We keep going back to the men because ultimately, men, it’s your responsibility. You’re going to answer to God for the care you’ve taken of these that He’s entrusted into your hands.  Our children are not our own.  Be very careful how we, as parents, try to influence our children.  Our efforts and our influence should be very firm.  We should be present, very ambitious in trying to push them toward Christlikeness, but let God order their steps as it pertains to their walking out and working out their own salvation.  We have great responsibilities to bring guidance but a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife; amen?  So, when we see that aspect of the cleaving, that’s important for us and I want to share it from Genesis 2:24, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”  And they shall be one flesh.

The word, “cleave,” here is very interesting and we think of it as the holding fast, the grasping.  But there’s another word, as I was going back through these passages, this word, “cleave,” also, in the Hebrew, has a connotation with it that I’ve never really seen before but I really like this aspect:  it means to pursue hard or to overtake.  A man leaves his father and mother and pursues hard or overtakes this woman.  That pursuit should never cease, men.  There should be constantly a desire, and a love, and a thankfulness for that gift that God has given you from all creation.  Can you say, “amen” to that?  God, who foreknew everything, brought your union together.  You acknowledged it as the will of God but it doesn’t end there, there’s a continual pursuit, there’s a continual wooing, there’s a continual desiring to help and to protect, praise God, that should increase, not diminish as time goes by.  So, I want to encourage you with that, men, and realize what it means to be given over to one another: and these two shall be one flesh.

I’ll make this statement again from the teaching as it pertains to oneness.  Paul goes on in Corinthians and he talks about that the woman was made for the man but the man is of the woman.  And we all understand that clearly that this is how the replenishing of the earth was to take place, and in this union, in this physical oneness we have, from our oneness, a seed, we have the fruit of that.  But you are not as one with your children as you are with your husband.  That child is of the two of you.  Women, you are not special in this and your love is not to be more for a child than it is for your husband—you are not one with that child, that’s a gift that’s been given to you.  We see in many homes today many marital problems based on that one aspect.  Ladies, let your husbands know the confidence that you have in him.  Let them always be your hero.  Your delight is to be in your husband.  It’s not just one-sided as the man is pursuing, as the man is continuing to encourage you and to build you up.  Men, when you become aware of the fact that this wife that you have, that belongs to the Lord, that’s been bought with a price, the precious blood of Jesus, you’re told not to be sharp or critical in any way, because they are the weaker vessel, the Scripture tells us.  That word, “weaker,” does not mean inferior; weaker is not inferior.  In fact, your wife may be more capable in many things than you are, but because of the judgement of God, she’s been placed into a position of subordination.  To fulfill the heart and the will of God, she has to remain in that area of humility, of submission: “ranking under” is what the word means.