The portion of God's word that he has appointed to us this evening is found in 1 Corinthians 7. 1 Corinthians 7, where tonight we come to the second half of the chapter, the passage that begins at verse 25. So turn there with me. 1 Corinthians 7, verse 25. It's been several weeks since we were in 1 Corinthians 7. I remind you this chapter is Paul's instruction to the church at Corinth, the way that he is answering misapplications of moral purity. There was a contingency rising in the Corinthian assembly that saw all sexual relations as degrading and unfit for consecrated living. Certainly the apostle Paul has taught them that sexual relations outside of marriage are strictly forbidden and he reasoned with them in chapter six that that would be unthinkable for a Christian to engage in immorality. But this segment of the church was applying this, unfortunately, to marriage. And so we have a chapter of scripture here where the Apostle Paul is answering their misapplications of moral purity. The first half of the chapter is all addressed to married people. And so all the way down through the reading that we already did in our service this evening, down through the 24th verse, he's answering misapplications of moral purity to married couples, the way that it was being misapplied by that contingency in the Corinthian assembly. In verse 25, he turns to the unmarried in the assembly. You can imagine that if there is a rising tide of a view that celibacy was consecrated living, that there would be folks in the Corinthian church that would be very reluctant then to get married. And so they're asking the apostles, should we get married? And that's what's going on at verse 25 of 1 Corinthians chapter seven. So we're taking as our text tonight the 25th verse all the way down through the 35th verse, 1 Corinthians seven. Let's read this passage here first of all, giving our attention to the reading of God's word, 1 Corinthians 7, 25. Now, Concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, yet I give my judgment as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. I suppose, therefore, that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be. Art thou bound unto a wife, seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife, seek not a wife. But, and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned. And if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless, such shall have trouble in the flesh. but I spare you. But this I say, brethren, the time is short. It remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none, and they that weep as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that buy as though they possessed not. and they that use this world as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world passeth away. But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife, There is a difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be both holy in body and in spirit. But she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. In this I speak for your own profit, not that I may cast a snare upon you. but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction. Amen. Now that has been to us over the years a rather oblique passage of scripture, hasn't it? That's not easy to get to the bottom of. There's some wording there that makes us wonder, some passages, parts of that paragraph that we don't really know how to take. And so, I really want to simplify this for us tonight, and I want us to really come to revel in the wisdom of God as it is revealed in this passage of scripture. It's part of our growth in godliness and in yieldedness to the Lord that we're never embarrassed by any passage of scripture. And there is not a single line in the word of God that we would find ourselves over the shoulder of the apostle saying, I'm not sure you want to say it that way. We yield to what God's Word says in every respect. There are some passages where that's more difficult than others, and this is probably one of those passages where we might have looked at this passage with a little bit of confusion, maybe even a little bit of embarrassment. We wish maybe he had said it a little bit differently than the way that he said it. We make apology for the apostle. We talk about, well, you know, the apostle, you know, those sort of things, which is really not a high view of scripture at all, is it? There is an understanding of this passage where it is the revealed wisdom of God and it couldn't have been said any better. It couldn't have been said any better. And so I want us to look at the passage, you know, discarding all of the preconceived notions that we may have had about a passage like this and to really come to see this passage of scripture the way that the Holy Spirit would have us to see it. Let's begin with this issue before us. What is the nature of the instruction that we are given in these 10 verses? Okay, let's carefully think through that for a minute, because I do think that this is an important starting place as we work through the material here. So he says in verse 25 that he's turning his attention to the unmarried in the congregation, and he concedes he has no commandment of the Lord. And so what he means by that is that this is not material that has been previously revealed. We don't have instruction from Jesus in the Gospels regarding the lawfulness of marriage or the practicality or the pragmatism of being married. The closest you can get is his attending the wedding at Cana, I suppose. We have his teaching on divorce and remarriage, and we've thought about that in recent weeks, but we really don't have material like this. And so when he says, I have no commitment from the Lord, all right, so we don't have previous revelation on this. And we've come across a phrase like that, you know, back there in verse number 12, when he says, to the rest speak I, not the Lord. And we said, in verse 12, that doesn't mean, well, now this is Paul's opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. No, what it means is there's just no previous revelation about this, right? But when you're in verse 25, there are some other words that he uses and some argument that he uses that does put what he says in this passage in a different light than what he has said previous to this. So you see what he says next in verse 25. He says, yet I give my judgment. And the word judgment there is simply his opinion. He gives his opinion, he has thought this through carefully, and he's going to render a verdict now, he's gonna render a judgment, that all by itself. When we have inspired scripture in the apostle writing, does not give us any room, any wiggle room at all. Paul's judgment, Paul's opinion is God's judgment and God's opinion. So we're still in the category of black and white, right and wrong. But then we get this in verse 26, I suppose therefore, and you see the softening of what he's about to say. And he gives his counsel about how, in verse 26, there's a certain reason why he would counsel the unmarried to remain unmarried. And then he says in verse 28, but if you marry, you have not sinned. And later on in the passage, down in verse 35, He says he does not want anything that he has said in these 10 verses to be a snare unto you or to tie you down, to be binding on your conscience. So we are in a passage here where Paul is giving his pastoral counsel. He's giving pastoral counsel to the unmarried in the Corinthian congregation. He's giving them some considerations to think through before they are married. And these considerations You can take these considerations. You would be wise to give them full weight because as he says in verse 25, he is speaking as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord and is a faithful servant of the Lord. And so there's Paul kind of drawing on his own credit with them. Right, and he's saying, you know, I am one to be respected and wise, and I've proven myself faithful by the grace of God, so this is sound counsel, pastoral counsel, coming from their pastor as to considerations they ought to bear in mind before getting married. But at the end of the day, he does not want to put any restraint on them on this. They are free to marry or they are free to not marry. Either way, they have not sinned. He just wants them to think this through carefully before they get married. He wants them to give full weight to three considerations. All right, now what are the three considerations? The first consideration is in verse 26. And he talks about the reason of the present distress, the present distress. Later on in verse 28, he sums it up by talking about having trouble in the flesh if you marry during this present distress. And so there's his first consideration. So think about this, the present distress, present difficulty, trouble that is in their context. The second consideration is in verse 29. The time is short. And what he means by that is, end of verse 31, the world is passing away. And so he wants them to consider this, not only the present distress, that context that they are currently in, but he also wants them to consider the shortness of the hour, that the world is passing away. And then the third consideration he wants them to think about is verse 32. And once you get to verse 32, almost every verse uses the word care. And so it's the cares or the anxieties, the distractedness, the concerns that necessarily attend the married state. He wants to be honest with them about the concerns that come upon a person when they get married and to make sure they go into this eyes wide open. And so consider the cares of married life. So those are the apostles three considerations. And if you stop and think about that, there's hardly a young person that gives full weight to those three considerations before they get married. So this really is divine, practical wisdom from above that the apostle is giving to us when we are going to decide whether to marry or not, or whether we're going to help someone else in that decision as their parent, or a grandparent, or a counselor in some way. Here are three considerations. Present difficulty. the shortness of the hour, and the cares of married life. Make sure you give those three considerations their proper weight. And at the end of the day, if having considered those three things, and you believe it is God's will to be married, get married. Or it may be that because of those three considerations that you decide not to get married, either way, you are under no obligation, you haven't sinned. So our theme this evening is should we get married? Should we get married? And we're gonna organize our thoughts into those three considerations that the apostle was giving to this young couple across his desk in his study as they come to him asking his advice about this. We're gonna give our attention to those three considerations. But before we proceed into the three, let's just make sure that we all are thinking all the way through this that this is not just counsel for the unmarried in the congregation. Most of us have made our decision when it comes to this. So what is the use of this to us other than helping someone else in their decision? And I think the proper way to think about this is if the apostle, says that these considerations ought to be given full weight when it comes to something so blessed and God-glorifying as the gift of marriage, then don't you think that in any decision in life that involves your use of time that it involves the potential for added concerns or cares or distractions. Don't you think that you should think through that decision through this grid? If these are the considerations for something as wonderful as marriage, then this would be the way to think of any major life decision. And so I just kind of brainstormed some different decisions that you may be faced with. Paul, should my wife get a full-time job outside the home? Well, here are three considerations. I'm not gonna tell you what to do there, but here are three considerations. The present distress, the shortness of the hour, the cares of married life. Paul, should I start my own business? Paul, should my children participate in travel baseball this spring? Paul, should I take up golf in retirement? Well, I'm not gonna tell you what to do. This is discretionary. But here's my counsel. As someone who's trustworthy, have you considered these three issues? How would this bear on your decision? And so while the passage is specifically addressing the marriage question, what we really have here is apostolic considerations for important decisions. But I almost titled it that, and if you wanna title it that, you can, right? But apostolic considerations for important decisions. It really is broader than just the marriage question, if you think about it. But since he's dealing with the marriage question in particular, that's how we'll deal with it tonight. All right, so in the first place, according to verse 25 or 26, he tells you, he counsels you to consider that the existence of a present distress would argue against you getting married. A present distress may argue against you getting married. What does he mean by the present distress? There are some who think that it has a reference to a severe economic hardship that was being faced in Greece in the first century. Apparently, in the mid-50s, in the Roman Empire, at the time of the writing of the Book of the First Corinthians here, that there was a severe grain shortage. And they were on the verge of economic collapse in that part of the world because of famine conditions. And so perhaps that's the difficulty, some impending famine on the horizon. There are others, of course, who think the reference here is religious persecution. Persecution had not really become, had not really exploded upon the Gentile church at this point in time. Persecution at this point in time was just the Jewish contingency in the cities. It was kind of focused there. There wasn't really Roman persecution yet, but that's about 10 years off. And really it's about a decade after this that Paul is going to be beheaded for his faith in the Lord Jesus. And so perhaps it is religious persecution, the mounting antagonism of the Greco-Roman world. The fact is no one can say for certain what the present distress is. They knew what it was though. And that's what makes what he's saying applicable to a wide variety of circumstances that we can capture with the expression present hardship. Present hardship. Consider that. If there is a present hardship, that may argue for not getting married. And these things ought to be taken into account. Times of great social or economic upheaval, instability that demonstrates the fragility of a culture, threatening ways that the Christian community is under attack. Think of World War II. Think of World War II. We romanticize the notion of a young couple quickly getting married the night before he shipped off to Europe. Was that wise? Was that wise? Or think on the other side. You're living as a Christian in Europe during the rise of the Third Reich. Or later on, during the bombing of Germany. Is it a time to be married? Or think of living in China as a Christian a generation ago when you're under the terrible pressure of forced abortion after having just one child. Or think of even more personal situations like great indebtedness or some personal, physical incapacity that one's spouse would always be under the burden of. Some obligation to aged parents. Your parents have no one else to look after and they're very needy. I mean, those kinds of things, a passage like this, argue ought to be brought into consideration when it comes to this, present difficulty. But after he says this in verse 27, He hastens to clarify, he says in verse 26, it's good for a man to remain a virgin, to remain unmarried because of present distress. But he does hasten to clarify in verse 27, that does not mean that you must necessarily unbind yourself from your wife. Now we have to pause and ask, what's he talking about here? I thought he was addressing virgins. I thought he was addressing the unmarried. How can you be unmarried and bound to a wife? Well, how can you? And he's talking about engagement in verse 27. He's talking about betrothal. And so, are you betrothed unto a wife? He says, why do they call it a wife? Well, that's how they referred to it back then. You remember that when Joseph and Mary were betrothed, that the angel himself says, calls Mary his wife, even though they had not come together. So, betrothal was a much tighter contractual relationship than even our present day engagement is. But so the argument here, the instruction is, in verse 27, that if you're betrothed unto a fiance, don't seek to be loosed. I'm not saying that you have to go out and break your engagement. When I said this, okay, if that engagement has been loosed, if there has been something that's taken place, and the betrothal has been broken, all right, seek not a wife, verse 27. But, verse 28, if thou marry, thou hast not sinned. Right, so he hastens to clarify, he's giving pastoral counsel here. Just give that its full weight. Present difficulty may argue for not getting married. He doesn't want couples to necessarily break their betrothals upon hearing his advice about present distress. So the bottom line is this. If you're a young person weighing whether or not to seek to be married, consider whether there is any present difficulty in your life that would really be a squeezing pressure on your relationship and bring trouble immediately into that marriage. And I think that one of the primary applications of this in our context is the issue of indebtedness. I would be real careful, real careful about getting married if you are before marriage under a tremendous amount of debt. Indebtedness can bring a great deal of trouble into a marriage. Financial pressures are some of the hardest pressures that married couples and that families face. I would counsel you to settle your finances before you get married. That may be a present distress that may argue against being married right away. All right, so present distress is the first consideration. All right, Paul moves on in verse 29 to the second consideration, the shortness of time, the shortness of time. He says in verse 29, this I say, brethren, the time is short. What does he mean by the time is short? Well, down in verse 31, he says, okay, the fashion of this world is passing away. And here the apostle is merely speaking from the perspective that we are consistently taught in the New Testament. Five times in the New Testament we are told that we are living in the last days now. That the last days began with the ministry of Jesus Christ. These are the last days. And the end is clearly in sight. When you read your New Testament, you're told to look up because your redemption draweth nigh. James says he's right at the door. Paul says in Philippians, the Lord is at hand. In terms of all of world history, that's how close you are to the end. The coming of Christ is imminent. The coming of the Lord, he could return at any time. In other words, there is no generation of believers that can count on finishing their days. And that's what Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15 when he tells people that they are not all going to die. We shall not all sleep, but we all shall be changed. So that is a consideration when it comes to the question of marriage, the shortness of time. Well, how is that a consideration? I mean, how does that play out when you're thinking about this? Well, I think his point is the believers must make decisions with eternity in view, that when you consider getting married, think about eternity. If your reasons for being married are all temporal, you need to factor this in, that the world is passing away, and that you're a stranger and a pilgrim in it. that you possess a heavenly citizenship, and you're on your way to a heavenly country, that you're risen with Christ, and so you're called to seek those things that are above, you're to redeem the time, because the days are evil. And the way that factors in to marriage and your decision about marriage is that you need to consider whether this person that you're going to marry is a friend of grace to help you on to God. Are they gonna help you heavenward? Because the time is short and eternity is near. And so are they going to help you heavenward? And of course, being married can factor in there into that consideration in a very positive way. And those of us that have believing spouses can testify to that. We have found it to be the case that our marriage has been with someone who is a friend of grace, who helps us on to God. That our spouse is someone that helps us to view things from a heavenly perspective and to seek those things which are above. Marriage can be a great benefit in that. Peter speaks of our relationship. The ideal is that we are heirs together of the grace of life, that we help each other heavenward. And so that's the consideration. Is the person that I'm considering marriage to, are they, is this decision consistent with what I believe about the shortness of the hour and the imminency of the return of the Lord Jesus and the weight of eternity that is right on the doorstep? I need to factor that in. Now, admittedly, the wording of verses 30 and 31 is difficult. When he goes through those five phrases, he says, They that have wives be as though they had none. They that weep as though they weep not. They that rejoice as though they rejoice not. They that buy as though they possess not. Those that use the world as not abusing it. That's some difficult language and I think that it's just a little beyond the scope and time that we have tonight to give a full, full explanation to that part of the paragraph. But it's my understanding of those five lines That's Paul's exploration of the way that Christian people hold this world loosely. There is a certain level of detachment that Christian people have regarding these things. No doubt he does expect for Christian people to marry, and to sorrow, and to rejoice, and to buy, and to make use of the world. It's just that none of that determines the direction of their life. that none of that is foundational to their living. The Christian, rather, is marked by eternity. He's not under the dominating power of the kind of things that dictate the lives of the people that are in this world. He possesses things in a way that they don't possess him. He holds it loosely. He may use the world, but he doesn't use the world in a short-sighted way that overlooks the transitoryness of this world and the importance of what is eternal. It's folly for a believer to act as if this world's values are permanent. They're not permanent. So live with eternity in view because the shortness of the time and the world is passing away. And so there's your second consideration. The first one, present difficulty. The second one, the shortness of the hour. And now the third. Verse 32. But I would have you without carefulness. And now every verse from here to the end uses the word care. It occurs twice in verse 32, once in verse 33, twice in verse 34. That word care, you know, is also translated worry or anxiety. There are contexts in the New Testament where the word is used as something that is a sinful thing, or not to be full of care, be careful for nothing, or not to be anxious about things, fearful. But the word can also have the nuance to it that really has to do with showing an eager, attentive concern for the welfare of someone else. You're concerned for them, and it's a care. And that's most certainly what's being spoken of here in this passage, the concerns that necessarily attend married life. He wants to remind them of this before they get married. Consider the cares of married life. So the way that he explains it in verse 32, he says, he that is unmarried is concerned for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord. So the one who's unmarried is attentive to the things of the Lord exclusively. That's the idea. The unmarried man who believes in Christ is only concerned with pleasing the Lord. and he doesn't have other considerations competing in his life than needing to please some other very close human being that they are in covenant with and have responsibilities over. On the other hand, verse 33, if you marry, then a man is concerned with pleasing his wife. Now is that a bad thing? Of course not. Course is not a bad thing. It's God's will that you would devote yourself to her, that you would love her like you love yourself, that you would be attentive to her the way that you're attentive to yourself. The fact is that when you covenant with a wife, now it becomes pleasing to the Lord to be concerned for her, and to show attention to her, and to love her as Christ loves the church. That is your service, and that is your calling, and it is pleasing to the Lord that you are wholeheartedly giving of yourself to her. You're to live with her according to knowledge, 1 Peter 3 says. And of course it works the other way around too. When a wife commits herself to a husband, that is going to require a lot of care because husbands require a lot. We husbands require a lot of service, a lot of attention. And so being a wife requires that your attention be placed on your husband. That's not a bad thing. It is a worthy service to the Lord that is pleasing to him. So Paul's saying here that when you are married, it is God's will to show concern and interest for your spouse. You please the Lord by pleasing your spouse. But what will happen is, that you still have other channels of your life that are outside your married life. You still have other channels of service, other opportunities, and other desires for pleasing the Lord in other ways outside of family life. And it is of necessity, it is of the nature of being married that your interests will now be divided to some degree. So what you're faced with is that there may be times when in your sanctified inclination, your desires might run in a certain direction by giving much more time or energy to various matters of Christian service, to serving other people or to evangelistic efforts, but you also have obligations at home that the kitchen sink is leaking, and the lawn needs mowed, and the laundry needs folded. Supper has to be prepared. So you just need to consider that before you get married. Consider that getting married is going to bring its complexities. And it's concerns that you will necessarily be obligated to pleasing and serving your spouse. Know that going in, the apostle is saying. Know that going in. And you know as I thought about that this week, I thought about all of those pioneering missionaries in the 19th and early 20th centuries who were in many respects so godly, and so far out in front of us in their consecration to the Lord. But so many of them had this flaw, that they were inattentive to the concerns of family life. And you read in their biographies about years of separation between husbands and wives. sending children back home to England for boarding school for years at a time. Or China Inland Mission sending their children to the English boarding school at Chifu over there on the coast and their children growing up under the tutors of single missionary ladies and never really knowing their parents. And you wonder. It might have been good for those people to have been given these verses a weighty consideration before getting married in the first place. And if you are called to primitive pioneer missionary work, then either think twice about being married in the first place or commit from the outset that marriage is necessarily going to bring with it some cares and resolve to embrace those cares as God's call on your life, as a married person, and never treat the cares of family life as burdens to be cast aside for the so-called greater work of serving Christ in the kingdom. That would not be right. All right, so here's Paul's counsel regarding getting married. If there's a present difficulty, there will really be a hardship right out of the gate in your marriage. Give that a weighty consideration. Present distress argues for waiting to get married, or perhaps even embracing singleness altogether. Remember that the time is short, and that you live for eternity. and make sure that the person that you married is on the same page, pulling in the same direction, and will be a help heavenward. And just know that married people embrace certain concerns that single people don't have to deal with. So that if you do get married, you need to be okay with taking on those responsibilities. and seeing them as your way of serving the Lord and never just a necessary evil. Now look at verse 35. You need to be assured that as Paul gives this pastoral counsel, he has your best interest in view. He is speaking this for your profit. And a passage like this actually has the effect for all of us of sharpening our thinking when it comes to our marriages. This is for our prophet to think through this material and to hear this godly counsel from this faithful man. And then he says in verse 35, none of this that I've said is intended to be binding on your conscience. If you weigh these considerations and you choose to marry, that's wonderful. You're not sinning if you do that. Proverbs 19.14 says that a prudent wife is from the Lord. And Proverbs 18.22 says that he that findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favor from the Lord. And the 31st chapter of Proverbs tells us that when a man finds a virtuous woman to marry, she is a woman in whom his heart can safely trust, and she will do him good and not evil all the days of his life. So it is good to be married. And let me end with this. If these are the considerations, that ought to weigh in to a decision like marriage, which is an honorable estate, instituted and approved by God, an estate that has so many blessings attached to it and opportunities for glorifying God, then don't you think that you should take these considerations into account for other lesser decisions that regard your commitments, that regard your use of time, that regard your financial expenditures, that regard your taking on extra responsibilities. Whatever the decision is, from taking up golf or getting an extra job, is there a present distress Are you thinking in terms of eternity? Are you being honest with yourself about the added concerns and even distractions that this may bring to you? And may God make us wise and understanding what the will of the Lord is. Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, we praise Thee for the wisdom of Your Word. We marvel at the way that Your Word speaks right to the human condition, is applicable in every generation, and is perfect counsel. We pray that you would give us tender hearts to receive the counsel of your word, to esteem all of your ways to be right. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen.