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Strong Tower Radio

Ariel Roldan

Living the Marriage 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 series of sermons started about 5 years ago while I was still pastoring at the Oakwood Church.

And they've been a great source of instructions, encouragement for me.

I want to continue developing this idea of what it means to be in a covenant.

Last sermon, we talked about, or try to help us understand better, how we may be thinking of a marriage versus how God wants us to think about a marriage.

And we talked about how marriages sometimes are often seen as a contract.

And contracts are not the same as a covenant.

A covenant is something that extends beyond focusing on me getting what I want.

When I enter into a contract with a dentist, I want him to take care of my teeth.

And if he takes a wrong tooth out, I'll get a new dentist.

If I want a plumber to fix my plumbing in my house, and my house gets flooded, I'll get a lawyer.

Because it's a contract-based relationship.

But when marriages are approached with that same mindset of a contract.

We are setting ourselves up for failure because it's a guarantee that whatever you expect from that human being is a matter of time before that human being somehow fails at something.

Sandy asked a very important question during the children's story, 1 that didn't really show whether we get angry or not, but whether we are honest.

He said, raise your hand if you've ever lost your temper.

So if you are marrying someone, you are marrying someone that may lose their temper or will lose their temper.

And so if you enter into this relationship expecting a contract to be fulfilled, you are in essence setting yourself up for disappointment.

And eventually because many people think of marriage as a contract, they feel that well, you failed at meeting your end of the deal, therefore this contract is made void.

Whereas a covenant is a completely different dynamic.

And this morning we're going to go into part 2 of the marriage covenant, entitled Living the Marriage Covenant, If you would allow me to award prayer as we begin.

Precious Father, this is a sacred subject and spiritual things are spiritually discerned.

I am not able, Lord, to express fully and eloquently and clearly the beautiful truth you have for us this morning.

So I'm asking for your spirit, Father, to condescend to our great need.

Father, even if we're single, We are still experiencing covenant relationships with our parents.

And all of us, Father, are invited to have a covenant relationship with you.

So whether we are married, widowed, divorced, single, whatever our condition is this morning, Us understanding what a covenant is, Father, is crucial for our happiness and for our fulfillment.

Like I mentioned earlier, we have a struggle in our society more than ever because we have media through all its forms, be it the newspapers, education, university.

Brother Keith and I had a wonderful conversation this morning as we were driving to church, and faith, how our culture seems to put, you know, either you're a faith person or you're a science person, but you can't be both.

And so if you love science like I do, you love medicine like I do, but I love Jesus and I have faith in his power to heal, somehow the 2 cannot live together.

And in academia, if you express faith, then you're ridiculed as gullible or childlike.

There are 4 forces that are very much present today, especially in our culture in the western part of the world.

Secularism is a loss of a sense of what is sacred in life.

Humanism, marriage does not have its origin with God, but with a human-devised social structure.

Selfism, this is where the contract mindset comes from.

This worldview emphasizes our right to pursue self-fulfillment, self-sufficiency, and self-development.

Do you want to marry someone that is selfish?

But yet society keeps telling you, you got to watch out for number 1.

If you're not watching out for number 1, who is?

And if this relationship is not fulfilling your needs then you've got to leave it, you've got to walk away.

And there are situations, but they're usually the extreme situations where you have humongously dysfunctional behaviors that yes, you should be protecting yourself or putting yourself in safety.

But for the majority of us, the idea of my needs and my wants and what I expected, the focus on self, frustrates our desire for companionship, for lasting, loving relationships.

The last 1, relativism, this social lens makes moral issues subjective and therefore personal, not universal.

I used to tell people, well, your path is Buddhism, your path is Islam, your path is atheism.

And I can respect and I can see, well, when you go that route, then who has the final say as to what is right and wrong?

Ultimately, all of these actually just put the human mind above the mind of God.

How many of you have struggled telling your child they are sleepy, therefore they're having a tantrum?

Now, the challenge is that your child thinks they know more than you.

And the challenge is that you as a parent know them.

It is not until they are adults that they begin to reflect back and say things like, you know what, Dad was right after all.

If you're blessed with good parents, I mean, not perfect parents, because we're not perfect either, right?

But if you have good parents that love you and care for you, their advice will 1 day make sense to you.

And that is the challenge that we have today when it comes to marriage and relationships.

We as humans have a very narrow, limited view of reality.

And the Word of God opens to us a mind bigger than ours and we chafe, we resist the idea that someone knows better than me and is telling me something contrary to what I want.

We are careful with what we tell our girls not to do.

Because sometimes they were not even thinking about not doing it until you told them.

But now that you've told them not to do something, they're struggling with doing it.

We have been very careful not to tell them too many details as to why we put these plastic lids on the plugs in our house.

Because we don't know how curious they might be.

The Word of God is 1 of the most tender revelations of a heart of a God that loves you.

And you need to know this before we even engage in anything that we're going to talk about this morning.

If there's anyone in this universe that wants to see you happy and fulfilled, It is God, your Heavenly Father.

And this morning you may be challenged just like my 4 year old is challenged when she is on the floor.

They've made snowmen, they've sled, they've done all these things and I know that she's tired.

She needs to lay down for a good 45 minutes to an hour.

You know I'm hoping she'll agree with me.

I just hope that my love for her will convince her, I want the best for you, honey.

Living the Marriage Covenant

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