• His original plan and standard for marriage still holds good. That’s the way he wants marriage to be brought about. Today I’m going to share with you along these lines in a very personal way. I’m going to tell you how God joined me to my first wife, Lydia. At the time of my marriage to Lydia in 1946, I had been a committed Christian for about 5 years.
• I believed the Bible and was sincerely seeking to serve the Lord. But I did not understand the biblical principles of marriage as God later revealed them to me. And yet as I look back, it amazes me and also strengthens my faith to see how God worked in my life exactly according to the principles that he himself had established when he created Adam and Eve and joined them together.
• Now let me just give briefly some of the details in a way that will bring out these points that I’m trying to establish. I came to know the Lord in a personal way in the British army in 1941 in an army barrackum in the middle of the night. I had a dramatic life-changing personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ. From that day onward, I knew that my life was in God’s hands and I knew without any process of reasoning that God had a plan for my life.