Does your understanding of marriage point to God and the Gospel? I’m currently preparing a marriage course for my church and in the process, I’m devouring a lot of good resources.
Andreas Kostenberger, who authored of one of the best books I’ve found on marriage, God, Marriage & Family, also presented a discipleship class on marriage and the family at Richland Creek Community Church.
Kostenberger is an incredibly sharp theologian, and has written a number of very good commentaries. He was also picked by Don Carson to author two books for Carson’s New Biblical Studies in Theology series.
Kostenberger is disarmingly unremarkable as a speaker, but once he gets warmed up his material is very helpful. This was not a preaching situation, but rather more of a classroom type of setting.
These courses are all on wma video (a hateful format) unfortunately, so not compatible with iPod’s or iTunes.
God, Marriage & Family course >>>
I am also preparing a marriage course for my church and would love to know how you have structured it and what you found to be the best core resources and would share where I am heading with you if you would like. I attend Covenant Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, TN. Thanks, Jon
Jon, I focused on preaching through the main passages of Scripture that concern marriage in an expository manner, rather than a topical manner. The topics emerged from the text. I focused on Genesis 1-3 and Ephesians 4-6. Ephesians 4 provides the spiritual context for 5, of living by the Spirit. Ephesians 6 deals with spiritual warfare which is directly related to marriage. Very few books or marriage courses deal with chapters 4 and 6, which I believe is a major flaw. Those two passages were my foundation, then I moved into 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Peter 3 and Titus 2. The class ended for the Summer at that point. Had it continued I was planning to look at the tongue in James.
When I began I started to tackle this topically, but ended up throwing it all out because the structure was so man-centered and convoluted. I determined to go through the main passages expositionally to see how God talks about marriage, and the issues that emerged were not the typical subjects you find in most marriage books (no big surprise). It also demonstrated to the couples that Scripture and expositional teaching is sufficient and practical to living. Successful Christian marriages have been around for more than 2000 years without the help of psychology and PHD’s.
Arturo Azurdia also has some very helpful things to say about marriage.
The link does not work?
Don, they migrated their website. I’ve emailed the church to ask if they still have the files available and their links.