Welcome to the Warriors of Grace podcast hosted by Dave Jenkins. Warriors of Grace is about helping men from generation to generation become gospelmen in private, in the home, in the church, and in public through the Word of God. Now for today's episode, let's join our host, Dave Jenkins. Well, man, welcome back to the Warriors of Grace podcast. My name is Dave and I'm the host for this show. And today we're going to start a brand new series and the series is titled the Christian man and the pursuit of love in every sphere of life. Now, this series is especially important because we know in February we're going to celebrate Valentine's Day and you know what? Everybody is thinking this month about love. In fact, we are a culture obsessed with love. Even immediately after Christmas happens, we as a culture, in our grocery stores, we already have stuff on Valentine's Day. We go from one holiday, it seems, to the next. And so we need to reflect long and hard on the love of God in Christ and what that means for our life, and not only just for our marriage, as we're going to talk about today, but also, you know, what does this love of God mean for us in our relationship with one another, with the Lord, in our marriages, with our kids, and in our workplaces, and in our local churches, and more. You know, many young people today not only are saying no to the traditional wedding ceremony, they're also rejecting marriage itself. More and more young people are coming from broken homes. As a result, they have a fear and even a suspicion about the value of marriage. And so we see couples living together rather than marrying each other for fear that the cost of that commitment may be too much. They fear that it may make themselves too vulnerable. This means that one of the most stable, as we were once thought, permanent traditions of our culture is being directly challenged. And one of the things about the traditional wedding ceremony that we must talk about is that it includes an explanation as to why there is such a thing as marriage. We are told in that ceremony that marriage is ordained and instituted by God. That is to say, marriage did not just spring up out of social conventions and human taboos. Marriage was not invented by men, it was invented by God. We see this in the earliest chapters of the Old Testament, where we find the creation account. We find that God creates in stages beginning with the light in Genesis 1-3, capping the process with the creation of men in verse 27. At every stage, he utters a benediction, a good word. God repeatedly looks at what he has said and he says, that's good. In verse 4, verse 10, verse 12, verse 18, verse 21, verse 25, and verse 31 of Genesis 1. But then God notices something that provokes not a benediction, but what we call a malediction. That is a bad word. What was this thing that God saw in His creation that He judged to be not good? We find it in Genesis 2.18 where God declares, It is not good that man should be alone. That prompts Him to create Eve and bring her to Adam. See God instituted marriage and He did it in the first instance as an answer to human loneliness. For this reason God inspired Moses to write, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. While we like and we appreciate the words of the traditional wedding ceremony, the form of the ceremony is even more important. That is because the traditional ceremony involves the making of a covenant. In fact, the whole idea of a covenant is deeply rooted in biblical Christianity. The Bible teaches that our very redemption is based on a covenant. Now we could talk a long time about the character of the biblical confidants, but one vital facet is that none of them is a private matter. Every covenant is undertaken in the presence of witnesses, and that is why we invite guests to our weddings. It is so they will witness our vows. They will hold us accountable to keep them. And it's one thing for a man to whisper expressions of love to a woman when nobody is going to hear them. But it's quite another thing for him to stand up in a church in front of parents, friends, and ecclesiastical and even civil authorities, and God himself in the presence of God, and there make promises to love and even cherish her. Wedding vows are sacred promises made in the presence of witnesses who will remember them. So marriage, we must say, is the most precious of all human institutions. It's also the most dangerous. Into our marriages we pour the greatest and even the deepest of expectations. We pour our emotions on the line. There we can achieve the greatest happiness, but we can also experience the greatest disappointment, the most frustration, the most pain. With that much at stake, we need something more solemn than a casual promise. Even with the formal wedding ceremony, even with the involvement of authority structures, roughly 50% of marriages fail. Even men and women who stay together as husband and wife, many would not marry the same spouse again, but they stay together for various reasons. Something has been lost regarding the sacred and even the holy character of the marriage covenant. We need to talk about this and this is why we're doing this series, so that we can strengthen the institution of marriage. So we need to consider strengthening also the wedding ceremony and even engaging as local churches, if you're a pastor listening to this, consider having premarital counseling. That can help strengthen, but we also need a clear biblical reminder that marriage is instituted by God and forged in His sight. In his teaching series, Wisdom, Dr. R.C. Sproul states, there is so much wrong with the romance we experience in our own culture. But the answer is not to deny the reality of sensuous attraction between the sexes or the erotic dimension of marriage, but rather to understand it in a way that is pleasing to God. If you want to know what real love is, spend some time in the Song of Solomon. While married or single, sexuality is a central aspect of our humanity. Though it can be perverted, the physical relationship between men and women is deemed very good within marriage between one man and one woman in Genesis 1.31. Solomon's Song is one of the many biblical encouragements for husband and wives to enjoy their sexual union as we see in 1 Corinthians 7, 1-5. And though we do not have time to discuss this point Fully, there are all sorts of double indentures and word plays in the Hebrew text that in no uncertain terms tell us Solomon and his bride take great pleasure in one another in Song of Solomon 4.10-16, Song of Solomon 5.2-5, Song of Solomon 5.10-16, and Song of Solomon 7.1-10. Today the church acts as if sex is a taboo topic. We need to not ignore it, because the Lord talks about it in Solomon's Song. If the church does not work to shape our sexual ethics according to the word of God, then we cannot be surprised when pagans define them. Ministries to men, especially, are avenues through which the church should not only warn people that sex is wrong outside of marriage, but also affirm its goodness, the depths of which can only be reached between one man and one woman in marriage. And one of the ways the Song of Solomon encourages marriage couples to celebrate their physical relationship is through the words of praise to one another. Some of these are strange to us, such as Solomon's comparison of his wife's hair to a flock of goats in Song of Solomon 6-5, but in that culture, centered as it was around animal husbandry, This was a great compliment indeed. In fact, a modern scholar once said that he never understood how such a thing could be beautiful until he saw with his own eyes a flock of goats descending a mountain in Palestine. The compliments we may offer may be different today, but the Song of Solomon exhorts us to build up our spouses through words of praise. Dr. R.C. Sproul says this, there's nothing wrong with being a love. There's nothing wrong with extolling the beauty of our wives or of our husbands. Husbands and wives. And there are women who listen to this podcast, so I'm going to say this to both. When was the last time you complimented your spouse on their appearance? When was the last time you did something to enhance your beauty? Married or not, find trustworthy Christians with whom you may discuss relational intimacy and God's word regarding it. Now you know perspective, it makes all the difference. It matters in life and it matters in marriage. The Apostle Peter provides perspective for Christian marriage when he exhorts husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way and to show them honor because they are heirs with you of the grace of life in 1 Peter 3.7. Peter is setting Christian marriage on the highest plane possible. Husbands and wives possess the same internal eternal inheritance. They are but fellow pilgrims traveling on the same path to the same celestial city. This informs everything in a Christian marriage. Christian husband, you are a recipient of grace. You're going to be a recipient of glory just as your Christian wife is. This makes our marriages wholly different than marriages around us. And this has the effect of centering our marriages not just upon the immediate or even the next 50 years, but upon Christ and on eternity. We do well to remind ourselves of this perspective daily. It changes the goals that we pursue in our marriages. This orients us as co-laborers standing side by side, arm in arm, aimed at the same prize to finish the race and hear, well done, good and faithful servant. That is the goal of our life because that is the goal of every Christian life. And the Lord in his bountiful grace often gives us a Christian spouse to help us achieve that end. In fact, our spouses, they know our weaknesses, they know our struggles, they know our temptations, they know our faults, and they are there to encourage us to help us men. And when we're weak, we have somebody to lean on. When we're in need of correction, we have somebody to offer a word of counsel. When we're battling, we have a fellow saint to join us in prayer. We possess the greatest of earthly blessings, someone who knows our frailty, loves us, and seeks to carry our burdens with us. In fact, our union is even greater than this. We have made men one flesh. Paul presses this thought home in Ephesians 5, 28, when he says, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. A husband's wife is his own body. They are one. We then are united with our spouses as we have been united to Christ by faith in his name. Therefore, we are never against one another. We're never enemies. We're never combatants. We're never opposed. This is not only our goal, but our reality. Any injury I do to my spouse, I do to myself. Any encouragement I provide to my spouse, I provide for myself. In Christian marriage, we charge ahead together and we fall back together. We are co-heirs and co-labors united in one flesh under the head of Christ. Now, Christian men, we should long to reach glory and to receive our inheritance. And therefore, we should labor to see one another grow in the Lord with our spouse to the end. It is this chief aim of our marital relationship because we love one another and we love the Lord. And what greater love can one individual show to another than to encourage them in Christ? We know that delighting more in Christ and being conformed more to His likeness in this life means greater enjoyment in the next. So as co-heirs, we labor with this perspective in mind and aimed at seeing it magnified in each other's souls. Well, man, I want to thank you for listening or watching this opening episode of this series titled, The Christian Man and the Pursuit of Love in Every Sphere of Life. This is episode one, and we've considered what biblical love means in marriage. Until next time, may the Lord richly bless you and keep you. Thank you for listening to the Warriors of Grace podcast. 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