The following sermon is brought to you by Capitol Community Church, located in Raleigh, North Carolina. Capitol Community Church is a people awakened to a holy God. If you are searching for a new church home, or from out of town looking for a church to worship with, or simply seeking for answers. Please join us for worship at 1045 a.m. every Sunday morning and six o'clock p.m. for our evening service. If you have any questions, please email us at info at CapitalCommunityChurch.com. We pray this sermon will help you grow deeper in your walk with Jesus Christ. I invite you to open your Bibles to Genesis chapter two. Genesis chapter two. We're going to take a break from the Gospel of John, and for the month of October, this is a very special time at our church. This is the first time we've done this. We're calling it Family Month, and we are going to take a break from our expositional study in the Gospel of John, and we are just going to set aside time to look at the family. So, Sunday mornings throughout the remainder of this month, I'm doing a series called God's Design for the Family. Pretty simple. And then tonight, we're doing an elder-led prayer for the family. So come back tonight, we're going to be praying for our families that God would build strong families. And then beginning next Sunday night, we're beginning a series, really more of a seminar on parenting called Parenting in the Fear of the Lord. So that's what we're doing for the remainder of this month. And we want to talk about families because families are incredibly important. None of us were born in amniotic goo to be raised by the state like you see in some sci-fi movies. Each of us is born in a family. Each of us is born to a mother and a father somewhere. And God's ideal from the very beginning is a family, a husband, a wife, who are married to one another, and their children. That's what a family is. That was God's idea. And then, of course, you have the immediate family, and then you have grandparents, and uncles, and cousins, and so on and so forth. And, of course, Satan, from the very beginning, has attacked the family. He's attacked the family. And what Satan has been doing, especially the past 60, 70 years in this country, is attempting to redefine the family. Satan is a liar from the beginning. He's the father of lies, and so he tells lies. And we've been introduced to what's called the modern family. What's the modern family? It's anything you want it to be. It's anything you want it to be. It doesn't have to be one man and one woman. It can be two men. It can be two women. Or maybe two men and one woman, or two women and one man, and their kids, or it doesn't even have to be their kids, or even adopted kids, it's just whoever you want to call your family, and for that matter, it doesn't even really need to be a person. It can be animals, too. We've completely redefined what the family is. I read this past week that a gay couple in New York filed a formal complaint against the city of New York arguing that not having access to a woman's reproductive potential is a form of discrimination, and so they're asking the city of New York to pay for a surrogate mother so that they can have a child. This is the air that we breathe today, that the family has been redefined. Well, when did this start? When did this assault on the family begin? Well, it happened all the way in the very beginning in the garden, but we've seen it most recently in America, going back to the 1960s, when no-fault divorce was introduced. Anybody know what year that happened? 1969, California. 1969, before that, if you wanted to get a divorce, you had to have cause. adultery. There had to be abandonment. There had to be some reason for a judge to declare that your marriage was null and void. 1969, you could come in and say, look, I just don't love this person anymore. We're done. And that started an epidemic in the life of the family, an epidemic. In the 1960s, 87 percent, this is Pew Research poll, 87 percent of all children were raised in a home with a father and a mother. Pew Research released 2014, this is eight years ago, it's probably worse now, that only 47 percent of children are now raised in a home with their biological parents. Only 47 percent. 26% are raised in homes with a single mother and 5% don't have any parents at all. So we're talking about at least 31% of the children in America today are growing up without a father. And you know the statistics for those without a father. You are increasingly likely to commit violent crime, you are increasingly likely, I think it's 47% of all kids without a father grow up in poverty. 47% of all kids without a father grow up in poverty. The statistical rate of suicide is enormous. And here's what all this is. The assault on the family is really an assault on children. Because what are the parents in a family supposed to do? They're supposed to protect their kids. Christian parents are to raise their children in the fear of the Lord. They're supposed to teach them how to function in this world. They're to protect them from predators, and those who would take advantage of them, and those who would abuse them. And so when you take the parents, and particularly the father, out of the equation, is you are essentially leaving those children up for Satan's attack. And that right there is the widespread epidemic right now in this country. You have children upon children upon children upon children who aren't being protected and aren't being taught basic things about themselves. And we're in this middle of this transgender revolution where even their teachers are telling them, oh, you feel like a girl even though you're a biological boy? Well, maybe it's time you start dressing like a girl. California passed a bill that parents don't need to be told by the counselors at the school if their kid decides to undergo a transition in gender. So, you have kids that aren't being protected in homes with fathers and parents. They're being led astray by teachers in the public school system who are telling them that they're a different gender than their biological sex. And what we're seeing right now in this country is massive confusion. And it all goes to the breakdown of the family. And here's why. When God designed the family, in the very beginning, the family was the basic building block of culture, of a nation. Think of a family as like the Lego. The family's the Lego. And you can build stuff with a lot of Legos. And that's how nations are built. That's how nations thrive, is with strong families. But when the family becomes degraded, when the family is diminished, and when the family is destroyed, no nation can survive that loss. And that's what we're experiencing right now. What you are seeing is a modern day Rome. How did Rome fall? Rome fell from the inside. Moral decay. And that's what we are experiencing in this country is the moral decay from the inside out. Politics can't survive that. States can't survive that. Nations can't survive that. And so that's why we as the church have such an important responsibility. We have such an important responsibility. We need to preach Christ and Him crucified. That's the only message that saves. That's the only message that brings truth to a lost world, is the good news, the gospel, the truth that Jesus Christ came, lived a perfect life, died for sinners, rose again on the third day, and that good news is offered to all, that all who believe in Him might have life in His name and be transformed. And then we need to teach the truth regarding the family, that God designed the family to be one man, one woman, and their respective children. But we also have a responsibility in the church to model this. Our tendency and our temptation is to do this. How does the world do family? And to go along with the world. Too often, the church doesn't look very different. The divorce rates, often the same. The pornography rate amongst men, often much the same. It's time for the church to begin to model what a biblical family looks like. And I promise you, if we do that, we are going to be the salt and light in this world, because there's so much confusion. And when you model this, and you raise children in the fear of the Lord, and you have two godly parents, you are going to stand out like a beacon in this culture. You and your family are going to be a lighthouse. That's just the fact of the matter, because there's so much disarray and confusion. So I want to begin by starting with the very foundation of the family. which is marriage. Marriage is the cornerstone of the family. And just in thinking through this series, I wanted to begin with the most basic thing about marriage. As I've been counseling people, I realized that even many Christians don't know the reasons for why God created marriage. So I want to walk you through this morning the four purposes for which God designed marriage. The four purposes for which God designed marriage. I didn't make these up. People have been teaching these for 2,000 years. This is what Christ and the apostles taught. This is what the church has taught for centuries. So, these are what all Protestant ministers since the Reformation have taught. But let me just walk you through these four purposes for marriage. The first, is companionship. God designed marriage for the purpose of companionship. Now, I want you to look in Genesis chapter 2, beginning in verse 4. Really, Genesis chapter 2 is a commentary on Genesis chapter 1. God is providing more detail on how God created specifically man and woman. Notice that first phrase in verse four, these are the generations. In the Greek Septuagint, that word generations was translated Genesis, and over and over that phrase appears in the book of Genesis, and that's how this book got its name of Genesis. And what Moses is saying, he's now about to recount the early beginnings of Adam and Eve. In the very beginning, the heavens and the earth, when they were created, and the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. And a mist was going up from the land that was watering the whole face of the ground, and the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and that man became a living creature." So God made man from dust, not from a long evolutionary process in which man arrived from monkeys. Man was directly created by God, and then God breathed into the man this breath, this ruck of life, Now verse 8 says that the Lord God planted a garden in Eden. Notice that Eden is a larger portion of land. The garden was essentially an early tabernacle or temple. When they created the tabernacle and the temple, all the decorations in the temple went back to the garden. They were floral. When you read the instructions of the tabernacle and it talks about the lilies and all those things, the tabernacle in some ways was a picture of the Garden of Eden. And it all points forward to the New Jerusalem in Revelation 22. So God puts Adam in a garden temple, essentially to be its priest. He has responsibilities. I want you to look at verse 15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden, this Temple of Eden, to work it and keep it. Those are the priestly responsibilities. You work it, you commune with God there, but you also protect it. You also guard it. The priests were to guard the temple. so that no one else came into the places where they weren't supposed to be. Remember, King Uzziah went into the Holy of Holies, and the priest said, don't go in there. He went anyway, struck with leprosy, and he went out very quickly. But the priests were to guard the temple, and Adam was to guard the garden. And the Lord God, verse 16, commanded the man, saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. So God gives Adam a test that there is a tree that he is not supposed to eat from. And God give gives these commands before. Eve is even created. I want you to note that and remember that. Then verse 18 look at verse 18. The Lord God said. And we're going to really look at this verse and hone in here. It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. When God says it is not good that a man should be alone, he means much more than physical intimacy. He means every facet of life. Every facet of life. It is not good for a man to be alone. Adam was a priest, a worshiper, and God says it's not good that Adam be a worshiper alone. We are designed from the very beginning to worship and live in community with another. God says that the normal function of a man And then we'll see what the woman is to have a companion. And this is the very beginning of a family. This this reality of companionship in the covenant of marriage. Francis Schaeffer's wife, Edith Schaeffer, wrote a book called What is a family? And this is what she said. She said God made Adam and Eve as two very different people. Who could become one unit? Male and female, he created them on purpose. God made woman to be physically beautiful in the eyes of man. God also made man to be beautiful in the eyes of the woman. Two kinds of beauty complementing each other, fulfilling each other. God gave man and woman capacity for love and someone to love, capacity for gentleness and someone to whom to be gentle, capacity for communication and someone with whom to communicate. Capacity for worshiping Him and having communion with Him, their God, and someone with whom to join for worship. Capacity for learning and someone with whom to discuss all the new discoveries and understandings. Capacity for physical oneness and someone with whom to become one in a mysterious and very real way. God also gave man and woman the capacity to be a family, and the marvel of being able to reproduce. She says, wonder of wonders. I want you to look back at verse 18, and I want you to notice God's solution to man's need for companionship. God says, it's not good for man to be alone. So His solution is, I will make him a helper fit for him. That Hebrew word helper is the Hebrew word izer. It literally means to come alongside, to help, to be of assistance. And this gives you an idea of the woman's responsibility to the man. Her responsibility is to help, to be of assistance, Once heard Alistair Begg say about pastors, but it's true of all men, he said, every pastor needs a wife if for no other reason than to keep him humble. Every man needs a woman, a wife. And you see here in verse 18 a distinction in their responsibilities. From the very beginning, this is pre-fall, God gives the man what responsibility in verse 15? To work and to keep the garden. God gives the woman the responsibility to help her husband in this task. From the very beginning in this marriage relationship, the man is the leader or the head of the relationship, and the woman is to be the follower. as much as she can submit to her own husband's leadership, her job is to help her husband accomplish his responsibilities. Now ladies, what this doesn't mean is that you are inferior to your husband. It doesn't mean that. In fact, God is even called the Ezer, same Hebrew word, the helper of Israel. Later on, I was subordinate to many other officers when I was in the Marine Corps. That didn't make me inferior to them. It just meant that we had different roles and responsibilities. But what this does is it does help us understand the difference between men and women. Men are responsible. Husbands are responsible. Fathers are responsible for providing for their families and protecting their families. Paul holds the men responsible. He says in 1 Timothy 5.8, he says, if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. So what you see here, and this is very, very simple to deduce. What every man needs, this is pre-fall, is to work. Every man needs a mission in life. Every man needs to take dominion of what God calls you to take dominion of. Work is a good thing. I talk to people, look, you know, you might be very wealthy. That doesn't mean that you should retire. You need to find something to do if you're a man. It is not good for you to play Mr. Mom and be at home. That's when you will languish. The man needs a mission, and a woman needs to be able to respect what that mission is, and come alongside that mission, and be of help to that mission. How was Eve to be in Azar or help to Adam? Well, Adam was given the mission to take dominion. He can't do that without children. You can't take dominion of a planet without children. So Eve was given to help him by bearing and raising children, but also to help in her own way beautify and domesticate what Adam was supposed to take dominion of. So she comes alongside as this companion, this helper. The man's orientation is towards the mission. The woman's orientation is to help her husband. You see that distinction? This is so natural to us, actually. Look at the books and the movies that men and women consume. You look at the books that men like, what's the plot line? Cowboy wants to get the cattle ranch, beat the bad guys, the bank robbers, whoever it is, and then along the way, he might find a bride. That's what the stories that men like. What are the stories that women like? A wealthy banker moves up to upstate New York. It's Christmas time. There's pumpkin spice lattes in the air. Woman meets the man, and by Christmas Eve, they're kissing as the Christmas tree is lit up. For the woman, what's the pursuit? What's the climax? The woman gets the guy. That's the climax. For the man, it's the guy gets the cattle ranch and beats the bad guys and gets the girl along the way. Do you see how we're oriented differently? And it's all right here. It all goes back to the beginning and how God designs it. Now, God wants to show Adam that he needs a woman and what he does is he helps Adam realize this by bringing the different animals to him. Remember when Noah was at the ark and God brought all the animals to Noah? God does something similar here with Adam. He brings all the animals to Adam and he gives Adam the responsibility of naming the animals, but in this process he wants Adam to realize that there will not be a helper suitable for him found amongst the animals. Look at verse 19. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. Now there's a leadership element in naming the animals. The man gave names to all livestock and all the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So God provides the helper. Look at verse 21. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. That word deep sleep basically means comatose. It's a sleep. The same word is used to describe the Egyptian army when they were crushed in the Red Sea. It's a word that describes basically going down to the depths near death. That's the picture here. It's a picture that when you enter into a marriage, there's a death to self involved. That Adam has to go to sleep and go to the point of near death, and when he awakes, he's now ready to enter into covenant with someone else. And the rib That the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman. And brought her to the man and then the man said this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Now look what God says. And this is, by the way, what Jesus quotes in Matthew chapter 19. And what Paul quotes in Ephesians 5. God says, therefore. a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall be called one flesh." That's the beginning of the family right there. God institutes marriage, and thus a family begins. But I want you to notice this whole picture of companionship, that God made men and women for companionship. And one of the great problems, I think, in our culture, and it's seeped into the church, is this reality of prolonged singleness. People are getting married later and later and later, and by prolonged singleness, hear me very clearly, I don't mean widows. whose husbands have died. I don't mean those who are single for the sake of the kingdom, like Paul mentions. I don't mean those who wanted to get married at some point, have been praying for a wife or husband, and have been diligently seeking that. I'm not talking about people in those categories. What I'm talking about are young men and women who postpone marriage out of a sense of convenience. I'm going to postpone marriage to get ahead with the career. I'm going to postpone marriage so I can have fun, so I can live the life. Right now, the average male in this country gets married at age 30. Age 30. About 20 years ago, it was 26. So people are getting married later and later and later. And the same is true of women as well. I think the average age for a woman who gets married now is 28 years old. So what's happening during this time is, one, there's a lot of promiscuity. Let's just be honest. That's what's taking place. There's a lot of promiscuity. And there is a lot of delayed maturation. People aren't maturing. They're living like kids well into their 20s because what happens is when you get married and you have kids, you have responsibility. It's time to grow up. It's time to work a job and it's time to make money and watch what you spend and live for somebody else. The biblical pattern is that you get married young. That's the normal pattern. Solomon says it's the wife of your youth. And so I really wanna challenge, especially our young men and women, that if you are single, begin praying that God would show you the sister in Christ, or the brother in Christ, that he would have you love, if you're a man, protect and provide for. If you're a woman, that you can come alongside and help him in his mission. And begin praying, and just have a very simple checklist Does she love the Lord? With all her heart. Does she serve in her church? That's an important thing. Is she a conservative believer? Does she hold to the inerrancy of Scripture? Does she hold to justification by faith? Does she hold to the deity of Christ, the virgin conception of Christ, a literal resurrection? Does she share my values? Is she pro-abortion or is she against abortion? Is she pro-gay marriage or is she against gay marriage? Those are important things. You go through those things and then you ask, am I attracted to her? Check, I am. Lo and behold, there she is. And same thing with you young ladies. Look, you don't have to marry the Apostle Paul. You don't. Who, by the way, looks like Fabio. That guy's not coming. But ask, is there a man whom I respect? Do I respect a man? Can I come alongside him in his mission? Does he serve in his church? Same thing. Is he a conservative believer? Do I respect his faith? Would he be able to lead our family in the Lord? Am I attracted to him? Can I respect him? And if so, then get married. I think maybe one of these Sunday nights we should do a dating game and start matching you up, and we'll just have weddings on the dot on Saturdays, and we'll just all show up for weddings. But my point is, is don't languish. Look, God's basic design for most people, now Paul talks about some are called to singleness, and I don't want to minimize that because there is a place for that in the body, but what I'm talking about are the people that delay marriage to just spend it on themselves, and that's not God's pattern. God's pattern is for you to be sacrificial to lay down your life to serve and to do that in the context of a family. So that's the first reason why God instituted marriage is companionship. The second is sanctification. I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Sanctification. And specifically what I'm talking about here is sexual purity. God's design for every single Christian is to walk in purity. I want you to look at 1 Corinthians 6 verse 13. Second part of the verse. Paul says. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord. and the Lord for the body." What's sexual immorality? That Greek word is porneia. It means anything that is sexual in nature outside of the covenant of marriage. So, anything that is outside of marriage is put under this banner of sexual immorality and is prohibited. And God says, look, the purpose of this is that you are to be holy unto the Lord. He says, verse 15, do you not know that your bodies are now members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two shall become one flesh. That's quoting what we just read in Genesis 2. but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Therefore, here's the imperative verse 18. Flee from sexual immorality. Flee from it. Run away from it. Be like Joseph with Potiphar's wife. You run. Don't stay there to see how long you can be tempted. He says, flee sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. And here's one of the reasons for this. He says, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? within you, whom you have from God. You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God with your body." Now, what's Paul's remedy for this? How does Paul say that we are to fight against sexual immorality? How are we to fight for purity? Is it to go be chased in a convent somewhere, or in a cave somewhere, and just constrict ourselves? No, that's not what he says. Look, jump down to 1 Corinthians 7 verse 9. Look at verse 9 of 1 Corinthians 7. He says, and this is for the believer, he's talking about believers, he says, but if they cannot exercise self-control, they should what? marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." One of the things that I tell young men that are battling lust, I ask them, have you considered marriage? Because this is God's design for your help in order to fight against lust. And Paul's gonna build out this argument. He's gonna talk about singleness and those that are single like he is. And in verses eight, he says, look, if you can do that, that's great. You can be single for the kingdom. God can use you. But if you are battling self-control in this area, you should get married. And I wanna show you this. Look back up at verse one. the Corinthians asked him this question. So, verse 1 is Paul is quoting what the Corinthians said. Paul says, now concerning the matters about which you wrote, quote, so this is the Corinthians, They said, it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman. So they're asserting this. They're asserting a prohibition. They're saying it's good for a man simply to abstain from any sexual activity. The actual word they use is to not touch a woman. It's good for a man to not touch a woman. So they basically adopted this Gnostic approach. Many Christians at the time adopted this, that the body is bad, the spirit's good, therefore food is bad, therefore physical intimacy is bad. This belief really came down even through the Roman Catholic Church. They said marriage is a less holiest state, physical intimacy is less holy, therefore priests must be what? Celibate. Priests must be celibate. And in so doing, what the Roman Catholic Communion has done, it's denied those priests the defense that God gave them to fight against sexual temptation. And that's why you're seeing all these scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, is because these priests have no recourse. What they should do is they should do what Luther did and what Zwingli did, is they should go find a bride and get married. That's what they did. Nuns as well. So look at verse two. Paul says, no, that's not the case. Paul corrects this understanding. He says, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife. and each woman her own. husband. Now, this is a general principle. He said, look, to mitigate against this, this is God's design that each man should have his own wife, each woman her own husband. So, Paul knows and understands that God made man and woman as physical beings with sexual desires, and marriage is the only blessed context for those desires to be expressed, the only context So, we should pursue marriage if that's what we need. In this vein, I was speaking to a gentleman recently, and he told me that he had told his wife that if she died, he would probably need to find a new wife at the funeral. I told him that was probably not a wise thing to say to her, probably not the best approach, but I think he understood the point of this verse. The reason, Paul says, is in verse 3, the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. And this verse is talking about the responsibility that each husband and wife has to the other. that each husband and each wife is to serve the other in this area so that they do not fall into temptation. I've talked to couples, I was talking to one this week, and they hadn't been intimate in months, in months. And what happens when that takes place within a marriage is the devil gets a foothold. because you're allowing, one, Satan to get a foothold or a possible foothold in the life of your spouse, and then you're letting that jeopardize the whole enterprise of your marriage. And so, what Paul says is, don't let that happen. Don't deprive one another. He even says, verse 4, for the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. You're one flesh. In other words, because the husband and wife are one flesh, neither should be deprived in a marriage. I think the best explanation of verse four is in verse five. He says, do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. So I think the application is very simple. If you are tempted and you are single regarding sexual sin, God's design for you is to fight that temptation by getting married. And if you are married, you have a responsibility to not let foxes into your covenant. You have that responsibility of faithfulness to your spouse. Writer of Hebrews says, Hebrews 13, four, let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. I've counseled several men this year whose wives committed adultery with them, against them, with people they met at the gym. I don't know why it's the gym, but it's been that way with every single case. where the woman has met somebody, committed adultery. And then you go on the other side and you see the ravages that pornography is wrecking in this culture and specifically in the church. It is a monster. A monster. It destroys your soul. It destroys your marriage. God says, repent. God says Romans 8 13 if you live according to the flesh you will die But if by the Spirit you will put to death the deeds of the body you will live That's the approach you have to take to sexual sin. You must put it to death Put it to death Don't treat it like a pet Say well, it's dangerous, but I'm just gonna keep it in its cage. You have to put it to death Jesus says what? Tear out your eye cut off your hand at a roommate in college who threw a computer out of his window. He said, no more, no more. You must take sin seriously. Otherwise, it will destroy your marriage. It will. So look, this though is the place of hope. You're only gonna find hope and help here. And the first step is confession and repentance. You confess your sin to the Lord. First John 1 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. You confess your sin to your spouse. There's going to be some fallout. There's going to be some some difficulties with that, but with that. comes walking in the light as he is in the light, and you begin walking in repentance. If you need an accountability partner, come talk to me. Come talk to one of the pastors. We have guys walking in accountability with other people daily, weekly, but we need to take this sin head on. How else are we going to be different from the world? We wanna be different, we wanna have a reformation and revival in the church. How are we gonna do that if we're consuming the same things that the world consumes? If we're taking part in the same sins that they're taking part in? It has to start with your own vertical relationship with the Lord, putting that sin to death, and then guarding your marriage. Let the marriage bed be held in honor. And then we'll honor the Lord, and we'll model what a biblical marriage looks like. Okay, really quickly, third. Third reason why God instituted marriage. God instituted marriage to produce godly children. I want to read you the preamble. This is what a Church of England minister would read, before he officiated a wedding. This is from 1559 from the Book of Common Prayer. This is what he would say about marriage, and you can even see the different spelling in your notes. He would say, marriage was ordained for the procreation of children. to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord in praise of God." So God designed and instituted marriage to bring about godly children. Genesis 128, I'm not going to have you turn there, but just listen. This is the command that God gave to Adam and Eve. It says, God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." That's called the dominion mandate or the creation mandate, but from the very beginning God commanded Adam to take dominion and Eve to take dominion by being fruitful and multiplying. God says to unfaithful Israel who had intermarried with pagan women in Malachi, Chapter two, verse 15, he says, did he make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? What was the one God seeking through a marriage? Answer, godly offspring. That's what God is seeking. So guard yourselves in your spirit and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. The psalmist says in Psalm 127 three behold, children are a heritage. That means a gift. A treasure, something that the Lord gives from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward. It's a blessing like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. What is striking difference from the way our culture views children? Isn't that a striking difference that are a reward, a heritage from the Lord. I mean, you know, you moms out there, what's the response you get when you walk into Target with four kids or five kids? Oh, you must be busy, right? Nowadays, people look at children as such a nuisance that they would rather get dogs. They would rather have dogs than children. because they view children as a hindrance. Listen, I officiated a wedding a few years back. And, you know, the whole thing, after the wedding, there's a reception, and because I was the officiating minister, they asked me if I would do the blessing at the reception. So, you know, the DJ's doing stuff, and everybody's sitting down, there's a couple hundred people there, and, you know, I go up there, and they hand me the mic, and I said, okay, everybody bow your heads in prayer. And I begin to pray, and I ask the Lord to bless this couple, that God would just bless them with health and financially, and that God would bless their union with faithfulness and all those things. And then I said this, and I said, God, and if it's your will, would you bless this couple with children? So I prayed. And guess what happened? people started audibly laughing. Laughing. I almost stopped the prayer. Do you not know why we're here? I mean, that's the whole point of this. Is that this couple would bring children into the world. That's why we're here. What do you think this is? In their minds, children were an afterthought, something that weren't even part of what was happening that day. But God says different. No, God says that the reason why I ordained marriage was to bring godly children into this world. Now, of course, post-Adam, they're not born godly, are they? You have to teach them to be godly. You have to train them to be godly, because they're born rebels. But what God says, God says to the children of Israel, to us in the church, God says you have children and you teach them then to fear the Lord. Deuteronomy 6, 6, and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise. Proverbs 1.8, this is the command that God gives to both the father and the mother. Hear, my son, your father's instruction and forsake not your mother's teaching. Both the father and the mother are to teach the children to honor and fear the Lord. Same is true in the New Covenant. Paul says, Ephesians 6.4, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So, some of you might be asking, and you see this often, is maybe the Lord hasn't blessed you with children. Maybe you've tried to have children, you can't have children. What do you do then? Well, you do what Isaac did. You begin to pray. Genesis 25-21, Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord granted his prayer. and Rebecca, his wife, conceived. You see, listen, every child that's born is from the Lord. Make no mistake. Life is from God. Yeah, we know the mechanics of it biologically, but life, the soul, is from God. Life is from God. And in some cases, God does close that door for some couples. And that either means that God desires you in the life of the church to bring other younger Christians, you know, in and you disciple them, or maybe it's God's will for you to foster children or adopt children. But God desires you to serve and to teach and to train, and that's God's design and plan for every married couple. So that's third, third reason why God created marriage. And then the fourth is absolutely remarkable. I want you to turn to Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5. Paul reveals something about marriage here that was a mystery. He says in verse 32 that this mystery is profound. And I'm saying it refers to Christ and the church. What Paul reveals to us about marriage is that marriage was designed from the very beginning of creation to picture the relationship of Christ in his church from the very beginning what that means is that marriage was not an afterthought marriage was not plan b marriage was not something oh we need to kind of reconstruct this and it's supposed to picture Christ in the church no from the very beginning it was to picture Christ's relationship with his bride look up at verse 22 Paul says, Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now, how is this relationship to work? Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. As much as you can under Christ, he's saying. Obviously, this doesn't mean that you disobey the Lord. You submit as much as you can under Christ, and you are to submit to your own husband. You're not to submit, ladies, to men in general. This is actually a protection for you. You're not to submit to any old man on the street. You're to submit to your own husband and him alone. Husbands, he says, have a much more difficult task. He says, husbands, you are to love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. And then he quotes Genesis 2 again, This mystery is profound and I'm saying that it refers to Christ in the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. So we're confronted with this reality that our marriages as believers are supposed to picture the very gospel that we preach. That Christ loved his bride and gave himself up for her and the bride, that's us, is to submit to Christ, his Lordship. In a similar way, wives are to submit to their own husbands. So let me ask you, does your marriage picture the gospel? We have to be introspective here. We have to look at ourselves. Husbands, do you love your wives as Christ loved the church? And wives, do you submit to your own husbands in the Lord and respect him and honor him as the head of your household, the leader of your household? Look, these are huge realities, and we're gonna come back to these next week, and we're gonna drill down into them. We're gonna study Ephesians chapter five next week. But this is so important for us to see, that in this dark world, your marriage, your marriage, is a very picture of the gospel. People should see your marriage and reflect on the reality of what Christ has done. Heavenly Father, we come to the throne of grace, and we thank you, Lord, for marriage, that you ordained this from the very beginning, and that you reveal in your word why you ordained it and why you gave this to us. And so, Lord, as we look at these four reasons why you ordain marriage for companionship, for our sanctification and holiness, and for the bearing and rearing of children, godly children, and most importantly, to picture Christ in the church. As we look at these things, we pray, Lord, that our marriages would model them, that we would have the grace and the power needed to live this out, that our lives would be a living testimony to those in this community of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ as they see it in our marriage and as we preach the truth with our words. And we ask all these things in Christ's name. Amen. Thanks for listening. For more sermons, information, and events, check out our website at capitolcommunitychurch.com.