Marital Relationships
To experience marital fulfillment as
God intended, we must practice the
one man--one-woman plan instituted
in the Garden of Eden.
Here now is Gene Getz:
Now it shouldn't surprise us that
Elkanah who is mentioned--
who happens to be the father of Samuel.
It shouldn't surprise us that Elkanah
was a polygamous.
Remember he lived within the time of the judges.
He lived when everybody was doing
that which was right in his own eyes.
And polygamy was never condoned by God.
It was allowed by God because of Israel's sin.
And everywhere you see polygamy practiced,
it created all kinds of problems.
And you can see it creating all kinds of
problems for Elkanah.
He was married to two women,
one was named Hannah and the
other was Peninnah.
And it shouldn't surprise us that they had problems.
And you see once again favoritism being
showed in this particular situation.
Polygamy always leads to favoritism.
It's impossible to live in polygamy
without showing some type of favoritism,
especially in a culture of sin,
immorality, idolatry and all the things
that were going on within Israel.
Now picking up with verse 4, we read:
Whenever Elkanah offered a sacrifice...
And let me just underscore that
Elkanah was still going to worship the Lord.
And he was still making his sacrifices at Shiloh.
And so, you had this going on within Israel.
And you had this horrible syncretism,
frequently that was going on between
actually worshiping God--
as God said He should be worshiped--
at least in the place.
They weren't doing it the way God
wanted them do it often.
But they were still worshiping God,
but they were integrating into their
worship pagan practices.
And you see that going on in Shiloh
during the time that Samuel was born,
during the time, of course,
that Elkanah lived along with his two wives.
...[So] whenever Elkanah offered to sacrifice,
he always gave portions of the meat
to his wife Peninnah and to each of
her sons and daughters.
But he gave a double portion to Hannah,
for he loved her even though the
LORD had kept her from conceiving. ...
Obviously, that's favoritism.
...Her rival [the other woman] would
taunt her severely just to provoke her...
See there's a lot of sin going on here, a lot of evil.
And so, she would--Penniah would provoke Hannah
...because the Lord had kept Hannah from conceiving.
[And] whenever she went up to the Lord's house,
her rival taunted her in this way every year. ...
Isn't it interesting it happened
when they went up to the Lord's house.
Of all places they ought to be sympathetic to each other,
but here you have all this rivalry.
And Hannah wept. And she was so overcome
with grief that we read here, she wouldn't eat.
..."Hannah, why are you crying?" her husband Elkanah asked. ...
Which by the way, is a very dumb question
under the circumstances. We'll see that.
...Why won't you eat? Why are you troubled?
Am I not better to you than 10 sons? ...
And that by the way, is really stupid but it
reveals something very significant about this man.
Now you see those four questions tell
us a lot about Elkanah.
The first question is: Hannah, why are you crying?
Well, it was obvious why she was crying.
I mean that is so typical.
It seems to me of us, as men, many times: Why are you crying?
All we have to do is look at the circumstances.
Now sometimes we don't know it,. We don't understand it.
But, I mean Elkanah was not blind.
He heard this stuff going on.
He heard the taunting. He saw it.
This wasn't done by closed doors.
Hannah why are you crying? Why won't you eat?
You know he started digging himself in deeper.
Why are you troubled?
These are sort of redundant questions
based on obvious answers to the situation.
But here's the real revealing question
as I said earlier.
Am I not better to you than ten sons?
He was threatened and that didn't comfort her at all.
In other words, you have me.
Why are you upset?
And obviously, he was very threatened
by this particular situation.
So, what you see in this situation is indeed dysfunction.
And it reminds you of the story obviously of Jacob.
Because remember, he married Leah
then he married Rachel.
and that's a soap opera in itself,
if you go back and redo that story.
But obviously, Jacob loved Rachel
more than he loved Leah and that
created all kinds of problems within
that family situation.
Almost throughout their whole lifetime.
In other words, here is a violation of
the will of God, the ideal will of God,
the perfect will of God.
And it created all kinds of problems in this situation.
And that's why the Principle is stated the way it's stated here.
And let me just restate that Principle:
To experience marital fulfillment
as God intended, we must practice the
one man--one woman plan instituted in the Garden of Eden.
And most of us realize that because
sin exists in the world, even just having
one man--one woman relationship
creates enough difficulties rather than
having more than one woman involved
in the situation.
But God's plan from the beginning was
one man--one woman. That's what God created.
He created Adam. He created Eve for Adam.
He did not create two Eve's.
He created one and this was God's plan.
Now as sin entered into the world, obviously,
through their disobedience.
Then we see polygamy coming into the story
and we see that throughout the Old Testament.
And we see the multiplication of lies
particularly among the kings.
And that just created all kinds of
difficulties and problems.
Now when Jesus Christ came,
He introduced us to a whole new concept--
going back to God's ideal.
And that's why, for example,
in 1st Timothy chapter 3, verse 2
or Titus chapter 1, verse 6 where it
talks about the selection of men who
are to serve as leaders within the church.
They're to be the husband of one wife.
God made that clear, a man of one woman.
And this is to be a criteria by which
we evaluate whether or not a man
is mature in Christ.
Now, here he's dealing obviously with
men who are in leadership in the local church.
But he's not just saying that it's
something that is required of men who
are in leadership.
This is God's ideal and it's going back
to what happened when God created Adam and Eve.
It goes back to the story of Christ who
came to die for our sins in order to re-establish,
to a great extent, the possibility of having
this plan work out
as God intended this plan to work out.
So, in the New Testament we have that emphasized.
We have it in 1st Timothy 5:9.
It's a two-way street.
The wife was to be a woman of one man.
Wife of one husband, 1st Timothy 5:9.
And so God really makes it very clear
that this is indeed His ideal plan.
This leads to a very significant Principle
that grows out of Genesis and that's Marital Union:
To grow in oneness and unity,
we are to follow God's plan regarding
a one man--one woman relationship
within the bonds of marriage.
And that Principle comes right from Genesis
prior to sin entering the world and
what sin did to that relationship
because they disobeyed God.
And we've seen the results of that
obviously all the way through history.
So, the question to think about here
for Reflection and Response is:
What practical steps should we take
to maintain committed moral relationships
that are pleasing both to God and to each other?
And that's a question we have to wrestle with.
And God, to a great extent, speaks through
the New Testament authors of Scripture
to show us how to live within this
relationship as we should.
Number 1 and we could go for a long time
because this just would introduce us
to a whole concept of a marriage seminar
in terms of how you can maintain
the relationship that God wants us to have.
Particularly a moral relationship that is
pleasing to God and to each other.
And the first thing that I noted is that
we need to understand biblical love.
Because we really didn't understand
biblical love until Jesus Christ came--
at least after sin entered the world.
In 1st John 3:16, it says this is how we know
what love is:
Jesus Christ laid down his life for us and we
ought to lay down our lives for each other.
Jesus Christ introduced us to what real love is
and it's far more than feelings.
It's far more than sexual intimacy.
It's a much bigger concept involving loving
as Christ loved. Sacrificing,
being devoted to unselfishness,
and patience, and kindness, and all the things
that are used to describe this concept of love.
Particularly in 1st Corinthians 13 and
throughout the whole New Testament.
Another thought I had is not only
understanding biblical love,
but we need to understand the
difference between men and women.
There's a strong emphasis today on
"there are no differences." Yes, there are!
Even secularists who write on the subject will tell you
that there's a difference. To write a book called
"Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars"
is indicating as a secularist there's a big difference.
And so, if we face reality,
we need to understand that.
And we need to devote ourselves to
understanding that in relationship to marriage.
And then number 3, we need to
understand the impact of sin--
I already alluded to that--even in a Christian marriage.
In fact, Satan I think, sometimes
attacks Christian marriages more than
he does a secular marriage.
Because if he can destroy a marriage,
a Christian marriage, then he has an
inroad into the church, into the family,
into the church. Because the church is
made up of family units.
And so, if he can destroy it at that level
then he can weaken the whole church.
So, it shouldn't surprise us that Satan is very active,
even within Christian marriages.
And then we need to learn to
communicate with each other and to
meet one another's needs.
And of course, when you're dealing with
moral issues, Paul was extremely practical
on this in 1st Corinthians.
And it has to be interpreted in context
but you can't question what Paul says.
It's just black and white when he says
in chapter 7: a husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife.
And likewise, a wife to her husband.
And we all know what he's talking about in context here.
A wife does not have authority over
her own body but her husband does.
Equally, a husband does not have
authority over his own body but his wife does.
Do not deprive one another,
except when you agree for a time to
devote yourselves to prayer, then come together again.
Otherwise, Satan may tempt you
because of your lack of self-control.
Now as I said, Paul is very practical here.
But he's also very practical in terms of working
that out because that can be abused--those statements.
The moment we have the attitude
"you owe me," God says so, we're
already moving in the wrong direction.
Even though God says we have a responsibility,
it's to be based on love,
and Christ-like love, and unselfishness.
So, this is something we need to work out together:
walking in the spirit and not taking advantage.
Not controlling. Not manipulating.
But allowing the Holy Spirit to enable us
to meet one another's needs
according to the will of God.
So the Bible is very practical.