Excerpts from

I, Isaac, Take Thee Rebekah

By Dr. Ravi Zacharias

W Publishing Group

The Weightiness of Marriage

Some subjects you write about because they rise to the top of your thinking and you sense a deep compulsion in your heart about them. No matter what you address, that deep, pressing theme makes its way into your conversations or your preaching. Such a theme is timeless, and to fail to deal with it is to fail yourself and others. But in some instances, with the passing of time, the urgency lessens and you move on to other ideas that occupy your thoughts. The momentous subject that once held you captive no longer elicits the same fervor and passion that once overwhelmed you.

The subject of love, romance, and marriage provided such a moment for me when it captured my thinking and energy. It may have been because I, too, was making decisions that would shape my future and so felt drawn to the ramifications of these life-defining determinations. It may have also been that for the first time I was keenly aware of the direction our culture was headed and of the seeds that were being sown in society for the destruction of the home.

As the years went by I found myself thrown constantly into a different arena, where I was called upon to defend the gospel in hostile settings. My mind was inexorably drawn to “weightier” matters of philosophical debate about truth and belief in God. That still remains my primary locus of speaking.

Yet I have sensed that sooner or later, when outward resistance to the gospel has been dismantled, some very troubling questions lie beneath the surface for the one challenging biblical truth. Young people in particular run into romance and love with an irresistible urge and then begin to wonder if love was, indeed, all it was made out to be.

According to a recent study by a major university, the average college student pursues “sex without strings and marriage without rings.”¹ Physical intimacy is commonplace, considered just another way to have fun. And many young people aren’t interested in marital commitment. They say that living together is better than the risk of marriage and the hoops they will have to go through to get out of it, the certainty of which is only a matter of time. Yet in the midst of this scene, the average person continues to hope and long that it will be otherwise.

Love is still what people long for. It is still the theme of dreams. Why else do we hear so many songs about love when all around we see shattered dreams and wrecked homes? Why is there such hype about sex when no one person seems to be able to hold our attraction? Why do we still dream and yearn and hope when those yearnings seem unrequited? Suddenly, the issues that were deemed weightier become less pressing than the matters that directly reflect life and how to live it.

Marriage God’s Way

It may not be an overstatement to say that a person makes heaven or hell on earth depending on the one he or she marries. Any married person will agree, with a groan or smile. Marriage is an extraordinary relationship. It is a commitment from which you dare not take a vacation. It needs nurture and care, and like a tender shoot, the better the care, the better the blossom. But to be sure, it is hard work.

Different cultures view marriage differently. If we are not careful, we can begin to believe that marriage is society’s idea within the framework of each culture and, therefore, we may deal with it as we will. Nothing could be further from the truth. Marriage was God’s idea, and He alone has the right to define how it was meant to be. Within these pages I have made an effort to present God’s intention for marriage as given to us in His Word. Sooner or later we all come to the realization that only when we do marriage God’s way do we reap the benefits. When we do marriage our way, we damage His intent and pay the price.

The Culture of Marriage

The memories of the first wedding I ever attended are still fresh in my mind. I was a youngster in India and had seen many weddings from a distance. Every spring along the streets of Delhi, I would see huge processions following an elegantly arrayed bridegroom on a white horse as he would ride, sometimes for many miles, to the home of his bride. The horse would be draped in colorful velvet. The groom would sit tall, with the posture of a victor coming to claim the prize for which he has worked all his life. His attire would be shining, with gold-intertwined threads falling from his turban and covering his face. Musicians, many of whom desperately needed music lessons, serenaded him with flutes and other instruments along his journey.

Women carrying lighted kerosene lamps walked as part of the procession, providing a light along the darker roads and a brilliant symbol of the festive occasion. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of guests would be shouting and dancing as they followed along toward the celebration that awaited them. As the bride’s home came into sight, the music reached a crescendo and the procession came to a halt. Awaiting their arrival would be the guests of the bride, and the massive tent set up for the feast would suddenly become a beehive of activity. At this moment, all the attention was on the bride, bedecked in her magnificent and radiantly colored sari, her face covered by a veil, her hands and arms painted with henna in beautiful patterns. The guests would be intrigued, their necks straining to get a glimpse of her.

Wedding processions were a fun part of life in those teeming cities of India. I had stood on the side of the road and watched dozens of them. I must also make a confession. With the weddings as large as they were, nobody knew who came as whose guest. Often, as we would see a wedding procession going by, my buddies and I would bring our cricket game to a halt, casually join the groom’s party of followers, and arrive along with them at the bride’s home, ready to enjoy a gala dinner. During wedding season we could have feasted every night and no host would have been any the wiser. In fact, it was customary for wedding invitations to read, “We invite you, your family and friends . . .”

I have to admit that looking back on those days of youthful exuberance, I find my immodest self-invitations quite embarrassing to confess. Oh, but what meals we enjoyed, the best of Indian cuisine, justifying our participation as celebrants at a solemn ceremony! The truth is, we could not have cared less about the solemnity of the occasion. The food is what we came for. Priests chanted and recited incantations, but that was not for us. Weddings came and went, and I never stopped to think of what it all really meant beneath the exterior trappings.

That is why the first time I ever witnessed a wedding as an invited guest has remained etched in my memory. I accompanied my parents for the marriage of a close family friend. The ceremony took place in a church. The organ rolled, the guests rose, and the bride entered the church in a magnificent white-and-gold sari. She walked toward the groom waiting at the altar, where they pledged their vows to each other. Seeing this prompted a whirlwind of emotion within me. It was then that I began to ask questions about what it meant to be “man and wife.” How did they meet? When did they decide to be married? Who did the asking? What does it mean to be in love? Does anyone ever get turned down? Is marriage forever? What if it is a mistake? What happens now? Can marriage get boring? I never doubted the sense of awe and beauty in the ceremony. There was charm in the air. But I wondered if this was all a veneer or the real thing.

A Parent’s Role in Love

[W]hen you or I first set our eyes upon the one whom we think we have always wanted and the heartbeat of romance begins to pound, we are very susceptible to many dangerous situations. Our emotions can take over and prevent our minds from functioning with legitimate objectivity. In our minds, our parents can become merely interrupters of a relationship rather than wise guides assisting us to find the right person.

Before you completely dismiss that warning, think about it—first as a child and then as a potential parent who one day will guide your child in making the same decision. Young people, be immensely careful when you pledge your life to somebody if your parents are not in sympathy with it—particularly so if your parents love God.

I say this from personal experience. I found this principle extremely difficult to apply when the test came. The struggle to honor this commitment to our parents was a deep one because of the unique situation in which we found ourselves. I had come from one part of the world, born and raised in India. The girl I loved came from another part of the world, Canada, and when we first met and developed an interest in each other, neither of our parents supported our relationship. We knew this would be a mountain to scale if we were to ever see the light of their consent and blessing.

So I found myself in this emotionally weighty situation, wondering to what degree I was going to obey this singularly important guiding principle in our friendship. As much as there was a struggle within my soul, I had told Margie that if our parents, who dearly loved our heavenly Father, were not supportive of our relationship, there was no way I could seek the blessing of God upon us. Margie and I made this a matter of passionate prayer. We talked, we prayed, we wept, and we struggled. A love I wanted was potentially going to be taken from me. This commitment to receiving our parents’ blessing became an important proving ground in our relationship.

Uniquely A Man and Woman

From the beginning God positioned this relationship of man and woman in a unique context. Having created Adam, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18), so He created a partner for him. Man’s aloneness was an impediment to complete fulfillment. I find that to be thought provoking, because in a very real sense man was not alone. God was with him. Adam experienced companionship in his relationship with God. God walked and talked with him. Their communion was nestled in the beauty of a garden. Yet God said that man was “alone.” Interestingly, He made this pronouncement before Adam’s disobedience ruptured his relationship with God. So when God says, “It is not good for the man to be alone,” He must have had in mind a kind of companionship uniquely human to help meet Adam’s human finitude in a way that God designed and orchestrated. In other words, God has made each of us with certain needs that are an intrinsic part of being human—needs that only a fellow human being can meet. We must step back and take note of that. Once we understand this, we realize that though God uses marriage to represent His relationship with us, the Church, that relationship with God is not identical to marriage. God has designed marriage to be a distinctly human relationship, different from all others. That is the first reminder in the creation of humanity.

There is another reality that is often forgotten. When God said that it was not good for the man to be alone, even though he was in a close relationship with God, He created a woman. The fact that God did not create another man ought not to escape our attention. The companionship and the complementariness in that created pattern is defining for all of the rest of procreation. The woman met the desire, the need, and the insufficiency of the man in a way that God precluded Himself from and that another man was not intended to meet. Neither the gender of maleness nor the man’s spiritual relationship with his heavenly Father was to provide this particular relationship.

Pride Versus Personality

Conflict resolution is the key to success in most marriages. Beneath each tension lies one fundamental question: Is the point of tension unresolved because of the issue or because of a disposition? Dispositions are often matters of pride. Demanding a certain solution because of pride sows the seeds for discontent in years to come, yet giving into the other person’s pride is not the solution, either. I once heard a remark attributed to a famous preacher: “Only God knows how to humble us without humiliating us and how to exalt us without flattering us.” If God does it that way, must we not seek His strength to do it the same way? Keeping a person humble is not to try to humiliate them. Setting them in a place of respect is not to flatter them. Talking it over in the light of the other person’s personality is the key to conflict resolution.

Positive Purity

I challenge you to abide by a principle (and only you can seek the mind of God in this) that would be my desire for my children. Be careful, especially in those moments you spend alone. One principle Margie and I followed in our dating was that we would never be alone together without being accessible to somebody in either a public or a home setting. If we were in her home, we’d be talking in the living room and when we were in my home, my parents always had access to us. Such precautions aren’t absolutely foolproof, but they help reduce the margin of error. The apostle Paul says in Romans 13:14, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” In other words, “Do not put yourself in a place where you can fall.”

There remains just one more thing that I would like to say about purity. We are given to think of these qualities as the absence of something—no illicit relationship, no lustful inclination. If we only see purity on those terms we miss the true nature of what is pure. I want to lift you to see one of the most glorious revelations revealed to any of the apostles, and that was to John the Revelator, in the Book of Revelation, chapter 21.

As John was transported in a vision to heaven, he was utterly surprised by something he did not see. He remarked with utter consternation that there was no temple in heaven. But his consternation turned to joy when he realized that there is no need for a temple in heaven because the Lord Himself is present with His people. There is no need for an intermediary through which to commune with God.

Ultimate purity is a positive state, not a negative state. It is a matter of presence rather than of absence. The immediate presence of God transcends the intermediateness of the temple. In that sense, even the body will one day be shed because God will be all in all. In anticipation of that day, let the temple of the body be pure so that it points beyond itself to the very presence of God in marital commitment. That is why the Lord reminds us that as physical as the sexual act is, the marriage bed remains undefiled because His presence sanctifies the act. That is the privilege of a man and woman coming together in consummating the physicality of love, representing the spiritual bond between the two.