Well, we have two scripture readings today, the first from the Old Testament and the second and sermon text from the New Testament. So our Old Testament reading is Isaiah 65 verses 17 through 19. Isaiah 65, 17 through 19. Give your attention to God's word. For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people. No more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. And our New Testament reading found in the epistle to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter seven, verses 25 through 40. Once again, give your attention to God's word. Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. This is what I mean, brothers. The appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit, but the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, If his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes. Let them marry, it is no sin. But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better. A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. Yet in my judgment, she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the spirit of God. Thus far, the reading of God's holy and inspired word, may he add his blessing to it this day. Well, there are times when it seems like the world is falling apart around us. Have you ever felt that way? I imagine that you've had those kinds of thoughts, a little bit at least, in the midst of all the craziness that's been taking place over the past seven months. When people live through times of crisis, they typically console themselves with the belief that things will eventually return to a state of relative normalcy. And that's not an entirely unreasonable response. After all, God did promise in the Noahic covenant that he will uphold and maintain this world for as long as it endures. And that is something that we need to keep in mind when we go through times of upheaval. If we don't, we'll be dominated by feelings of panic or despair or anger. On the other hand, though, we also need to remember that a time of final crisis is eventually going to come upon this world. And you know, it could very well be that this is the beginning of it. Who knows? We never know. As Jesus said, no one knows exactly when that hour is going to arise. And the reason why is because all the signs related to the very end are signs that are already taking place in this present evil age. As John said in his first epistle, you've heard that Antichrist is coming? I tell you, many Antichrists have already come. But there is a time of final crisis. We don't know when it will be. Maybe it will be just around the bend. Maybe it won't be for another thousand years. Who knows? But when it comes, things will never return to a state of normalcy. Our conception of normalcy is something that belongs to this present world. And this present world is not going to last forever. And that's another factor that we need to keep in mind as we go about our lives in this world. And this is really at the heart of all of the different things that the Apostle Paul has to say in the verses that we have just read and that we're going to study now in this sermon. So as we begin to work our way through our text, we begin looking at verse 25, and you see that verse 25 begins with the words, now concerning, now concerning. And if you look back to the beginning of chapter seven, you'll see the same words there. Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. And so what Paul is doing here in verse 25 is he's continuing to respond to the matters that the Corinthians raised in the letter that they had written to him. They wrote him a letter because they had some questions about things. And the issue that Paul is addressing here in this section concerns the betrothed or virgins. It could be translated either way. These were young women. who were still under the guardianship of their parents, and they may have been pledged in marriage to someone. And apparently there were some people in the Corinthian church who were questioning whether marriage was really appropriate anymore. And now that the ends of the ages have come upon us, should we even be thinking about marriage? And should we be giving our daughters in marriage? Should we be following through on these commitments and engagements? And in answering this, Paul continues to make a distinction. He distinguishes between Jesus's words and his words. And he admits that, you know, Jesus never addressed this particular question during his time on earth. And yet Paul says, I'm able to offer you a trustworthy answer. I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. So it's important for us to remember that when Paul makes this distinction between the words of the Lord and In his words, he's not saying, I'm just giving you my opinion. Now, some aspects of what he says here are his opinion and his counsel, and he makes that very clear. But some of what he says is quite binding. Also, he is speaking with apostolic authority. He's writing with apostolic authority here. And so he says this. He says, I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is. And this is very much consistent with the things that Paul has been saying all throughout this chapter. The person who is married should remain married. And that's not just Paul's opinion, that's God's will. If you're married, God wants you to remain married. But then the person who is unmarried, Paul says that you do well to remain unmarried if you can handle it, if you can exercise self-control. Now, one question that arises about what Paul says in verse 26 is the meaning of this phrase, the present distress. What is this present distress to which he refers? Well, some commentators will point out that there was a significant measure of social instability in Corinth at this particular time, and there were a number of factors that contributed to this. One of them was that there had been a protracted famine in the broader region, and that led to a food shortage. We probably, you know, we can't really identify with that, you know, but we can begin to, right, after the past seven months. At least we know what it's like to have a toilet paper shortage, right? Things don't go well, right? We go nuts. Well, imagine if it's a real foods crisis. That creates a lot of societal upheaval. Another factor. was that the city seems to have been subjected to some kind of plague or disease. And Paul alludes to this in chapter 11. He talks about how some in the church in Corinth had actually died. And it may very well have been from some kind of a sickness that was spreading through the city. And then one other factor was that the Emperor Claudius, Probably just about a year or so before Paul wrote this letter, the Emperor Claudius had just created an imperial cult in Corinth. And that would have put pressure on these Christians to participate in that idolatrous worship. So in light of these things, you could read that phrase, the present distress, and think, well, Paul's just talking about this particular moment that these Christians were living through. And I think that that's included in what he's saying here, but I think it's bigger than that. And I think the context makes it clear that it's bigger than that. Look at what Paul says later in the passage. He says, the appointed time has grown very short. The present form of this world is passing away. I think that what's going on here is that the troubles that the Corinthians were experiencing were emblematic of the troubles that God's people experience all throughout this present age. These things serve as reminders that the end could come at any moment. We are living in the last days. And this is why Paul refers to these things, these sufferings, these experiences of futility and frustration as the pains of childbirth. As the age to come is, as it were, in the womb and labor has already started. Now, Paul does counsel the unmarried to remain single if they can, but he is certainly not saying that there is anything wrong with getting married, and he makes that very clear in verse 28. He's not saying that it's a sin to get married. Marriage is a God-ordained institution, after all. It's a source of numerous blessings. It's a beautiful picture of Christ's intimate relationship with his church. Paul's point in counseling people to remain unmarried if they can is that those who do get married are going to have worldly troubles. That is, getting married entails taking on earthly responsibilities that are not incumbent on those who are single. And Paul is of the opinion that this means there's a good rationale, a good reason for remaining single. Now Paul's reasons for arguing for singleness are not the kinds of reasons that people would give today. People today, I think, oftentimes prefer the single life because they don't want to make a commitment, because they don't want to take on responsibility. because they're not sure if this is the one, or maybe because they're selfish and aren't willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary for marriage. But no, for Paul, he is speaking out of his own experience here. He's speaking as one who has leveraged his singleness to serve the Lord in ways that would not really be possible for a married man. Now having made this point, Paul then offers words of counsel that apply more broadly, that apply beyond just this issue of should I get married or should I stay single. And he puts it this way, he says, from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none. and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. What does that mean? Well, I think we can understand what he means just by looking at the very first thing on the list. Let those who have wives live as though they had none. Well, you could really go off the rails with that, right? You know, you could really misinterpret that. Yeah. Paul is certainly not telling married people to abandon their marital responsibilities. He's not telling them to be unfaithful to their spouses. That would be a contradiction to things that he says previously in this chapter and elsewhere in his writings. Well, the point that he's making is simply that we need to keep the things of this world in proper perspective. We need to live in light of eternity. We should not let ourselves be dominated by any aspect of life in this world. We should always remember that everything in this world is going to pass away. Marriage and family will not last forever. Wealth and possessions will not last forever. Bodily health and vitality will not last forever. Earthly happiness and earthly grief will not last forever. Don't be consumed by those kinds of things. Only the kingdom of God will endure for all eternity. And that being the case, you want to make sure that your supreme and controlling commitment in life is to Christ and to his kingdom. I think it's a helpful reminder, something that I think it was C.S. Lewis said, and he said, you know, people sometimes say, you know, he's so heavenly minded that he's of no earthly good. And Lewis said, you know, it's really, the truth is, it's the other way around. The people who are most heavenly minded actually do the most earthly good. If you look at church history, that tends to be the way it is. You can do much more earthly good if you keep things in proper perspective. Well, Paul continues to develop this idea in verses 32 through 38, and here he focuses once again on the choice between marriage and singleness. He returns to this, and he begins by pointing out that being married forces a person to make the material welfare of his or her spouse and family a matter of very high priority. Paul puts it this way, the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided." Now that's an interesting statement there because there's a number of phrases in that statement that have negative connotations for us. We hear that and we think, you know, surely it's not a good thing for a Christian to be anxious about worldly things, is it? Surely it's not good for a Christian to have divided interests, is it? And yet, what we need to understand is, in saying that, Paul is not making a moral judgment. He's not saying that it's wrong to be anxious about worldly things. He's not saying it's wrong to have divided interests in the sense that marriage creates that kind of situation. No, he's simply describing the reality of the married state. Being married involves having more earthly responsibilities and commitments than being single. That's just the way it is. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's a reality that Christians should take into account before they get married. And Paul's intention in raising this point is not in any way to denigrate marriage. Obviously, he's biased, right? He is single, and he sees the benefits of being single, and he's arguing for that. It's a minority position, for sure. For most Christians, marriage is the norm. But Paul is making a case here for something that's maybe not the norm and yet that is certainly a viable option. Obviously, God thinks very highly of marriage. He invented it. He sees it as a good thing. He wants spouses to be faithful and responsible in carrying out their marital commitments. He certainly does not want a husband to say, well, I'm not really able to give you as much time and attention as you might like because I need to do these spiritual things. I need to be committed to the Lord. The husband who's doing that is not serving the Lord. If you're married, then the duties and obligations of marriage are a central part of your God-given vocation. And you can't neglect them by excusing yourself and saying, well, I've got more important things to do for the Lord. Now Paul also points out that those who remain unmarried are freed from the responsibilities of marriage and are therefore less restricted when it comes to their opportunities to serve the Lord. And when you think about it, that's what made it possible for Paul to be Paul, for Paul to travel all around the Mediterranean world in his apostolic ministry. If he'd been married He couldn't have done that kind of work without neglecting his duties as a husband and as a father. Because those who are unmarried are unencumbered by the worldly cares that accompany marriage, they can take on endeavors that would be difficult or perhaps even impossible for those who are married. Let me just give you one example. What if our denomination saw an opening in some mission field where it was extremely dangerous to be a Christian. And yet we see an opening, and we feel like we've got to see if there's somebody who might be willing to serve in this field. And let's say there's a process. You're interviewing people and trying to determine who the Lord may be calling to this position, and two candidates rise to the top. They're both wonderful men, godly men, highly qualified. They would both do so well on the mission field, but there's one difference between them. One of them is married and the other is unmarried. So who are you gonna send? I think we all know who we would send, right? We would send the unmarried man. It just makes more sense to do that in that situation, in general. Now, of course, not all unmarried Christians are called to be missionaries or to serve in full-time ministry or anything like that, but there is a basic principle here that does apply to all single Christians. Being single does free a person from the obligations that do place significant limits on the ways that you can serve the Lord and the ways that you can serve your neighbors in the name of the Lord as a Christian, or even just serve the society and seeking the welfare of your community. You're not limited in the way that you would be if you were married. And because of that, unmarried Christians should be looking for ways that they can put their singleness in service to Christ and his church. Now, this brings us to verses 36 through 38, and here we come to a significant interpretive challenge. This may very well be the most difficult part of 1 Corinthians to translate and interpret. And I say translate and interpret because in translating these verses you are interpreting. It's just one of those situations where you have to make a decision. And so there is a question over how to handle this and there are two basic options. It could be that Paul is addressing young men in these verses, and specifically speaking to young men who are conflicted over whether they should marry their fiancées, whether they should marry the young women to whom they are engaged. And if you have the ESV or if you have the NIV, that's how it reads, that's how they've translated it. There is another option, though. It could be that Paul is not speaking to young men here, that he is speaking to fathers. Fathers who are conflicted over whether they should give their daughters in marriage. And if you have the King James Version, or the New American Standard Bible, or the New English Translation, the Net Bible, all of those tend to translate it in that direction, I believe. And as I said, this is a challenging thing. Both of those options are possible. It's not easy to decide between them. I'm inclined to think that the second translation is probably more likely, the translation offered by the King James and the New American Standard and the NET, mainly because, you know, if you look at the end of verse 37, It says, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. Obviously, if you're taking it in the sense of the King James and the New American Standard, you'd probably say, to keep her as his virgin, he will do well. What is Paul saying there? Is he saying that it's good to remain engaged indefinitely? That's kind of how you have to take it if you follow the ESV here. And that seems a little weird to me. I think it would make better sense to maybe say that Paul is speaking to fathers about giving their daughters in marriage and saying, look, if you think that she can handle this and this is the right decision, then you would do well to keep her as your daughter and not to give her in marriage. But regardless, whichever option you choose, the same basic point is being made. On the one hand, Paul is saying that it is entirely permissible for people to go ahead and get married. It's fine to get married. There's nothing wrong with marriage. And the Corinthians needed to hear that. They were living in this sexually depraved culture, cult prostitution, terrible things, and they had a very jaded view of sex. And they started to think that it was just so bad that it should be avoided altogether. You remember earlier in this chapter, there were married Christians who were thinking, you know, maybe we should just be celibate, you know, even though we're married. And Paul is saying, no, no, no, no, no, that's wrong. It's wrong to reject God's good gift just because it's being abused and misused. So there's nothing wrong with getting married. But on the other hand, Paul is expressing his opinion. And again, it's a biased opinion, right? But it's his opinion. that if a person can remain single without giving in to sexual temptation, then that's the better option. In his mind, that's the better option. But he doesn't say that because of any moral principle. It's not because he's a prude. It's not because he thinks that there's something dirty about marriage or something like that. No, it's simply for pragmatic reasons. The person who remains unmarried is less restricted when it comes to how he or she can serve the Lord. So we turn now to the last two verses of our text where Paul addresses the matter of widowhood. And this would certainly apply not just to widows, also to widowers. But he begins by restating this basic point that he has made earlier in this chapter, and that is that marriage is intended to be a lifelong commitment. As he says in verse 39, a wife is bound to her husband as long as she lives. As long as he lives, I'm sorry, as long as he lives. Of course she's bound as long as she lives, but yeah, that's not what it says. Now, as we have said in the earlier sermons on this chapter, the Bible does give two circumstances that give people grounds for ending a marriage, and that those circumstances are adultery and willful abandonment by an unbelieving spouse. And when those things happen, divorce is permissible. But apart from those scenarios, the Lord calls people to remain in the bonds of matrimony as long as their spouse remains alive. Now having said that, Paul then adds that when a person's spouse dies, the surviving spouse, in this case the wife, the widow, is free to marry someone else. Now why is that? Why is it that once one partner dies, then the other one is free to remarry? Well the reason why is because marriage is not an eternal institution. Marriage is a temporal institution. It's an institution of this present age. And Jesus talks about this in the Gospels. We read about it in Mark 12. In that passage, he's responding to the Sadducees. They came to him with a question. It wasn't a genuine question. It was a trick question. And they laid out this scenario saying, oh, we've got this woman. and she marries seven different men, they die one after the other after the other, and in the life to come, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? And they did that because they didn't believe in the resurrection and they wanted to point out the absurdity of such a belief. And here's how Jesus answered them. He said, when people rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. Now, it's important to note that Jesus did not say that we become angels, okay? Some people, I think, take it that way. I think that, you know, in the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra took it that way with Clarence the angel, you know? Was it Clarence Oddbody or whatever, you know? You know, he was a person, but he became an angel. Well, that's not the way it works. Now, Jesus is saying that we become like the angels. There's a sense in which we become like them. In what sense? In the sense That we don't get married. Why don't we get married? Because we don't need to reproduce. That's one of the main purposes of marriage. We don't need to reproduce because we're gonna live forever in heaven. This just reminds us that life in the new heavens and the new earth will be different than life in this world. It'll be different in ways that we can't even begin to imagine. Now, some people might be bothered by the thought that there won't be marriage in heaven, but we certainly need to understand that the joy that is found in marriage is not going to be lacking in heaven. Heaven will be the true fulfillment of everything that marriage stands for, both for those who were married in this life and for those who weren't married in this life. And C.S. Lewis talks about this in a more general sense, not specifically about marriage, but in a general sense in an essay that he wrote called Transposition. Listen to what he says here. Our natural experiences, sensory, emotional, imaginative, are only like the drawing, like penciled lines on flat paper. If they vanish in the risen life, They will vanish only as pencil lines vanish from the real landscape. If flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom, that is not because they are too solid. No, it's the other way around. They're too flimsy, too transitory, too phantasmal. You see, the reason why there won't be any marriage in heaven is because marriage symbolizes something that transcends marriage. And when we have the real thing, the thing to which marriage is pointing, there won't be any need for the sign any longer. While a widow or widower is free to marry, Paul does add two qualifications to this. First of all, he says that a Christian widow can be married to whom she wishes as long as that person is a believer. That's what he means when he says, only in the Lord. And this is consistent with what God told his people in the Old Testament. God forbade the Israelites from intermarrying with those outside the covenant community. He warned them that if you do that, your heart will be turned away from me and you will serve other gods. And of course, that's exactly what happened. It even happened with King Solomon. Well, here in 1 Corinthians 7, we see that this principle still applies under the new covenant administration of the covenant of grace. And this command makes a lot of sense. when you stop and consider the role that marriage plays in the spiritual edification of spouses and in the Christian nurture of children. How can a husband and wife live together as heirs of the grace of life when one of them does not have title to that inheritance through the grace of justification? How can a couple raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord when they don't share the same faith in the Lord? Of course, you know, Paul has already addressed the issue of mixed marriages earlier in this chapter. There were situations where people became a Christian after they were married and their spouse did not become a Christian and Paul addressed that and said you should stay in that marriage as long as the unbeliever is willing to stay. And I think we can also acknowledge that there are times when God's people are disobedient. When Christians go ahead, and they go against God's will, and they do marry an unbeliever, and the same principle would apply in those situations. But God's will for his people, his command to his people, is that if you're going to marry, you need to marry within the household of faith. That's the first qualification. The second one, that Paul gives with regard to widows remarrying is really just a reiteration of the point that he's been making all throughout this chapter about the benefits of remaining unmarried. Once again, he's giving this minority report here on the issue. He's saying, look, I want to say something about singleness. And he says, yet in my judgment, she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I, too, have the Spirit of God. That last sentence is interesting. It seems like that's probably in response to something that the Corinthians said in their letter. They probably were citing some of the people who were setting themselves up as spiritual sages and leaders in the church and who were saying, well, we think this because we have the Spirit of God. And Paul's saying, well, guess what? You're not the only one who has the Spirit of God. I have him too. He wants such people to know that they shouldn't set themselves up as having greater spiritual insight than he does. Well, one of the lessons that I think we can learn from the things that have happened over the past seven months, and that continue to happen, and probably will continue to happen for some time, is that we never know what the future will bring. We never know. You know, think back to a year ago, October of 2019. Would you have been able to predict the things that happened over the past year back then? I don't think so. And my goodness, what a strange world we live in now, right? Life is filled with uncertainties. We certainly shouldn't panic. when things go off the rails or when there's times of upheaval, but we should let those times remind us that this life is transient. As Paul puts it, the present form of this world is passing away, it really is. And that being the case, whatever your circumstances in life may be, whether they're normal or whether they're highly irregular, Always set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. May God help us to do that by his grace. Amen. Let's pray together.