Welcome to A.T. Stewart & Sons Ministries. I am glad to welcome my youngest son to our ministry team. Josh is one of the teaching pastors at Summit Church in Naples, Florida. Now take your Bibles and let's listen to God's Word together. Well, good morning Summit Church. My name is Josh Stewart. I am one of the pastors here, and I have the awesome privilege today to be able to communicate God's Word with you. We're continuing in our series of First Corinthians, The View of a Healthy Church, and we have arrived at Chapter 7. I'm going to go ahead and put this out here beforehand. This is a hard passage. I think what Jeremiah did at the beginning of the semester was look through all the hard passages. I'll give this one to Josh. I'll give this one to Josh. No, I'm kidding. He actually doesn't even set the schedule. Jamin does, so we can blame Jamin. But we're in, first reading the chapter 7, it's made such a good passage for us to unpack today. But the things that we are going to be talking about, this is probably a little more PG, 13, is kind of the route that we're going. And so if you have kids in elementary, students that are here, we always love children in the service. But if they're in elementary school, I would just highly encourage you to consider putting them into KidZone today. We have KidZone that meets right across, down the other side of the school. And it's offered great teachers, great resources. We go through the Gospel Project, which walks through Scripture. And it's an opportunity for them to hear the gospel, participate in the gospel at something that is age appropriate. So no, we don't do it for just babysitting. It's so much more than that. We have a vision and a goal behind it. And so if you have elementary school students, you can step out now or when I pray in just a moment, they're more than welcome to. But I also would say if you have middle school students, I would actually encourage them to stay. Because we're going to talk about things that they're actually hearing about all the time in school, all the time across media, all the time in songs, and we're going to look at it from a biblical perspective. And so I would encourage them to say, and this is going to have some really good conversations that's going to unfold later from this, but don't shy away from those conversations. Press into them. As parents, it's our responsibility to be able to educate them and to be able to walk through these things that are prevalent, these things that are good in God's eyes, but can often be used in a sinful manner. And so 1 Corinthians chapter 7, if you don't have a Bible, please raise your hand. We have ushers who can provide a Bible for you. We don't do that to shame anybody or embarrass anybody, but we do that because we love God's Word here at Summit Church. And we're going to process through this. We're going to start in verse 1, chapter 7, all the way down to verse 16. And we're going to walk through this, and we're going to pull things out, and we're going to apply them to our lives. And I'm going to come with a lot of information with you today. I have points and sub-points. I normally don't have sub-points. But this is how much information, but man, it's good information and my prayer and my hope is that the Holy Spirit can use it. And every single person in this room where you find yourself, right, whether married or unmarried, young or old, that God's Word has something to say to you today. It always has something to say to you. But today we're specifically going to speak into those situations. So before we dive into 1 Corinthians 7, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Oh Lord, we desperately need you. Every moment, every millisecond of every single day, Lord, we need you. We need your presence. We need your goodness. We need your grace. We need your mercy, Lord. We need you to confront the sin in our lives. We need you to smash the idols that we're worshiping, Lord. We need you to show us that you're more beautiful, that you're more satisfying, that you're more good than anything else on this planet. We're so prone to live in a sinful world and because of our sinful nature, Lord, we look to the things of this world and we say, satisfy me, give me pleasure, give me joy. These things were only let us down because they were never meant to do that. Even good things were never meant to do that. But you and you alone satisfies. We just sang just a moment ago, you Jesus, and we all need to be satisfied and you alone can do it. And so as we look our eyes to you, Lord, the author and the finisher of our faith, that you today would appear more beautiful than anything else. That you today would appear more gracious and merciful than anything else. And today that our eyes would be locked on you and the truth of the gospel would not only apply to our salvation, but would apply to our marriage, would apply to our sex life, would apply to our singleness, would apply to the way that we live this life on this earth through the power of the Holy Spirit because of the finished work of Christ. And so today there might be some things that are uncomfortable. There might be some things that we wrestle with. This might lead to repentance for some and hard conversations. But Lord, we thank you that you're a God that doesn't leave us in our state. That you're a God that's consistently molding us into the image of Christ. And sometimes that's not easy. But thank you, Lord, that you love us enough to do it for your glory and for our good. And so today we come to you. I desperately need you, God, in this moment and during this time. Speak, Holy Spirit. Your people and your servants are listening. And it's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen. So as we approach 1 Corinthians chapter 7, I think it's important that we understand this text in light of what the gospel is. And the gospel is simply the good news of Jesus Christ. What the Bible says in Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 is that God created the world. And he created the world good. And it was good and there was no sin in the world. And he created two individuals, Adam and Eve, along with all the trees and all the plants and all the animals. It says that Adam and Eve lived with God in the Garden of Eden. This is that they were naked and unashamed. No sin had penetrated the world. It was good. It was perfect. There was deep relationship with God. And we see in chapter 3 of Genesis something devastating happened is that God told them so they could eat from any tree of the garden except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan, and they disobeyed God. They took of the fruit, and they ate it. And at that moment, sin entered into the world. At that moment, this perfect relationship with God, His presence being with them consistently, them being naked and unashamed was gone. Because of their sin, they had to be removed from the presence of God. Because of their sin, sin entered into the world. Not just Adam and Eve, but it affects us as well. The Bible says that we're conceived into sin. They were removed from God's presence, and death came into the world because of the sinfulness, because the wages of the payment of sin is death. And because God is a holy and righteous God, He cannot interact with sinful beings. And so they were removed from the garden, removed from the presence of God, and man and God were separated. And there's nothing that Adam and Eve or that we can do on our own to get a relationship with God. Because God demands perfection and all of us fall short of that. And that's when the good news of Jesus comes. That right after Adam and Eve sing, God gave a promise to Adam and Eve that one would come born of the woman who would crush the head of Satan. And he was saying one would come that would make this all better again. One would come to redeem his people. The Bible refers to him as the second Adam. Someone will come. Someone will save you from all of this. And he came and his name was Jesus. And Jesus came, and Jesus was not sinful. He was perfect in all of His ways. He never said anything He shouldn't have said, never did anything He shouldn't have done. He was perfect in everything. And because of His perfection, He could have been the presence of God. He was God, and the presence of God with Him in the Father and Him in the Spirit never had to be broken. That He never had to experience death, that He never had to experience the punishment that our sins deserve, but because of His great love towards us. Because Philippians chapter 2 says, because he considered us more significant than himself, right? He considered sinful human beings, the enemies of God, more significant than himself, that he came and he died. He died for his people. He experienced the death that they deserve. He experienced the punishment that they deserve. He experienced the wrath of God that you and I deserve for our sins. He was our great substitute. and experience that on our behalf, what we deserve Christ's experience because of his great love and mercy. And after experiencing that, He died on the cross, but then three days later, He rose from the dead, the victorious King, conquering death, conquering sin, conquering the enemy, that He stands victorious over those things. He has defeated death, right? He has defeated sin. He has defeated the enemy, and He has experienced the wrath and the punishment and the separation on the cross that you and I deserve. And so all we have to do is trust Christ as our Lord and saver. And when we trust Him, when we believe, John 3, 16, for God so loved the world, that He gave His only forgotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have eternal life. And that what we could do, what was there in Eden, what was there between Adam and Eve and God, before sin entered the world, can now be ours. A deep relationship with God is now possible. Satisfaction in God's presence is now possible. We can worship Him with our lives. We can praise Him. We can thank Him. And then the Holy Spirit then comes within us when we accept Him, and He empowers us in the Christian life. He gives us the strength to live this life the way that God called us to live. Not perfectly, but he gives us the strength to live this out. Because the gospel is not just for justification, right? Meaning that we're made right with God when we accept Jesus, but it's also for sanctification, meaning becoming more like Jesus. He wants to mold us and shape us. And so the gospel, we apply it for our salvation, we accept it, but then we... That didn't come out right. They can write it all. We begin to distribute it in our lives when we live in a way that honors and glorifies them. That means it affects the way that we live in our marriage. That means it affects the way that we raise our kids. It means it affects the way that we work. It means it affects the way that we view relationships, and it affects the way that we view sexual intimacy. It all has to be filtered through what Jesus Christ and what He's done and what the Holy Spirit has empowered us and given us the strength to do. And so as we approach 1 Corinthians chapter 7, we have to have a mindset of the gospel as we go in. That we've been saved from our sins, that we can know God, that the greatest treasure is Jesus and He is now ours. And then He says, this is the way that you live your lives. And we do that for His glory and we do it for our good. And so what we're going to talk about today, Michael mentioned it earlier, we're talking about marriage, we're going to talk about singleness, and we're going to talk about sexual intimacy. And so 1 Corinthians chapter 7, the big idea is that a healthy church faithfully holds to a biblical view of marriage, singleness, and sexual intimacy. And so as we approach this text, as we dive into what 1 Corinthians chapter 7 is saying to us, My hope is that the gospel is in the forefront of your mind, recognizing that everything is said here is through the lens that we have been saved, that we have been redeemed, that we have been forgiven, that we have been made new, and we have been restored, and our greatest treasure is knowing Jesus. So let's start here in 1 Corinthians, right? The first point that we're going to see here as we process through is that we understand that the view of sex and the covenant of marriage start in verse 7. Let me start from verse 1, chapter 7. Now, it's concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman, but because of the temptation of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. It says the husband should give his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. And so we see here that Paul approaches in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, and we're going into our question sections of 1 Corinthians. And so they wrote a letter to Paul, all right? And the letter that they wrote to Paul, they made a comment in there that it wasn't good for a man to have sexual relations with a woman. And what they're saying there is any woman. that a man must have sex relations even with his spouse, that it's not a good thing for someone to do that. That's what they wrote to Paul. And what was happening here is we have to understand the context of what they were writing in. So a few weeks ago, Jeremiah took us through 1 Corinthians 6, and we see that in the culture of Corinth that sex was worshipped, that sex was something that people longed for, that sex was their God, and they went after it more than they did anything else. that they were looking for, for their satisfaction, they would worship it was everything that was going on. And so you had some people within the church at Corinth say, man, we don't want to worship sex in this way, but instead, maybe we should go to the other side of the pendulum. And maybe we shouldn't even touch women or have any type of sexual relations with them, not even our wives, because we don't want to worship it in the way that the city and the culture of Corinth had. And it's interesting as I begin to process through that, man, like Corinth was a time that sex was exalted and worshipped more than anything else. And I thought about our culture, right? That I would say that the God of this culture, what our culture worships more than anything else is sex. And if you don't believe that, just think about this for a moment. Someone challenged me in this way. Think about all the movies that are out there, that are on TV, everything on Netflix, everything in the cinemas. Think about all the TV shows that are out there. Think about all the songs that are out there. Think about everything that is referenced in magazines, right, that are talked about in comic books. All those things, right? You take all those across the board. It's like every time that sex is talked about, if you replace that, every time sex is talked about, it's mentioned, it's joked about, it's shown, if you take all of those out of all the media and instead you place it with talking about Jesus and presenting the gospel. Every single TV show that's out there, every movie across the screen would present the gospel over and over and over and over again. Because we see in our culture that sex is what we worship and what we exalt. Sex is our God. and sex sells, right? And so we see it, we're flooded with it, and everyone around us, right? And so we see in our culture, we can't get around it, we can't, you know, move past it in TV shows, and maybe even shows that aren't supposed to be about sex, comedies, right? They bring it up one way or another. It is everywhere, flooding us. And so we see it everywhere in culture, but unfortunately, we see it crept into the church, too. We tell our young kids when they're younger, right? We say, man, you don't need to have sex until you get married. Because once you get married, man, someone told me when I was in seventh grade, then you're going to have mind-blowing sex, right? Like, that's what it's about, right? So you save yourself, right? The Bible says you wait till you get married. We're going to talk about that in a second. You wait. But why do you wait? Because one day, sex is going to be mind-blowing. Because one day, your sex will be better than all the people having sex now. And what does that teach them? That sex, right, is what you worship once you get married. That sex is what you need, right? So yeah, just wait. One day it will be way better. So even in the Christian culture, right, we say until we get married, so then we worship sex. We do it in our own marriages now, right? How great our marriage is going, right? How successful it is is based on how often we're having sex and dating relationships, right? How quickly can you have sex with somebody, right? You have these apps, these dating apps that you're using to hook up with individuals. As a man, you are massacred by how quickly you can get a girl to have sex with you. And a woman, right, you look at as sexy or admirable if you can have a man to have sex with you. Like our culture is flooded with this in and out of the church, in and out of marriage, that we see this as the greatest thing, as the greatest pleasure there is. And we see that sex has a function, but that function is not the greatest pleasure. Because there is a greatest pleasure out there. There is something the Bible talks about that is greater than all of us desperately need, and we see it in Psalm 1611. He says here, you make known to me the path of life. Here you go. In your presence, there is fullness of joy, and at your right hand, there's pleasures forevermore. What we desire in sex, in sexual intimacy, is we desire fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore. And that's not where we're gonna find it. Where we find, man, the presence of God is where we find joys and pleasures that last forever. That is where it is found. And so we say, you're never going to find it there. You can have sex every moment of every day and it won't fulfill you the way that the presence of God is meant to fulfill you, which is found in Jesus. I mean, young ones, adolescents, you don't have sex until you get married because you want to honor God and you have the fullness of joy and you have pledges for evermore found right now. You don't need to wait until you're married. You can experience that in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus when you know him. and you know him deeply. And inside of our marriages, our relationships shouldn't be based on our sex life, but it should be based on as individual and as a couple that we are experiencing the presence of God that is found in Jesus. That's where fullness of joy happens. That's where pleasure is at last for all of eternity is in God's presence, which is accessible to us through Jesus Christ and what he's done. And so we see here, right, that sex is an act of worship. not something to be worshipped. That in our own lives, that we instead of worshipping what sex is, it's actually an act of worship. And Paul goes on to say to them, so he says, all right, we don't want to worship sex at the Corinthian culture, so I guess we don't even do anything with our wives and our husbands? We just stay away? And Paul's like, no. In fact, he says you should have sexual relations with your wife and with your husband. Like that's a good thing. In fact, you're obligated to do it. Like sex within marriage is a good thing because what sex in marriage does is it points to a greater intimacy that we have with God. That we shouldn't worship sex within our marriage, but instead we should use it as an act of worship. Which I realize sounds really weird. Like when I say, you're like, wait, like no, like worship, we raise our hands, we read our Bible, we pray, but like sex within marriage, like wait, what? Like that's an act of worship towards God? And it is. Because God has given us sexual desires and the Bible tells us that sex was made to be between a man and a woman within the covenant of marriage. That's what it was designed to be. And he says, he's like, Jeremiah used this example a few weeks ago. It's like a river, right? Like river gives life, like civilizations, like live around rivers in order to find like how great it is and to, man, the water and the fish and the food and all that that comes from it. But yet when it, man, when it overflows or when it goes places that it shouldn't, it's absolutely devastating. It's the same thing in our sex life. That is, we've been given these desires, but we should use it as an act of worship towards God, not something to be worshiped. And I think about this, someone brought this to my attention, that he was like, you know, sex is one of the one things that brings us back to the Garden of Eden. I mentioned when they were in the Eden that they were naked and they were unashamed, right, with great deep relationship with God. And this is something in the sex life that is done in private between a husband and a wife, that they should be naked and unashamed together, enjoying the benefits of what God has given them. and that we can use it as a way to honor God and to glorify God and to exalt Him with our lives. It's not something to be worshiped, but it's an act of worship. So in your own life, are you looking at sex as something that you're worshiping? Are you trying to have sex fulfill all your joy and your pleasure? Are you looking to it and saying, if I'm gonna have sex, I'm satisfied. If not, like my life is just not nearly as good. Are you looking to that instead of looking to Jesus to be the one in His presence to be what satisfies you? Not only do we see that sex is an act of worship, not something to be worshipped, but we also see that Paul tells us that we should be self-sacrificing in our view of sex. Let's continue to read what he says here. Verse 4, it says, For a wife does not have authority over her own husband, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. What Paul is saying there is he's reminding them that we should be self-sacrificing. He says, your husband, your body's not yours, it's your wife's. And wives, your body's not yours, it's your husband, that you should be self-sacrificing in your view of sex. Which, once again, goes totally against culture, or totally in our mindset, right? Like, sex is supposed to satisfy me. Sex is supposed to be what's good for me. And instead, Paul says, no, you need to have a mindset that it's about your partner. You should be more concerned about your partner during your sex life than yourself. And when we see about this, I mean, he said, man, you can model the way that Christ approached us and his love and self-sacrificing towards us could be the same way that you approach your spouse. Look what it says in Philippians 2, verses 3 and 4. It says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. That means in our sex life that we should be more concerned about the entrance of our spouse, that we shouldn't do it out of selfish ambitions, but instead that we should be self-sacrificing in our view. And what irritates me is I've heard of men who have used this to manipulate their wives to have sex with them. Or, you can't hold back from me. See what it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 7? And they're completely misunderstanding what Paul is saying. No, you need to see self-sacrificing in it, right? Your view is, I'm considering my spouse as more important than myself. You need to understand that we have to have a Christ-like view, just like he considered us more important than himself, that we consider our spouse more important than ourselves. So that means that there's times in your life that you have sex with your spouse, even maybe when you don't want to, as a gift to your spouse. But there's also times that as someone who desires to have sex, that you understand that your spouse is at a hard day. You understand that your spouse is going through a rough time, that you say, you know what, I'm gonna, I love you enough, right, to say, it's okay, like, we don't have to do this right now, because I love you enough to be self-sacrificing towards you, that I care enough about you. And so when it comes to your sex life within your marriage, right, like, are you being self-sacrificing in that? Are you considering your spouse more important than yourself? All right, let's keep going. So, next we see here, our third point is, is that if sex has been idolized, a period of prayer and rest is important. Look at what Paul says here, in this final verse, in this section. Look what it says in verse 5. It says, you 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 that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. And so Paul is saying that sex is good within marriage. You shouldn't deprive one another. You have an obligation to do it. You should be self-sacrificing. It's an act of worship towards God. But he says there is going to be times that maybe for a period of time that you put pause on your sex life and you devote yourself to prayer. Because what happens often in our sex life, what happens often behind closed doors is we say and we do things that can be really harmful for the other spouse. That we're selfish and we idolize sex, so we bully our spouse to have sex with us, right? We're selfish in the way that we receive it, right? We're concerned. Sometimes there's unfaithfulness that happens. Sometimes there's carelessness that happens. Sometimes we look outside, right? To the computer or to social media or things like that in order to satisfy our sex life because we're worshiping it more than anything else. And there's moments in our marriages that we idolize sex to the degree that we need to put pause, right? And there needs to be a moment that we seek God together. because intimacy with God is way more important than intimacy with our spouse. And then we take time to say, man, like, maybe we should have our priorities right, or maybe we should put pause on this for a moment so that we can seek God, because His presence is where there's fullness of joy. His presence is where there's pleasures forevermore. And maybe we take a moment to repent, right? We go to our spouse and say, I've been idolizing this. I've said things and done things that hurt you, and I want you to forgive me, and I want to seek God for repentance in this moment. Maybe there's times that we have a really hard conversation to say, man, like, let's talk about things that we know that's going on. In premarital counseling that I was trained for, they said that sex should never cause pain or shame to the other person. And so maybe those counselors, like, man, I've done things that's caused you pain and shame. Maybe I need to repent of that. Maybe we need to talk through that. This would be something that we should care about. My encouragement to every married couple in here is that you go home this afternoon, or tonight when the kids are in the bed, or not around, and you have good conversations about this. That you ask each other hard questions, and you listen, right? Not just trying to get a response out, but you listen to what they say. And you care for them to say, man, how can we use this intimacy, this blessing that God has given us in order to honor Him and to worship Him? That's something that maybe I've worshipped or you've worshipped. And so we should view sex as something that is great, something that is beneficial, but something that is done appropriately and inside of a mirror. So I challenge you to do that. I challenge you to have those hard conversations. And if you need to, take time, take rest. Maybe you have to seek counseling. Maybe it's gotten to that degree. Don't be ashamed in that. Counseling is a good thing. and to be able to love each other enough to seek the Lord together, knowing that the satisfaction in your life is not found in sexual intimacy, but is found in knowing Jesus and a deep relationship in his presence that is offered to you through Christ. All right, it's getting a little bit lighter after this. All right. So now that we talk about sex, let's go on to what Paul mentions about singleness. So secondly, we see here is that we recognize singleness is not God's consolation or second best. So if you're single in this room, you're like, man, you're not even talking to me. I'm talking to you now, right? But more importantly, God's Word is talking to you. So let's see what Paul says here. Let's start here in verse 6. It says, Now as a concession, not a command, I say this, I wish that all were as I myself, but each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows, I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. And so Paul addresses the single people, and one thing I want to mention here is that singleness is not something that is God's consolation or second best. See, what often we do in our own lives, especially within the church culture, that we buy the lie that if I'm single, that must mean God doesn't love me enough. That means I must be missing out on what God has for me. So we see that singleness is something to be celebrated and not something looked down upon. And so Paul comes to them, and he says, you know, I'm going to write to those who are single, and I desire that you would be like me. Like, I desire that you would remain single. Like, it's a good thing to remain single. That is a benefit to remain single, right? But if you can't, you know, exercise self-control, like, I don't want you to burn with passion. Like, you didn't get married if you're going to burn with passion. But if you can remain single, like, it's a gift that God has given to a certain amount of people. And it's a good gift that God has given to certain people. I think about someone like Lottie Moon, who went over to China and did amazing mission work. Her work in China was groundbreaking. She was single her entire time. I think about John Stodd, who was a pastor over in England for many, many years. And he remained single during that entire time. And God used these individuals to do incredible things. And there's many more out there that God has used, right? I think about Paul himself who remained single, who wrote most of the New Testament, who did an amazing work of the Lord. I think about Jesus Christ, right? Like he never received marriage on this earth. Like he was single, right? Because he had a purpose and a plan behind that. Like God can use people who are single to do far greater things than they could possibly imagine. And then it's a good thing, and it is a gift that God has given to people, right? Most people he doesn't give it to, but it's a special gift that he can give to individuals. And he can use it to do great things in their life, right? There's certain obligations that married people have, there's certain obligations that people with kids have, and single people don't have those obligations. And sometimes God gives them the gift of singleness because he wants to use them in a unique way in their lives through their singleness. Nancy Lee DeMoss, who's a Christian author and radio host, she said this so well. Look what she says. She says, there's no greater giver than God himself. He loves to give good gifts to his children. As with human givers, when God gives us a gift, He is pleased when we receive it, thank Him for it, and use it for His intended purposes. I'm not single by accident. I'm not single because I've made up my mind not to marry. Rather, I'm single because God has chosen for me the gift of singleness. So I can live in full contentment in this gift, that He desires for me another gift. A biblical perspective of what singleness is. Because often within the church, when we find ourselves single, we desire to be married. We're like, if I was only married, things would be so much better. If I could only have kids, things would be so much better. If I could only have sex, things would be so much better. And even though marriage is good, and children are great, and sex within marriage is great, that's not the ultimate goal in our lives. Remember Psalm 1611? We just read it. It's in the presence of God that there is fullness of joy. It's in His presence that there is pleasures forevermore. You have access to Jesus. You have access to the greatest pleasures. That's not found in marriage. That's not found in children. That's not found in sex. The greatest pleasure that you could possibly imagine is offered to you in Jesus Christ because God's presence is found when we embrace the good news of Jesus. That's where it is found. You're not missing out, right? You're not missing out on what could be. The only people who miss out are those who never accept Christ, who never received his fullness of joy and his pleasures forevermore. You are not missing out if you're single. God has a unique gift to give you and he wants to bless you and he wants to use it for his glory and you can receive satisfaction and joy and pleasures found in Jesus Christ. You're not missing out. And for some people, it'll be a season that you might be single for a while and get married later in your life, and God wants to use you in that season. For others, maybe it's your entire life that God does that. But it's not second best, it's not God's consolation. He loves you and cares for you, and He has given you a gift. And more importantly, He's given you His presence, that you can experience the greatest satisfaction there is in Christ. But also, I think that's what happens often in the church, but outside the church in our culture, we see that singleness is not an excuse to live a self-centered way and to avoid commitment. Because outside the church, if you're not involved in the church, everything I just said seemed crazy to you. You're like, I don't want to get married. I don't want to have kids. Man, I'm living the single life. I'm going to single and mingle the rest of my life. I'm going to be in and out of relationships. I'm going to do whatever I want, stay up as late as I want, have no obligations. I'm going to live my life in great singleness. Because you have idolized singleness as being the greatest thing there is on this earth. And what you do is you have hurt people along the way. You have paved a path of bitterness and hostility and selfishness because you have lived only for yourself instead of other people. And singleness is not an excuse to do that. It's not an excuse to say, well, I'm going to be in a relationship for eight or nine years and never commit to that individual. Put a ring on her finger. Come on, man. Like eight years down the road, man, step up and be committed, right? Christ has committed to you. Now you commit to them, right, in a godly relationship. And that we need to know that it's not an excuse for us to live selfishly, it's us to live self-sacrificially in the way that we view our singleness. And so maybe in this room today, right, you've idolized marriage and children and what sex could be like, or maybe you're single and you're idolizing singleness and worshiping that more than anything else. That is, that you have the presence of God in that moment. Areas that you need to repent, repent. And areas that you need to seek deeper, the presence of God. Seek it even deeper, knowing the full satisfaction and joy is yours and is found in Jesus. And the last thing we see here, as we begin to close, is that we seek to honor the covenant of marriage as a healthy church. Read verses 10 all the way down to 16. Paul says, to the married I give this charge, not I but the Lord. The wife should not separate from her husband, but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And the husband should not divorce his wife. And to the rest I say, I, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any man has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean. But as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? And there's a lot of things unpacked there. The first thing we see here is that we should remain faithful to your marriage as a covenant with God and your spouse. So Paul kind of uses some interesting language there. He starts by saying, the Lord commanded this, not I. And then later he says, I commanded this, but not the Lord. And it's kind of, man, like, what do you mean by that? Like, what is he, is he trying to give advice? Like, how is he trying to piece that together? What I believe, along with other commentaries, is that he's actually, in the first thing, in the first paragraph, when he says, not I, but the Lord, he's actually talking about Jesus there. And he's reminding them of what Jesus said about marriage and divorce in Matthew chapter 19. He's saying that this is what the Lord said. Let me remind you of what he says. In Matthew chapter 19, the Pharisees come to test Jesus. These are religious leaders. They're trying to trap Jesus. They did this often. And they're coming trying to trap him. He said, can a man divorce his wife for any case? And at that moment, divorce was kind of rampant. There are certificates of divorce that they would just kind of give out whenever they wanted to. And Jesus speaks directly into that situation, and he says that a man and a woman should be committed to one another, right? He quotes Genesis when he says, and the husband should leave, right, and the wife should leave their parents. And the two shall come together, and they shall become one flesh. And what God has joined together, let no man separate. Let no man separate them. It is good for them to be together. This is a committed relationship. And then he goes on to say that if any man divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, then he has committed adultery. And what Jesus was doing here is he was emphasizing to the people, like Paul is in these verses, that the marriage relationship is a covenant between a husband and a wife, and is a covenant between them and between the Lord, and is a deep commitment that we should have. But what often happens in our culture, it's not looked at as a covenant. It's looked at as a contract, right? that you get married to your spouse and the contract is as long as I'm happy, as long as I'm getting what I want, as long as I believe that things are going good, as long as we're having sex as much as I want to have it, as long as I'm getting satisfied in one way or the other, then this relationship is good to go. We're thumbs up, but as soon as you fail on your end, well then I'm bailing out of here because you've broken the contract. But what we need to understand is that a marriage between a husband and a wife is a covenant between two individuals. And this covenant is supposed to reflect God's covenant towards us. See, God is committed to us, right? It says that he will not leave us or forsake us. Jesus says that all the father's given he has in his hands and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hands. Like Jesus is committed to us, that he's faithful from generation to generation and we should be committed to our spouse. It's the covenant we made with them and the covenant that we made with God that we're committed. And Jesus is saying, yes, there's some cases that sexual immorality comes in, right, and divorce has to take place. But my goal in this is that when men and women marry, that they remain married for the rest of their life. They're committed to one another. And what often happens is that we don't have a proper view of what marriage is and what our role is within the marriage. And in 1 Thessalonians 4, 3, Paul says this, this is the will of God, right? This is God's will for your life. Your sanctification. What he means by that is that God's will for your life is that you look more like Jesus. Like that's what God desires for all of us in this room, to trust Jesus and then to continue to look more like Jesus. And he's done that in many different ways in many situations that he places in. And one of the primary ways that he does is within our marriage. That he has given you your spouse because he wants your spouse to mold you and to shape you into the image of Christ. that your responsibility as a spouse is to be who the Holy Spirit uses to shape your spouse to look more like Jesus. and vice versa, and that God uses that in individuals. Why do we get married and all of our junk comes out, right? I used to tell everybody I wasn't selfish. I have a twin. I grew up. I shared everything. I seriously said that to people. I'm not a selfish person. And then I got married, and then I realized I was the most selfish person ever, right? Like, I remember Maggie and I arguing about who was going to take a shower, like, right after we got married. Like, this heated argument, and I was like, I am such an idiot. Like, yes, I might not be selfish with material things. Man, my time, I'm selfish with. When I want to do what I want to do. And God brings these people into our lives to expose our sin, right? Not so we can drag them around and tell them what to do or scream and shout or get into big fights, but he wants to expose our sin to lead us to repentance and deeper faith in Jesus. And so we're committed to our spouse because we want to be displayed the type of commitment that God has towards us, and we want God to use them to shape us and mold us into the image of His Son. The commitment between spouses are so important. Man, like are you committed today to your spouse through thick and thin, through sickness and through health? We said the vows, but do we really mean it? that we're committed to them the same way that Christ is committed to us. Are you asking the question, God, how can you use me to deepen my spouse's love for you? How can you use me and how are you using my spouse to shape me and mold me into the image of Christ? We should be committed within our marriage. And the second thing we see here is that we should remain faithful to your unbelieving spouse to honor God and to minister to your family. And so then Paul, in the next paragraph, says, listen, I'm gonna say this, right? Jesus didn't say this, but I'm gonna add something to what Jesus said. And we believe what Paul says was fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, right? This is God's word to us. He said, Jesus talked about the commitment that you should have within marriage, right? That you shouldn't divorce, you shouldn't separate. If you do, you should remain unmarried, hopefully to reconcile with your spouse. But then, let me go on to say this, because something is happening in the church of Corinth. that what's happening within the Church of Corinth is you have people who are non-believers that are getting married, and then one of the spouses is becoming a believer. And so what do you do at this moment, right? If you're a believer and your spouse isn't a believer, should you divorce them? Should you separate them, right? Paul, let's make it clear, is not promoting that believers marry unbelievers, right? We shouldn't be unequally yoked, right? Scripture talks about that, that believers should marry believers. But what happens when two unbelievers get married and then one becomes a Christian? And Paul speaks into that, and he says, what you need to do is you need to remain faithful to them, that you shouldn't divorce them. If they leave you, if they bail out, if they get out of town, well, then you're not enslaved anymore, like you're free of that. But if they're willing, if they're consenting to stay with you, then you also need to be willing to stay with them, that you need to be committed to the person that you made that commitment with. And then Paul tells them why. Paul, for first, do it for the benefit of your children, then also do it for the benefit of the unbelieving spouse. What Paul is not saying here, which can kind of seem confusing, but in light of other scriptures, we know this isn't true. He's not trying to say, if you believe, then your spouse will be saved because of your salvation. He's not trying to say that your kids are going to be holy because you've accepted Christ, even if they don't accept Christ. No, what Paul is saying here is that God wants to use you to minister to your spouse and to minister to your children. He wants your children to see the commitment that you have towards their unbelieving father or mother. And when they're reflecting on God's relationship towards them, man, you know how my mom is so committed to my dad, even though he doesn't love Jesus? Man, that's how God's committed to me, even when I screw up and even I mess up. Maybe we see that it's also had the great effect on the spouse as well. Paul says, how do you know that God won't use your faith and your commitment to them and to God to lead that individual to a relationship with Jesus? And I want to be really sensitive there because I know that we have people in this room who have unbelieving spouses and you've prayed and prayed and prayed for years that God will lead them to Christ. that you've begged him on your knees, that you've begged your spouse, please, do you see the beauty and the satisfaction of Jesus? And week in and week out, you've come by yourself to Sunday, by yourself to community group. And you might be really weary right now. You might be really downcast right now because you're like, what is it gonna take? God, do you even hear my prayers? Are they just hitting off of the ceiling? And I want us to be reminded, in Genesis chapter 16, that Hagar, who was a maidservant of Abraham and Sarah, that she was cast out for doing exactly what they asked her to do. And she was sitting in the wilderness all by herself, and God met her there. And God ministered to her in her brokenness and her sadness, and the first time in Scripture we see that somebody gives God a name. And she says, you're the God who sees me. That same God who saw Hagar in the desert thousands of years ago is the same God who sees you today if you're crying out to Him on a consistent basis for your spouse. I pray with you that your spouse would see the beauty and the satisfaction and the saving grace of Jesus. I pray with you. We pray with you. And in the meantime, man, I just encourage you not to grow weary in doing what is good. continue to push forward, man. Bring that up in your community group. Allow other believers to rally around you in that moment, and that they would see your faithfulness, that your spouse would see it, and God would use it to lead them to salvation. 1 Peter 3, 1 and 2 says this, it says, Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their lives, when they see your respect and your pure conduct. So they see their wives, God uses their respectful and pure conduct to lead them, just what we see there. Then also Galatians 6, 9, and let us not grow weary of doing good, for in the due season we'll reap if we do not give up. So I encourage me to stay committed to that relationship, stay committed to that spouse, and pray, and let people rally around you and pray, and let's hope that Christ will reveal himself to them, and they will see the beauty, and that they would fall in repentance and faith in Christ because of your conduct, and your faithfulness to them, and your faithfulness to Christ. So we just got done unpacking a whole lot of stuff today. But man, I pray that God used it to minister to you. Even in my own life, right? The convictions that were springing up, right, in my own life. So how in your life is God calling you to respond today? I know it's so easy. We have a lot of people across this room. We have people in this room, right, that, like, you've done harmful things, right, to your spouse. You've committed adultery. You've been unfaithful. We have people in this room who have gotten divorces. We have people in this room who have been angry and bitter towards God. Like, we have people from all over. And what I don't wanna do in this moment, right, is to bring up the past, right, so you're stuck in the past or not able to fully embrace the future. My hope and my prayer is that you will look to the future, right? That if you're in a relationship now, that you'd be committed to that relationship, right? If you've done things in the past, that you'd repent of those things, right? And that you will look to Christ for the strength to overcome them in the future, right? If you've been in challenging situations, that you would look at this as an opportunity to be reminded that in the presence of God is where there's fullness of joy and where there's pleasures forevermore. And so I hope that God will lead you to repentance, that he'll lead you to good conversations, that he would revolutionize your sex life. You probably thought a pastor would never say that, that God would revolutionize, right? Your sex life within your marriage as an act of worship, not something to be worshiped. That if you're single, that you would seek God's presence more than you would seek anything else. And that God would remind you of his goodness, maybe leaving you to marriage, maybe not. And that you'd be committed to the relationship that you have in marriage because God is committed to you. And that you'll be reminded of that truth and that you will look to Him for the strength and the power through the Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done. You've been saved from your sins, believer. Now go. Go and sin no more. Go and trust Christ and move forward in that. We'll love to talk to you about this as pastors, and we love to talk about this in community groups. We would love to unpack. There's a lot of stuff that was brought before you, and it doesn't mean it's going to be over in just an instant. There might be things that you need to walk through, things that you need to process through, so we encourage you to bring it before your community. We also would say, if you need to bring it before pastors, that we're here for you. And we're reminded every single week as we look around at the tables around us, to what Christ has done on our behalf, right? We opened with the gospel, and we're going to close with the good news of the gospel of what Jesus has done. That Jesus, the night that he was betrayed, he took a piece of bread, and he broke it. He says, this is my body, broken for you. Someone's got to, blood's got to be shed for your sins, and my body's about to be broken. Then he took a cup of wine. He says, this is my blood, right? Shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sins. And so do this in remembrance of me. Come and be reminded that I died so that you could live. Come and be reminded that life is found in me and me alone. Come and eat and taste and see that the Lord is good. And Christ did this for your forgiveness and so that you could be in his presence. Right now in part, but one day in full. Full satisfaction is offered to you because in the presence of God, there's fullness of joy at his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. And you can take hold of that when you trust in Jesus. And so come believer, be reminded of that truth. Take a piece of bread, dip it in the juice, right? And if you're a non-believer in this room, We ask you that you not take communion, right? This is the only part of the service that we ask you not to participate in, because this is a family meal. But instead, we ask you to take Jesus. Maybe you've been idolizing the things of this world, and you realize, man, they're just never good enough. They never meet me where I am. I always want more. There's a reason they were never supposed to. Christ alone was meant to satisfy you and to give you everything that you desire. So come to him, receive the forgiveness of your sins, receive the justification that Christ purchased on your behalf, receive the love and grace and mercy that is given to you. We'd love to talk to you about it. I'd love to talk to you about it. We'll have deacons throughout the room that would love to talk to you about it. But if you might need prayer about anything else, we'll have people around the room that would love to pray with you. We have someone who may be brought to you today Talk to them about Jesus, right? Have them pray for you. Let us be people who seek Jesus in every area of our lives, in our marriages, in our singleness, in our sexual intimacy, so that we can know God more deeply and honor Him with our lives. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for today. Lord, sometimes messages can be heavy. Sometimes messages can make us feel uncomfortable. Sometimes messages can eat us at our core. Sometimes they make us want to go hide under a rock. But Lord, when you expose our sin, it's not to heighten our shame, but it's to heighten your grace and your forgiveness. That our sins are supposed to bring about forgiveness. There is shame behind our sins, oh Lord, but we don't have to live in that shame. We don't have to dwell in that shame. That Christ, you took that shame upon the cross. And we see in the Bible that there's no condemnation, right, for those who believe. That doesn't have to define us. That doesn't have to be most true about us. That all of our sins in the past, in the present, and in the future, all of them can be forgiven. because Christ is life, your death, and your resurrection, and that you can lead us in what life is meant to be like, in your presence, knowing you and being satisfied with you. And so, Lord, there are people all over the map today. people that are struggling with different things, people that are idolizing different things, I pray that you would lead them to repentance. I pray for those who are growing weary, Lord, that you would strengthen them. I pray for those who want to give up and throw in the towel, Lord, that you would strengthen them and that you would remind them, the Holy Spirit, that you're there to guide them and to give them the strength to move on. And for those who just want to fall, Lord, I pray that they would fall on the goodness of Jesus and his mercy. that you would carry them, that you would care for them, and that know that they are loved more than they could possibly imagine. Thank you for hard texts that mold us into shape for us to be more like Jesus. Help us not just to be hearers of your words today, but help us to be doers of your word. What steps are you calling us to take? Give us boldness, give us strength, give us humility and repentance. We love you and we praise you, and as in Christ's name we pray, amen.