Many Christians think that the church should control marriage, but doesn't that create a lot of problems? Welcome to the Conquering Truth. I'm Dan Horne. I'm Conor Slim. I'm Charles Churchill. And I'm Joshua Horne. When the Reformation happened, there was lots of problems with marriage, and you see the church responding to it. Like in Calvin's Geneva, they set up the consistory. The consistory was made up mostly of pastors. There were also some lay people that were appointed, but it was a church council that had real authority. And in that authority, they had a problem that there were what was called secret marriages, a man and a woman would get together, they'd want to have sexual relations, so they would take an oath before God that they were married, and then they'd start, you know, having relations. And then the church would consider them married because Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6 that when the two become one, you know, if you have sexual intimacy, the two become one. And so the church was trying to stop that and stop this idea that you could, without any approval of your family, without any approval of anybody, that a man and a woman could just decide to be married. You know, they also had issues where they knew that if two people got engaged and you let that engagement go too long, that fornication frequently happened. So they said, basically, you get in trouble with the church if it takes more than six weeks to get married after you get engaged, to reduce that problem. And so they basically took over marriage. And now that was what the Roman Catholic Church had done when they made it a sacrament, but it really isn't a church thing. And this is really affecting, even now, recently, that Amy Byrd came out and said that she had to be ordained so that she could officiate at her brother's wedding. Now, there's all kinds of problems with that, but at the same time, we should see that once jurisdiction is violated, it creates an escalating set of problems. So how should marriage be dealt with? So, I mean, when you say, like, how should marriage be dealt with, I mean, part of the reason why you're using that term is marriage is this, it feels like this complex thing that, you know, because of the history of it, because of all the different aspects of it, there's family, there's the church, there's the state. But the answer is, is what we should really do is we should go back and we should say, Where did God assign responsibility? Who did he give it to? And like with a lot of things, God creates things where there are overlapping responsibilities. Jurisdiction isn't always just given completely to one group. This group may have an aspect of it, another group may lay over it in a different way, and it pleases God to express himself in this way. We've talked before about how because of the Trinity, because of other aspects of who God is, he does things in a way that shows his complexity and that shows that there are layers that need to be considered and thought about. And so I think that's really important when you look at this, because when you mention even Amy Bird, the reason why what's going on is happening is because, like you said, when you get that wrong, when you don't think about it right in the beginning, as it moves away from the middle, the gaps get wider and wider. And it creates so many different possibilities and openings for things to be twisted, for there to be damage done. And so the answer is, God assigns responsibility. And what does He say about marriage? I think it's really important when we think about those type things where he assigns responsibility. It is clear that he doesn't assign it to the church. It's really obvious why he could not have assigned it to the church, because the church is a subset of the people, and marriage is for all. So does he give a teaching responsibility to the church? Absolutely, right? That's the Great Commission. But it doesn't mean that he gives the ability to control marriage to the church. And the church, when it looks and it says families aren't doing the right thing, the state's not doing the right thing, It knows what its responsibility is from scripture if it reads the scriptures. It's not to say, therefore, we'll take the responsibility on ourselves. And I don't want to beat up Calvin too much, right? Because the city council at the same time is trying to take over the jurisdiction of excommunication from the consistory. They're saying that they can't excommunicate people. And so everybody's stealing authority from everybody else because the Roman Catholic Church had stolen authority from everybody. And so they're all trying to wrestle back to figure out who should have what. But it did set, you know, it continued an error in the Roman Catholic Church that wasn't reformed that did continue and continues down to this day. I mean, we could just do a history of marriage podcast because there's a lot of different, you know, struggles over a lot of different things. And there's also, you know, pretty much every culture has marriage, but the way that it looks in terms of the wedding and how that marriage, how you get from not married to married varies vastly, you know, in different areas and throughout history. and like you're talking about how that the marriage can't be given to the church because it is um a because not everyone is in the church um which is which is a quite i've seen people asking this question like are people really married if they weren't married in a church well well yes because god gave marriage to everyone not just, you know, Paul says that marriage is honorable among all. So it's not something that's just for Christians. It's something for people who have no Christians in their country, if there's any countries like that anymore. But, you know, your ancestors a thousand years ago could get married even if they were in a place that the gospel would not come to. But it was interesting. So a lot of people probably don't know that one of the big unique things about the pilgrims or one of their distinctives about the pilgrims is that they held to civil marriage because England still had that you were supposed to get married in a church. But one of the pilgrims big things was we're not part of the Church of England. We're separated people who are actually professing faith and living according to that profession, they should be creating churches. Not everyone is just part of a church. And what goes along with that is saying marriage isn't a sacrament, and not everyone in society should even be part of a church. So they go over to the Netherlands, and the Netherlands, their church is organized in a similar way. The Netherlands, because it was one of the main reformed countries, and they They adopted this idea that we're not saying everyone's a Christian. We're saying all the reformed people should gather into churches. So then they had a state church that not everyone was part of. So then they said marriage is not a sacrament. Marriage is not even for the church. You can have a church ceremony, but it's something you register with the state. And so then the pilgrims would adopt that. And actually, Edward Winslow is arrested when he goes back to England because they say, you are a governor and you are performing marriages, which you should not have been doing. So that's something that even in the founding of America, we had that idea in a little part of America, that marriage is not something that is for the church because everyone isn't part of the church. And you go back and there's the Roman Catholic idea where if they had a church in an area that once they Christianized that area, that everybody was part of the church. The Anglican church largely kept exactly that same view. Luther was very explicit in his writings that you require everybody to be part of the church because that will sanctify them. He would make an argument from like First Corinthians. seven, where just being associated with the church would sanctify them, so that would control sin in the society, so you should force everybody to be part of the church. That also is unbiblical. The reality is that the whole point of the church is to create a distinction between the people who are God's people and the people who aren't, so that people see the holiness of God. I mean, the church has to be a holy people. And that's certainly when it talks about the New Covenant in Jeremiah, it's speaking about that, the importance of so that God can say, these are my people, and we can say he is our God, you have to be a holy people. And so any of these groups that mix it in, that's coming from Roman Catholicism, which was about power, the church having power. And so, but there's a lot of churches that continue to make that same error and continue to say we rule over it. I know somebody who told me that when he went to be married, he went and talked to his future wife's father and said, you know, can I have her hand in marriage? And he said, why are you asking me? You have to ask the pastor. I mean, so this is, you know, this is 40 years ago or something. This is, these things are still happening in America today in reformed circles. And you can see even with the example Joshua gave where the Puritans kind of pulled away from the church having authority, that they then kind of said that the state has authority over marriage, and that's not exactly right either. And so, I mean, you can go off in a lot of different directions here, and you can really structure things wrong. And even in America today, a lot of states, the state is saying, we get to decide who can marry people. So I, you know, everywhere a pastor, as far as I know, a pastor can't marry people, but it is some areas they say here, we, we decide, which is why people do these fake online, you know, pay 10 bucks and get ordained into a fake church. And it's interesting, because I go to Nigeria, and in Nigeria, until 100 years ago, everybody said, it's obviously a family ordinance. Once you pay the bride price, the father of the bride accepts the bride price, then you can come pick up your bride whenever you want. That is the marriage. And so that actually has better biblical roots, even though their religion was horrible, right? It was a form of animism. you still look at it and you go, okay, that at least, it's once Christianity came that we actually brought heirs in. So now everybody in Nigeria, not everybody, but most of the quote unquote Christians in Nigeria have three weddings. They have one for the family, one for the state, and one for the church. So they're all married three times. But this isn't how it should be either. I mean, God has actually said how these things work and it clearly can't be in the church because everybody's not in the church. Yeah, like a member from our church married someone from Nigeria and we were there at his, or I was there at his state wedding, which is like in the US, usually you go get your marriage license. This was the same thing, except they had the whole read the vows. And then they said, you know, you may now kiss the bride. It's like, well, we're not considering this the actual marriage, but they're like, no, we're the government. We're saying you're married now. Go ahead. You got to do it. It's like going to the justice of the peace. I mean, it's that same sort of idea in the US. But in the US, they also allow you to go to a church. There, they don't. You have to go to the state. Exactly. And so, no, I went to all three weddings. So did Mark. So did Mark. Oddly enough. Who was the one getting married, by the way? So part of it is the church was treating it like God didn't give answers to how to deal with these problems, but obviously these problems like secret marriage and people fornicating where they've betrothed but they haven't married yet, I mean, they're not new problems. This has happened throughout the history of the world. This is the nature of men and women. And so God gave laws on how to deal with this. Deuteronomy 22, 28, and 29 says, if a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out, then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman's father 50 shekels of silver. And she shall be his wife, because he has humbled her. He shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days. So God sets in place how you put constraints so that in the moment of passion, people don't go, yeah, we'll take marriage vows. Well, if you do that, you can never be divorced. If you do that, you still have to pay the bride price. So God put constraints in, and what they're saying is, well, instead of enforcing those, which they should have taught that the civil magistrate should enforce those, what they did instead is say, we'll come up with another way. And guess what? That other way didn't work that well. It was better than it was before, but it's still God's ways are better. So I mean, and I think it's important to point out that what the passage you just read, that that's case law. And it's really important to take it as case law because what it's doing is it's highlighting the different elements that are really relevant in that, that all those elements don't have to be present. You know what I mean? It's like they don't have to go in that way, but it's showing that if the two rush in and they do this, if they do it in this way, the one that they go to is the father. Where the restitution is made, in a sense, is to the family, to the girl, in the sense that she can't be divorced and she has to be provided for. And so there's this part of it where, I mean, we need to look at the structure of this because the reason God gives these is to handle both sin but also to help us understand the way things are structured and where, like you said at the beginning, I think, where are the responsibilities. Who has a responsibility in these issues? And then you start to deal with things. Sometimes you start to deal with things in a normal way in the sense of if you go, this person has a financial responsibility, I can go to him and ask him to pay it. And if he doesn't, well, where do you normally go when someone doesn't pay something that they owe? Well, then you potentially either take him to the courts or you could use other social pressures. You might go to his father and go, hey, your son's not doing this. Post in the community Facebook group. But I mean, if there's a sort of where God's not trying to create everything from whole cloth in each situation, he's going, I'm going to show you there are things that I've established, there are things that I've created, and I'm going to show you how they relate to one another. That's really important to remember as you go through this. And I do think when you read a law like this in Deuteronomy 22, where you are in Deuteronomy, it is God instructing the civil magistrate what they should do. So this is, maybe you do go to his father first, but in the end you should be able to go to a judge, and a judge should go, yep, he can't divorce you. and not being able to divorce you means he has to provide for you. I mean like all those other things, God's not spelling every single thing out about marriage every single time he talks about it. You have to go look at the different places in scripture where the things are established. Right, so there's a real binding that happens on the young man so that the young man thinks before he acts, the young woman thinks before he acts, the father should think before he acts. And so – but all of it is putting it – the onus on the family and on the people that are involved and not saying, oh, the church should go. You're not allowed to do this. It's really dangerous when you start to say the church owns marriage and that the church is the one that's controlling it. because when it does that, and I know lots of people, I can name off the top of my head, they never darken the door of a church until they want to get married. Then they think the only way you can get married is to be married in a church, that that's where real marriage is. So they lie about being Christians, they pretend like they're something that they're not, they pretend like all of a sudden that they're doing this before God when they're not doing it before God, right? All of a sudden, in marriage, you have people blaspheming the name of God so they can get married. That's a really bad situation. when we figure out who and we're trying to figure out who has the responsibility for marriage it's useful to go back to the very beginning where marriage comes from in genesis 2 and adam said this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh which i mean one thing you don't see there is a church building church at all. You don't see, you don't even see a civil magistrate, you don't see necessarily even like verbally entering into a covenant. God is saying that a man and woman come together and then they're married. They leave the father and mother and then so you have the family mentioned in there as they're leaving their parents and being joined to one flesh. And so that's kind of the basics of marriage is that it doesn't need to involve all those other elements. Some of them are good and some of them are necessary in certain contexts, but it's not the core of marriage because it's not in the passage. And even when it says a man shall leave his father and mother, I mean, until you leave your father and mother, you are under their jurisdiction, which means that they have the right to speak about whether you get married or not. And so I would argue that even implicit in the way that the language is structured is that at that point in time, there is a change in authority. And before that, you're under their authority, which means the marriage is under their authority. There's no mention about going to a priest or elder in that situation. It's, you appeal to the father or the parents. You don't appeal to a religious authority, which their opinion should matter, but it's not, there's no authority necessarily in that situation. Right, because all they have is the right to teach, not the right to command. Right. Because you can see in Scripture when Cain leaves, when God curses him, and he goes and he leaves the presence of everyone else, and when he ends up marrying, there's no indication that he goes back to his parents. There's no indication that that relationship is restored. And so, I mean, whereas there are other cases where someone says, hey, I want to marry with my parents' blessings. I want to have that blessing. that you're going to involve the parents. I mean, the power that parents have, in a sense, is to say, if you do this, you're severing the relationship with us. And you want to do this in a way that you have our blessing. And all those things, God doesn't spend a long time talking about. But there are things, even when you, I mean, this is really important, because even when you think about the oath that people take in a wedding, those things should be rising from the natural responsibilities of marriage. And so there's this part of it where, I mean, I think it's very important to understand that God builds this structure, and he builds it in many different places in scripture. He tells us how marriage works. He tells us what a husband does for his wife. He tells us what a wife can expect from her husband. And that's how we should infer marriage, is by looking at those passages. And like one passage is when Paul writes to the Corinthians and is talking about sexual immorality and is saying, you know, if you're doing this, then you're uniting Christ to a harlot via you, which, I mean, that's kind of, you know, you match that up with Genesis 2, and he's saying that almost a de facto marriage is taking place when you're going to that harlot. Right. And that kind of connects it. And you can connect that to the idea that there used to be, and in some places still is, a common law marriage where a marriage doesn't have to be, even though it was encouraged to do it before the magistrate or before the church, that if people were living together as husband and wife, then the government would say they are married. Even if they don't say they're married, the government would say, you are married. And that's really the reality of it. And there's been cultures where that's as simple as it's been. We're married now. And you think about the justice of that situation, there's a part of it where it's very tempting for a man to see a woman when she's young and say, I want to sleep with her. He enjoys sleeping with her. And then she starts to get older and he goes, I don't want to provide for you any longer. And while they never had a formal ceremony, but that was clearly the arrangement they had. And there's a part of it where someone looks at them and they go, no, you can't toss her away. And it isn't, we're not nearly strong enough, I would argue. From the biblical point of view, they're married. And usually in the United States, I thought common law was something like seven years before you have a common law marriage. And that's not what the Bible says at all. The Bible would say right from the beginning, and that you have to pay the 50 shekels. And right, I mean, it's establishing it a lot earlier. And we play this game where it's looser. That caused a lot of damage to society. That doesn't help society. Yeah, with the concept of, you know, non-Christians wanting, you know, a church wedding to be involved, you know, like you said, a person's never been to church, they're going to go to church, maybe be involved for a little bit just so they can get married or whatever, and that's just a way that The unbeliever wants to be righteous before God. They want to have some sort of connection, some sort of religiosity before God so they feel better. So yeah, I got married in a church. I got this blessing from this pastor. I'm right with God in some minor area, but for a lot of people, they're just looking for enough to keep the conscious quiet for a while, and that's the danger of And it could even be that what they're basically doing is going, if we take these vows when we're in a church, that somehow my spouse will be more bound to them than they would be otherwise. And so maybe that will preserve my marriage because they'll feel more obligation. So I think that there's this religiosity, which you said, that kind of, they think that that will somehow make the oath more, you know, bear more punch than if they just did it in front of a civil magistrate. or the Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas. Like we were saying, God instructs in lots of different ways. Here's another passage where God is Israel is coming out of Egypt, that God is giving them the law, they've been slaves, and he's telling them, he's basically going, I'm going to teach you how to be a nation. And so this part of that is instruction related to marriage. Deuteronomy 7, 1 through 3. When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you. And when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them, nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. And so while the instruction here is specific to a particular, you know, them going into the promised land and the tribes that they're not allowed to marry, it's very specific to the judgment that God is bringing on those nations. The responsibility that fathers have is not something that this is, he doesn't say for this particular time I'm going to give you authority over your sons and your daughters. He's saying, Fathers, you should use your authority. Yes, you should use your authority to cause your sons and daughters to marry people who they're allowed to marry. And in this case, they're not allowed to marry them. And he's like, you shall not give them, you won't give your daughter to them. And there's very specific, you know, or take their daughter for your son. The language is actually really specific related to the daughters, either giving your daughter or taking their daughter to your son. So there's this part of it where, I mean, Scripture looks at the father. A father has a real role relating to his daughter and to who he allows her to marry, and with his son is who he allows him to bring in, and that a son is bringing someone into the family if he stays in a relationship with his father. You know, like there's the old saying, you know, you don't, what is it? You don't lose a son, you gain a daughter. I mean, a daughter, you know, I mean, in the sense of the daughter comes into your family. And so there's a real part of that, that that's baked into scripture. And it's even a picture of the gospel, because when we're saved, we go from being in the household of, you know, children of wrath to becoming part of the household of God. And so you can see how this is taught and established by scripture. And while we have this verse here, I mean, this is all throughout the Old Testament. This is in Genesis. I mean, here it's stated as part of a law, so it's clear, but other places it's like, you didn't do this, so I'm going to kill you. You did do this. This is what he did. And a lot of the narrative, this is reemphasized over and over and over again. So this is very common, this concept in the Old Testament. It's worth considering that this is a picture of New Testament marriage and how we're supposed to view it. You have Israel, the covenant people of God, and you have the other nations, the people under the judgment of God. You're not to marry, intermarry in that way. And then the believers in the New Testament, unbelievers under the judgment of God, they are not to marry. And I think to an extent you I mean, your pastor, your father, certainly not in that order. Your father more so has the authority to say, if you're a believer, you shouldn't marry this person. You can't marry this person because you'd be unequally yoked. And so what the pastor, what the father in that response should do is to go, I'm going to stop it anyway I can. And what the pastor should do is I'm going to excommunicate. I'm going to lead the church to excommunicate because it's fine for you to marry an unbeliever. Marrying the unbeliever isn't a problem. The problem is if you're a believer marrying the unbeliever, and if you marry the unbeliever anyway, you're testifying that you're not a believer, so you should be put out of the church. And so the response of the church is very different, not to prevent the marriage, but to go, you don't want You don't have a heart that wants what God wants. So why are you in the church? You're walking according to the flesh, not according to the spirit. And an exception to that, just to tie in with what we were talking about earlier, is if someone becomes a Christian and they're not married, but they're in a relationship, the question isn't, does your partner want to become a Christian? The question is, will they go marry you right now? Because it's not about like we were saying before, it's not about do you have the pieces of paper from the government, it's not about did you say certain words before the pastor, it's about the relationship you're in, and it's God ordained for it to be marriages. And so if you're already in a de facto marriage, then the counsel would be just make it official. Right. There's concubinage, right, which is marriage without covenant, which is effectively what happens in dating relationships all the time, is that a man takes a woman as a concubine, And they should then take them as a wife, which means to enter into a covenant with them. And so that shift should happen. And a believing man or a believing woman that falls into that case where they're saved, they should then go, yeah, we need to marry. And they, not to heckle, but they should be requesting that. But yeah, you should cut off relations until that, because we are to be married by covenant. That is the true picture of the gospel. It's not concubinage. That's the picture of idolatry. the picture of the gospel is actually covenantal marriage. So Calvin and the consistory, when they were trying to deal, one of the big problems they were dealing with was secret marriages, where somebody would get married and they wouldn't tell their father, they wouldn't tell, you know, they wouldn't tell anybody. And then all of a sudden, when it became convenient, then they'd be married, or they might actually then go have a public marriage. Well, God even says how to deal with this, which would be really high risk, right? Because Deuteronomy 22, 13 through 21 says. Benny man takes a wife and goes into her and detests her and charges her with shameful conduct and brings a bad name on her and says, I took this woman. And when I came to her, I found she was not a virgin. Then the father and mother of the young woman shall take and bring out the evidence of the young woman's virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. And the young woman's father shall say to the elders, I gave my daughter to this man, his wife, and he detests her. Now he is charged with shameful conduct saying, I found your daughter was not a virgin. And yet these are the evidences of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. Then the elders of the city shall take that man and punish him. And they shall find him 100 shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name on a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He cannot divorce her all his days. But if the thing is true and evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel to play the harlot in her father's house. So you shall put away the evil from among you. And a lot of times you might think, oh, yeah, she had relations with somebody else. But this could be the man who was her husband. If he decides it's time to get rid of her, he can go through with the marriage and then go, she's not a virgin. And then she'd be stoned to death, and he'd be out of the marriage. I mean, God has set ways that put real risk for the woman. to be playing with that secret marriage if the civil magistrate is enforcing it as the civil magistrate should, because here it's the elders of the city that are saying that she should be stoned. And so the civil magistrate has a role, but the role is not to say these people should be buried, but the role is to protect marriage. So the secret marriage and the church trying to get involved doesn't really help the situation, what you need to do is shift it and use the sword, as God says. One of the issues is culturally, we don't take the things leading up to marriage very seriously at all. Like we talked about physical relationships, and you know, Scripture says... We don't take polygamy very seriously at all. Right. If you lay with someone that we go, laying with them doesn't mean anything. you know, having a physical relationship with that way, that doesn't mean anything. What it, what it meant, what were you meaning by it? What did you want to mean by it? And God goes, laying with them actually means something in and of itself. That that actually means something, and it already creates obligations right then and there. And like, with, you know, and so there, and there's this part where you read the, the verse we just read. There's this part of it where, I mean, life and death can be on the line in this situation. And we go, well, I wouldn't want my 16-year-old daughter to have to deal with this. And the answer is, if you thought it was that way, you would have talked about this a lot beforehand. You would have spent a lot more time talking about the importance and the sanctity of marriage and the importance of learning to control your emotions and your desires and not to look at people and desire their approval and be willing to give. I mean, you think about how culture would change. and even not just that but the culture in the household would change because you might have two daughters and one daughter could easily be misled by a young man that was attractive that was trying to seduce her and the other daughter might not so you might say this one daughter can go to this place and the other daughter cannot right and you'd all of a sudden start setting rules because you'd say well if i mess this up she could be stoned in front of my house the daughter should be saying if i mess this up i could be stoned right all these god has put a system in place that puts pressure on everybody to be holy. And when you shift it to other places, it greatly diminishes the pressure, right? What would the church do? Well, they'd go, you're excommunicated. And then the state would go, no, you're too important to excommunicate. I mean, this is what happened in Geneva. And it ends up that you don't actually solve the marriage problem because you haven't gone and taught on it, which is what the church should do. I mean, anybody who's grown up and read Pride and Prejudice or anybody there who's seen Pride and Prejudice, like, you know, movies based on the book, there is a huge section of that book that is about that exact issue of you've got a man and woman who have several daughters. The daughters are all out at the same time in the sense of like they're all being available for marriage. One of the daughters is very foolish. They send her away with someone else to where there's a regiment of soldiers. She ends up getting seduced by one and led away, and there's this great turmoil because this foolish daughter was able to be led away, and they're even arguing ahead of time, you shouldn't let her go. Of all the people, she shouldn't be, I mean, this is not, and there was no danger of being stoned in that situation, but there was great social pressure as well as financial risk because the man who had her was requesting money to not shame her and turn her back out is basically on the street as she's someone who's went and slept around now. You look at this, and this not that long ago. I mean, this is a part of culture that people look at, and they go, they appreciate that aspect of culture when they read it. They appreciate the romantic aspects of it. But we go, well, I don't actually want that to be in reality. And just to make sure that we all recognize what's going on here is the Bible says the woman who sleeps around, she should be put to death. Our society says the woman who sleeps around, her baby should be put to death. Because that's why we have an abortion industry right there. That's it. That's the whole reason we have an abortion industry. And so people shouldn't look at this and say, oh, how terrible to put somebody to death. No, we do it all the time. That is the nature of our society. So to pretend like we don't think this is life and death, of course we do. We just say the innocent should be punished. And we should also be clear, in the case of if it was a man who had a secret marriage with her and then tried to get her to be put to death by blaming her, and they could prove that he had actually done that, he should be put to death for trying to, you know what I mean? And, you know, because Strieper says what you- That's a risk of if he's not caught doing that. Right. It's not that that's, like, that's his right that he can do that. so yeah he he would be he could very well be put to death because the scripture says if you try to cause something else to happen to someone else and it's proved that you lied about it then the penalty should fall on you but she still played the harlot in israel and the evidence is still there so sure so both of them have the risk rather than one right but all of this is we've done all these things to construct it so that that the wrong party is bearing the risk and that we've eliminated the risk so that people brag now about their body count. Well, that's how many polygamous marriages they have is how God looks at it. This is just, I mean, this is just such evil. And the solution obviously was not to shift it to the church because that didn't work. So to loop back to the situation, the Amy Byrd situation that we referenced in the beginning to talk about that for a few minutes, because I think it kind of brings out some of the issues that we're talking about. So this is a lady that at one point was pretty big in reform circles, but then I think she went pretty egalitarian. But anyway, the latest thing that she put out there is that her brother was getting married and they weren't really in a church yet. or they weren't in a church, and so they needed someone to perform the marriage. And that state required that either a civil magistrate or a minister marry someone. So not just anyone could do it. So she winning one of these online places, which happened to also be a pro-LGBT one. So she's- I think most of them probably are. Yeah, but I don't think all of them make you say, make you approve explicitly that you're pro-LGBT. Anyway, she signed up for the thing and did the marriage. So the state has taken a jurisdiction that it doesn't have. Because all of a sudden, it's saying that it has to be removed out of the family jurisdiction. When it says somebody from a minister has to do it, it's saying it can be done. The explicit law is it cannot be in the family. It has to either be for the church or for the state. It can't be in the family. You have to have the church or the state actually enter them into marriage, which that's obviously unbiblical. And then that gives her an excuse to then all of a sudden violate other things. I mean, it's very clear. There's other people that have followed this path, like Beth Moore, where you start out going, oh no, women have a role and they have to stay in that role. I think Amy Byrd started out with what the Theological Housewife, or Housewife Theology, or Housewife Theologian. That was her original first book. But obviously she's been rejecting the role that God has given her for a long time. And so through that now, this gives her an opening where she goes, well, they were in a situation where they weren't in a church, and obviously you have to be able to be married. weren't in a church because they haven't transferred membership yet, because they just graduated from college and they moved, and so they needed somebody. They didn't want to just go ask a pastor to do it, so I'm forced to go approve of LGBTQ, and then I'm forced to give a sermon. What she said is, and what a blessing. From having my brother and new sister-in-law over for dinners to discuss their intentions and desires, to planning the ceremony and homily, leading to the great honor of that day, I can say that the whole experience was a great honor. Homily is another word for sermon. She has now gotten herself in a place where she's going, oh yeah, women aren't allowed to preach, but now I can preach. Because she is ordained. I'm ordained, right, and I can preach. And so you just see that she's using this confusion because the church doesn't have it in the right order, the state doesn't have it in the right order, so she's using that confusion to put herself out of order. Because, I mean, the state, you know, having that has to be a minister, but also you can just sign up to an online church in 10 minutes for $10. I mean, they're making a mockery of the church. And I think some of that might also be imposed by court decisions and whatnot that you can't Say that has to be serious church. I don't know the details of that of who exactly went wrong But the situation is definitely making a mockery of churches that you know you know what the church that's been around for you know hundreds of years or thousands of years is Has no more weight than you know Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that you can sign up online. I mean, it's it's making it's making a mockery of it so so I mean I you know in a more ideal law I They could just, they don't need someone to marry them. They covenant together. Doesn't have to be at a church. Now, I think if we're saying, if you're Christians, why are you not at a church? It shouldn't have been hard for them to have a pastor who would come and marry them in their backyard, at the community center, wherever they got married. That should not have been hard for people who are Christians. I mean, and she didn't even say it was going to be super hard. In their case, she said he wanted her to do it. It was communicated to her by her mother. And she said, I was honored. And I was trying to, and she goes, and I was trying to work through, can I do this? You know, that was her. So I'm going to lie and say I'm a pastor. She's going, I didn't lie, I accepted the fact that I support LGBTQ, and I got this certificate. Because ordination doesn't mean anything. That's basically what she says, is ordination doesn't mean anything. But the reason why it's in the law is because the government at one point said ordination means something. And the church still thinks ordination means something, and God definitely thinks ordination means something. And there's also the element of submitting to the civil magistrate, where if they're saying, you come before us and say in covenant before us, then you just do it because it's not something wrong to do, to go in covenant before each other in front of a magistrate or in front of a pastor. It's not a wicked thing to do. And so it's something that it's not like where they would force you to say certain things that were unbiblical. And part of it is the reason that her brother wanted to do it is the language that she's using about her brother indicates that he thinks it's a church ordinance because he's saying it really matters who marries us. Instead of the person that's actually officiating, so what? It's some pastor you don't know. It's some pastor you won't go to their church later. So what? Why does that matter? Well, if you, on the other hand, think that the church, that wedding is, a sacrament of the church, then it really matters who married you. And so that's part of the problem is he wants her and it's coming from this idea that the church has jurisdiction over marriage. And so, you know, after doing this and after preaching it, here's how she describes it. And I have to say ranks up there with the most real spirit filled experiences of my life. So now she's thinking that the sermon she preached, obviously with men present, because her brother was there. She's obviously in violation of the scriptures, no question she's in violation of 1 Timothy 2, yet she's saying this is the most spirit-filled experience, one of the most real spirit-filled experiences of my life. It's not the spirit of God. She's on the path of destruction. And the church is helping her by some of its confusion about where marriage is. And the state is helping her too. Because part of your point is if all that really needed to be done was to swear two people to an oath, she could have done that. She could do that. That's not a violation of scripture to say you two are committing to each other and having them swear before God. Signing a piece of paper that says that there's witnesses. Right. Administering the oath is not the issue. The issue is she also used that as an excuse as a minister of the American ministry. I forget what the thing is that it is this organization she got her piece of paper from for five bucks or whatever it was that now under that she's going, I can now preach a sermon. And so these things snowball one on another. Once you start to say, okay, the state can do this, and you go, I do this, and now all of a sudden she's going, I'm ordained, I can preach. Which this isn't really relevant, but they're also doing it in Maryland. Of all the states, what is the easiest state to get to another state from? It's number two. Number one is Rhode Island, number two is Maryland. It's not hard to get out of Maryland. So we've been talking about the different responsibilities that God gives to different parties. And like we said, marriage was not given to the church, but the church does have a role. I mean, the church does have, the church has a place in the world. And one of the places that the church has isn't even specific to marriage. It's specific to, it has the authority to speak on the things that God has commanded regarding what is good and evil on pretty much any subject. And so you can see in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. And so this is really important because there's this part of it where because the church wants to go, we have this special jurisdiction over certain things. Actually where the church, the church's greatest power is that it has the right to speak and teach God's word. And if you get that wrong, there's a real danger because you start to shift away from where the church really... I mean, this is how the church changes the world. The church doesn't change the world by going in and going, we're going to regulate marriage ourselves, or we're going to go and wield the sword in this way. The church changes the world by proclaiming the Word of God. And they can do that on any issue. And the state should listen to them. family should hear their words and let their actions be shaped by their words. The state should do the same thing, but that is the power of the church and we should recognize that. I mean, above everything else that the church can do, speaking the Word of God is where they get their power from because Christ says, I have authority and I've said this is what I want you to do. And it's something that, in terms of marriage, the church has done a lot of it. You know, you look at the traditional marriage vows in the U.S. before people started promising always loftier jokes and writing their own stupid vows. But before the traditional ones, they're, you know, a modified version of the ones from the Church of England, which are pretty sound. And they would read verses, verses that often still get read today. And they're good verses, and they read what God has joined together, let not man put asunder, which noted God joined together, not the pastor, not the government. But the church, even though it has usurped some authority, has spoken a lot of truth to a lot of people, and had a lot of people confess with their mouth a lot of truths that were good for them to hear and to say. And I mean, one of the points that I wanted to make is that Calvin's Geneva What they should have done was go to the civil group that was in charge, right? There was another group of civil leaders that actually ruled the city, and they should have gone, this is a big problem, these secret marriages. This is a big problem, the fornication that happens because people have this long… You should be stopping this. You should be enforcing God's laws about fornication. You should be enforcing God's laws about what marriage means. You should be enforcing these things instead of going, well, we're just going to come up with rules that try to enforce it. They did the wrong thing. They responded wrongly. And they got very upset when, and this became a big fight between them and the church or the city council, when they would go, we can actually communicate. And the city council said, no, you can't. But they don't do the same thing about marriage. They were hypocritical. They were stealing authority from the civil magistrate, taking it upon themselves. But yet they were upset when the civil magistrate stole authority from them. I think Calvin, would say that there are four parties that should be involved in the marriage, other than the bride and groom, the parents, the peers, the church, and the state. Yeah, I think it's appropriate to have some involvement from all those parties. Now, not to say that the church is the one signing off on it, but to say if you're Christians, a great place – Trevor Burrus That's the big thing if you're Christian. Amy Goodman So it's not that it's required and that you don't have a valid marriage if you don't check all those boxes. But this is where you get to, is it an ideal situation or is it a non-ideal situation? And in the ideal situation, I mean obviously you want your parents to be there and giving their approval or blessing. You want, you know, other people there to witness it. And having it at a church is a great place. Having the pastor, you know, be the one to administer the covenant is not a bad thing. that's, you know, to be the one praying over it, to be saying, you know, to be tested. You do want a sermon. It's not wrong to want a sermon. Right, that's what I was going to say, is that there's the difference between the civil ceremony and the church ceremony. is that the church actually exercises, in most cases that I've seen, the church exercises, and sometimes it's only for five minutes, but it exercises its responsibility to teach. So you're giving the church the opportunity to do what it should do. So there's nothing wrong with that. When you go and get married before a magistrate, they usually just go, okay, do you marry each other? I pronounce you man and wife, sign here, sign here, sign here. when you have a church wedding, the advantage of a church wedding is the church gets to fulfill its role towards that marriage, its primary role, which is a teaching role. Now, the church obviously is supposed to treat people differently if they're married, so it needs to know, it needs to be informed. But that idea of having that there, the church is testifying that, yes, we believe that they're fulfilling the responsibilities of the marriage. That's what the church should be doing. And having it in a church building, you can do those things. as long as you don't go, but the church has decided whether they can get married, because that's not the church's right. And in fact, the two parts, one, that the church doesn't decide they can get married, and second, at the end of the sermon, sorry, at the end of the ceremony, the pastor should not say, by the power invested in me, I now, because in the end, it's not some special power that's been invested in him to pronounce the man and wife. That is not what's going on. It's neither the state nor the church is calling them man and wife, it's by their covenant that has been made before God that they're man and wife. And one thing that happens with church marriages frequently is that One of the ways the church usurps it is they go, this is the order of service. We're going to give a liturgy for this is how—and that's Roman Catholic, that's Lutheran, I've seen that's Presbyterian, where they have like this order of service for how you should do—I'm sorry, it's not it's not a church service. If it's a church service, you have every right to dictate what all the elements should be. You can try to persuade, you can try to convince, you can try to say you should do this, you shouldn't do this. Those are all valid things, because that's a teaching ministry and by appealing to Scripture. But too often, I've seen churches that go, Here's what our wedding service looks like. This is what we're going to do." Well, that's taking jurisdiction, and we have to be really careful not to usurp jurisdiction from another party. Right. One of the things that really matters about authority is respecting other authorities. And when we refuse to respect other authorities, we're basically saying we don't respect God. We don't respect Jesus Christ who gave the others the authority. We're saying that our authority comes from a special place, not from Christ, because their authority didn't come from Christ clearly, or you would respect And you're saying that a marriage of two unbelievers and a marriage of two believers is functionally different, and it's not. If yours makes it, if this is what's required, then you're saying that that marriage at the end, that the unbelievers are not going through, that somehow it's functionally different. It's functionally different if the two people are Christians. It has nothing to do with the fact that they're married. It has to do with the fact that God saved them is the difference. And all of a sudden, you're acting like that there's this big difference, which creates this attraction that you get unbelievers to play hypocrites and pretend like they're Christians so that they can get married in church. That damages everybody. Instead, we need to get it back that the group that's supposed to be the man and the woman under the authority of their parents, that's the normative case of how marriage should happen and where the authority comes from for the marriage. And when we're saying it's not something that is the jurisdiction of the church, we're not saying that it's not a religious thing, because religion is not only the jurisdiction of the church. Every individual is called to worship God. Families are called to worship God. The Bible says to magistrates, kiss the son lest he be angry. So the state even is called to honor God. And, you know, and I mentioned at the beginning, the pilgrim, the pilgrims, how they did the Dutch, you know, where they did the government marriage, marriage before the magistrate. And they, I mean, a lot of people think that's secular, but they're, they're, they're, uh, covenants that they would make before the magistrate were very religious. Even when we were talking about going to Nigeria, the service that the government official does was very religious. And so we should remember that whenever you take an oath, it is a religious act. And God even commands us as he commands Israel and as the church is the fulfillment of Israel. You see in Deuteronomy 6.13, you shall fear the Lord your God and serve him and you shall take an oath in his name. to say that the state doesn't have any religious effect, well, then why do they make you swear before you give testimony? Obviously, it exercises in a religious area. That doesn't mean it's exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It means that it has religious responsibilities, just like it does in Jeremiah 10, that if you're not calling on the Lord and your family, that God will judge you. The family has religious responsibilities. And so the fact that it's an oath does not mean that the church now owns it. So it's very important for the people of the church, the people of your congregation, even believers that are near you that may be in a different assembly to be there to see that, so they can see the oath that you're taking, the oath that you're promising to provide for this person, love this person biblically. all the oaths that you take. So when they see that, and they see you acting in a way that may be questionable to that, they have great authority and great responsibility to look and say, you're either doing this, you're breaking your oath, or you're going in a way that could break your oath or lead to it. And it gives them that responsibility to be to be a blessing to you, to show you this is an oath you took in front of God, this is an oath that you said you fear God, you said you're going to do these things, and you need to watch your steps, you need to watch where you're going, what you're saying and what you're doing. And you really are giving yourself, I mean, the couple that gets married in a church so that their church family is there, that like you said, other people, you're putting yourself in the place where you're saying, I want to be held accountable. When you're just getting married in the little chapel in Las Vegas before the Elvis impersonator, you're saying, I don't want anybody to hold me accountable. So when we're saying this, we're not saying you shouldn't do a wedding in a church. There's big advantages to doing a wedding in a church. Just don't shift the responsibility to the church. there is a line of where the people in the church are spiritual family, that it's reasonable for people. I mean, even aside from the church having a role of teaching and there's other things, it's very reasonable for you to want those people to be there because there's this part where Jesus Christ is sitting with his disciples and his family is on the outside and he says, you are my family. And so there's a part of it where it doesn't, you know, our physical family doesn't cease to exist, but Christ is putting a really important example here and going, the church does become your brothers and sisters. And so it's wanting them to see that covenant, wanting them to be there to witness that and to hold you to it, that's a very reasonable thing. And as we have fewer and fewer children, as families get destroyed, as we have less and less of that, one thing that's become very obvious, like you go to Scotland and watch a wedding, and they'll go, wow, that was a big wedding. That had 15 people at it. right? Because if you have one child and then they get married to somebody else and they have one child and now they're getting married, guess what? You don't have any cousins, you know? And so as families shrink, there becomes this huge difference between a church wedding, right? During COVID, we have a church wedding and there's only 200 people there. And we go, oh, that was a pretty small wedding. As opposed to in the secular world, That would be a huge wedding for most people. I mean, obviously, if you're a billionaire, that's not true where you're paying people to come like Donald Trump does. I did not get offered that. I just heard the other day he said that he paid Bill and Hillary to go there. That's the only reason it was his wife's wedding, or his wedding, is that he pays people to go there so that he has a big wedding of important people. But most people in secular weddings, there's like very few people there. And a real testimony to the world about how different Christianity is and how different because it does create a union. We're one body. It creates a union with other people. And there's a lot of people in the world that don't have that. And especially as families get smaller, as there's more breakdown of our society, that will become more and more obvious. I think a big question for people is what role should the state have in this, in marriage? I've heard people who are getting married talk about, you know, should we even get a marriage license? The government shouldn't be saying whether or not we get married. And I think generally in the US, I think what the government is doing in terms of marriages isn't really that out of bounds. Because when you're now that the term marriage license, which it might vary depending on state, but marriage license is an unfortunate term Because it's not like you're getting permission To marry you don't take a test to marry. It's really more of a marriage registry and the idea that you register with the government that you're getting married is not unreasonable because Part of that is to say let's make sure that you aren't already married. Let's make sure that you And that's why they do call it a license, because you also used to have a blood test to show that you didn't have STDs. Because if you had STDs, obviously you were sexually active with somebody else. And so they required those things so that they could say, not that you are permitted to marry this person, but that you're permitted to marry. So it was a license to marry. Does that make sense? Yeah which well I mean that I think is that might be a little more questionable how much what they're why they're requiring that but I don't think that's required anymore. It's not required anymore but I mean they would also they're supposed to check to make sure you're not brother and sister. Right. They're supposed to check a few things. That's one of the reasons that they were licenses is, and this was a big problem in Geneva as well, is that they're going, okay, so this, this person just married their sister. So what do we do now? And these things were happening. And so they started to go, we need to, you know, and again, they were wrong, but it's reasonable for the state to say your brother and sister, you can't, I'm not, we're not going to license you to marry. which is very different than saying these two people are, you know, we've decided that they should marry or we decide that they shouldn't versus they're violating the law of God by marrying. And a big thing in several society was what was called reading the banns, where before you get married for three weeks, they have to either have it posted or read out in a church to say these people intend to get married. If they are too closely related, come let us know. Or if they're already married, come let people know so that this doesn't go through. For people who are being really quick to go, we know this state shouldn't do this. And I've been a person who's been really critical of the state at times. And then you start thinking, like with the STDs, there are certain things that you should only punish after the fact. But marriage is kind of permanent. And so there's this part of it where there's some validity to going if there's something that should prevent something that you can't undo. Because if you marry someone with an STD, you don't automatically get a divorce. It's not like there's some sort of exemption. And this is where God's really big, is that now you've consummated, and you've become one in flesh, and you've done all these things. So there is this real part of it where It reminds me almost of, was it Nehemiah, where he's going, the people aren't obeying the Sabbath. God, I don't know what to do. And he has to leave. And he's like, Lord, judge me. I'm trying to do the right thing here. I don't know exactly what I would do if I was a civil magistrate. And especially take it the other direction, right? Take it back 200 years where marrying a brother wasn't necessarily that weird, where all of a sudden, or somebody goes to another town and they take a second wife. That still happens, right? doesn't happen as much as it used to. And one of the reasons it doesn't happen as much as it used to is because the state said, this is really evil, and we need to do something about it. So you have to publish it so that people can see it. You can't do all this stuff hidden. And so some of these things, I mean, part of it is we see the fruit of their decisions. And then we go, well, why do you need to make that decision? But the reality is things have been constrained. It's part of the reason that we can go, what's the big deal now? It's because it worked. And I do think that they're stopping evil. And the civil magistrate has. And again, it's not saying that this man should marry this woman. That is not the jurisdiction of the state. But to say this brother can't marry his sister, that is. To say this man can't marry a second wife, that is. And so if they're using that license to enforce what they have jurisdiction over, you can't say it's wrong. You might say there may be a better way to do it. You might be more wise. But to say it's wrong gets to be a real problem because God did appoint them to constrain evil. And God cares about this a great deal. I mean, these, you know, the sins of, the sins of how you, who you can marry, like marrying someone who's a close relative. And if you read, I mean, God's laws regarding it, it's not just, it's not just consanguinity, it's also affinity. I mean, it's, it's the sense of, you know, even if you, you know, well, we'll, you know, you, you have all these things today. Again, me growing up watching sitcoms, the Brady Bunch, you know, it was like these two brothers and sisters who had no blood relation to each other. people would talk about the fact that they could be attracted to each other and they could marry. Well, God says, nope. If you're in the same family, if your father and your mother are married, it doesn't matter your blood relation. You cannot marry. And I mean, you know, if you cannot marry your aunt, you can't marry that. I mean, there's, there's this whole, there's this whole set of things that God forbids. And later on in the same chapter, this is what God says, Leviticus 18, 26-30. For all these abominations the men of the land have done who were before you, and thus the land is defiled, lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it as it vomited out the nations that were before you. For whoever commits any of these abominations, the person who commits them shall be cut off from among their people. Therefore, you shall keep my ordinance, so that you do not commit any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that you do not defile yourself by them. I am the Lord your God. So when you look at this, I mean, God is not saying this is a thing specific to Israel. This is not a thing that is specific to just, you know, the people of God. He's saying, I destroyed other nations because they didn't observe these things. And so when you look at the state and you look at it in that light, state is actually preserving the life of the nation by enforcing some of these regulations. And you might even look at it and go, maybe I don't love the way they're doing it, but I like the fact that we might not be vomited out of the land. Now, if you look at where we are today- We are being vomited out of the land, but- I mean, the truth is that the people are rebelling against these, and the churches in some ways too. The church is pushing back and going, we want to do these things. We desire these things. And God will judge us if we continue to do that. He is already judging us. God is already judging us in many different ways. Because we are already doing this. And again, it says all the nations. And we just need to, when you think of what the civil magistrate does, right? The civil magistrate, a big part of its responsibility is to protect the nation. In Leviticus 18, where God starts, he tells Moses to tell the people, right? This isn't a picture that you tell the church these things need to be done. He's saying tell the people. And so the civil magistrate has a real responsibility to stop the evil. It's really easy for us to go, but they won't stop homosexuality, they won't stop this, they won't stop that. But you also have to say, okay, you have a real role to stop a brother and sister from marrying. You have a real role to stop these other things that we might look at and go, well, why is the state involved in marriage? Well, to protect the nation. But it doesn't mean that it says this person should marry this person. It only has a negative responsibility. This person is not allowed to marry that person. It's worth considering that, you know, as We go to Nigeria, people of the church have the authority to go there and tell the people these laws, the laws of Leviticus 18, whether their government's enforcing it, I'm not necessarily sure. But we have the authority to do that, whereas the state of America doesn't have the authority to go to Nigeria and say, you must do this. But if a Nigerian comes here and they move there, move here, they have that authority. So that just shows the difference of our authorities where we're commanded to go to the nations, but the state is commanded, keep this nation, where it needs to be, each nation worries but itself, but the church, we go forth. Right. And so in Nigeria, if you're a Muslim, there's one set of laws. If you're not a Muslim, there's another set of laws related to marriage. They're completely different between the two. And so it's very, very weird. Because if you're a Muslim, you don't get married by the state. It's only if you're a Christian that you get married by the state. And again, it's because the church has done a really bad job of saying, you know, here's where the jurisdiction actually lies. I think, isn't it, when we were there, didn't they ask Mark about that specifically? Like, is she a relative of yours? Didn't they ask questions like that? I think so. Okay. It was kind of funny. Yeah. Right. Yes. Yeah. I think they did. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one wedding I was at. So I was, so both of you were at that wedding? Yeah. Oh, okay. But I know with the Muslims, I mean, you can essentially marry whoever you want, you know. And you definitely, they don't require you to have the state wedding. They recognize the Muslim wedding, but they don't recognize it. It's enough for them, yeah. And if you're the traditional religions, they recognize that marriage too. It's only if you're a Christian do they usurp the authority. And that's because throughout so much of the history of the church, since like 700, that the church has usurped that authority from the state, so the state's usurping it back. Or not from the state, because they really usurped it from the family, and now the state is usurping it from the church. But they made it a point that this is a power that should be wielded. And the state went, oh, if we're going to be wielding power, it's going to be us. Right. A lot of times those things are done for a particular reason because they're having particular problems. So the church may have even said, please help us constrain these people who say they're Christians and are doing all these horrible things. And I think it's probably polygamy within the church is what they were trying to constrain. You know, there are a lot of these, you know, often when there's rules, there was a good reason for it and they took something too far. Right. And sometimes it's power for the sake of power, too. You can't ignore that. People, you know, that's pretty common. But I suspect that they were arguing that the reason that it's different for Christians than for Muslims probably has to do with polygamy. I mean, and one thing, if you're asking how do you turn this around, I mean, we should go back to the point we made regarding the power of the church, is the way that the church turns things around is, first, is the church should obey the Word of God. But then the church should proclaim it. The church should speak the Word of God. And that will change people's hearts. It will change their minds. God says His Word will go forth. He says it will have power. We've been promised that. And we should stand on those promises. And we also have to recognize that the church needs to understand these things, and it needs to be taught inside the church. Because a lot of churches go, of course we have the authority. We're not giving it up. instead of going, well, who does God actually put it with? What should the church be doing related to marriage? And so much of it, they can go, well, this has been well over a thousand years that the church said it had this responsibility. This is back to the Roman Catholic Church. Then I guess it officially became a sacrament like in 1200 or around there. But they're looking at it and going, The church has had this for a long time, and that's not how we're supposed to think. What we're supposed to think is we are standing on shoulders of the people that came before us so that we can go, wait a second, they did all these good things, they made all these advances, but they didn't do it here, and we still have to go back and take every thought captive to Christ, not every thought captive to Calvin. Which, I mean, that's pretty remarkable that they were 1200 years of Christianity and you didn't have to get married in a church. It's brand new. Jurisdictions matter because God delegates responsibility because he is the one that has all authority over all things at all times. And he gives specific authority to specific people at specific times for specific reasons. We're supposed to understand the mind of God, and we're supposed to look at that. And when you get it wrong, it has real impacts on society. We need to go back to the Scripture and say, what does it say? Thanks for joining us. This has been The Conquering Truth, a project of Reformation Baptist Church. If you found this helpful, you can visit us online at theconqueringtruth.com and subscribe here or in your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching.