Whenever anybody is engaged and headed towards marriage, we work to provide premarital counseling. And it is a passion of mine, or at least a concern of mine, that as a church we understand we should provide premarital counseling and things like conferences on marriage, but then for whatever reason, the idea of marriage counseling has a stigma attached to it. Oh no, I can't believe it, my marriage, it must be falling apart, I need marriage counseling. It's like, well, if you need premarital counseling, and if we all recognize that books on marriage and conferences on marriage are a good and helpful thing, and it's even good to have sermons on the topic of marriage. It shouldn't be stigmatized to recognize at points that your marriage could use some sort of marriage counseling. And I would go further and encourage you to think about marriage counseling as not necessarily being something tremendously official, where you're going to a counselor and paying for a session. It might be that, that might be appropriate. If you can't afford that for some reason, that's something the deacons in the session would always be interested in helping you with. But marriage counseling can be, wow, there's a couple, they've been married for 35 years and they don't hate each other. Maybe we can have them over for dinner and talk to them. We're only five years in here and, you know, we're drowning. That can be marriage counseling. Marriage counseling can be a man saying, man, I want to love my wife as Christ loves the church, and I'm drowning. What a calling. I'm failing. Every single day I'm failing. And you could take a man out who has been married for 30 or 40 years and say, you know, how do you do this? How does the rubber meet the road in your own life? And I just want so much for all of you to understand that saying help or acknowledging that you have growth to go, that you need to grow into various things, overcome certain things, that shouldn't be stigmatized. It's fascinating to me as Reformed Christians, we recognize that we came out of total depravity. And then we all look at ourselves after that as if we should be like, you know, a million miles away from it. And we're all overwhelmed when we realize there's still depravity left. And Christians of all people who recognize that we're saved by grace through faith, alone and not of our own doings, should just be completely willing to say, I gotta work on this, I need help here, I'm not where I need to be. Call in the counselors, call in the Holy Spirit, call in, work through prayer, labor in prayer over these things. He said this yesterday, his name is Steve Broughton, and he said, the counselor that taught yesterday, he said, marriage is the hardest thing you're ever going to do. That's a great perspective, and you're not going to get it from Disney and fairy tales. They live happily ever after. Those movies end where Christian marriages begin. They live happily ever after. Well, it doesn't just happen like that. It's day in and day out. It can be difficult. You can have romance in marriage. You can have excitement in marriage. You can have long and satisfying and thrilling and happy marriages. But there is difficulty to it. It's the hardest thing in this life. And it's also what he said was the hardest thing, but it's also the most rewarding thing. And I think that's absolutely true. So with that said, I can kind of speak through how we begin counseling related to marriage, which begins through premarital counseling. But I already want to stop and just hear any comments or questions. All right. Well, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. Absolutely. So the passage that we read from Ephesians 5 that we'll come back to, in morning worship does speak about husbands interacting with wives, but it's so clear that it calls men, all people, to respect, to submit to, to revere Jesus as Lord through being a part of the church. That's explicit in the text. So I think really just right there, it's very helpful to begin in our modern day that is so charged when it hears words like submit, it's like, I'm a Christian man, I'm called to submit. It's like, I can't say Jesus is Lord if I'm not willing to submit to him. So that's very helpful. It's also helpful because it's actually a segue to the premarital counseling It's interesting, the first session of premarital counseling is something I call a qualifying session. Why would that be? Why does there have to be a qualifying session for premarital counseling? A couple comes and says, hey, we're getting married. Okay, basic beliefs in common. Yep. Right. Okay, so there's a theological reason and a practical reason. I know theology ends up being practical, but if you wanted to turn to a chapter and verse to express what has just been said by Rick and Bob, the first session of premarital counseling needs to be a qualifying session because basic beliefs concerning Jesus Christ are the very first step. You can't go on to the rest of the premarital counseling curriculum if there isn't that. And what's the verse that comes to mind? You might not know the reference, but you probably know the verse. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Now that's a very important word for this reason. It doesn't say do not be unequally yoked with Baptists. It doesn't say do not be unequally yoked with confessional Lutherans or whatever the case might be. If Jesus Christ is Savior and Lord for both man and woman, there is there reason to proceed with premarital counseling. It doesn't mean they should get married. by the way, but that you at least have a foundation to begin with. And that's so important, you know, if we're going to confess in our creeds one holy universal or Catholic church, small c, Catholic, we do need to recognize that there are many, many, many Christians that are not in this local church, this particular denomination of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, that there were differences among Christians all the way back in the New Testament, and even with those differences, Paul didn't say you have to marry somebody from your own denomination. He said, don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Now, if a person of Presbyterian conviction does want to marry a Baptist person, that becomes difficult because the question of whether or not the children will be baptized is a real question for them, right? They're going to have to work through that. But I still think it's very helpful to look at the language. Don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers. And that is really 2 Corinthians 6.14. If I didn't say that, that's where you find that, 2 Corinthians 6.14. Practically, why is that essential? Because in a sense, yes, it's there. It's nice that it's explicit for us in 2 Corinthians 6.14. But honestly, even without that verse, it would still be essential to insist on it. Why is that? You're pulling in the wrong directions. What fellowship does darkness have with light? I think that's in the same chapter. What fellowship does darkness have with light? If we just think back to what we read from Ephesians 5, considering submission, that the church is called to submit to Christ, that all Christians are called, in some sense, to submit to one another within the context of the church, that brings us back to something that is absolutely fundamental for the Christian, which is Jesus is not only Savior, but Lord. I am not the Lord of my life. Nobody else is the Lord of my life. Only Jesus is the Lord of my life. And if you and your spouse can't both say that, well, what fellowship does darkness have with light? One will be following something other than Christ, anti-Christ even, and the other will be following Christ. So you can't go any further. That's where it has to begin. Natalie? Right. Yes, that's right. I think everybody would have the humility to admit that in every situation marriage is a challenge and presents all sorts of trials and difficulties. One thing you cannot begin with is being coming from you know, one spouse coming from darkness and the other coming from light, one spouse being outside of Jesus Christ, and the other saying, Jesus is the Lord of my life. And the reason why it's just so fundamental is that if you think about it, Everything in premarital counseling, everything in a marriage conference, everything in a sermon, everything about the Christian life, it ultimately comes to Jesus is my Savior and Lord. Why are you doing this? Why do you believe it? Because Jesus told me to. Jesus speaks through his word. I listen. I'm his disciple. I'm a follower of Jesus. It's just the, in Latin, the sine qua non. It's like you can't get it on without it. You don't qualify as a Christian, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, unless Jesus is Lord. And you're not going to be able to be one in one flesh and engage all the challenges and difficulties of marriage unless you've got that fundamental unity. Yes, Bob? Yeah, I've never had, I'm trying to think. I have had to tell people, it wasn't so much like Christian, non-Christian, it was just not very clear that they were in any way serious, that either one was in any way serious about being a Christian. What I've had much more of is someone who, does actually have a very young, immature profession of faith, where they'd say something like, I do believe in Jesus, I know I need to be forgiven of my sins, I understand he died on the cross, I see how he needs to be the Lord of my life, but I'm not a church member, and I never have been. or I haven't been for 10 years. And that's why I keep kind of coming back to like, let's say what the Bible says, don't be unequally yoked with an unbeliever, but let's not take that too far. If we can work with that, if somebody says, no, I'm not interested in being unequally yoked with an unbeliever, I'm a believer. I'm just not a member of a church anywhere. Then you can say, well, as part of working towards marriage, you need to become a part of a faithful Bible-preaching, teaching, gospel-preaching, teaching church. Yeah? Two non-Christians, when we come to that, is something you could, I believe a minister could in good conscience, marry even two unbelieving people. It comes more down to like how much responsibility that that particular pastor has with the local congregation he's called to serve. Because you could kind of quickly get involved with sort of just doing funerals and weddings for the general public instead of serving the local congregation where you're installed. When it comes to two people that are unbelievers, the way you proceed with that is by insisting that they really need to come to Jesus Christ. that you can make no guarantees about their marriage or anything else about their life unless they are safe in Jesus Christ. And so you're kind of constantly coming back to Jesus Christ needs to be Lord and Savior. But, you know, even reasoning from scripture, you can start to see that an unbelieving couple living in marriage is better than an unbelieving couple living in fornication. So, yeah. Yeah. No, through premarital counseling, it gets through all of that. Primary, secondary, tertiary beliefs and not just that. Can you live with her parents? Can you live with his parents? What about finances? Are you going to spend money without your wife knowing about it? Is your wife going to spend money without you knowing about it? What about your past? Are there things about your past that need to? So through premarital counseling, you get into much finer detail even than just what you believe. But just to start, really, for it to even go from a qualifying session to actual premarital counseling, Second Corinthians 6.14 is just the first stepping stone. That's good. Other questions or comments? All right, so this is interesting in that it will illustrate, in a sense, why you could counsel to unbelievers Because at every point you're understanding marriage not as a human idea, but as God's idea. And that's, again, something we'll come back to during the morning worship service. It's the most serious commitment you can make in life. It's more serious than buying a house, an automobile, moving for a job, taking a job, whatever the case might be. Marriage is the most serious commitment in your life. And if you think about it, it is remarkably unique. I mean, all of that language about two becoming one and one flesh, the scripture never really speaks about that when it comes to, like, parents and children or brothers and sisters or children and their parents. It doesn't use that one flesh language, but it does when it comes to marriage, this idea that One man and one woman from two different families come together, leave the families they were born into and cleave to one another through a covenant and take on the serious commitment that really is a unity, a union. And it should make sense to us. as sad as it is, that where we see marriages failing, it's the worst. It's the hardest thing for people. It's the hardest thing for children. It's just a terribly difficult thing to work through. So it's a sober issue. And it's worth coming to marriage counseling and reading books and premarital counseling and all of those things because we don't want to buy into the silliness of just thinking, oh, then you live happy. You know, the comedy ends with a wedding, and they all live happily ever after. That's a fairy tale. For premarital counseling, as a qualifying session, I'll ask something like, if you died tonight and God were to say, should I let you into heaven, what would you say? And I'll say that to the man and the woman. I want to hear a clear answer when it comes to that, because that's the way you get to Jesus being understood as Lord and Savior. And then there really does need to be enjoyment, and this was said yesterday during the conference. He was speaking especially about getting to the point where you have an empty nest after you've raised children and they've moved on from living in the house with you. He was saying the goal for that is not an empty nest, but two best friends having time together. There should be something about an empty nest that's like, oh, great. More time with my best friend. And while that's certainly true for the emptiness period of life, I think that's very helpful early on. Is this someone you not only love and feel romantic feelings for and could see yourself marrying, is this someone you enjoy being with? Do you like doing things with this person on Friday night? Do you look forward to spending time with this person? Do you enjoy talking with this person? Is it a friend? Is it someone you could see, maybe it already is your best friend or somebody that you could see being your very best friend and in an intimate way, which is what really marriage is. Now, I think that in our circles, this gets a lot of attention, and yet it probably can't get too much attention, that love is not, first of all, a feeling. So again, here you have a marked difference from the typical way our culture thinks about what love is. It's always just shocking to me when you hear a celebrity or someone who has had an affair or broken off in marriage and goes with somebody else just to say, like, well, I just fell in love with them, as if that's any sort of a noble explanation for what they've done. The idea of love and what we read in Ephesians 5, loving your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, really puts all of the emphasis on the fact that this is first and primarily an action, even a responsibility. It's not necessarily something you fall into. And if you fall out of it, there are ways to reestablish it and pursue it. And all of that is tremendously important because marriage and love takes effort and sacrifice and working through things, endurance. Anybody? Yes. Yeah, so I have a friend, a couple. He's a pastor now, but we went to seminary together. And it's amazing. It's like a really happy marriage that was an arranged marriage there from India. I would say, though, as a Christian, like there does need to be a recognition of Genesis 2, leave and cleave. I'll go there for a second. So Genesis 2.24, which was quoted in Ephesians 5. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. I see in that a transition taking place where it's not simply honor your father and mother, as in living under them as children, but beginning your own family, your own household, and your own home. And in advance of that, I certainly think it would be important to have complete consent from the male and the female, the bride and the groom. So maybe parental guidance and some level of arrangement is okay. But at the end of it all, it would have to come down to these people being willing to consent, take the vows towards one another, not to their parents, and respecting that leaving your parents, becoming your own household, and being the own sphere of authority as a household. So, it's a good question. Other questions? All right, so again, Ephesians 5, going to the cross is so helpful. So much of marriage is tremendous and can be just joyful and happy and exciting, and yet there's absolutely difficulties along the way, and you have the highest expression of love set before you, and saying, you know, even if it requires a cross and death, this is the sort of love you extend to your wife and is expected from marriage. So, you know, not primarily a feeling, a responsibility, an action. You know, it's not 100% true that every time you act in a loving and sacrificial way, the good feelings follow. That is not 100% true, but it is often true. You don't feel like getting out of bed. You don't feel like bringing your wife a cup of coffee, but you do it, and then you enjoy the time together. So things to keep in mind, a difference from us and the culture around us. And I want to say this. There was a whole session on this yesterday. I really think this is the most important dimension or feature of marriage. I also think it's the most important feature of being a disciple of Jesus, a church member, a Christian. It's really this. Be willing to admit when you're wrong and ask forgiveness. I can't tell you how critical, there was a whole session on forgiveness yesterday. And over and over when there are like really upsetting, difficult questions that come and require counseling to work through, so often it's just like this very calcified approach to life where it's like, you know, I'm in the right, she's in the wrong or he's in the wrong, I'm in the right. Now, it's not always that simple. I understand that entirely. But there is so much to just sort of going through life realizing, I could be wrong. I'm not above error. I'm not above making a mistake. I can be wrong. I can apologize for having a tone in my voice. I can listen to my wife if she tells me I was too harsh with one of the children. You know, it's just a very persistent willingness to, you know, keep short accounts, as they say. Because it's just remarkable when it comes down to it, how often, you know, Christians have every provision for sin, not to continue in sin and sin recklessly or without care of the results. But Christianity over and over says if you sin and you admit that you sin and you confess your sin, you'll be forgiven. And that's just the tremendous reality in a Christian marriage really comes back to don't be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. This life of being willing to ask for forgiveness and being willing to grant forgiveness, beginning between a husband and wife and then flowing through towards the children is a tremendous advantage within Christianity. The other, of course, is love. and the sort of love that is taught in scripture that we see paramount on the cross. This is part of 1 Corinthians 13, which is all about love. And you've heard me or other people say this, you know, read 1 Corinthians 13 and instead of the word love, read the word Jesus. Jesus suffers long and is kind. Jesus didn't envy. Jesus didn't parade himself. Jesus wasn't puffed up. Jesus didn't behave rudely. Jesus did not seek his own. Jesus wasn't easily provoked. Jesus thought no evil. Jesus didn't rejoice in iniquity, he rejoiced in the truth. Jesus bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things. Jesus never fails. And that's helpful as we look at Ephesians 5 and say the sort of love that is to be within a marriage is the sort of love that we see Jesus living and the sort of love that even brought him to the death of the cross. So this is what comes after the qualifying session. And I like these things because this is really like nitty and gritty, rubber meets the road, just bullet points, some things to do, some things to avoid. Between you and your husband, I'll read some of these things and we can talk. about where premarital counseling would go from this point. Give suggestions and criticisms carefully and always in private. Okay? When you're out with friends, that's not the time to tell your wife what you think is wrong about her. airing the dirty laundry is what they say, right? Give suggestions and criticisms carefully and always in private. I don't feel this as strongly out here in the Midwest. In New York, people just wore it on their sleeves. They would go around all the time saying, I just say it how it is. I just speak what's on my mind. I used to hear that all the time from like so many church members and I finally started saying like, oh, that's interesting. Where does Jesus say to do that? Where is that in the Bible, you know? Just, I just let it all, no, the Bible doesn't talk like that. It says, you know, speak a word in season. It says, you know, a gentle word breaks the bone, right? Or the great verse, also from Ephesians, speak the truth in love. I think you can make a very strong case that Jesus Christ himself, is the truth in love. He's not just the truth. Remember what John says in John chapter 1? The law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. He's not just the truth. He's grace and truth. And so criticisms, suggestions, especially anything on a very personal level, the place to do that is between the two of you as best friends, as an intimate husband and wife, not around other people. Show courtesy to your spouse at all times. That's often overlooked in that idea of submission, but it's very much included in it. That's why it's used in reference to the whole church. A deference, a concern, a forethought, going out of your way constantly for your spouse, always looking out for them. Absolute loyalty and devotion to your marriage, all the time, without interruption. Always practice absolute loyalty to your spouse and devotion to your marriage. I just think it's appropriate to say this, whenever you hear about adultery, a pastor falling, a politician falling, an affair, a divorce, whatever it is, Use it as a wake-up call to yourself. Just think about it. Think about how easy it is. It's the oldest sin there is. And it happens all the time. Vigilance. Alert. You are blessed to have a wife, a spouse. Take that seriously. You know, the level of trust between a man and a woman in marriage is unparalleled. So, just understand that. The things you know about your wife, the things you know about your husband are not necessarily things that anybody else should know. So, respect that trust and that bond. Make decisions together. Even if you, you know, we do believe that men are called to leadership. And yet, every husband and wife should recognize that in their spouse they have their greatest counselor. That's always the case. That should always be the case. So that's the idea of being a helper, suitable to his needs, is someone to always speak to, talk through ideas with. Now, it doesn't mean you never make a difficult decision or anything like that, but constant communication with your spouse, understanding the aid that is there in her counsel and his counsel. Keep each other informed about your whereabouts and your schedule, if you think about it. It's probably never a time in the week where your wife shouldn't know where you are, or your husband shouldn't know where you are. And here's a difficulty with busy schedules, but devote most of your leisure time to your family and not to friends outside of family and marriage. There's certainly a place for that, but you need to make the family and your spouse the priority when it comes to time. Okay, things to avoid. This is something that comes up over and over. I think we're all aware of like Steve Lawson, the. itinerant preacher in the sort of Ligonier circuit who had an affair and recently, maybe the last month or so, just had this fall. And I was watching Al Mohler, who is the president of a seminary in Kentucky, and he said this. He said, you cannot commit adultery unless you're alone with someone else. And I think there's obviously so much more to it than that. And yet, there's a lot of truth in it. Like, just be super careful, super vigilant, always on the alert, watching out for this, protecting the sacredness and everything about your marriage. Don't discuss former boyfriends and girlfriends with your spouse. And, you know, Facebook, right, social media, all these people from our past, you can be in touch with them forever, right? And it can feel very innocent and very, you know, above reproach. Like, oh, it's so nice to hear about you. And, well, be careful. Don't even joke about disloyalty when it comes to your spouse. Don't make jokes about divorce or any of those things. These are very weighty subjects. Don't make jokes at your spouse's expense. Maybe that should just be don't make jokes at anybody's expense, but certainly don't make jokes at your spouse's expense. Again, be aware of being in public and, take care of things in private that need to be taken care of in private. Here's something that every, I guarantee you, every married couple talks about this, and every married couple needs to be on guard about how they talk about it, and the subject is in-laws. When you speak about your wife's parents or when you speak about your husband's parents, that's something again to be very sensitive about, thoughtful, understanding, that whole grace and truth or the truth and love idea. Something that gets a little bit more difficult as the children get older, I suppose, but don't argue in the presence of your children. It's just so, it puts them in a situation that they can't do anything with, and it's so unsettling, especially for young children to see that sort of thing. So I know that's do's and don'ts, and pretty direct, and yet, that really is so much of the sort of thing you should be sensitive to, and the idea isn't that you're never gonna you you know, fall short of any of these things. The idea is that when you do fall short, recognize it, and go to your spouse, ask for forgiveness, and move on, keeping in mind all the things about love, that it suffers long, it's kind, it does not envy, it doesn't parade itself, it's not puffed up, it doesn't behave rudely, it doesn't seek its own, it's not provoked, it thinks no evil, it doesn't rejoice in iniquity, it rejoices in the truth, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and never fails. And that is the way to begin, you know, living in love and marriage. Other questions or comments? Yes, sure. Yes, that's terrific. So the parents are the core of the marriage, and the children complement it, but they don't rule the roost. And yeah, our culture has a way of idolizing children, falling into like, we need to provide every last opportunity for every single one of these children, no matter what, otherwise we're terrible parents. And it becomes a challenge to remember, like, marriage is so special in scripture. Like, the relationship between parents and children isn't described the way marriage is described in scripture. Two becoming one flesh, a unity that represents and points forwards to Christ and his church, all of those sorts of things. So, that's very good. Other questions? Yes, Santhi. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, that's, I'm so glad you said that, Cynthia. It's true. I think a good short definition of love, giving yourself for the good of the other, and what Cynthia was saying is, When it comes to in-laws, parent-in-laws, part of you giving yourself for the good of your spouse is working hard to get along well, as hard as necessary, to get along well with in-laws. You are connected to them through family. really want for your children, for there to be opportunities for cousins to get together, and for it not to be this terribly awkward situation all the time because people don't get along, whatever the case might be. So it really does make sense to really work hard to have peace and fellowship and love between even in-laws and all of those things. I will say on the other side, not so much on the other side, along with that does come that leave and cleave idea that you have left your father and mother, you are your own family, they don't get to tell you how to spend Thanksgiving, they don't get to tell you how to spend vacation, deal with that lovingly and wisely, but as a family, those decisions end up falling to the new set of parents or the husband and wife. So, that's good. Yes, Anne. Yeah. That's excellent. That's it. Yeah. So that's perfect for coming into what I hope we cover during the sermon. But what's amazing, if man and woman, husband and wife, are committed to the Lord. What is absolutely astonishing is that even a very difficult marriage can be tremendously beneficial and can grow you in sanctification and holiness and love for the Lord and love for one another. So yeah, don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers. What does darkness have to do with light? It's just fundamental. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you that when it comes to even charged topics, hot topics, difficult topics, we still have your word and instruction. You speak to us, you continue to speak to us. We thank you that we have Jesus Christ as our Lord. We thank you that we have the Holy Spirit. We pray that you would build us up in this love that we speak so much about. We pray that you would continue to build us up in Jesus Christ, your son, and strengthen us through our faith and belief in him. In his name we pray, amen.