In these verses, we have on display the will of God for every station in life. Whether you're married, single, widowed, or divorced, you have God's will for you right here in these verses. You must set your heart and mind upon them. Obviously, the bulk of this passage has to do with marriage, a certain test, a trap that was laid before Jesus. But it is for everyone. It is for everyone. And as we get into this passage, without having a really long introduction to it, I want to give you some hints about what is going on in these verses, the historical reality in the text, because I think that will clarify and help us understand this whole argument that Jesus gets into. And really, it will help you understand the heart of God for marriage and divorce and singleness. So here we are, Matthew 19, a new phase has begun in Jesus' earthly ministry. Matthew 18 concludes the Galilean ministry of Jesus. Jesus, Matthew 19, verse one, goes southward to Jerusalem. It is the winter before the final Passover Jesus celebrates on earth. You could say it's right around this time. Jesus, that these Jesus, that these events happen in the life of Christ on Earth. Jesus is heading towards Jerusalem. To celebrate Passover and to suffer and die and to rise again. But it's very important, there's this really great detail here that he enters the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. Jesus has now marched southward into Judea beyond the Jordan, and he's continuing as he goes to demonstrate kingdom of God acts of power. He's healing crowds of people. But it's very important to notice this region because this region of ministry, the area beyond the beyond the Jordan, is the region of ministry where some very important figure came just before Jesus, that figure being John the Baptist. And John the Baptist, if you would remember, his ministry ended right here in the region beyond the Jordan. And if you remember why his ministry ended, it ended because of a marriage conflict. John the Baptist preached against the unlawful marriage of Herod to Herodias. He preached that to Herod and he preached it to the crowds. divorced his wife, deposed his wife, and chose to marry his brother-in-law's wife, Herodias, who also was a member of his own blood family. So there was a lot going on that was unlawful. But John protested it, and finally it led to John being beheaded in the courts of Herod. You could read this in Matthew 14, one through 12. And by the way, this marriage conflict that John took up in the region beyond the Jordan only happened just a few months before this encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees. So, you can put it this way, the topic of marriage is all the buzz in the land. Everyone is debating about marriage and divorce, especially the religious leaders. So here Jesus comes in to this region where marriage is all the buzz, and the Pharisees are right there with all their hatred. It's just amazing, isn't it? Jesus is here healing crowds of people, still doing incredible acts of mercy and power, and crowds are following him, but it's like as much as he demonstrates his power and love, like the Pharisees just grow more and more despising of him. They hate him all the more. But they approach him to test him. You could say they approach him to trap him, to ensnare him, to tempt him with a question regarding divorce. Their question seems kind of simple, but it's a loaded question. Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? Now, there's a lot of Maybe not a lot, but there's a few layers to this debate. You could say divorce in every culture, really since the beginning, since mankind has been upon the earth, after the Garden of Eden, after the fall in the Garden of Eden, divorce has been a very common practice among all the cultures. And in the Roman culture, divorce was easy, it was cheap, it was rampant, it was everywhere. What might surprise you, though, is in the days of Jesus and in the days of Moses, the Jewish culture was absorbed in the practice of easy and cheap divorce. I'll tell you what I mean. This whole debate revolved around two schools of thought, two Jewish schools of thought. The first one was the Hillel school of thought. Rabbi Hillel, a teacher, and he was teaching that divorce is acceptable for any reason, any reason. This was the dominating view at the time. You could divorce your wife, and I've read through all this Jewish literature about the reasons that were acceptable for divorcing your wife, and some just seem almost laughable, but truly sad. You could divorce your wife for basically anything that displeased you. If she burnt your supper, you could divorce your wife. If she spoke a word in public that you didn't like, you could divorce your wife. All of these reasons were acceptable in the sight of the Jewish rabbis. In fact, one of the most famous rabbis, Rabbi Akiba, said this. He said a man can divorce his wife if he looks upon a woman who is more fairer than she, more fairer than his own wife. That's an acceptable reason for divorce. Josephus, the historian Josephus, wrote actually a number of things about his marriages. He had four, at least we know about. And in one of those marriages, he says he talks of divorcing his wife because some aspect of her behavior displeased him. That simple. This very liberal view was called the Hillel view, as I mentioned. But another school, which was the minority view of the Jewish teaching, was called the Shema school. And it taught that there was only one acceptable reason for divorce. So the Hillel school, divorce for any reason, the Shema school was a divorce for one reason, and that reason being adultery. Again, this was the minority view, the minority attitude. The vast majority was easy divorce, cheap divorce, no-fault divorce, divorce on demand. What you have to do, though, to make it legit, to make it legitimate, was when you divorce your wife for whatever reason, all you have to do is write up a receipt, a certificate of divorce, so that she can walk around saying she's lawfully divorced. And it just caused this wicked culture of, you could almost call it wife-swapping. Well, why was this such a big debate? It's because these Pharisees, and you could say certain rabbis, were trying to argue and understand really one single word from the Old Testament. So if you would, if you would just go with me to Deuteronomy chapter 24. By the way, this is the second time Jesus has preached on this. The first time was in the Sermon on the Mount, says nearly the same exact thing in the Sermon on the Mount that he does now. I preached that passage in the Sermon on the Mount a long time ago. It's hard to remember, but I do remember it was on Mother's Day 2022. I remember it being Mother's Day because people were like, why would you preach on this topic on Mother's Day? But I did, and anyway, I said a lot of this in that sermon, so if you want to go back on Facebook and look up that sermon, Mother's Day 2022, it's a lot more technical. But Deuteronomy 24 verse 1 says this, when a man takes a wife and marries her, If then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house and she departs out of his house. I'm just going to stop right there. You can read the rest of the legislation for yourself, but the key word there, one word is the word indecency. The word indecency. What is meant by that word indecency? Well, the Hillels were teaching everyone that indecency could be pretty much anything that bothers you, anything you don't like. The Shammais were teaching it's got to be adultery only. Now, the rest of that legislation is about Moses putting a stop on the hard-heartedness of the Israelites, and I'll cover that in just a moment. But Jesus is. Is brought into this test with this question, is it lawful for any reason? In other words, Jesus, who do you side with when Moses wrote that word indecency? Do you side with the Hillel's or do you side with the Chimay's? Because if Jesus sides with the Hillel's. There's a problem. Then he actually contradicts his forerunner, John the Baptist. He'll contradict John the Baptist, and then he'll validate the wicked sin of Herod. Herod decided to put off his wife just because he wanted a new one. By the way, the Pharisees hated Herod. They just hated Jesus and John the Baptist a lot more. If Jesus sides with the Hillels, then He sides and validates the wicked sin of Herod. But if Jesus sides with the Shammais, Then he sides with John and could be handed over to Herod to be treated like John at the hands of Herod. So the Pharisees think they have this awesome trap set for Jesus. Pharisees think they got him. They got this gotcha legislation. It's right there in the law, Jesus. You said not one word of this law would ever pass away, Jesus. We got you. Jesus is on another level, we'll see. And his argument shows the worth of marriage in the eyes of God. Not in the eyes of man, but in the eyes of God. You know, there's a lot of correlation, though it's not so much mixed up in religious talk. But divorce is easy. Divorce is... In our land, something we call it, we have legislation for it, it's called what? Know what? Fault divorce. And people have found every reason to be thinking like the liberal school, the Hillel's. But Jesus is going to show the main thing about marriage is this is a God thing. This is a God created thing. It's not for man to define. It's not for man to work up a system around. It's for God to define and man to celebrate. But here's the main thing all throughout these 12 verses because Jesus talks about first marriage and then He talks about singleness. Let me tell you the main thing. I want you to know this. I'll boil it down for you this way. Christ's will for you who are married is unbreakable devotion. It's unbreakable devotion. For you who are married, you are to be unbreakably devoted to your spouse. Body, mind, heart, soul, love, life, you're to be devoted to one another. That's why it's called one flesh. But also for you who are single, Christ's will for you is, do you know it? Unbreakable devotion. Unbreakable devotion when you're married, unbreakable devotion when you're single. in a different sort of way. You devote yourself to God in marriage by being devoted to one another in love and in that one flesh union. When you're single, you devote yourself to God in usefulness and service and you refrain and you stay away from impurities and that which would hinder you from being useful in the kingdom of God. It's single-hearted devotion, unbreakable devotion, no matter. So let's learn about Jesus' argument here. I have three lessons for you. The first lesson is this. It's let us learn to beware of and to run away from torturing Scripture to satisfy lust. Beware of and run away from torturing Scripture to satisfy lust. This is more of a general admonition, a general rebuke. based on the hard-heartedness of the Pharisees. You see, men and women in sin will use the presence of obscure verses or the absence of clear commands to justify sin. It's the heart of self-justification. It's the heart of lust. And by the way, I'm using lust to talk about not just sexual immorality or sexual lust, but just that insatiable sin nature. But we have to remember to take God at His words and definitions, take Him simply, take Him clearly. You know, the Bible is clear. Are there things that are kind of hard to understand because of older cultural contexts and different ways of life back in the times? Of course there are. But in the Bible, the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. That's what we call the clarity of Scripture. We can see these and see these clearly. But I'm sure you have heard the unending list of those spiritual-sounding phrases and words that people use and wrench from Scripture to try and justify or to remain in their sin. I'll just give you some. Some kind of big ones. Some ones that are way more out in public, but take it to your hearts as well. Well, I'll say this. These words and phrases especially people use in the context of marriage and sexuality. The man who leaves his wife says, she's not respecting me. Well, that's actual biblical language, by the way. That's a head nod towards Ephesians 5. Wives, respect your husbands. But here he is, wrenching Scripture to remain in hard-heartedness and sin. Or that wife who leaves saying, leaves her husband, her family saying, God wants me to be happy. Doesn't he want me to have the desires of my heart? Well, certainly these are scriptural words, but what are you using? You're using this to justify your own hard heartedness. Again, we talk about the unbiblical sexual norms of today, those who say, who will scream, judge not, or God is love. What is this doing? It's wrenching scripture. Judge not, that's Matthew 7. Those are Jesus' words. Didn't Jesus say that? Or God is love, that's a direct Bible verse, 1 John 4. You know, that common sentence you hear Jesus in the Gospels when He was on earth said nothing ever anywhere about abortion or homosexuality. So that means all bets are off, right? But it's not just these issues of sexual sins. Think about that lust of money which is covered by so-called righteous talk. It could be in that preacher who says, you know, you just need to sow some seed money into my ministry and then watch how God will heal you or heal your loved ones. Well, seed money, what is that? Seed? That comes from the Bible, right? That's a head nod towards Matthew 13. Or even the man who refuses to gather with God's people because he wants to work and make that dollar and just be productive in that worldly way. And he says, oh, you know, preacher, you know, my ox is in the ditch. Can't leave my ox in the ditch. Got to keep on working. It's like you use scripture, you wrench it out to justify yourself. These are the phrases that are in the sad song that men and women in hard-heartedness will always dance to. It's the attitude of putting Jesus to the test. It's the attitude of Really, you could say it's the attitude of Satan. Remember when Satan put Jesus to the test in the wilderness? He was trying to get Jesus to obey him. And how was he doing it? Do you remember the very tactic Satan used? Do you know what he did? He quoted scripture to Jesus. Jesus, don't you know the Bible says this? Don't you know it? And so these men of Jesus' day had wrenched a verse out of the perfect law of Moses to please themselves and to do what God hated. I want to read to you, if you want a clear statement. I'm going to read a different translation here. I want to read to you from the book of Malachi, chapter 2, beginning in verse 13. If you want a clear declaration, this is what God says. He says this, and this is a second thing you do. You cover the altar of Yahweh with tears, with weeping, and with groaning because He no longer regards the offering or receives it as acceptable from your hand. But you say, for what reason? Because Yahweh has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. But not one has done so, and even one who has a remnant of the Spirit. And what did that one do while he was seeking a godly seed? Be careful then to keep your spirit and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth." Verse 16, "'For I hate divorce,' says Yahweh the God of Israel, and him who covers his garment with wrong,' says Yahweh of hosts. Be careful then to keep your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously." What's God saying here? He's saying, you come and pollute My altar. Why? Because you've just been putting off your wife just as easily as you change your clothes. I hate divorce, God says. Your wife is your companion from your youth by covenant. That's the clear will of God. Take that down. Number two. So first thing from this, beware of beware and run away from torturing scripture to satisfy lust. The second thing. Remember this. Remember this. Let's learn that. Let's learn of the glorious worth of marriage in Christ's eyes. The glorious worth of marriage in Christ's eyes. This is an incredible argument. Jesus Christ. I wish I wish I could have just a fraction of the logic he has when he deals with his opposers, his arguers, because it is so brilliant what he does. So simple, so brilliant, so clear, so right at the heart. Look at what Jesus says. They ask Him that question. Is it lawful for any cause? Jesus doesn't play their games. He says, Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female? Have you not read? That's what Jesus says. Have you not read? These are the Pharisees. These people had every verse of the Old Testament memorized in their heads. These people were brilliant learners. But he says, have you not read? It's like, do you even try to discern the will of God? Do you even try to understand what pleases God? Or are you just going after the Scriptures to find what's going to justify yourselves? Jesus says, let's go back to the beginning. Let's go back to where there was never ever seen one single ounce of sin in all of creation. Let's go back then and find out what God's will was. And what does Jesus do? He quotes Genesis 1.27 and Genesis 2.24. Genesis 1.27, he made them male and female. Genesis 2.24, that's that passage that you hear at all the weddings. Therefore, man shall leave his father and mother. Jesus is showing that in in the beginning, before there was an ounce of sin, God gave a special crowning glory to all of creation. And that was his image bearers whom he made male and female. But that's not all. There was one more thing he did to bless creation. He gave them marriage. The greatest gift you could say in all of creation was God's gift to the world, which is marriage. And this is how he starts it. One male and one female. Not one male and a bunch of females. Not a bunch of males and one female. Not one male and one male. Not one female and one female. One man and one woman. But then Jesus says something you cannot mistake. This is wonderful how Jesus, not just that He views marriage so wonderfully, but how He views Scripture. It says this, have you not read that He, God, who created them from the beginning, made them male and female, and then these two little verses that begin verse 5 say this, and said. And said. So in other words, the words that were written down by Moses with whatever writing instrument on animal skins or papyrus or whatever it is, those were written But guess who spoke it? Guess who spoke it? The one who was the creator of the man and the woman. The one who made them male and female. The one who spoke this marriage ordinance is God. Is God. Don't mistake that. These are not man's words, but God's words. It is written, God spoke it, God defined it. How does He define marriage? A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. God defined it and God gave it. The whole thing of marriage, the invention of it, the making of it, the making of the people in it, the bringing them together, the joining them to it, the giving of marriage was all done by whom? God, it was God's work. In fact, when it's, the Bible says that God put the man to sleep and fashioned the woman out of a piece of his body, the rib, and then God brings the woman to the man. The heavenly father brings the first daughter to the man. So God gives the woman to the man. It's the whole thing is God through and through. It's amazing, it's just amazing that marriage is set up this way. It's all the work of God. But it's not just that, if you look at what Paul says about marriage. He quotes these words of Jesus that Jesus quoted from God in Genesis chapter 2. And Paul says in Ephesians 5, verse 31 and 32, this is a profound mystery, this marriage, this one flesh union, this union, husband and wife, is a profound mystery. It is indeed the telling of Christ and the church. It's a picture of Christ and the church. Marriage is a picture of the gospel. Jesus saving sinners. And not just that, not just that, but when you go, if you could fast forward, if we could look to the future and we see the end of history and God roll up the old earth and bring in the new heavens and the new earth. The crowning glory of the beginning of eternity is when Jesus receives his bride, the church, and we all celebrate with him at something called the marriage supper of the lamb. So you've got to see here from first to last, from beginning to end, marriage is a huge priority of God. It is so, it's so wonderful. And Jesus says it just so right here. He says, what therefore God has joined together. God joins together. God joins together. Let not man separate it. So the question before the Pharisees or 21st century America is, if God is the one who did this marriage and sees it as such an incredible picture, a picture to hold out for the world, and has this in mind, this display of His own glory in His Son, that Jesus will one day ransom finally the church and bring her to Himself, then what are we doing? What are you doing, Pharisees? What are you doing, 21st century America, when you want to trample upon marriage with easy divorce? Thirdly, so you see this, beware and run away from torturing Scripture. You see the glorious worth of marriage in Christ's eyes. But thirdly, I want you to see this, the cruelty and pain of divorce according to Christ Jesus. The Pharisees think they have a home run case though. They're still not letting up. Jesus says, Or they say, why then, Jesus? They say, why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and send her away? And this really does display their hardness of heart. It really does say how they twisted scripture. The Pharisees actually show how satanic they are when they wrench Scripture down this way. Because how does Jesus answer? Jesus says, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed. He says Moses allowed. You see, nowhere in Scripture, nowhere from Genesis to Revelation, does God ever command divorce. If you think that Moses was commanding divorce, then you're reading the Scriptures in error. What Moses was doing was he was engineering a dam to stop that river of hard-heartedness that was flooding the Israelite families with divorce and broken families. Divorce was cursing and crushing the families of Israel, so God led him to put procedures in place to halt the hurt. That's the whole point of Deuteronomy 24. It's, hey, this wife swapping has got to stop at this point. No more of it. God's saying the whole reason for this. Why did God allow for this? Why did God permit this? Why did Moses allow for it? By the way, whenever you say you allow something, or permit something, or concede to something, or tolerate something, you're admitting to how unfavorable that thing is, aren't you? That's the whole point of this word, allowing. He nowhere commands it. This procedure where you give a divorce certificate was not a command, it was a concession. You know, it'd be like when we do marriages, when you go to a wedding, and the pastor stands before and says, I, as a minister of the gospel, now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride. Now, before everyone goes, when you get a divorce, here's what you do. I mean, what would you think if you went to a marriage ceremony like that? No, that's not what happens. That's not what you do. You don't. We don't operate that way. We say no. What are the final words? What God therefore is joined together? What? Let no man put asunder. Let no man separate. But when the case happens when these divorces happen, right? The the God in his grace and his mercy led Moses to put some legislation down that said here's. How to stop this hard heartedness? Don't let it just break through and unleash on everybody there. But the question remains then as to why divorce is so spiritually bad, and I think I'm out of time here, but I want you to see this because the beauty of marriage is so wonderful, that divorce is so painful. I want you to see this. in what Christ has already said about God joining one man and one woman in marriage. Pay attention here as you go back, as we just look back on these verses. Jesus quotes Genesis. He says, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, and my Bible says, and hold fast. Hold fast. Maybe your Bible says something like cleave, or cling to, or stick to. This is the whole idea of leave, then cleave. hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. They are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." You see, by Jesus putting these statements together one after another, He's really focusing on that idea of clinging, of cleaving, of sticking. And for the Hebrew, this word shows up all over the Hebrew Scriptures. The word to cleave or to stick to or to hold fast. Sticking or joining is well known. I came across this discussion from a pastor and I just wanted to relay it to you. It's not a quote, but this is wonderful. You know, the best way of understanding the picture of cleaving is to understand or to think about flesh sticking to bone. You remember in Genesis 2, when God brings the woman to the man and gives her to him, Adam is blown away. And do you remember what he says about her? He says, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Let me demonstrate this desperate clinging, this desperate joining in a few other examples In Job 19-20, same language is used here. Job says, my bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. He's desperate. Job is crying out and he's in agony. And the only thing holding himself together is that his own flesh is still holding together. It's flesh and bone. Psalm 105, similar thing. Because of my groaning, my bones cling to my flesh. All over, there's references to this type of clinging in a number of things. Naaman's leprosy clung to Gehazi. You remember that story? Examples of a fish to scales. Scales cling to a fish. It's this desperate connection. God has sewn this up so well. Bone and flesh, those are different things, right? The bone can't move unless the flesh moves it. And the flesh can't do anything unless it pulls the bone along with it. Otherwise, there's no structure to it. They're so intimately and intricately and permanently joined. But then look at this. Think about it this way. What God has joined, let not man separate. How painful is it to pull flesh from bone? How painful is that? It's pretty painful. That's pretty painful. That's what that separation means, to pull flesh from bone. Jesus is saying, Pharisees, you're talking about your easy divorce. You know what you're doing. This thing that God has woven together, so joined together, so desperately tied together, it's like flesh and blood. And it's like you are tearing flesh from bone from a living thing. Jesus says this separation is the work of man. God joins. Man separates. Don't you dare do it. Marriage is God's work. Man's work is separation. Well, That's why it's so cruel and painful. That's why divorce is so cruel and painful. Well, I'm out of time for the remainder of this passage. You know, Jesus has this exception clause about when it's permissible, when it actually is permissible to get a divorce. Not commanded, but permissible. And then Jesus says this thing about singleness, referring to eunuchs in a pagan court. And for those matters, you'll have to wait till next time. I know those are the ones that we really want to get to. What I want you to see here, though, is that Jesus upends the whole mind, the mind of Judaism. The mind of hard-heartedness when it comes to marriage and divorce. Doesn't he here? He said, look, get your mind off of these tricks. Get your mind off of these obscure Scriptures that you just want to use to justify yourself. Think about God's mind for what you're asking about. What is God's will? You must see that Jesus wants those who are single for whatever reason, those who are married, to be unbreakably devoted to God. But right now, I want you as we close to reflect on Christ and His truth. I want you to see Him there in the midst of that zealous work, healing, performing these miracles, pointing people to the heart of God, healing their bones, and laying the hammer of truth upon hard hearts. I want you to see how much he was despised by the self-righteous, and how in the midst of their temptations, he once again relied on eternal truth, the truth of God's Word, and the truth of God's gracious and perfect character. I want you to see that this passage is here. It's not because. It's it's not because it's here to to just put some black and white. Code on things, it's because this is a living and breathing Christ who had a word of healing for a desperate problem in his day and a desperate problem in our day. You see, whether you're married or single, widowed or divorced, remarried, single parenting, any and all circumstances, there's something here that Jesus calls you to focus on. And it's in these words. From the beginning. God says. God says it is because of hard heartedness that Moses allowed this, but it was not so from the beginning. It is not so from the beginning. There is that which is in you that was not so from the beginning. When God walked in the garden with those first blessed people, Adam and Eve, that perfect life with the gracious God, what has ruined it all is sin. And you can have hard-heartedness in the middle of a long marriage, where you're just gutting it out because you said, I'd never divorce anyone, but you hate your spouse up and down and you can't stand him or her. There's nothing joyful or good there. Listen, that is not how it was so from the beginning. That is not God's will for you. His will is that you'd be unbreakably devoted to your spouse. to be soft and tender hearted to your spouse, to have that heart that only God can give. That heart that was there from the beginning, that heart that Adam and Eve had when they first look upon each other, when that husband said, whoa! Take me back to that moment when I could look upon my wife and look upon my spouse and say, this is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. This is God's gift to me, his calling on my life. For as long as I'm in it, I will be unbreakably devoted to this one. What hinders all that from being your attitude? It's not the other person, y'all. It's not her. It's not him. It's not the culture of easy divorce. What is Jesus saying? It is your hard heartedness. Go to Christ and look upon the one who points you back to God's will and heart of generosity and love and faithfulness. Do not despise the wife of your youth or the husband of your youth. Hold fast, hold fast, hold fast. Hold fast until death does you part. Do not make any attempt, even in your heart or on paper, to put asunder. God brought you together. And for everyone else, you know, when you're single and you're in those those moments and you're trying to rely on the will of God for your life, remember. that your highest calling is to glorify God with your body, with your time, with your resources, with your precious gifts, you are called to be an unbreakable devotion to Him. And you know what would stop you from being that way, from honoring Him, from pleasing Him? It's to justify yourself with hard-heartedness, to reject His commands, to look for ways to self-please. Do not be that way. Do not be that way, but trust God for His grace, for His timing. You see, one of the things, people, that we have to understand is that in everything, we are going to be called one day to give an account for the greatest, well, not just the greatest, but every gift God has given to us. And God is a generous God. Do you believe God's a generous God? I believe God's a generous God. God's a generous God, y'all, I'm telling you. Believe it. And so when He gives you that gift of marriage, one day He's going to call you to account for how you used it. How your heart was towards it. How you honored it. How you nurtured it. And by it, I mean your part in loving your spouse. Same with singleness. Same with being widowed. Whatever calling. All of these are gifts. All of these are gifts. that God's calling you to use, to have that heart of unbreakable devotion. Soften your hearts and remember that this Jesus is the One who gives you this strength. He gives you His very own love to pour out to one another. In this is love, right? That God gave us His one and only Son so that we might live through Him We live through Christ. And what is Christ? Same yesterday, today, and forever. Ever faithful. Ever true. And remember what happens to Christ Jesus. He died on the cross, and He was resurrected. He died in your place, forgave you of your sins, resurrected to an unconquerable life. And what does it say about this Gospel that when you repent and believe and put your trust in Jesus, do it today, repent and do it, You'll be born again, and you will be united to Christ. A union with Christ. And as it was read last night so wonderfully when we were talking about love, you've got to remember what Romans 8.39 says. Nothing in all of creation, preceded by all that list, height, depth, life, death, angels, rulers, principalities, nothing and all of creation will be able to, what's that word? Separate you from the love of Christ, the love of God that is in Christ, Jesus. That word separate can't happen, it can't happen. Why? Because that's the heart of Jesus Christ for his people. And those who follow him are being made in that same likeness with that same heart. May God bless that to each one of you, to each one of us, as we think about each station that God calls us to in this life. Be unbreakably devoted, wherever God calls you, to him. Amen? Amen.