As a woman was getting her hair fixed, she listened to the conversation between her beautician and the 19-year-old beautician in the next booth. The younger woman was trying to decide if she should marry her boyfriend, who was contemplating getting a tattoo with her name. The older beautician cautioned her by saying, “Marriage is one thing, but a tattoo is permanent!” (Reader’s Digest [4/99], p. 129.)
There’s the modern mindset for you—we see tattoos as more permanent than marriage! As I said last week, our culture has gone through a major shift over the past 30 years, where divorce is now fairly commonplace, even in Christian circles. If we want our marriages to last for life and be glorifying to Him, as God’s Word commands, then we need to develop God’s perspective on marriage, that He hates divorce and that marriage is a lifelong covenant before Him. We explored those matters last week. This week I want to focus on another principle from our text: