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Strong Tower Radio

Ariel Roldan

Marriage as a Covenant

Fresh manna fell to the ground as a gift from God while the Israelites were in the wilderness.

It was Fresh from the ovens of heaven, baked by the master baker himself.

How the Israelites must have anticipated the taste and the smell of each morning's delivery.

Just like the Israelites, you too can now enjoy the taste and smell of fresh manna.

Today you will be listening to Ariel Roldan, pastor of the Cadillac and Lake City Seventh-day Adventist Churches in the Michigan Conference.

This morning, we're gonna start a brand new series on marriage covenant as I began to pray and plan and Elder Snamen and Lori Snamen agreed to come and do this weekend's workshop last Sabbath.

I realized it would be great to segue that with a couple more of meditations, instructions from the Word of God in regards to marriage.

Most of the material, of course, comes from the Bible.

There's another book that if you're able to find it, I would encourage you to get it.

You may be familiar with an Adventist professor named Samuel Bakyoki.

He's most known for his work on the Sabbath, but he's actually written a book called The Marriage Covenant.

And much of this sermon series is based upon his book.

There's another pastor, he's a Presbyterian pastor, Timothy Keller.

He wrote another book called The Meaning of Marriage.

Very well written, very biblically sound.

And of course Advent is Home, Patriarchs and Prophets, Steps to Christ, Desire of Ages.

Many of those books have also been sources for this sermon series.

So I want to pray that before we engage it, God will open our hearts to receive the blessing He wants to give us this morning.

Father, I'm already blessed by fellowshipping and opening Your Word with our brothers and sisters in Belgium.

As we were looking at Your Law this morning, it was encouraging for me to know that there's a body of believers faithfully meeting, Faithfully, Lord, in spite of the language barriers, cultural barriers, COVID barriers, you are showing them a way to still be a church, to still be connected.

Thank you for the opportunities and blessings we have in our country.

Give us of your spirit that we can maximize these opportunities you give us.

And Father, this morning we need your spirit to speak to our hearts.

Open our understanding, Father, that these truths from your word will become real and applicable to each of our lives.

Thank you for blessing us with your word.

We ask that your spirit be the 1 explaining and teaching us this morning.

These are the sermon series, Marriage as a Covenant, this morning, Living the Marriage Covenant, The Law of the Marriage Covenant, Covenant Marriage and Sex, How to Face the Tax on the Marriage Covenant, Marriage Covenant and Divorce, Marriage Covenant and Mission.

I remember growing up in the church and hearing sermons with that word covenant in Spanish, pacto.

And immediately in my mind I would think, boring.

And I can understand because a lot of the concepts and words in the Bible are foreign to us.

And there's 1 that really stands out and that is covenant.

It gets flung around in Christian circles.

It means this to this church group, this to that group.

And yet for us, we're sometimes left wondering what is covenant.

And this morning I'm happy that we will be studying it in the context of marriage.

I think sometimes we get those 2 confused.

Contracts engage the services of people, whereas covenants engage what church?

You make a contract with a plumber, you make a contract with a chef, you make a contract with a photographer, but you do not make a contract with your spouse.

Contracts are made for a stipulated period of time, whereas covenants are forever.

Contracts can be broken with material loss to the contracting parties, whereas covenants cannot be broken, but if violated, they result in personal loss and broken hearts.

But this is the most precious part of a covenant, at least from the scriptures.

Contracts are witnessed by people with the state as guarantors.

It means that 13 years ago, when I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in front of Darlene and my precious bride, glorious and glowing and beautiful as she does today, even after a girl's been sick and her hair is not as done as it was that day, she's still precious and beautiful.

We stood before each other and there was a part in the wedding ceremony that if you've been married, you've partaken of, where we say our vows.

Some people like to write their own, some people like to have the standard in sickness and in health, poverty, etc.

But what I've come to understand from the scriptural teaching of covenant is that that day I made a covenant with the lean in God's presence, but the 1 that makes himself responsible for the success of those vows to be fulfilled is God.

No matter what promises I made to Dallin that day, there's a book called Steps to Christ that says that our promises are as ropes of sand.

But when I enter into a marriage covenant with another human being, the 1 that guarantees the success of that marriage is not either of the human parties.

Who is the guarantor of that covenant relationship?

Because I tell you, I tried to make it work for the first couple of years and they were not the nicest.

And when humans try to fulfill something that belongs to God, we are not very good at fulfilling that.

So this idea of marriage covenant is not really about us trying harder to be nicer husbands, nicer wives, but opening up ourselves to the grace of God and allowing Him to be the guarantor of our marriages.

We're going to look at 3 covenantal phases.

As we are starting this first sermon we're going to set the foundation as to what a covenant is, what it looks like, what it does for the marriage couples and in the upcoming series we'll develop this theme further.

Michelle read for us the verse that opens to our understanding the 3 covenantal phases.

Genesis 2 24 says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become 1 flesh.

In this 1 verse, God defines and describes the process by which each human being can experience the covenant, the marriage covenant.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become 1 flesh.

This language gets repeated throughout the entire Bible, but not primarily in marriage context.

These 3 words, that sequence gets repeated over and over as God engages humanity to save humanity.

The experience of marriage post-sin, the way God has created the marriage covenant to be experienced is to be a life lesson, an experiential life lesson for the couple, for the husband and the wife, in the process of what it feels like to be saved and loved by God.

The way I experience my marriage with God in it becomes my personal lesson book as to what God has done to save me.

It becomes a salvational experience for me.

Can we say that out loud so that it gets ingrained in our brain?

These are the 3 covenantal phases and we will see this repeated throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament.

In Genesis 2.24, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become 1 flesh.

We will look at this first part of this covenantal phase, the leaving part.

In Genesis 12.1, God is about to make a covenant with Abram and the first thing he tells Abram to do is found in Genesis 12.1, the Lord had said to Abraham and what are his first words?

Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family and go to the land which I will show you.

In the same way that God says a married couple begins this covenantal phase, is the exact same way He begins the covenant of salvation with Abraham by telling Abraham to do what with his family?

In Jesus in the New Testament in Luke 5, 10-11 tells us, Then Jesus said to Simon, Don't be afraid, from now on you will fish for people like Bruce.

So they pulled their boats up shore and did what with everything they had?

Left everything and not just their boats they also left their wives, they left their families, Peter's mother-in-law was sick which means he was a married man.

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Marriage as a Covenant

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