Marriage and Food Are Alike

124 - Today's Prime Time Devo comes from 1Ti 4:3-5, “forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; 5 for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. (1 Tim 4:3-5) Marriage is more like food than one might think. Both are in God's design to sustain life on this earth, and both are gifts from God that are sanctified by His Word and prayer! Now some may snicker at such a statement and say, “Look around pastor! We don't need marriage to produce children, thereby sustaining life! We can make children outside of marriage!” This is undoubtedly true, however, to quote Jesus, “From the beginning it was not so!” He said in Mt 19:4-6, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' 5 "and 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 then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate." This is God's gift of marriage, and He designed it as a parameter for bringing offspring into the world. It is set apart forever on the basis of His Word, and it is in this parameter that the gift is to be received with thanksgiving. To bypass the process is to “ditz” the gift, and the Giver. Once Eve was brought to Adam and given to him in marriage, God gave the command to “be fruitful and multiply. And replenish the earth.” Marriage was God's plan to sustain and replenish the earth, and that's why we can say it is just as necessary as food itself. Therefore, it is not to be forbidden! At the same time it is not to be twisted into something it is not. Note God's explanation of marriage, He includes words like “Father and mother(male and female) “man and wife,” (male and female) producing children, male and female, who leave home and then being united through marriage producing more sons and daughters. Marriage. A sacred gift involving man and woman for the purpose of sustaining the earth. We take great pains to take care of our gift of food. Should we not also take great pains to take care of God's gift of marriage?