The Meaning and Purpose of Marriage
SLIDESHOW PRESENTATION
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QUICK LINKS
Sesame Street: WATCH
3 Way Marriage?: WATCH
Throuple: WATCH
PRINTOUTS
Printable PDF Files:
Leader’s Sheets | Student Sheets
PURPOSE
To determine where marriage came from. To see that God designed marriage for our good. To understand that God created marriage to be between a man and a woman.
GOAL
To get the students to think about where marriage came from and understand its purposes. To get them to question the validity of other forms of “marriage.”
Preparatory Reading:
In this article, Sean McDowell lists the nine essentials of marriage. https://www.biblestudytools.com/blogs/the-good-book-blog/9-truths-about-sex-and-marriage-from-genesis-1-2.html
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1 What is marriage?”
VIDEO: Sesame Street—Grover discusses What Is Marriage?
In this clip, Grover defines marriage simply as love between two people who want to become intimate. Get the students to react to that claim. Do they agree? Why or why not? www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQJvSzkVfRg
2 What kinds of relationships can be defined as marriage?
A) one man and one woman
B) two men
C) two women
D) one man multiple women
E) one woman multiple men
F) other
Read the following section from the article:
VIDEO: Polyamorous marriage: Is there a future for three-way weddings? A so-called ‘throuple’ in Colombia have been hailed as having the first legal union between three men in the world. So will we see three-way marriages in the future? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-40655103
Here is a Canadian throuple as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8Vw3nxELu4
3 Who defines marriage?
A) Government?
B) Culture?
C) Church?
Get the students to discuss what happens if marriage is defined by government or culture. This includes governments changing the definition of marriage in whatever way the culture wants. This could also include child-brides (where young children marry grown adults), incest or multiple partners. Explain that from previous talks we should trust God, who designed and created human beings male and female, to define marriage.
4 Whose idea was marriage?”
God designed and defined marriage as a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman. We keep coming back to these verses because they are so important in discussing sexuality. This time, reiterate that sex unites two people and God sees them as “one flesh.” This indicates that to God, tearing a marriage apart is as horrible as tearing a person apart.
“22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. ”
5 What are the benefits of marriage?”
Get the students to brainstorm the benefits of marriage for children, men and women. Get them to also consider how marriage benefits society as a whole, including for those who’ve never married. These benefits include:
A) Creates Children: Natural marriage encourages an adequate replacement birth rate, resulting in enough productive young people to contribute to society and provide security to the elderly.
B) Best for Raising Children: Children from natural marriage homes are six times less likely to commit suicide, half as likely to become pregnant out of wedlock, and less likely to drop out of high school. Children raised in a home with a committed mom and dad are:
Seven times less likely to live in poverty
Six times less likely to commit suicide
Less than half as likely to commit crime
Less than half as likely to become pregnant out of wedlock
Develop better academically and socially
Remain healthier, physically and emotionally, when they reach adulthood
C) Lengthens life spans of men and women.
D) Civilizes men and focuses them on productive pursuits; married men are more sexually satisfied, are more likely to be employed, and cause fewer crimes.
E) Protects women,from being abandoned and harmed economically by uncommitted men.
F) Protects mothers from violent crime. Mothers who have never been married are more than twice as likely to suffer from violent crime as mothers who have married.
G) Lowers welfare costs to society.
H) Allows couples to have sex and intimacy.
Tell the students that the last point seems uncomfortable to say but it is actually found in the Bible. Have them read 1 Corinthians 7: 1-8:
“1 Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. 3 The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 But this I say by way of concession, not of command. 7 Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that.”
6 What does this passage say about sex in marriage?
Sex in marriage is a good thing to help us practice self-control. But it also acknowledges we have a healthy need for sex and intimacy. It treats sex as something that binds two people together not just physically but mentally, emotionally and spiritually. In other words, it unites a couple in a way no other relationship can.
Mention this article as well: “A study of newlywed couples. Published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, this study indicates that “partners experience a sexual ‘afterglow’ that lasts for up to two days, and this afterglow is linked with relationship quality over the long term.” In other words, the more committed a couple is, the more likely they’ll be to experience sexual satisfaction. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/a-48-hour-sexual-afterglow-helps-to-bond-partners-over-time.html
7 Is there a difference between “sex” and intimacy?
Sex vs intimacy—“sex”(in popular culture) just involves persons performing the act, without the lasting connection or personal vulnerability. Intimacy on the other hand, is about knowing someone deeply and being able to be completely free in that person's presence. It is an emotional state that is reserved for just one person. Ideally, sex in a loving relationship should be the physical embodiment of intimacy. It should come from a place of love and connection.
VIDEO: Difference Between Sex and Making Love
In this video, a secular psychologist explains the difference between the physical act of sex and an act of making love. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6UtJ4mbyjc
8 What is the difference between romance and love?
Some definitions of both:
Romance is the expressive and pleasurable feeling from an emotional attraction towards another person often associated with sexual attraction.
Love in its best definition is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection to pleasure. ~ Quora
Follow-up with this,
9 What is commitment? What does it have to do with love?
“When the chemistry and attraction dry up at times, people often give up on the relationship. But true love is the commitment and even the discipline that contributes to the relationship survival. Romance is a part of love, but love can continue without romance. On the other hand, romance won’t last long without love.”
VIDEO: Watch this clip about commitment. Discuss with the students how it defines commitment. What analogies stood out regarding what commitment looks like and hat it costs. Ask them how this affects their view of marriage. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXghcI8hcWU
10 Wouldn’t a committed, life-time relationship be the best place to create a place of trust? If you know that you are the only person your partner is going to have sex with for the rest of their lives, doesn’t that build intimacy?
Watch this video and write down how this video describes marriage. What do you think of the description?
VIDEO: Sex, Marriage and Fairytale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4OK9DmLpCY
11 Because of the kind of intimacy involved in marriage, doesn’t it make sense that we celebrate this lifelong commitment and discourage divorce? How can we celebrate marriage and discourage divorce?
Demonstration: Take two pieces of paper, glue them together and then try and separate them once the glue has dried, neither paper will come out whole. In the same way, when you have sex with someone, you are connected to that person and it is very difficult to separate yourself from them. This is why God designed marriage as a way to meet our needs for romantic intimacy and friendship, but in a holistic way.
Have the students read this final passage and discuss how much value Jesus gives to marriage. Help the students see that marriage was part of God’s design for humans from the beginning and that He does not approve of divorce, let alone any sexual activity outside of marriage:
“3 Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” 4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and He also said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” 7 They *said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning, it has not been this way. 9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
12 How does God treat people who violate their marriage vows? How should we treat people whom we know have been sexually active outside of marriage?”
Read John 8:1-11. Jesus addresses the woman caught in adultery by loving her, but not her sin. He doesn’t condemn her, but He does condemn her sin.
Explain to the students that as you learned last week, marriage is a great institution to protect us from a lack of self-control. It is meant to be a chain-link fence to protect our path, not a chain around our necks. Get the students to brainstorm ways marriage protects a couple who save sex only for each other.
EXERCISE FOR THE WEEK
Have the students read Ephesians 5. Get them to answer these questions in their journals:
What are the commands God is giving husbands in this passage? What are His commands to wives? Which commands are hard to follow? Which ones make sense to follow? Why do you think that some are harder to follow than others?
Even though some of these commands are hard to follow, this passage also shows that God sees the marriage relationship as a symbol of His love for the church. Why is this significant for how we should see marriage?
This passage shows us a biblical standard for marriage that is different from the world. It shows that relationship is about serving the other person before we serve ourselves, just as Jesus chose to serve us by His death and resurrection.
RESOURCES
The Mingling of Souls, Matt Chandler- Video Series
What is Marriage? Man and Women: A Defense, Sherif Girgis, Ryan T Anderson, Robert P George
You and Me Forever: Marriage in light of Eternity, Francis and Lisa Chan