Somebody Loves You

Raul Ries: And maybe you're a Christian and you're still saying things to your wife that you shouldn't be saying to her, or the wife to the husband. God wants both of you to be simple, to be humble. And if you mess up and if something's going in your marriage, to get on your knees, both of you, and you pray to God and say, "God, we need You today. We can't make it without You, Lord."

Host (Male): Welcome to Somebody Loves You Radio, the Bible teaching ministry of Raul Ries in Diamond Bar, California. Today's message continues our study of the biblical blueprint for a strong, healthy marriage.

If you and your spouse are struggling, Raul will urge you to seek God's renewal in your relationship. You'll find that when you submit to the Bible and adopt an attitude of mutual respect, you make room for the Lord to heal and restore your brokenness. Today's lesson is titled "Scriptural Marriage" in Genesis chapter two. Here's Raul Ries.

Raul Ries: There's a lot of marriages today that are in deep, deep trouble. Maybe you're here tonight in deep trouble. Number one, in the marriage, there's no fear of God. And yet we want to make sure that we look at the Scriptures to see what the Bible teaches. Not what I teach, not what men teach us. What does the Bible say about marriage?

Can you imagine how children feel when a father and a mother divorce or they have a separation because they can't get along? And the children have been in the home and they've been watching Daddy yelling at Mom or even beating on Mom. And then she's really broken up, and here the father's drinking or taking drugs or whatever he's doing, and that marriage has totally come to an end and a divorce comes.

I had a friend that was totally separated for five years, separated. His wife took off with another person. He had just come to know the Lord. We went to school together. I led him to the Lord. And I was amazed how he was getting rooted and grounded in God's Word. And yet he waited for his wife to see if she would return, which is biblical.

She never came back, so then he got married. And God blessed him with another woman, a very godly woman, and she became a wife to him in the Lord. And I've had many counseling appointments where people come in and they're tired of their marriage. They've been married 10, 15 years and they find somebody else at work or somebody else in the church, believe it or not.

Now, I don't know as a husband where you are tonight, but I hope you don't find yourself in that situation where you're cheating on your wife and you're grieving the Holy Spirit of God. And if you're a woman, you might be doing the same thing. Divorce is a very ugly thing. God hates divorce, the Bible says.

But here in the book of Genesis, we have the first marriage, which I always take people back to this because when you're talking about marriage, it's two people becoming one. And first of all, if you're single, how do you know that God wants you to marry that person? How do you know? If you marry a person not really knowing that God told you to marry that person, already you're going to have big problems.

You've got to have the peace of God in your life. You've got to spend time in prayer. You've got to spend time in the Word. As a matter of fact, I tell these young guys, don't hang out with your girlfriend alone or your wife to be, because you get tempted. Hang out with people around you. And when you don't have anybody around you, then don't be alone in the home or wherever you're going. Hang out with people that can see you, because otherwise, you're going to start your marriage in the wrong way.

And Adam and Eve were a great example to each one of us individually because this is our first parents chosen by God to become husband and wife and bringing forth children that He gave to Adam and Eve. Let's begin by looking at verse 18 what he says here. He says, "And the Lord God said," so here is God's word, thus saith the Lord. "It is not good that man should be alone," there it is.

God never expected men to be alone. Now, if you're a man and God has given you the gift of singleness that you'll never get married, as he says in First Corinthians chapter seven, awesome. But if you're a young man and God hasn't given you that gift and you have sexual problems and you have a girlfriend to be your wife, then I would get married instead of falling into the lust of the flesh and bringing a black eye to the kingdom of God and bringing a bad witness to your family and to your friends.

Especially when you're telling them that you are Christians and that you love the Lord and that you're wanting to get married to this woman or to this man when you're sinning against God. Adam and Eve are a great example to us because He says again, "And the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.'" So that woman that God is going to give to us is a helper, one that's going to help us.

A husband must take care of his wife spiritually. I don't know if you have a Bible study with your wife at home and your children. It's not a big Bible study, but the things that I do with my grandkids even to the present time, when we come together, we pray. Not long, but I teach them how to pray. And when we share the gospel with people, I always tell them about verse 18: "And the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.'"

Notice a helper comparable to him. God puts it together. Yes, there are going to be problem situations. But if the Lord is for us, who can be against us? Think about that. Who can be against you, who can be against me if God is for me? And knowing and recognizing that God has called me to be married to this man, God has called me to be married to this woman and to watch the blessings of God.

The way God begins to bless in that marriage, He says in verse 19, "Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every bird 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." He gave them the power, the knowledge to actually come to that place and giving names to every one of the animals in the kingdom.

I mean, that's pretty powerful when you think about that. And then he says, "So Adam gave names to all the cattle, the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him." God saw the loneliness of man. Here is all the animal kingdom, here is everything God has created, and yet here is man and has nobody. And God says he needs somebody.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept. And He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. And when He uses the word rib, it's that God took the woman from the closest part of man's heart. Not from his feet, not from the top of his head, but from the side of his heart. God took the man and made a woman.

And then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man He made it into a woman and He brought her to the man. And Adam said, "This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of the man. And therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be glued unto his wife and the two shall become one flesh."

So you have the bridegroom right here, the bride way back there. The father is here sitting down and when she comes forward and he comes to take her, who gives this woman to be married to this man? Her mother and I. He takes her, brings her up to the altar here. At that particular moment they're coming as two, but when they leave here they're one. One as husband and wife, not two.

And that's something that a lot of times people don't realize. You don't allow your parents to get into your marriage. That's a real problem. You have to run your own life. Yes, they can pray for you. Christ has to be centered in your marriage. If Christ is not centered in your marriage, you will not have a marriage that God planned for you to have.

It has to be a spirit-filled marriage. And the reason I say that is because people come here all the time and they want counseling. And when you begin to share with them, they begin to share with you they don't pray together, they don't even talk or converse together in any way and they're already split up. And it's important, as he says here in the Scripture, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be glued to his wife and they shall become one flesh."

Now, I'm not a carpenter, but you take two-by-fours, you glue them together, leave them overnight, and then the next morning try to take them apart. You can't. So you take a hammer and a chisel and you put it up and you start hammering these two pieces of wood and you get right in the middle and all of a sudden it splits. How many marriages have become split because of different things in your lives?

You see, God hates divorce. And I know that maybe some of you have been divorced. It's important for you if you've been divorced and you got remarried, make sure you don't make the same mistake again. Make sure you're going to stick to your husband and to your wife. And maybe you're a Christian and you're still saying things to your wife that you shouldn't be saying to her, or the wife to the husband.

God won't honor your marriage. You'll grieve the Holy Spirit of God. God wants both of you to be simple, to be humble. And if you mess up and if something's going in your marriage, to get on your knees, both of you, and you pray to God and say, "God, we need You today. We can't make it without You, Lord." But people are not willing to do that. People are not willing to humble themselves before the Lord and say, "Yes, Lord, I have problems in my life."

You need to become a prayer warrior in your marriage because God not only loves you and He cares for you more and more every day, but He wants you to understand that He's there 24/7, 365 days in the year there for you at any time and point that you need Him, He'll be there for you. He's there just amazing the way He does things in our lives.

Host (Male): You're listening to Somebody Loves You Radio with Raul Ries. It's always our joy to strengthen and support you in your spiritual walk. Visit somebodylovesyou.com to take a look at our full range of family-focused resources. You can also download our app to bring the Word of God into your daily life on a consistent basis. Here's Raul Ries once again with more of today's study.

Raul Ries: What I want to do now is I want to give you some of the things that I've learned through the Scriptures about biblical marriage. First of all, we need to understand it was instituted by God Himself, not man, by God. Where He says in 2:18 of Genesis, "And the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.'" A helper.

She is there to help you guys. But if you don't love her, how can she help you? You've got to love your wife. And if you love your wife, you don't have to tell her what to do in your life. She will become not only that type of helper that you need as a man in your life, and you won't have to complain like so many men complain. They haven't been that husband, haven't been that father.

And if you haven't been that, how can your wife then yield to you and trust you in the things that maybe you want to do in your home? And when I was reading that I was thinking again because, you know, in my own personal life when He says, "And the Lord God said," it's God speaking. Not me, not Adam. God is speaking: "It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him."

She's there to help you. In Hebrews 13:4, it says, "Marriage is honorable among all and the bed is undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers will be judged by God." A woman loves to be loved. She doesn't want to be yelled at all the time and called names all the time. If you love her, she'll love you and your children will be able to see how you love your wife and how you care for your wife.

And your wife automatically will come and say, "What do you need that I can do for you as a husband?" And she'll do that. In Matthew 19:6, He says, "So then they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has glued together, let not one separate the couple." Never to be separated. It's that intimate bond, that intimate bond that Jesus talked about in Matthew five.

And He said, "For this reason a man shall leave his mother and father and be glued to his wife and the two shall become one flesh." You notice how many times in the Bible he comes up with the same Scriptures? How many times does God have to repeat Himself until we say, "Okay God, I hear what You're saying"? And then He says, "Well, practice it now. Practice what you know. And then you won't have problems like that."

It is blessed by God. Genesis chapter one, 27, 28: "So God created man in His own image. In the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. And then God blessed them and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the seas, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'"

So God gave them the authority. And what happened? They both sinned and they were kicked out of the garden. And then from that point on, here we are. And marriage is only dissolved by death. Romans 7:2: "For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband."

So then if while her husband lives and she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law so that she is no longer an adulteress, though she had married another man. And remember what Paul said in First Corinthians seven, only in the Lord you're to marry. Not apart from the Lord. If a wife dies, a husband can marry again in the Lord, someone that knows the Lord in the same way, and vice versa on the other side.

And then again, you know, marriage is a consummation of a relationship given to each one of us individually between husband and wife. Proverbs 5:15 says, "Drink water from your own cisterns," you see? Your own wife. Don't go out looking for somebody else. "And running waters from your own well. To have children. Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets?" Going from here to there and there to here, having all these women in your life, or you might have all these men in your life if you're a wife.

You've got to be careful. He goes on to say, "Let them be only your own and not for strangers with you." And this is really important Scripture because he goes on to say, "Let your fountains be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth. As a loving deer, as a graceful doe, let her breasts satisfy you at all times and always be enraptured with her love." That's why sometimes divorce hurts a family.

Just lately, I mean, if you look back when I was a kid, you never heard of somebody 60, 70 years old getting divorced to somebody else. And a lot of times it's the lust of the flesh that takes place. And God wants each one of us individually here, if you're a single person, wait on the Lord for Him to give you the right person that you're to spend eternity with, all the days of your life to be with that person.

And then he says it's to be centered in love and obedience in Ephesians 5:1. Therefore, be you imitators of God as dear children. You saw husbands, verse 28, ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

The wife cannot respect the husband unless the husband respects the wife. No possible way. But when you look at the men, three times in the book of Ephesians he says, "Husbands, love your wives. Love your wives. Love your wives even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it." For the husbands. And that's why I say when a wife is being loved by her husband, they're assured that you love them. They're assured. And it's so cool to see that type of a family that they love one another and they're not fearful that they're not really husband and wife.

But then also she is a crown to her husband. In Proverbs 12:4, he says, "An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones." I mean, this is the Word of the Lord. An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who causes shame is like the rottenness of his bones. And man, how many wives have caused that to happen in a marriage?

She's a good thing to her husband. Proverbs 18:22: "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord." For you single guys, to find a wife is a good thing, especially if she loves the Lord, especially if she's going to be serving with you in some type of a ministry and you're going to have a godly home, godly children. It's awesome.

And then she is the weaker vessel, the weaker vessel. First Peter 3:7 says, "Husbands, likewise dwell with your wives with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel," there we go, "as to the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered." If a husband is not being nice to his wife and you're abusing your wife as a Christian, your prayers are going nowhere. Your prayers are going nowhere until there's repentance and until you tell your wife, "I'm sorry," and until you say you love her.