Well, I praise God today, among other things, for bringing Steve Wilkins to us, pastor at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church, which is now a member church in the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches, as I mentioned earlier. Doug Hayes and I met him, I don't know, 15 years ago, 16, 17, something like that, and spotted a kindred spirit. And we had already known of his work in American history, being involved in the homeschool movement in the early days of our church. Many of us, the old-timers at least, have listened to his history tapes, profited by them and used them in our homeschool curriculum. He's done so many other wonderful things that are such a great privilege for us to be recipients of. And we're pleased that the Lord God has brought him today to us to minister his word and by the power of the spirit to transform our lives. And on into this week as well at family camp. It's been a long time coming, but we're so delighted to have Steve here in our community both today and then on into the week. So may the Lord God bless the preaching of his word. Dennis, thank you very much. And for all the elders and you as a congregation, thank you for inviting me and having me here. It always amazes our congregation that anybody would invite me anywhere. So I'm really thankful for the opportunity to be with you. Let's hear the word now. I want to read from Ephesians chapter 5 and begin in verse 22. It's a familiar passage. It's one of those passages that almost gets so familiar we no longer listen to it. So hear the word of the Lord, Ephesians 5, verse 22. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for it. that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church, and that is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for giving us your word, and we do pray that by your spirit you will help us to understand it so that we can be conformed to the image of our Savior. and glorify Him in all our days, in all our relations, for Jesus' sake we pray. Amen. One has said that the whole theme of the Bible and the story of the Bible can be summed up this way, boy meets girl. And there's a lot to be said for that, right? I mean, that's the case. We start, the Bible begins with the story of a boy in a garden and he meets a girl. and they live together. And then the Bible ends with a great wedding between the son and his bride. Boy meets girl from start to finish. And at critical points throughout the scriptures you have the same thing happening, usually around water, usually around wells. Abraham's servant goes off to Mesopotamia and finds a wife for Isaac at a well. and brings her back. And Jacob goes to Paddan Aram and he finds a girl at a well and marries her. And Moses flees to Midian and he finds a woman at a well. And every time marriage is the result. So when Jesus comes and he goes to Samaria and he meets a woman at a well, we go, of course, I mean that's exactly the way this thing goes. And he talks about marriage there at the well. He doesn't marry her but he talks about her marriage, because that's what you do, I guess, with women at Wells. And we're not surprised. Boy meets girl. That's the story. And we're set up for this story right from the beginning, as you see in Genesis 2. We're told that after the creation, of everything. God says something unusual after he creates man. Everything's up to this point. When he's commented on it, he said, this is good. This is very good. This is really good. I like it. This is good. That's good. Everything I'm doing here, I'm enjoying a lot. But then when he creates man, he says, ah, not good. Not good that man be alone. It's not good. Man needs to have a companion with whom he can fellowship and with whom he can learn to love and live and be fruitful and multiply. And God creates a woman for Adam there in the garden where that river of the water of life flows throughout the world, which is why you have these meetings with women at water places, because the first meeting was at a water place, the river that feeds the world with the water of life comes there, and that's where Adam met Eve. Well, marriage then, you see, is central to everything that God does, and that's what's implied in Genesis 2, but what's implied there is startlingly emphasized in Ephesians 5. And that's why I read Ephesians 5, because Paul there, talking about marriage, he tells the wives to submit to their husbands, and husbands to love their wives as their own bodies. And then he quotes Genesis 2, which is not what perhaps you would expect, because he then says, for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined or cleaved to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. And then he adds, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Now that we're not quite ready for. It sounds like this is a great mystery, but that's how marriage counseling goes. But that's what you would expect. But that, he says, no, let me tell you why this is mysterious. This whole relationship between husbands and wives is a mysterious, glorious thing. Because really, it's only a shadow of the even more glorious mystery of Christ and the Church. That's why you get married. So you can learn about the great reality, the glorious thing, which is Christ has taken a bride to himself and become one with her. Now, when Paul says this is a mystery, he's not saying it's a whodunit novel, you know, or it's something that you need a finely honed analytical mind to figure out. What he's talking about there, that word that's used often in Paul's letters and used elsewhere in the Bible, but it talks about things that are revealed in the scriptures through the work of Jesus and what he's done. Because of what Jesus has done, because of his coming, because of his work, because of what he's accomplished, These things take on amazing meaning, and we understand them as we see what Jesus has done. So, for example, Paul talks about the mystery of the Jews and the Gentiles, that they would be one in Christ. Now, that didn't happen until Jesus came, until he finished his work, until he was resurrected and ascended. into heaven, a new order of things, a new world, a new heavens, a new earth was established at that time and everything was transformed and glorified and made more glorious than ever before. Marriage, Paul says, is this kind of a mystery. From creation on, from Genesis 2 on, marriage has been full of hidden meaning and that meaning comes to its fullest light Not only now in the New Covenant and in the relationship that Jesus maintains with his church, now we can see the full glory of this great mystery. Marriage is a mystery that has now been revealed, and it can only be properly understood when it's seen as a type of the relationship that Jesus bears with his church. And this reality dominates all creation, and history. History revolves around marriage, the marriage of men and women, in particular, the marriage of the Son of God to his people. Now, what I want to do real quickly is see some of the implications of this. All this week ahead of us, we're going to be talking about marriage first, and then children, and looking forward to marriage if you're not married, those kinds of things. That's kind of the focus, but let's think about by way maybe of laying some foundation for that study, what this means. First of all, marriage is central to understanding God's purposes in the earth. The idea of marriage is rooted in God's purposes for the universe, for all creation. Before the creation of the world, God planned a marriage. The father determined to give a bride to his son. And history can be seen then as the wooing and winning and saving and cleansing of this bride, making her ready for her wedding at the last day. Marriage thus points us to the glorious reality of Christ's redemption in his work in our behalf. The concept then of marriage is central to all of life. Marriage, in this sense, is the central theme of history. It forms the foundation of the Church. It is the pattern of human history. It becomes the life-giving fountainhead for all society. And so since the dominant theme of history is the bride and the marriage to the land, that teaches us the centrality then of the church. And Paul points that out. He's talking about Jesus earlier in the epistle to the Ephesians in chapter one. And he says that God put all things under Jesus feet. He exalted him to his right hand and he put all things under his feet and gave him to behead over all things to the church. So the church takes the central place because it's one with this Savior King. It is one with the Lord Jesus. Only in the bride then can man find love and acceptance with God. The church is the focal point of all of life. It's the place where life is found and experienced because it is the bride that's made one with the living, eternal Son of God. So the church becomes the instrument through whom God brings his purposes of salvation to pass. But that brings us to a second thing. Marriage is central to understanding the nature and the destiny of man. Man is created after the image of God, and that means that man is to look like God, and to be like Him, to live like Him. Well, I'm using man now in the general sense that includes male and female, but yeah, humanity is made to live and to look like God. But you see, the God who created man is not a unitary, isolated being, but a being who lives in triune community. God is both one and three. He's not a monad, he's not Allah, living by himself. In fact, he is three eternal persons who live in holy, eternal communion, a communion of love. And that means that the image of God cannot be fully displayed in isolated individuals. Now it is, but it's not fully displayed in isolated individuals, but rather It demands that man be in community, and he live in covenant with others, and he live in relationships of love with others. It has to be. That's the way God is. You have to be the same way. You can't cut yourself off from that. Otherwise, you become inhuman and you become beastly. It's what happens to every guy who doesn't get married. No, I'm joking. That's a joke. Wasn't funny, but it is a joke. No, but it does. I mean, you think about your life before marriage and after, and how you've changed, hopefully for the better. But marriage does transform you, just like all of your relationships do, which is why unmarried people, men and women, must be joined to a community, or you get really weird fast. You're not meant to live by yourself. You're not meant to be cut off from bonded relationships, relationships that obligate you in love. And so unmarried people must be a part of the church, must be part of the family. They can't live without it. Otherwise, they get very, very strange and warped, because that's not the way you're meant to live. Because you're created after the image of God. And God is not alone. He is three and one, and He lives in joyous communion. If you look at him, the Bible says he is love. That is, he is love in himself. Well, love demands an object. So what it means is, look, this is the way God has always been. He joyfully loves the Father, joyfully loved the Son. And the Son joyfully responded to that love and gave it back to the Father. And the Spirit joyfully gives Himself and is the love of the Father and the Son and gives Himself to glorify the Father and the Son and bonds the Father and the Son together. They are God is a community of life and love and fruitfulness and marriage therefore is not peripheral to the image of God but central to that image. Man in isolation can't really reflect that image. He must be in a bond of covenant love with others. So the first and in a way the most fundamental form of human community is the male-female bond. Man must have someone with whom he can commune on the deepest level and who will enable him to be fruitful in a real way. And the woman is created for his fellowship and fruitfulness. She was created for him. He was in a way created for her. So that she becomes whole in him and he becomes whole in her. So that he and she can live like God himself in a life-giving, loving, productive, fruitful communion. That's really what it means. That's why we have marriage. It's something central to the image of the living God. And this is why God said it's not good for man to be alone. And that does raise the question, I really don't think I'll take the time to go into it, but was Adam alone? Well, in a way he was, in a way he wasn't, right? Because God is everywhere, but God is not everywhere in the same way all the time. So that when God came into the garden on the first full day of their lives, Adam and Eve's, He had come in a way that he was not present in the day before, on the day of their creation. In the same way, he's present with us. We live and move and have our being in him, but he comes in a special way on the Lord's Day when we gather in his presence and when we hear his word and sing his praises and make prayers to him and offer prayers and thanksgiving to him and commune with him at the table. That's a special presence that we don't have all the time. And so we, so Adam needed someone to be with in those times when God wasn't especially fully present with him, he needed someone with him and that's the role that Eve performs. So we need companions, we need other people who image God in particular and you see in God's presence and his blessing comes to us through one another. As the Spirit indwells each of us, then He comes to us and He speaks to us through each other so that your words can build up or your words can destroy. Your words can give life or they can spew forth poison and death. Now that's the work of the Spirit. But God says, no, you've got to be careful about how you speak because depending on what you do, that's how I work. That's what will happen. He works through us. to each other and God manifests his presence to us most of the time through one another and then on the Lord's Day in special ways. Now, so we have to have companions, we have to have good faithful friends, we have to have brothers and sisters in the family of God to instruct us, to correct us and to encourage us. We have to have that. because that's the way God ministers to us when we're out of his special presence. So at the last day, we'll be in his presence in a way we haven't been up to that point. Now you see, celibacy then is a lawful calling, as I'll talk about this week. It's not the ordinary calling, but it's a lawful calling. It doesn't mean it's more holy or less holy than others, but it is a special gift from God. so that man can live without a particular mate. What that means is that he finds his fruitfulness and his communion in the family, in the family of God. And that's how that will work. It is still not good for him to be alone. Even if he's given the gift of celibacy, he cannot exist by himself. He must have communion with the rest of the family. That's the way he's been created. And further, just as God's love could not and would not be contained within himself, but it flowed, it overflowed into creation. That's one of the church fathers says, that's why God created things. His love was so great, it could not be contained within himself. He had to be, to create things, to be fruitful. That love is always fruitful. And the fruit of his love was the creation, so that he could have an even larger circle to embrace in his glorious love. And that's one way to think of creation. That's exactly what God was doing. So, that's the way it is as God lives and that's the way we have to live and marriage enables us to be that. In marriage, following God's lead, the man and the woman are to be fruitful and increase in number, and they are then to be fruitful and multiply. Husband and wife is God's image-bearers, covenanted together like the persons of the Godhead, and that means that they will not restrict their love within their own private relationship. That love is going to overflow and go outward in the procreation of their own images, their children. That's certainly not a perfect analogy, but it's a God-ordained analogy. And we're to think of things like that so that we understand what God himself is doing. And so just as it's not good for man to be alone, so it's not good for husband and wife to be alone. They need others to serve and love. And you say, well, but what about those childless couples? What about childless couples? What do we say to them? Well, we say the same thing we would say to a person who's given the gift of celibacy. God's normal plan for men and women is that most marry. Some don't. That's okay. Perfectly fine. Perfectly holy and glorious. When that comes, children are the normal plan for married people. But what happens when they don't have it? Well, it's okay. That's what happens. The fall and the curse, the consequences of sin upon humanity, means that some marriages will be childless. And that's okay. Some men and women will not be able to have children. Some may not be even able to adopt children. And that's okay. None of these circumstances necessarily implies that these marriages are less godly or less faithful or less holy or God-honoring. Ordinarily, however, God ordains that men marry and that they have children. And you see, the fact that you have men or women who are not married or couples who do not have children shows you that the family is not sufficient of itself to live in this world to the glory of God. Your family fulfills its calling preeminently and primarily through the Church. just as a single man or single woman would do that same thing. The church becomes the family, the preeminent family, the family from whom all our other families draws its existence and identity, right? From Him come all our names, all our family names. But it comes from God and God's family. That is central to everything else. The grand purpose of God. that has been given to us to carry out as his image bearers requires more than your family or mine. It requires a whole society of families living together as one. Children eventually leave their fathers and mothers and marry and create new families and all these families must learn to work together in love and in harmony and unity if the earth is to be glorified and turned into the theater of God's glory that it's intended to be. And that's what taking dominion requires. And you see this in so, so many ways. But, you know, if you think of just common activities like making a cake, you need people to do anything. I mean, you can't write anything unless so many thousands and millions of people have done work for you to make that pencil or to make that computer. to learn about electricity. I mean, if the world depended on me, you would never know anything, you'd never have anything. Because I don't know how to do anything. I can't, I don't understand, it's all magic to me. I don't understand anything. And so nothing would be around. But thanks be to God, we have gifted people who've examined, they understand, they're brilliant, they're bright, they understand things, and we have all sorts of stuff. So we can, you can make a cake when you don't have any wheat. or cows. And you don't have, you can go to the store and buy this stuff from people you don't even know. And you can take it home in a bag that you didn't chop down a tree and turn into wood pulp and make the thing and glue it all together. Loggers did that up here that I don't even know and they did this and turned it into wood pulp and paper mills turned it all around. You can use a dish made of glass that's done in this amazing process at this extremely high temperature. things you can't do in your backyard, you know, those kinds of things. It's amazing that taking dominion over the earth, as God has commanded man to do, is not a one-man project and it's not a one-family project. It's something we do together. Everything we do demands thousands of people who help us. Other families, other men, other women, someone else's children, someone maybe centuries even ago, worked in such a way as to enable us to do what we're doing now. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have a piece of cake. It's a glorious thing when you see how it all works. And that all begins with marriage. Marriage is central to understanding the nature and the destiny of man. But let me move quickly to the third thing. Marriage is central in understanding redemption. After God has created Adam, He made him aware of his need for a companion, bringing all the animals to Adam and asking him to name them. He had to examine them and give them appropriate names. And Adam realized every species came in pairs, male and female. And this meant that he was out of sync. And he began to realize that he was not normal at that point because he didn't have a companion. So, having made Adam aware of his need and his incompleteness, God caused a deep sleep to come upon him and then takes a portion of his side, and that's what the word is, not a rib, but his side, and forms Eve. And the word there is side. It's the word that's used to describe the sides of buildings and the sides of mountains. And God takes apart that part of Adam and he builds a woman. It doesn't say create. It doesn't say form. The words that were used to describe what he had done and everything other part of it says he built this woman out of Adam's side. It's the word used to refer to building altars and building temples and building buildings and building cities. God builds a bride for Adam so that Eve is literally bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh and Adam has to love her as his own flesh. in part because she is his own flesh. And so when God brings her to Adam, he makes Adam whole again. The two are made one flesh again. Adam all of a sudden realizes, this, I'm finally made whole again. And there is a mystical union then between a man and a wife that make both of them whole human beings. Apart from which, unless God gave special grace and gifts, they could not live in the world faithfully. Now again, you have to see the analogy with the Bride of the Lamb, because that whole process is to show us the great work of God. The first earthly bride signified the glorious reality that would hold true for all of the redeemed. Eve was the body of Adam. The church is the body of Christ, Paul says. Eve was formed by piercing the body of Adam. The church is formed by piercing the body of Christ, the side of our Savior. The first Adam had a bride chosen and created for him by God from his own body, and the second Adam had the same, and the bride is his body as well. And as God led the woman to the man, so the spirit leads the bride to Jesus. As he built the bride for the first Adam, so he builds the bride for the second Adam. That brings us the whole idea of the temple being built up and God talks about how the church is this beautiful temple and each individual is like a building block in that temple. You're to think about the city and remember in Revelation that city, that glorious New Jerusalem, it comes down from heaven like a bride adorned for her husband. The bride is the city that God builds for his son and that's the picture here. And so the first Adam had a bride chosen and created for him by God, and the second Adam does as well. So Adam's role is to follow the pattern of the divine husband. He is to lead and lead at love and provide and protect his wife. And as he does so, he will learn more and more of the gracious love and mercy of God himself. The earthly marriage magnifies the glory of the heavenly marriage. And so, Paul says, for this reason, this is why marriages take place, this is why God has ordained this, man leaves his father and mother, cleaves to his wife, the two become one flesh, and they have to be that way in order to learn about the love of God. The love of God in bringing a bride to his son. And throughout history, this whole process is going to be duplicated so that there is always this witness to every man who's married about the love of Christ for his people. Man leaves his old home, establishes a new, cleaves to his wife. Every marriage is a picture of the redemptive work of Jesus. As men leave their fathers and their homes, so Jesus willingly left his father's home. As men cleave to their wives, so Jesus obtained a bride and joins himself to her and faithfully cleaves to her. And so Paul says, yeah, you know what, this is what it means. When I say love your wife, I'm saying love your wife as your own body, because no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church. He says, there's the reality for you are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. The church is not some object separated from Jesus that every now and then he turns around and says, oh, remember, I love you. Okay. Give you a few things. Let me know if you need anything. The church is his body of his flesh of his bones. It cannot be conceived apart from him. You can't think of him apart from the church. You can't think of the church apart from Jesus, which is why the reformer said there is no salvation outside of the church. See, why do they say that? Because the Church is the body of Christ. There's no salvation outside of Jesus. So it has to be so. And that's why they saw the importance, then, of the Church that we have lost in our day. You notice how God there uses the same language that he used to describe the relationship that existed with Adam and Eve. Now he uses that same language and says that's what is true of Christ and the Church. So you're to learn from marriage not merely the beauty and blessedness of covenant union of a man and a woman and the love that they share, but you're to learn preeminently the glory that shows the glory of the love of Jesus for his chosen bride. All the love and joy that exists in a human union is just a faint shadow of the blessedness and the love and joy that exists between Jesus and his bride. And every time a man seeks out a bride with whom he has no previous union and joins himself in covenant with her, it's a picture of redemption every time. An imperfect picture, yeah, but a picture, a very real one, just as any wife that you marry is going to be a sinner. And that's exactly what Jesus did. He chooses sinners to be his bride. And just as marriage brings a new family into existence, so Jesus by his work has brought a new family into existence, the family of the living God. And just as the marriage results in fruit to God's glory, so the marriage of the son to the bride causes the new birth of a multitude no man can number. Marriage, thus, is to remind us first and foremost of the great mercies of the infinite love of God. The earthly is a picture of the heavenly. And this is so very, very important for you on a practical basis every day, because it is hard to love sinners. And that's one of the good things marriage does for you. It brings you down to reality. Because when you live by yourself, when I was living by myself in seminary, learning everything I needed to know, knew it all, I mean, I could teach you forever and you'd be amazed every day. You know, that's what I thought. You know, and I'm living by myself and I'm, you know, I love the way I do things. I love the way I look and dress. What I don't like, no one should like. And what I do like, everybody ought to like. And if they don't, they're weird. It was just great. I was so holy. It was amazing. And then I got married. All my holiness just went down the drain. After about three months, I was just being really wicked. Couldn't figure it out until I realized, well, it's her fault. That's obviously why. But I worked through that and, you know, we got to getting along better and then we had a baby and I just lost all that holiness again. It was the baby's fault. They do not know when to sleep and when to stay awake. It's just, so I take the children around and say, look outside, do you see anything? And you know why? Because it's dark. This is the time when you're supposed to sleep. You're up. And what's worse is you want everybody to be up when you're up. you know, lecturing the children. It was all their fault. I was so patient before when I lived by myself. So holy. Now you laugh, but I guarantee you, you as a single person, you start thinking that way. Because you don't know how hard it is to love sinners and to be loved. Marriage teaches you that. Being in the church teaches you that. Which is why it's so vital that all unmarried people be a vital part of the church. Because you've got to learn that you've got problems. And you offend people. And you've got to learn that there are other people that you have to love even though they rub you the wrong way. You've got to learn that. And this is the glory. And then all of a sudden you begin to realize, wait a minute. This is what it means when it says God While we were yet sinners, God loved us and sent his son to die for us. All of these relationships teach us preeminently the glory of God's love. Now quickly, this is why you can understand why it's legitimate now for single men to seek marriage and for single women to welcome being sought. God created you for intimate communion, and this communion is fulfilled ultimately, of course, in him and in the church, but it's fulfilled, it leads you also to a mate, and that's good. We also see why divorce is hated, right? Why is it hated? Well, marriage is to be a picture of the blessedness of the covenant, but unfaithfulness in marriage teaches the world the lie that Jesus is an unfaithful, disloyal, undependable husband. And that's bad. And God has ordained marriage to be monogamous for this reason. Christ only has one bride, not many. And his bride never has to worry about sharing his affections with another woman. His love is exclusive. He loves one and his loyalty to this bride will never end. And we also see how illegitimate it is to have sexual relationships outside of the marriage bond. Marriage requires the gradual death of self-centeredness and the increase of love that is centered around another. Immorality is founded upon allowing your selfishness and lust to go and have free reign, and it undermines the very foundation of love and the very foundation of sexual relationships. Sex must come only out of the context of sacrificial commitment and union and trust. and sexual intimacy outside the context of marriage marks the love of Christ for the church. Sexual immorality undermines future marriages and shows a grotesque disdain for God's honor and his salvation and for other people. And this tells us why it's so wicked to be unfaithful in the marriage relationship It not only injures your mate, it's a grievous sin against God as it perverts the gospel and blasphemes Christ. Now you see, the next fight you had, stop in the middle of it and say, okay, how are we showing the world, if they were all here watching, they're not, thanks be to God, we're in our house and the windows, the shades are pulled, but how are we portraying the love of Jesus for his people? And when it gets hard to love your wife, then you think, how hard is it for Jesus to love me? And when it gets difficult to bear with that blockhead of a husband, you start thinking, well, wait a minute, how much does Jesus have to bear with me in my blockheadedness? That's why marriage exists, so that you can see and be subdued to humility and repentance by the remembrance of the love of Jesus for you. Every marriage preaches to the world about the relationship of Christ in the church. Where there's an unfaithful wife who refuses to submit to her husband, that's a proclamation of the heresy that the church doesn't have to submit to Jesus and is wiser than Jesus. The gospel's perverted. Where there's an unfaithful husband, doesn't care about his wife, who tramples all over, lords it over her arrogantly, thinking that he can just snap his fingers and she's supposed to hop, and he's not to help her. That's just perverting the whole message of Jesus' willingness to serve. Who is the greatest, he told his disciples. Who really rules? Who really has influence in life? Is it the rulers in the great of this world? He says, no, it's the people like me who come to minister and who serve. How do you exercise leadership? By dying, by serving. And we could go on and on and show that every unfaithfulness teaches blasphemy and it teaches heresy. Marriage is much more than meets the eye and much more than we see in a husband or in our wives. You aren't just a married couple. You're a man and a woman joined in love for a purpose and that purpose is to reveal the mystery of Christ's love for His people to the world. And by the way, we live together as husbands and wives. And by the way, you who are unmarried, live faithfully, keeping yourself pure before marriage, you proclaim the glory of the love of Christ for his bride and the honor of the bride's love for her Savior. It is one of the most powerful proclamations of the gospel that a perverted, immoral, licentious world can ever hear and see. And that's why it's so stark. when people see it. It literally surprises them and shocks them to see a husband and wife who are faithful to each other and they love one another. That's why you can get any kind of show. You live long enough to have a 75th wedding anniversary, you'll be in the papers. And people will go, that's amazing, unbelievable. Well, it didn't used to be. But it is now, and we have to show that that's the way Jesus loves his bride. He is faithful to the end. And this is why marriage is always under attack, and that's why your marriage is always under attack. And it is, every day. You say, oh, we love one another. I know you do. But this afternoon, something's going to happen. And you're going to want to, oh, if I could just pop you out to the moon. That's the way it is. Every day we're under attack. And every day I've got to remember, why am I here? Why did I say I do? Why am I joined together with this man or this woman? It is for the glory of God. It is for Jesus that we are together. Martin Luther said there's no estate to which Satan is more opposed than marriage. And Luther was right. Love one another, live faithfully, and glorify God so that you can celebrate the joys of his salvation. Let us pray. Father, help us to hear your word and to learn what it means to live together to your glory as husband and wife. We pray your blessings upon us as a congregation of your people. I pray your blessings on this congregation here and on all those represented. Help us all. as we live together to show forth the amazing glory of Jesus' love for his bride as we love one another. Grant us patience and endurance and perseverance and courage to love to the end. Hear our prayers and uphold us for Jesus' sake. Amen.