WHAT A LOVELY HOME
Part 4

“I will refresh Israel like the dew from heaven;
she will blossom as the lily and root deeply in the soil like cedars in Lebanon.
Her branches will spread out as beautiful as olive trees, fragrant as the forests of Lebanon”
(Hosea 14:5-6 TLB).

Today we continue the descriptive picture of our “lovely homes” in Numbers 24:5-7.

FAITHFUL AND ENDURING HOME

Our home life begins with our marriage. God wants your marriage to be a . . .

FAITHFUL MARRIAGE

God wants our marriages to be like the cedar tree. Numbers 24:6 says: “like cedar trees beside the waters.” The cedars speak of majesty, beauty, and faithfulness. They are called “excellent” trees in Song of Solomon 5:15. As we learn more about the cedar tree, we understand why God likens our marriages to the cedar.

a) Cedars are Strong and Rooted

Cedars are strong and firmly rooted. In Psalm 80:10 (TLB) God likens His people to the “mighty” cedar trees. The word “mighty” is el in the Hebrew and means “strong,” a word that is also used of God. Psalm 92:12 (MLB) tells us that the “righteous . . . shall become mighty like the cedar of Lebanon.”

The Hebrew word for cedar is erez and means “from the tenacity of its roots.” I read that for every 10 feet of height above the ground, the roots go down 30 feet under the ground. Amazingly, the tips of the roots have a substance that allows them to drill through the toughest rocks as they go down deep into the earth. God wants our marriages to be rooted like this. He wants them to be strongly rooted in God’s principles and the covenant we made on our wedding day. He wants them to be strongly knitted together in commitment, faithfulness, morality, unity, and love. Nothing stopping them.

However, they don’t become strong without our proactively strengthening them. We must do something to build and strengthen our marriages each new day. With our words and our actions.

Are you doing something tangible to strengthen your marriage today?

b) Cedars Grow Tall

Because the cedars are strongly rooted they can grow to 120 feet high and 30 to 40 feet in girth. They grow slow and steady. That’s like our marriages. We constantly build into them and they gradually grow more beautiful, tall, and powerful in our influence as a couple. Notice again Psalm 92:10: “The righteous . . . shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.” We must not stay in the same rut. Cedar marriages don’t stay in a rut; they grow

Ezekiel 31:3-7 (NET) is an allegory about Assyria, likening it to a cedar in Lebanon: “Assyria was a cedar in Lebanon, with beautiful branches and forest shade, and of towering height, its top among the clouds . . . the deep made it grow tall . . . it towered high above all the trees of the field.”

We can either stunt our marriage or make it grow. We stunt our marriage by curbing each other. We must release each other into God’s wondrous plan. We let our husbands be men. We don’t expect them to be like us or even think like us. They don’t think like us. Forget it! They are different.

Let your husband be who he is. Let him take the responsibility of his role seriously to provide, protect, and lead you in God’s ways. Don’t take that from him. Many women think they help their husbands by going out to work. That doesn’t help them. It weakens the home and the husband’s mandate from God.

Let’s get it straight. When we embrace our high calling of motherhood and homemaking and release our husbands to their calling, our marriage can grow tall. Neither of us were created to do the job of the other. God made male and female with their own specific purpose. We accomplish far more for God and this world when we do it God’s way.

c) Cedars are Durable and Lasting

Cedars have remarkable lasting qualities and are noted for their durability. In fact, there are some cedar trees that are estimated to be two thousand years old! This is how God sees marriage--durable and lasting. When we make the covenant of marriage before God and witnesses, we are in for the long haul! It is “forsaking all others . . . until death do us part.”

We live in an unprecedented hour in history when divorce is as rampart in the church as it is in the world. How God’s heart must grieve as the beautiful institution of marriage, which He ordained, is attacked and torn apart by the devil. This is not the vision of “lovely homes” which God designed.

How can our marriages last? Only by doing it God’s way. Our selfish flesh continually puts a wrench in the works! “Self” and “selfishness” are the root of all problems in marriage. We need to lay down our own rights and embrace the same attitude of Jesus who did not cling to His rights as God. Instead, He made himself of no reputation. He became a servant, humbled Himself, and was obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:6-8). The outworking of this truth in our lives is sufficient to keep a marriage to the end.

Too many people think that love is a feeling. When the feeling dies, they think love has finished. Love is a commitment. It goes beyond feeling. It goes beyond circumstances. Even when we have no vestige of love left within us, God’s inexhaustible love is still available to us. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (MLB) describes the kind of love we need to survive marriage. It is agape love, which starts with: “Love endures long” and ends with “love endures without limit.”

King Solomon used cedar timber to build God’s temple as well as his own palace because of the durability of the wood. God wants our marriages to be built of cedar too, not poplar or untreated pine that does not stand the tests of time.

PRAYER:

“Oh God, sometimes I feel as though I don’t love my husband, but I know that my love is deceptive. Please fill me with Your agape love that loves even when it does not feel like loving. Help me to realize that my marriage is a commitment to a covenant that goes beyond my feelings and desires. Save me from being a chopped-off cedar tree, but one that grows to full height. Amen.”

AFFIRMATION:

I am growing a marriage like the cedar tree, enduring and faithful to the end.