Marriage 101 by Dr. Mensa Otabil

I'm beginning a new series which I believe will be of great interest to you and I want you to get ready. I've titled the series, Marriage 101 and 101 simply because it's fundamental. If you were in a university, this would be level 100 and this is trying to get the basics of marriage right.

Now, I want to encourage you, if you're married, if you're contemplating marriage, if you are divorce or separated or you don't even want to marry, you need to hear these series because if it's not applicable to you, you can use it to prepare for when you are ready or when somebody you know really needs information, you can help them to build a good foundation for marriage.

"Marriage is a very sacred institution and it is the foundation for human society. When we get it wrong in marriage, we get it wrong at the family, it affects the children, it affects the society. So, we should always try as much as possible to get it right from the beginning." I want you to get your bibles, get your pens, your notebooks and let's start the teaching on marriage 101.


And now, today's message...

I've titled the series, Marriage 101. These days when you go to the universities, they have level 100, level 200, and so on. When we say marriage 101, we simply mean that the basics, getting the basics right. We'll get later to marriage 404 and that's when we will deal with deep things but we need to get the fundamentals right because if you don't get the fundamentals right, you will not get the details right; You'll not get anything right. So, for whatever or everything we do, we must make sure that the basic fundamentals are right and when we get the basic fundamentals right, everything else will be okay.

Normally, when we talk about marriage and you say you're going to do a teaching on marriage, people immediately think you're going to talk about sex and so they get ready for a lecture on sex. As if having sex will have helped you to have a good marriage. You can have the best sex and have the worst marriage because the two are not mutually compatible. You have to get the fundamentals of marriage right and marriage is not fun, it's hard work. But I nearly titled this message, hardwork at home, and then I change it to Marriage 101.

To get the fundamentals right, let's go to the "fundamentals". Go back to Genesis Chapter 1 and we're going to look at the first marriage; its institution, how it was established, the first couple; who they were. Genesis 2:18-25. The Lord God said, “Tell the person near that it is not your uncle who said. It's not your family elder who said, it's not your "RELATIVE" speaking. This is the Lord God Almighty, all right”. The Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground, the Lord God found every beast of the field and every birds of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them and whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.

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Adam give names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field but for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him and the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept and he took one of his (5:28) and closed up the flesh in its plates then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman and he brought her to the man and Adam said, “This is now, bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man”. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife they shall become one flesh and they were both naked.

The man and his wife and were not ashamed. In this passage, we find the reason why God established marriage. God created the earth and he created living Christians on the earth, animals, beast of the field, birds of the air. Each one of them was created male and female and Adam was created but God did not create male and female. God just created one entity which was called man and God gave Adam responsibilities. He had to take dominion over the animal kingdom. He started naming the animals, exercising dominion.

Adam began to feel that there was something missing in his life because the cows were male and female, the monkeys were male and female, the alligators were male and female, the cockroaches were male and female, everybody was male and female and he looked at himself and he was one. He couldn't share friendship with the animals, he could command them, he could use them, he could direct them. He was their boss. He was their master. God says, “Adam cannot have a relationship with the animals because he is the boss. So, I'm going to do something for this guy. I'm going to give him a helper. The helper I want to give him will be a helper that is comparable to him, not somebody to boss over because he was already boss over the animals and he was still alone. God recognized that man was alone.

There is difference being alone and being lonely. You can be lonely when you are alone and you can also be lonely when you are not alone. You can be alone when there are people and you can be alone when there is nobody because sometimes in life, you can have it thousand people around and still feel very lonely because you feel nobody understands me, nobody cares for me, nobody loves me so I can have many people around and still feel lonely. Adam was not feeling lonely. He was alone. He was alone because there was no means of sharing fellowship, there was no means of communicating. Whatever he had did not have an object for him to share with. The God said, ”I need to create a partner for this man so he can share with that partner and that partner can share with him”.

The first reason why God established marriage was for man and woman to share life together, that's the first reason. God did not say it is not good for man not to have children, that's not what God said because the fact that Adam didn't have children was not a bother to God. It was the fact that he had nobody to share his life and that is very very important. Having children is essential but marriage is not primarily to have children. Children are a byproduct of marriage but there are not the reason for marriage. Anyone who goes into marriage because they want children, are starting on the wrong footing. God says it's not good for man to be alone and that's why I said tell to the person next to you (11:22) because you see if you don't get the fundamentals right, if you don't get what God had in mind, you will think your need was the reason why God created marriage. God didn't create marriage because Adam asked for a wife, God created marriage because he wanted man not to be alone. You can't be selfish in get into marriage.

The second reason why God created marriage, he says let us make a helper. So, the second reason is to support one another.

The first reason is share. Everybody says share.

That means you can't be selfish in marriage. Anyone who is selfish is not a candidate for marriage. You may be physical grown but you're not ready to marry until you have gotten to a place to share and I'm going to talk a bit about sharing soon.

The second reason is support. The third reason, he says, “Let us make a helper comparable to him”.

The third reason for marriage is honor. That what God is saying. I want to create another person that Adam can share with, can be supportive of, and can receive support from and a person Adam can honor and be honored by, that's the reason. For a person to be able to share, that person must have a sense of personal ownership because you can never share until you are convinced that what you have is yours. Have you ever seen a child who has a toy? You tried to get a child to give you a toy. Say, “Hello, could you give me the toy?”. He move the shoulder up and down indicating no. and you (13:42) him, “I'll give you coffee”. No. I'll give you this. No. But as the child hold on to the toy for a very long time. He, by himself walks to you and offers you the toy.

Now, what changed between the time you first ask and the time he gave by himself. He had a sense of ownership. He believed that the toy belongs to me and because he has this complete sense that the toy belongs to me, he was ready to share it. That's why people who have ownership are the people who share. If a person doesn't have the sense of ownership, he can't share and in marriage, sharing is vital. You have to share your love and for you to share your love, you must have love because you can't share what you don't have. If what you have is anger and frustration and bitterness in life, you can't share love. If you go into marriage because you want to prove a point to somebody, you can't go there and share love. You can only go and share proving a point because that's what you have. Because you see although God intended marriage differently, we are using marriage for our own purposes. Some people use marriage to prove a point to their parents, some use marriage to prove a point to their stepparents, some use marriage to prove a point to their classmates, some use marriage to prove a point to the church that after all me too have married.

If that is why you married, your fundamentals are wrong. Some matter because everybody is married. Everybody is married. I'm alone. I'm (16:01). If you married because you felt frustrated with your growing, that's what you're going to share because what you have is what you give. It's for sharing, everybody say sharing.

It comes from ownership. What you own is what you share. If you own piece, you share piece. If you own love, you share love. If you own frustration, you share frustration.

The second one is support and this support is mutual. It is not what taking care of the other, it is both supplying the need of each other. And the third and most, I think probably the most important is honor, respect. You don't get into marriage to disgrace one another. You don't marry your husband to disgrace him, not that you marry your wife to disgrace her. You marry to honor and that is how God intended it. It's important also to note from the passage we just read that the man and the woman when not created together. That is very very important. They were not created together.

The male and female hippopotamus was created together but male and female human was not created together. Secondly, the man and the woman were not created to be the same. God didn't create another man for Adam. He created a woman so, they are not physically the same and thirdly, the man and the woman were created to be part of each other. They were not created at the same time, they were not created to be the same, they were created to be part of each other.

Most marriage problems are located in the three statement I just made because the fact that they were not created the same is the basis of every misunderstanding and the fact that they were not created together is the basis of misunderstanding and the (18:31) that these people who are not the same were created to be part of each other is the basis for misunderstanding because normally is not easy to live in the same house with your own brothers and sisters, whom you grew up with from childhood from age 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 you (18:57) together and everything share clothes together, bathe together, you grew up, by the time you hit about 16 and 17 starts fighting seriously because each one wants space.

Can you imagine, people who didn't grow together and who are also not the same living together in the same space, same house? They are not the same, they come from different places but they're supposed to be part of each other and because of this differences, there are problems we need to deal with. For any marriage to work, we must first understand the differences between male and female. Males are not females and females are not males. A man is not a woman, a woman is not a man. Two, we must understand the responses of male and female to each other, the first is differences, the second is responses to each other, and the third is responses to issues, this is were the problems come from.

Men are different from women. How many of you know that by now? When a child is born, they go to the hospital, they lift the child up after birth and they say, “It's a boy!”. How did they know? They all have head, how do they know this ones is a boy? They have ears, how do they know this one is a boy? (20:52) “It's a girl!”. How do they know its a girl? Not from their ears, not from their eyes, not from their nose but as you go down, the difference will be seen. The difference has to do with a reproductive system.

The way God designed them to produce. I want you to get that phrase very carefully. These days when science is helping all of us. When women are pregnant, you can go and do a scan to check whether its a male or female and the scan simply looking for an outward manifestation and they can tell if it's not a boy, they know it's a girl because you can tell by the shape of a boy that it's a boy. The difference is in the way they produce. Apart from that, they seem to be the same physically. There is a difference in male and female and that has to do with the way they produce. When a man meets a woman and they want to produce a child, they play different functions and different roles and that has to do with the way God designed them. The man is the giver of seed. Everybody say, the giver of seed.

The woman is the developer of seed. (22:56) developer of seed. The man gives the woman takes what a man gives, multiplies it, grows it and make it powerful, beautiful or sometimes very troublesome, something comes out. In that system in the way God has designed them therefore, when you want to see how a woman produces, she takes little things and makes them big. The man gives little things and expect it to be big. It's very different productive paradigms.

When you understand why a man (23:55) going out will put some little money on the table and go out to work and come and expect a big (24:04) because that's not how men are designed that's the difference. Because of that, the men don't understand the women and the women don't understand the men because they look at life from a totally different perspective. It's like a two faces of a coin, it's the same coin but one face is different and from the other face.

However, if they learn to work together, they will understand that if they put the two faces together, they can purchase whatever they want to purchase but if they don't learn to put those differences together, they will begin to fight one another and destroy one another although they are part of the same coin. It's two different ways of doing things but it produces life for all of us.

Naturally speaking, God created women to be more sensitive and more withdrawn and more (25:16). Men are more external, more expressive in their outlook (25:29). when a man meets woman, men easily get attracted, women most of the time take time to nurture attraction. It's the way they meet. Whatever a man says, the woman works with. For example, the man says to the wife, “I love you” one little word, “I love you”, the whole day, the woman will be working with it although the man who released that seed from his mouth has forgotten. That's how they were made. He's forgotten he said, “I love you” and then they meet later in the evening and the woman is all over him and she's wondering, what's happening. I mean, what happened and he is forgotten that when he said, “I love you” why is he forgot. The woman (26:37), cultivate it, developed, meditated, brooded over what was said.

And at the end of the day, she began to manifest the word that has been spoken to her. In the same way, if the man said one nasty word, “Oh leave me alone”, and he forgot about it, the woman takes that word and wax with it. While you are away, she is working with it. She's growing it. She's developing it. She's incubating it and its becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. When you meet the man means the woman he says, “How is it cold?” and she's wondering what happened. I haven't done anything. And if that man was to complain to somebody about his marriage, he would say, “ I don't understand my wife. I haven't done anything but she is angry.”

The problem is that men don't understand that the little things they do become big things in women. They feel, “I haven't done anything, what you consider not anything gross” and that is why for a successful marriage to happen, I consider that the men are the key to how things would turn out because the woman, and I'm not saying it's a general rule and I'll come to talk about very specific things but I'm giving you general principle. The woman will take what you give her and give it back to you. That's how God designed them.

There are women who function a bit differently from that because before they married, they already had received seed. They marry and they give you things you didn't give her because some other boyfriend three years ago give her all that bad stuff and then she met you last year and you married her and you begin to reap something you didn't sew. That happens but it is still the same principle that she is only reproducing what has been put within her.

Well, my friend what we've tried to do in this session is just trying to lay down the foundations because it's always important to know where we are coming from. God created marriage for purposes that have been abused over the years. He created it for sharing, for honoring, and for supporting one another. If we get these three items right, we can build a marriage right. If we get it wrong, then our efforts may not be very very successful. I trust that you have been able to place yourself at the foundation and next week, I'm going to continue as I talk about the differences between men and women and why sometimes we have the challenges we have in our marriages. Pass the (30:17) Shalom, peace, and life to you.


Reference:
- Marriage 101 By Pastor Mensa Otabil