Come on in, anybody need a sheet, raise their hand. So we are on, got one right there, great. We are on marriage, chapter 25. I called Matt on Sunday and I said, you're teaching this week, right? He said, yes, and I made a joke. I said, aren't you more qualified to do this than me? And he laughed, and then he called me a few days later saying he would not be here this morning. So when I first read this chapter, we're going to cover all four paragraphs, attempt two. This is really just the ordinances, the ordinance of marriage as given by God. And there's a part of this that you look and you go, yes, are you telling me anything new? And the answer's no. However, when you step back and look at the world in which we live, in which you could probably marry your dog or a stone, what we take for granted, the world has assaulted. And so I think that it is very profitable for us to look at this and to consider this, even though most of this is what if you're a believer and you've read the Bible and you've you know what the ordinance of marriage is, you're gonna say, wow, isn't this review in a lot of respects? So, first of all, I think the overarching theme here is that marriage was given to man by God. This is a divinely instituted relationship that God has given man for his good. This is not the invention of man. This is not according to man's thought. This is given to us by the sovereign God who knows all things, and He certainly knows what's best for us. So, read the first paragraph with me. Marriage is to be between one man and one woman. Neither is it lawful for any man to have more than one wife, nor for any woman to have more than one husband at the same time." And again, we read this and we go, yes, but we live in a world that certainly doesn't fully comprehend this. And even we see it in the scriptures, the people of God haven't always comprehended this. So let's go back to the very beginning, to Genesis chapter two. And if you're in Genesis chapter two, we learn a lot about why God has given the institution of marriage. I'm gonna start in verse 19, Genesis 2, 19. And out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called the living creature, that's Adam, that was its name. Adam was a genius from the hand of God. And the man gave names to all the cattle and all the birds of the sky, verse 20, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a suitable helper, a helper suitable for him. And the alternate definition in your Bible for suitable in the margin probably reads corresponding to. All the animals have paraded before Adam, and there's not been an animal that is corresponding to man. He's qualitatively different. He's the crown jewel of God's creation. Verse 21, so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept and he took, he, God, capital H, took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place and the Lord God fashioned it into a woman, the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. And the man said, this is bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. For this cause," this is, if we could get this right, verse 24, for this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother, not stay with his father and mother, but should leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, And they shall become one flesh. The two shall become one. And the man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed. It's interesting, I don't usually go out to dinner. Usually I'm the one cooking dinner at home. And I went out, I was invited to a business dinner this week. And what are we laughing about? When I come home, the kitchen is my sanctuary. I want to know when my wife's coming home so dinner will be ready. I might have a glass of wine, and most likely, the Hallmark Channel will be on. Let's just get it out there. If you don't want to go to the fall harvest with me at the old Thompson farm, If you don't want to light the Christmas tree in the town square, and you don't want a Christmas kringle, that's your problem, not mine. So I went out to eat with a gentleman that I know. He's married, went to one of the service academies. He met his wife at church. She may be a believer. I'm not sure about him. And we're sitting there waiting for a third person, and I'm asking him about his family. He was a four-year-old and a three-year-old. And I said, are you going to have any more children? And he said, no, I've been to the doctor. We've settled that. I'm not going to have any more children. I said, okay. And so he goes, but I have a friend who's married and his wife didn't want to have children and told him, I want you to go to the doctor so we won't have any children. So he said to her, this is a story as it's repeated to me, he said to her, okay, well if I do that, then we're gonna have an open marriage and I'm gonna do whatever I wanna do when I wanna do it. And I'm looking at this young gentleman who I'm with dinner with and I said, that's not marriage. That is two people sharing a bed And they're sharing beds with other people. And he said, I don't know. So, wanting to suffer a fool, I continued the conversation. And... You remember about 15 years ago, maybe you still have one, everybody wore a bracelet. A lot of people wore a bracelet that said WWJD. What would Jesus do? Most people don't know who Jesus is. Most of us have no idea what he would do. But I understand the point. Well, married men that travel should wear a bracelet. You're not gonna sell a lot. It's not catchy. It should say WWMWS. W-W-M-W-S. So I throw down the ace of spades on the table, wanting to finish the conversation, I said, what would your wife say? You know, when you get married, you get something you don't realize you get, you get a double conscience. If your conscience isn't working right, most of the time your wife's conscience is working right. And so I looked at him, I said, what would your wife say if you floated this idea past her? And he said, she would kill me. She would kill me dead. I go, okay, well at least somebody in the family understands what marriage is. So marriage is to be between one person, one man, and one woman. And God created them from the very beginning. In verse 24 of Genesis 2 is very informative. For this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Let's go to Malachi, the last. Book in the Old Testament, right before Matthew. Chapter 2. And the point is really made in the last half of the verse, and in verse 16. Malachi 2 verse 15, but not one has done so who has a remnant of the spirit. And what did that one do while he was seeking a godly offspring? Take he then to your spirit and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth. the wife you married when you were young. For I hate divorce, says the Lord, the God of Israel. And he who covers his garments wrong, says the Lord of hosts. The Lord, when a man and a woman are joined together, the Lord does not want them to separate. Not because of except for just a couple reasons. What the Lord has joined together, He wants to be one and He wants them to stay one. Let's go to Matthew. The Lord Jesus Christ gives us insight in chapter 19, starting in verse 3. Matthew 19 verse 3, and some Pharisees, Pharisees were the keeper of the law, they were the keepers of the Mosaic law and all the laws that they had added on top of it. And some Pharisees came to Him, capital H, the Lord Jesus Christ, testing Him, saying, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all? No, it's not. And he, Christ, answered and said, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, for this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Consequently, they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. They said to him, why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away? Christ said to them, because of the hardness of your heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it has not been this way. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality and marries another woman, commits adultery. The Lord Jesus Christ clarifies what marriage is and that you cannot divorce your wife except for a specific reason or two. That's not what he designed the institution of marriage to be. The two shall become one. Marriage is given to man from God. He is the one that defines it because he's the one that has established it. Make sense? Paragraph two. Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of the husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, or one of the versions may say, in accordance with his laws, and the preventing of uncleanness. It may also say the prevention of immorality. That's why God gave man the institution of marriage. You remember when it said, bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh? Helpmate was the word that was used. Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of the husband and the wife. If we were mathematicians in marriage, one, the man, one, the woman, added together, don't equal two, it equals a number greater than two. That's what marriage is supposed to be. Let's go back to Genesis chapter two. Moses writes in Genesis 2, verse 18, the verse before the verses we read, and out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field. Verse 18, the verse before that. Then the Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable or corresponding to him, for him. It is not good in normal situations, and I know that there are circumstances beyond our control, it's not good for us to be alone. Have you ever noticed that when you're alone, that oftentimes you can get off track, you can fall into the ditch on the right or the left, and you have no one there to balance your thinking? No one that you're tethered to that can sort of keep you on the road. Oftentimes, we get going sideways. I don't know if you have a dog. I didn't grow up with a dog. I have a dog. The dog sleeps in our bed from time to time. I love the dog. I'm a dog person. I think dogs are amazing. Dogs are pack animals. The dog, she thinks, our dog, she's a fur person. She thinks that we are her pack. We are her pack. But man is, in that way, sort of like a dog. We're pack animals. We need other people. Man was not designed to live alone. Does that make sense? We communicate. We need to have interaction with other people. Moms with babies that stay home when their husband comes home, you know, they're almost starved for attention because they haven't had anybody to interact with all day. It just relays what we're like naturally, how God created us. He says, This isn't a psychologist, this isn't a professor, this is the Lord God. It is not good for man to be alone. So God instituted marriage. Let's go back to chapter 1 of Genesis. Verse 26, chapter 1, verse 26. And God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness, i.e., the crown jewel of creation, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Well, we could stop right there and spend hours discussing that. But here is the point, verse 28. And God blessed them, Adam and Eve. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Have children. That's how a man and a woman are fruitful and multiply. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, rule over it. And rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth, okay? God tells Adam and Eve from the very beginning to have children. Be fruitful and multiply. Go to chapter nine. This is after the flood. There are eight people on the world, in the world at this point. Noah, his wife, and his three sons, and their wives. There are eight people in the world. Genesis nine, verse one. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Verse six, whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. This is equal restitution in the law, an eye for an eye, which simply means that the penalty must be in parallel or equitable with the crime. for the last half of verse six, for in the image of God, he made man. And as for you, be fruitful and multiply, populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it. One of the blessings and one of the purposes of marriage is that a husband and wife, when the Lord opens the womb and gives the ability is to have children. Over and over, I was reading this morning in the one-year Bible, Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother, was barren until the Lord opened her womb. The patriarchs, they struggled. Abraham and Sarah, she struggled with being barren because there's a God-given desire and it's a good desire to have children. Go to 1 Corinthians 7. This is the purpose of marriage as God has set forth. 1 Corinthians 7, starting in verse 1. Paul writes, now concerning the things about which you wrote, now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman outside the confines of marriage. But because of immoralities, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband. Neither one of those combinations have a plural. Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, equally, also the husband does not have authority over his own body, But the wife does. Stop depriving one another except by agreement for a time that you may devote yourself to prayer and come together again lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control. But this I say by way of concession, not of command. Yet I wish that all men, even as I myself am, however, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to the widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I." Paul is saying, if the Lord has given you the gift, giving you the ability to live life in single-minded focus for His kingdom and His service, praise the Lord. Verse nine, but if they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better for them to marry than to burn, than to lust, than to sin sexually. That is all of why at the very end of this paragraph, and preventing uncleanness for the prevention of immorality, okay? These are the blessings of marriage from the way that God has made man. It is good to be married. It is good to have children. It's what the Lord ordained. Paragraph three. It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry. Okay? We have all, regardless of what we look like, regardless of how we were raised, regardless of where we were raised, regardless of if we have money or don't have money, we have all come from Adam and Eve. We're all of the human race. It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry. who are able with judgment to give their consent. One of the 1689s says rational consent, agreed. I'm agreeing to this union. Yet it is the duty of Christians to marry in the Lord, i.e., if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, unless you just want a lifetime of pain and misery, and you want to do what God has told you not to do, you are to marry another believer and be equally yoked. If you don't heed the Lord's command, you will pay, in a sense, for the rest of your life. Yet it is the duty of Christians to marry in the Lord. And therefore, such as profess the true religion, one of the older versions says Christian faith, should not marry with infidels or idolaters, neither should such as are godly be unequally yoked by marrying with such as are wicked in their life and maintain damnable heresy. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you marry outside of Christ, I can't even, time fails in what that will do to you. My mom and dad, I saw this firsthand, my mom and dad were raised Catholic. They went to Catholic school. My mom was so Catholic, as I tell the story, true story, she went into the convent to be a nun after she finished high school. The Lord saved my mom and brought her to the fact that she knew only the greatest love in her life was the Lord Jesus Christ. She was a wonderful believer. My dad never came to faith. They were unequally yoked after the Lord saved my mom. I saw what that type of marriage is for firsthand for 30 years. If you're a believer, you want no part of that. I wish I could stand on my head to convince you, but you want no part of that. Hebrews chapter 13. This is how the believer is to view marriage. There's this series of instruction. It's chapter 13, let the love of the brethren continue, love of fellow believers. Remember the prisoners, verse three. Verse four, let marriage be held in honor among all and let the marriage bed be undefiled For fornicators and adulterers, God will judge. What God has given inside the institution of marriage is wonderful. If you practice that outside the institution of marriage, it's not wonderful, it's sin. It's not what God wants for you. God will judge you for that. Go back to 1 Timothy chapter four. Paul writes to Timothy, 1 Timothy 4 verse 1, but the Spirit, capital S, the Holy Spirit, explicitly says that in latter times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. by means of the hypocrisy of liars, seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. Men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. The things that God has given, including marriage, is good. Forbidding marriage is not what God has given, i.e., see the Catholic priest. I was raised Catholic. That's a whole different topic for a different day. Go back to 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 7. This is talking about primarily the wife and the husband's bond, but what happens when one of them dies, in this case the husband. Verse 39, a wife is bound as long as her husband lives. She's bound in marriage. But if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes. Once the person until death do us part, once that person dies, the widow in this case is free to do whatever she wants. But look at the instruction, only in the Lord. Paul says she can get remarried. The husband, if the wife dies, can get remarried only in the Lord, only to a believer, only to someone that you're equally yoked with. If you have the third person of the Trinity residing within you, if you've been sealed with the Spirit, You have a different essence and quality about you that God has changed you when he has circumcised your heart. And if you join yourself with someone who does not have that, That bond is never going to meet the depths at which God designed it to meet. Your marriage in so many respects is going to be superficial. You're never going to be able to share the joy of the Lord with each other. You're never going to be able to read the scriptures and have the Lord speak to both of you the same way. You're not the same. That's the truth. However, if you were an unbeliever and your wife was an unbeliever and he saves one of you and the other one isn't saved, that's all by his divine plan. I saw in my own household with my believing mom and my unbelieving father, this measure of grace that was about the family because God protected us because of my mother. I'm not gonna go any further. We weren't saved because of that. But the Lord poured out his grace and his mercy upon my family because my mom was his child. and there was a blessing to the family, and even my unbelieving father knew that he was blessed because of my mother. 2 Corinthians 6. The Lord is sovereign, good, and perfect in everything that he does, even if it is not according to what we naturally desire. You may be single. You may be divorced. You may be married. And things may not be the way that you think they should be. The Lord knows exactly where you are. He is still on his throne. Everything is happening according to his sovereign will. Trust him. Trust him. That is so much of the Christian life, not trusting yourself and trusting him. 2 Corinthians 6, starting in verse 14. Do not be bound together with unbelievers. For what part partnership has righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? And then he goes on to say, Christ and idols. Okay, let's go back to Nehemiah. Nehemiah chapter 13. When Israel went into the land, Moses, Joshua, they were told to drive out the inhabitants of the land. Because the inhabitants of the land were pagans, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Girgamesh. They worshiped idols. And God knew that if there was intermarriage on the part of giving sons and daughters, that it would draw, unbelievers, that it would draw the heart away from the Lord. Nehemiah 13, verse 23. In those days, I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. The problem wasn't that they were foreign women. The problem was they were unbelieving pagan worshipers. That's the problem, okay? If they were believers, it would have been fine, but they weren't. Only Israel, faith was basically contained in Israel. As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them were able to speak the language of Judah, but the language of his own people. So I contended with them, and cursed them, and struck some of them, and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon the king of Israel sin regarding these things? Yet, among the many nations, there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, the foreign women, the unbelieving women, the foreign women caused even him to sin. Do we then hear about you that you have committed all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women? Let's go to the story. Let's go to 1 Kings. Back to 1 Kings 11. Verse 3. 1 Kings 11 verse 3. There's a lot of mistakes here. Okay? A lot of bad behavior. A lot of behavior that's not recommended. Okay? Remember in Genesis, the two shall become one, not the three, not the 700. Verse 3. And he, Solomon, had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned his heart away. And it came about when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods, and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord, his God, as the heart of David, his father, had been." He went after detestable idols, verse 5. Verse six, and Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not follow the Lord fully as David his father had done. Even David was a mess. We can go back to David, but he wasn't as big of a mess as Solomon was. David had multiple wives. The two, very specific, it's a finite number, the two shall be one, not the seven, not the 700, not the three. It isn't going to, I mean, there's a joke in there about sister wives, but anyway, all right. So let's go to paragraph four. Who are you eligible to marry? Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguity, which means close blood relationships, or affinity, forbidden in the word, Neither can such incestuous marriages ever be made lawful, you can't marry your sister, you can't marry your mother, by any law of man or consent of parties, so as those persons may live together as man and wife. you can't marry your sister. You can't marry the one, the Lord gave it for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is the gene pool, okay? It's not what the Lord has ordained. And if you go to Leviticus 18, it painstakingly takes us through this refrain, and I'm gonna read just a few verses, starting in verse six. And the refrain is, uncovering the nakedness you should not uncover. These are things that are not proper. These are things that the Lord has forbidden. Verse six, Leviticus 18, six. None of you shall approach any blood relative of his to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, that is the nakedness of your mother. She is your mother. You are not to uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife. It is your father's nakedness. The nakedness of your sister, Either your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether born at home or born outside, their nakedness you shall not uncover. The nakedness of your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter, their nakedness you shall not uncover, for their nakedness is yours. the nakedness of your father's wife's daughter born to your father. She is your sister. You shall not uncover her nakedness. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's sister. She is your father's blood relative." The Lord said, don't do this. This isn't healthy. This is not what I have ordained you to do. Go to Mark chapter six. Mark 6, why had Herod arrested John the Baptist? Starting in verse 17, Mark 6, verse 17. For Herod himself had sent, oops, sorry. For Herod himself had sent and had John arrested, John the Baptist, and bound in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother, Philip, because he had married her. For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. And Herodias had a grudge against him, John the Baptist, and wanted to put him to death and could not do so until later. Go to 1 Corinthians 5. 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Paul addresses a similar issue. It is actually reported that there is immorality among you. An immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles. It's so bad, they don't even do this. that someone has his father's wife, and you have become arrogant and have not mourned instead in order that one who had done this deed might be removed from your midst." Paul's saying, this isn't right. So this is the… structure of marriage. It is given by God. It is for man's good. One of the purposes is to have children. It is designed to be between a man and a woman, the two of them joining together. You're not to be closely related to each other. If you're a believer, which I hope you are, you are only to marry another believer. One last topic. Ephesians 5, what should a marriage look like? This is where it gets difficult. This is where if you're honest with yourself, you cry out to the Lord and you say, I'm not adequate, help me. Marriage between a man and a woman is to picture and parallel the Lord Jesus Christ and His church. The relationship between the husband and the wife is to picture the sacrificial and the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ for His chosen people, the church. And in chapter 5, starting in verse 22, Ephesians 5, 22, Paul paints this beautiful picture of these two images that are woven together. It's the image of a husband and a wife, and it's the image of Christ in the church. It's almost like a double helix. It's wound together, and you almost can't tell at times what he's talking about because he's talking about both. Verse 22, wives, be subject to your own husband as to the Lord. The husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church. He himself being the savior of the body. Here's the difficulty. Here's my perspective as the man and as the husband. Here is the difficulty with this. I read and I know what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for His people, that He has lived the perfect life, that He has paid with His life for everything that we've messed up. He has done it perfectly according to the will of God. He has done it for the good of his people, the church. And as the husband and as the man, I'm called to love my wife as Christ has loved the church. Is there a higher calling? Men, if you're honest with yourselves, you're not sufficient in and of yourself for the task. Verse 24, but as the church is subject to Christ, So, also, the wives ought to be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives. The root word for love there is agape. That's selfless. That's sacrificial. That's looking at the other person's need regardless of the cost of you in meeting that need. That isn't a love where you get, that's not love where, what am I getting out of this love? That is the love that the Lord Jesus Christ had for his people. That is what, that's the language in the Greek that Paul instructs the husband. Husband, love unconditionally your wives as, in case we missed it, as just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might, Christ might, sanctify her, the church, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he, Christ, might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ also does the church. When we, I'm just gonna quote it, if we could wrap our, as being married, if we could wrap our heads around the fact that we are no longer individuals, but that we have been joined together, and my one and her one is now one. We would act differently, we would think differently, We would respond differently. If you have children, especially when the children are small, it's easy to change a diaper and go, okay, that's not gross because that's me. That person is my DNA. But we don't always view our Spouse that way. Does that make sense? Sometimes we look at our children, we go, they're an extension of me. Well, my wife is an extension of me. Verse 30, because we are members of his body, Going back to Genesis, verse 31, for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great that the two become one flesh, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each individual among you also love." Again, that word is agape, the root word of that, the Greek word, the root of that word love. It isn't brotherly love, it isn't philo, it isn't a physical affection love, it is agape love. That you, among you, also love his own wife, even as himself, and let the wife see to it that she respect her husband." That is the calling of marriage. That is God's standard of marriage. That is the challenge of marriage. It's a high calling, and only in the Lord Jesus Christ can you even begin to scratch the surface of that. Well, let me end there. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would allow these words to sink into our souls. Lord, that we would anew think of what the institution of marriage is, that it is to be honored because it is from you. Lord, it is glorious because you have designed it. It is good because you have provided it. So, Lord, bless us in our thinking. Bless the next service. I pray that you would bless Austin Duncan. May all these things be for your glory, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.