The following message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. I'd like to welcome to our conference this year Dr. Joel Beeky and his wife Mary. We've been having a delightful time since last night and Dr. Beeky actually did two lectures this morning up at Community Bible Church on Puritan preaching. and it was absolutely wonderful. I met Dr. Beeky in 1997 in a class at Westminster Seminary and I remember the class, Reformed Experiential Preaching, and that class had an impact on me and my view of preaching and I am forever grateful for the way the Lord has used Dr. Beeky. Dr. Beeky is the pastor of the Heritage Reformed Congregation and he is the president of Puritan Reformed Seminary in Grand Rapids. He is also a professor there and he He is a modern-day Spurgeon. I don't say this to embarrass him, but he has written about a hundred books, which is just more than all of us put together will write. And he travels extensively preaching the word of God, and I am personally just very grateful for his ministry. And so, dear brother, please come. It's great to be with you tonight. Thank you for coming out. We've been asked to bring you three addresses tonight, tomorrow morning on the Puritan view of family. And you'll find it interwoven with Scripture. because the Puritans were very much on grounding everything in the Word of God. So our map for tonight and tomorrow is first of all we'll talk about the Puritan view of marriage tonight, and you'll find that in many ways there were light years ahead of us, and then tomorrow morning we'll talk first of all about raising children, Puritan view of family, And then we'll hone in on what the Puritans called the major area of family life in discussing how to do family worship. And I trust that will be enlightening for us and maybe a bit convicting, but that's okay. And hopefully the Puritans will teach us some areas in which we need to do a little bit of homework in our lives and need to change a few things because that was also their conviction when they preached or when they taught. The idea wasn't just to get comfort from a sermon, but also to be made a little uncomfortable at times and to be challenged so that you left the sanctuary saying, what must I do with this sermon? And how must I grow in grace through this sermon? So I want to just forewarn you a little bit. You might be challenged a little bit when we look at Puritan studies. But I'm hoping it will be for your growth and for your well-being. And that God will bless us abundantly in these three messages we have together on the Puritans. So let's turn first to Ephesians 5. Ephesians 5. We're going to read verses 20 through 33. Let's hear the Word of God as it comes to us tonight. Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with a 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 ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery. But I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband." Let's pray. Gracious God, we ask Thy benediction upon this address. We pray that we may follow the Puritans insofar as they follow Jesus Christ, in their views on marriage and we thank thee for how they hammered out those views in 29 different treatises on marriage and taught their people and modeled for them what marriage was to be like. And we do pray that as we seek to summarize that teaching in one brief hour that it will be useful, helpful, convicting, encouraging, alluring, and that we would leave this place tonight absolutely convinced of the importance of living in marriage, intentionally, consciously, biblical lives. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, there's a dear brother named James Labelle. James Labelle is an Orthodox Presbyterian minister in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and he and I decided some years ago that we would look at various themes where the Puritans excelled and where not much good literature was written on that subject today and we'd take all the books the Puritans wrote on that subject and read them all and then summarize it and present a 150-page, 200-page paperback on that subject, summarizing the Puritan views and sprinkling liberally the book with quotations from the Puritans. So we began that series about six years ago when the first volume came out, Living by God's Promises. And we looked at six different books the Puritans wrote just on how to live by God's promises. A subject not well covered despite all the plethora of Christian books today. Then about four years ago we did a book, Living Zealously. The Puritans wrote a number of books on just how to be zealous as a Christian. And then, even though there's lots of books about marriage on the market, we decided we would do a book, Living in a Godly Marriage, which summarizes all 29 books the Puritans wrote on marriage. So this took a massive amount of work compared to the other ones, because the other ones were only six or four books. And what we've done here is we've provided study questions, we've provided an outline. Tonight I'm just going to give you a summary in one hour. But I'll say a word about the books at the end of my lecture, but this is available to you at a very reduced price of 50% off and you could read through it yourself and glean much more in depth of what I'm about to present. The thing you need to understand about the Puritans is that they're thoroughly reformed. This is a 17th century, well late 16th century, but largely 17th century movement that spills over into the 18th century. It takes Reformed truth and says, how do you apply these doctrines in detailed ways in every area of your lives? Now, Martin Luther wrote one book on marriage, small book, which is good, kind of helpful. It's a pioneer effort. But you see, the Reformers and the Protestants, they were busy hammering out big doctrines like justification by faith alone, the authority of scripture, how to worship, And they didn't have a lot of free time to then take all these grand and glorious doctrines and say, but how do you apply those to your work? How do you apply those to your marriage? It was the Puritans who came along a couple generations later. When the reformers had children that were growing up and became kind of lukewarm, and there was a revival movement going on among the Puritans that said, we need to get back to Reformation truth, and we need to apply it to every area of our lives. And so one important area was marriage and family. The Puritans were the ones who really brought that back into focus. more than ever before in church history. You see, in the ancient church, marriage was considered, well, kind of a convenience and something that most people did. By the Middle Ages, marriage and sex within marriage was considered something that people had to do who were inferior Christians. If you were real spiritual man. You become a priest and priests weren't allowed to marry because marriage was a lower status of spiritual life. The Reformers turned it on their head by getting married and by beginning the dialogue about what marriage was supposed to be according to the scriptures. It was the Puritans who really began to talk in detail about the man's role in the home, the woman's role, how the children should show obedience, how the church should function in terms of teaching about marriage, how men should not have mistresses on the side, but actually how to keep romantic love alive within the marriage framework, and that sex has to be within the marital bonds. And so the whole idea of the happy Christian home that we take for granted today, where husband and wife, father, mother, children, teenagers, are all doing the roles designed for them in Holy Scripture, and being happy in so doing, and finding joy in marriage, and joy in family rearing, and joy in the sexual relationship within marriage, that whole concept, that whole picture, J.I. Packer says, is bequeathed to us from the Puritans. C.S. Lewis said the whole idea of romantic love within marriage we owe to the Puritans. Now this is very intriguing because worldly scholars, the liberals, and people who haven't read the Puritans had this crazy idea from 19th century caricatures that the Puritans were killjoys. And I'm saying to you as a church historian who has a doctrine in church history, and particularly in Reformation, Puritan, post-Reformation, so the Puritans especially, and spent my whole lifetime reading them since I was nine years old, I'm saying to you that there's no group of people in all of church history who are so happy in their Christian home as the Puritans. The furthest thing from the truth is that they were killjoys. They did live strict lives. Strictly biblical. But they believed that when you were strictly biblical, you were the most happy. Because happiness flows out of holiness, not out of a pursuit of happiness. And so in their lives, by running their marriages, their family, in accord with the principles of scripture, they were joyful people who loved the Lord, and who sought to raise their children in the fear, the nurture, and the admonition of the Lord. So instead of Augustine's idea of marriage that is something, well, that some people had to do to just calm the lust of the soul, the Puritans were the ones who actually presented in the Christian faith this glorious, beautiful, positive idea of marriage that we as Christians today just take for granted. We actually owe it to them. Richard Baxter, for example, I'll be quoting many Puritans here. Richard Baxter said, "'Tis a mercy to have a faithful friend that loves you entirely, to whom you may open your mind and communicate your affairs in marriage, and it is a mercy to have so near a friend as to be a helper to your soul and to stir you up in the graces of God." I'd say that's a rather positive view of marriage. John Dodd and Robert Cleaver, who often co-authored books, put it this way, thy wife is ordained for man, she's like a little Zoar to thee, a city of refuge to fly to in all his troubles, and there's no peace comparable unto her but the peace of conscience with God. That was a common Puritan idea, that your second greatest joy in life was your wife or your husband, because your first is always God in your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. John Downey, God is the institutor of marriage. He gave the wife to the husband to be not his servant, but his helper, his counselor, his comforter. Now not every Puritan definition of marriage was sterling. John Cotton was a great New England Puritan. His definition lacks a bit, but he said this, women are creatures without which there's no comfortable living for man. It is true of them, what is prone to be said of governments, that even bad ones are better than none. And then Cotton goes on to say, though some call them a necessary evil, I call them a necessary good. Well, the Puritans built this idea of a biblical Reformation teaching from their positive attitude toward marriage in sermons, in 29 treatises, and they set forth The idea of marriage largely under four headings, and I'm going to bring them to you right now. Scriptural purposes, scriptural procedures, scriptural principles, and scriptural practices. Purposes, procedures, principles, practices. And most of their marital books, 50% or more of the book is on point four. practices or what they called the duties of marriage they saw the word duties by the way is a positive word not a negative word and uh... they spoke about three kinds of duties, mutual duties, husband's duties, wife's duties so we'll look at those four points right now first the purposes of marriage the Puritans took over from the Anglicans and the Reformers the three basic purposes of marriage which were always given in this order, also in the Book of Common Prayer. Number one, you got married to have the procreation of children, to raise up a seed to serve God. Number two, to be the restraint and remedy for sin, that is, to bring your sexual lusts under control and to live within the confines of marriage. And number three, for mutual society and help and comfort of each other. Now the very first Puritan books in the late 16th century, early 17th century that address marriage followed this same order and didn't question it. But as the Puritan movement moved on, and they studied the whole issue of marriage in the Bible, more carefully, what you find is that there began to be a switch, and number three became number one. So that by the time the definitive Puritan statement confessionally on marriage was written in the Westminster Standards, then it was enshrined in their doctrinal system that The major purpose of marriage is for the mutual help of husband and wife, for comfort, for assistance, a mutual society that is mutual support of one another. And they built that on Genesis 2.18. That Adam, Eve was given to Adam so that the two could be one and that they could support one another and leave father and mother and cleave to one another. And then number two, number one became number two, that a second purpose for marriage was to have children. And I'll talk about that in a moment. And number three, for the preventing of uncleanness. So let's look at those three just briefly. Number one, to provide companionship and mutual assistance. Henry Smith, who was called the Golden Chrysostom among the Puritans because he is so fluent in his speaking, said, this is God's way to avoid the inconvenience of solitariness signified in these words, it's not good for man to be alone. As though he said, this life would be miserable and irksome and unpleasant to man if the Lord had not given him a wife to accompany him in his troubles and to double his joys. William Gouge, whose hefty book, Domestical Duties, we have recently edited and republished in three volumes, was the standard classic marital textbook of the 29 that were written. William Gouge said that mutual assistance in marriage that flows out of companionship and that under Christ reflects the relationship of Christ and the Church is the grand and glorious purpose of marriage. It was sufficient for times of prosperity and adversity, health and sickness. Through that companionship, said William Perkins, the father of Puritanism, the parties married may thereby perform the duties of their calling in a better and more comfortable manner. And all of this will serve together for the benefit of a man and woman's natural and spiritual life. Second purpose was procreation. the building up of the church and society and the commonwealth through godly child rearing. You see, the Puritans believe that having children is not simply a private matter to be decided between a husband and a wife. No Puritan couple would ever sit down with each other and say, honey, how many children would you like? The opening of the womb is the gift of Almighty God. You don't tell God how many times you want to be blessed. A child is considered the reward of grace. And so you don't want to limit God. So what you do is after you have a baby, you wait maybe six months as a wise, understanding husband, and you say to your wife, honey, do you think you're able to sustain another pregnancy at this time? Are you feeling strong enough mentally, physically, spiritually? The wife says, yes, dear, I'm feeling well. Okay, we'll try to have another child. The average Puritan family had nine children. The average Puritan family lost half of their children before they reached adulthood. So they knew sorrow as well. But you see, what the Puritans taught, so different from our society, we can't even comprehend this, but you don't have children just for the sake of you two having children. You have children for the sake of the church of Jesus Christ, which is your extended, your bigger family, your eternal family. your little nuclear family will be dissolved one day. But the bigger invisible church here on earth, the large family, the goal is to have children and to pray for God's grace that those children may be folded into that larger family and spend eternity with them and with the entire family of God. So that's your goal, to enlarge through child-rearing that eternal family of the Most High. And then by extension, you want to do that for the sake of the Commonwealth, which is England in that time. So now I've got a question for you. When's the last time you sat down with your wife and you said, my dear, do you think we can try to have another child for the sake of our local church and the worldwide church and the United States of America? See, that is so foreign to our thinking. We actually approach the question of having children selfishly. What do we want? And the Puritans say that's not the way to live. You're always living with a servant attitude toward God, toward man, toward the church, toward society. How can I most benefit society? Well, one of the biggest ways is by raising a God-fearing seed that can impact society for good. So for the Puritans, this was an important part of marriage, raising the seed of God that He pleased to give you for the sake of God, for His glory, and for the nation's good, and the church's good. And then thirdly, yes, a third purpose of marriage is to, as Goethe put it, to possess your vessel in holiness and honor so as to avoid all fornication. Goode says, marriage is an haven to such as are in jeopardy of their salvation through the gusts of temptations to lust. Marriage is the best and most sanctified solution to the temptation of fornication. Now mind you, all three of these purposes must assume themselves under the major purpose of life itself, which is to live to the glory of God. So always God is number one, your spouse is number two, your children are number three, and you are number four. That's the way to live happily in this world, in the servant kind of attitude that God created us to have when he made us servants of the Most High. You know, I had a woman in my church. Her name was Helen. She passed on to glory several years ago now. But she really became a member of our church mostly because she wanted to please her husband, not because she was genuinely converted. And that came out later on in their marriage. And they had maybe a C-plus marriage, about as high as it can go when both people don't fear and love the Lord in truth, out of God's common grace. And one day she got very frustrated with her husband. And she said to him, you know, you don't spend enough time with me. And he said, well, what do you want me to do? She said, I don't know. I mean, spend time with me. Well, what do you want me to do? Well, read to me. She couldn't read very well. She was almost illiterate. He said, well, what do you want me to read? She said, well, there's a sermon there from your church. I mean, read that to me. It was Octavius Winslow, My Times Are in Thy Hands. And her husband sat down and read the sermon. And in the middle of that sermon, she got so convicted of her sin. But by the end of the sermon, Christ was so clearly preached that she embraced him by the grace of the Holy Spirit. She was saved under that one sermon. And she looked at her husband when he was done reading, and she said, I've just been saved. And she said, now you are number two in my life, when all along you've been number one. But she said, I'll be a better wife to you when you are number two because I won't put all of my life's expectations upon you. I will expect things from the Lord and I'll be able to serve you much better. And she didn't know at that moment how the Puritans would agree with her 100%. You can love each other as a spouse more fully when God is number one in your life. And so John Winthrop, that great Puritan, wrote in a letter to his wife shortly after their marriage calling her the chiefest of all comforts under the hope of salvation. And John Cotton warns against the error of aiming at no higher end than marriage itself in marriage and encourages people to look upon their spouses not for their own ends but to be better fitted for God's service and to bring them nearer to God. So much for the Puritan purposes of marriage. What about the procedures? That's thought number two. The Puritans basically said there's six steps to getting married. Number one is getting to know, like, and then love each other. And the way they viewed this was not that the two people would go off in some car and sit on a road and make out and have conversations on their own, but what they said was Courting, or what we might call Christian dating, whatever term you use, involves getting to know people, first of all. And you get to know them in the context of their family. Common sense, the Puritans said, when you marry someone, you actually marry into their family. And so what they would do is the young people would consult their parents or the parents would talk with their young people about possible future life mates that they observed in the local church first of all and like a father might come to a son and say You know, I've been watching this young lady, and she seems very godly, and that's a lot of the attributes that a godly spouse needs to have. Would you consider courting her?" The son would say, Father, I'll pray about it. I'll let you know and be very respectful. And the son might come back two weeks later and say, Father, I'm afraid about it, but I just see no connection there. I feel no attraction to this woman at all. I just don't feel free to proceed. The father would respect that. But the father was involved. The mother is involved. The brothers and sisters are even involved. Because you marry into a family. But when the son would say yes, or the son would suggest a name, and the father and mother would say yes, then the parents of the young lady would be contacted. And if they all said yes, both parents and the young lady, then they'd set up an arrangement where the young man and the young lady would come together in the home of the young man or in the home of the young lady, and they'd play some games together, they'd get to know each other, they'd mix with the family. And after a few evenings of that, the family would sit down and they'd talk among themselves and say, what we know of this young man so far, do you think it's going well? Has this got potential for marriage? And if they said yes and everybody was agreed in the family, the relationship would continue. You see, it was getting to know, then to like, and then the beginning to love each other before marriage, so that after marriage, the love would grow and grow and grow for the rest of their lives. The idea of just having an infatuation period of love, and then quickly getting engaged and getting married, and then the love cools and wanes, as is so common today, was just foreign to Puritan thinking. So that's step one. Step two was what they call the contract of espousals, which I can best explain that as a very strong engagement period. When young people get engaged today, they don't come in front of the minister or a court or a judge and sign papers. But getting engaged today is a pretty serious business. In the Puritan day, it was even more serious. You actually did come in front of your minister, and you made a solemn statement, and you actually had a kind of divorce if you broke the engagement. There was a contract made. But there would be no sexual intimacy. until the actual day of marriage. But you would vow in the presence of the minister, I do faithfully promise to marry thee in time fitting and convenient." Now they found biblical support for this in the contract that included the examples of Lot's daughters who were, quote, Genesis 19, contracted to husbands while they are said to have yet known no man. And Mary herself was described as, quote, a virgin espoused. Luke 1, 27. Thirdly, the contract was then formally announced to the congregation on three successive Sundays to see if anyone in the local body had a lawful objection towards this relationship proceeding maybe four months, six months, maybe 10 months later into marriage. If the congregation was silent after three weeks, Then the church was giving it silent approbation upon this marriage. Then number four came the actual public ceremony, the religious ceremony, which is very similar to what we do, marriage within the church, exchanging the vows and so on. Number five was feasting at the groom's house afterward. That's where the reception was held. And the father of the bride did not have to fork over thousands of dollars and spend a whole year saving every penny so he could afford to put on an expensive wedding and take people to an expensive reception and spend just thousands of dollars on the marriage of his daughter. involved in that process right now. Our last child is getting married in 77 days, so we're saving money. But in those days, there was just feasting at the groom's house. It was like a potluck. People would bring food, and questions and riddles that were entertainingly wholesome and intellectually stimulating were to be raised, says Gouge. And nothing that was risque was to be allowed. So they just had a fun time with wholesome entertainment. And then sixthly, the marriage was finally consummated through sexual intimacy. Now thirdly, principles for marriage. Principles for marriage. The Puritans said there are two major principles for marriage. The big one is the one we read to you, the Christ Church principle. And what they said here, And Goodge has 133 pages where he just walks through Ephesians 5 explaining what it means in terms of the basics of marriage. The husband and the wife must do the duty that is assigned to them in Ephesians 5, which is the greatest theology chapter on marriage in the whole Bible, in which the man is to play the role of Christ and the bride is to play the role of the church. And this is the guiding principle. This is the North Star, they called it, of your marriage that would guide you in all your behavior. And so what was the primary attitude of Jesus Christ to the church? It is that he loves the church so much that he gave himself for her. So what should be the main role of the husband to his wife? He should love his wife so much that he gives himself for her. How was he to love her? Well, the Puritans said in four ways, and they just walked through this passage. Verse 25, they are to love her first of all, absolutely. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her. Not 10%, not 50-50, 100%. Absolutely. It's a wonderful Puritan story, anecdotal, but true. where there was a pastor who saw that a young married couple in his church were doting on each other so much that it seemed a little bit over the top and the minister began to fear that this young man loved his or put his new wife above the Lord. So those were the days when pastors weren't afraid to approach their people when they were suspicious of things and just gently say to them, I'm concerned about you. So he did that, and the man was shaken up terribly. And those were the days when people were shaken up terribly that they didn't take it out against the minister, but they went home like Bereans and they checked the Bible to make sure it was true. So he went home and began to search the scriptures with this question and this burdensome prayer, Lord, am I somehow loving my wife more than Thee? Am I making an idol out of her? Am I loving her too much? and he was very troubled, and then he came across this verse, and gave himself for her. He thought, I haven't bled for her? I haven't died for her? I actually don't love her enough. So he came back to the pastor and he said, look here pastor, Ephesians 5.25, I haven't died for my wife, I haven't shed any blood for her, I'm afraid I don't love her enough. The pastor looked at the verse, and those were the days when actually pastors were willing to change their mind from the scriptures. And he says, brother, you're right, go home and love your wife. You see, you're to love your wife, absolutely. Secondly, you're to love your wife purposely, verse 26, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with a washing of water by the word. This is your purpose in marrying your wife. So that you can stand, the Puritans would say, on the day of judgment and your wife can look at you and say, that man at my side, because I married him, I was more sanctified and lived a more godly life than if I would not have been married to him. He sanctified me with the washing of water by the word. He was my spiritual leader. He brought me the word every day. He helped me on my journey to the celestial city so that my life was more godly, more sanctified because of this man. How many men here married your wife because you wanted to sanctify her by the washing of water and the word? This was your main reason for marrying her. to cleanse her by the word. So we can believe, we can belong to very conservative, reformed, biblical churches and still not even realize the purpose of marriage. The Puritan said purposely, this is why you get married. Because you have the burden for this woman that you've come to love, that you want her to walk with the Lord and you want to contribute to that walk with the Lord through being married to her, to be her spiritual leader. Three, you're to love your wife realistically. Notice verse 27, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. In other words, the husband's to realize, just like he's a sinner, his wife is also a sinner. She's got spots and wrinkles. He's to love her realistically. He's not to expect perfection out of her. but he's to help her along the way with those spots and wrinkles. And then, we're to love our wives fourthly, sacrificially. Look at verse 28, 29. Men, if you get something in your eye that's very painful, what do you do? You don't say to your eye, I'm pretty busy right now, I think I'll wait to deal with you till tomorrow. No, you go to the mirror, you do something, you try to get it out. It takes first priority business. Your wives are tender, and rightly so. That's their beauty and their strength. And when they're hurt, they need attention right now. You're to love your wife sacrificially as you love your own body. So there you have it. These are your four duties, the Puritans would say. As simple as that. You're to love your wife as Christ loves the church. Absolutely, purposely, realistically, sacrificially. Now, you wives, you're to show respect and submission to your husband as the church shows to Jesus Christ. So you think about the church's attitude to Christ. That's your attitude that you're to model to your husband. You're not to resent it that he's the head of your home. It doesn't mean he's above you in any way that you're some inferior being. Submission is a bad word. Submission is actually a good word. Verse 20 says that both husband and wife are to submit to the God and Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in all things. Our whole lives are to be a life of submission to God, which is a beautiful thing because He's our Creator, He's our Lord. So in the Puritan mind you see all of life is structured according to the concept of authority, of leadership and submission. Ultimate authority, God. Draw a line down. He gives all authority into the hands of His Son in heaven and earth, Jesus Christ. Draw a line down. Spirit slash Word. Jesus Christ gives authority into the hands of the Holy Spirit to exercise authority and guidance in all of life, every area of life through the Word which He inspires. And then you draw a line down and you break it up into about seven sections. Husband has leadership over wife. Husband and wife slash have leadership over children. Employer over employee. Government over citizens. Church leaders over church members. School teachers over students. This is the way all of life is structured and you've got to figure out where you belong on that chart. It doesn't mean you're inferior or superior. It's just the way that God would have you function. God made man and woman differently. He made man to be the leader. That's not a more coveted position. Actually, men die on an average seven years younger than women. Could it be because they have so much responsibility on their shoulders? I mean, it's not something to say, oh wow, I'm so jealous of men because they get to be the heads of everything. Actually, headship is a heavy responsibility and so is submission and God knows that through our fall everything got mixed up and the two areas where men and women tend to do poorly at are just those two areas so men tend not to love their wives as they should so God says love your wife women tend not to be submissive by nature so God says be submissive this is not Something to quibble about. This is not something to be upset about. This is not something to reject. This is something to embrace and to say, this is the way God says a marriage should function and functions best. Now in the Puritan mind, it doesn't mean that the wife can't express her opinion. It doesn't mean that the man should, 99% of the time, get his wife's agreement and they together decide to do a course of action. It just means that when the rubber hits the road, there's a head in the home who calls the final shot when there happens to be disagreement over a certain issue. And a wise husband sometimes says, all right, this is not a sin issue. I feel we should go this way. My wife feels we should go that way. But as the head of the home, I make the final decision, she's given it over to me, I'll go her way. And a wife who has a loving husband, you see, knows the sweetness of submission to him. This is the Puritan concept of the exercising of authority. And the goal in the marriage, the Puritans said, in following the Christ Church principle, is that the husband would not look at his wife and say, how are you treating me? That's none of your business, man. Your business is to love your wife as Christ loved the church. And the wife's business is not to look at her husband and say, is he loving me? Is he doing this? Is he doing... No, no. That's his business. Your business is to show respect and submission. Pretty simple. You see, we complicate it when we start looking over the fence at each other's duties and saying, my wife isn't treating me right. I deserve something better. No, no, no, the Puritans would say. No, you don't deserve anything better. You deserve hell and death because you're a sinner. And anything above ground is the mercy of the Lord. So you better start appreciating your wife and your husband. So this idea of rights, and I deserve more, is hogwash in the Puritan mind. And that's why they're such grateful people, because they realize that they don't deserve anything better. Thankful people are thankful because genuine thankfulness grows in the soil of humility. You remember what you deserve, and you're grateful for whatever you receive above that. And so, Gouds says something like this, I don't have the quote directly in front of me, but he says something like this. Women, you can have a husband who's as mean as the son of Belial, and he becomes ugly to you, and he's rude, and he's just obnoxious, but you're to love, show respect to him and submission as if he's the fairest prince designed by God peculiarly for you. because it's not your business how he treats you. It's your business how you treat him. And then he says to men, you can have a wife who's become homely and deformed, even physically, and just is like a dripping roof, like Proverbs talks about, just a nag and obnoxious and just a miserable woman. You're to treat her like she's the fairest queen in all the world because God has given her to you. And you're to love her the way Christ loves the church. I've been a pastor for 40 years, counseled many marital couples. I've never in 40 years had to counsel any couple on any major issue of their marriage who are following this advice. Every single couple that I can recall I've ever had to engage in marital counsel because their marriage was in trouble. were doing the pointing finger game. They could tell you right away all the faults of their spouse, almost every time. But they thought they themselves were pretty good spouses, most of the time. You see, this is the way a marriage gets destroyed, that my spouse is the problem and not me. Well, that's the Christ Church principle. Then there's the Covenantal principle, which is in Malachi 2.14. And what the Puritans meant by this was that every proper marriage since the first was founded on a covenant to which the free and voluntary consent of both parties is necessary. Since time began, no man and no woman has ever been allowed to fix the terms upon which they would agree to be husband and wife. God has established all the rules for marriage in the word when he solemnized the first one and he's made no changes in them since then. So the covenant of marriage is a promise to obey those rules without conditions and without reservations. Jerry Packer put it this way, The Puritans' concept of marriage was informed entirely by the Bible. They went to Genesis for its institution, to Ephesians for its full meaning, to Leviticus for its hygiene, to Proverbs for its management, to several New Testament books for its ethic, and to Esther, Ruth, and the Song of Solomon for illustrations and exhibitions of the ideal marriage. It's a covenant. You both agree to do what the Bible says you're to do. in marriage and you live intentionally that way and ask for forgiveness from each other when you fail. That's what happens in a good marriage. Now what about duties or practices? That's my last point. I told you already it's divided into three groups. Mutual duties, spiritual, mutual duties, husband's duties, wife's duties. Let me be quick here. Mutual duties is ultimately the duty of love, whether it's submissive love, whether it's active love. Gouge writes, a loving mutual affection must pass betwixt the husband and the wife or else no duty will be well performed for this is the ground of all the rest. And the Puritan said, the mutual duty of love must be exercised in three ways. First of all, it must be spiritual love. You must build your marriage on Jesus Christ. You must read the scriptures together, sing psalms together, observe the Sabbath together, partake of sacraments together, pray together for each other, with each other. Love that is built on physical appearance or human gifts rests on a sandy foundation, said William Whateley in his Puritan book on marriage, and can be easily blown down by any serious storm. But spiritual love that looks upon God and rests upon his will and yields to his commandment resolves to obey them cannot change itself because the cause thereof is unchangeable. Spiritual love. Secondly, marital love must be superlative love. And by that the Puritans meant you must love your spouse more than you love anyone else in the world. Yes, you must give your parents time. Yes, you must respect them. Yes, you must give your children time. But your primary relationship in this world is with your spouse. William Waitley again, marriage love admits of no equal, but places the yoke fellow next of all to the soul of the party doing the loving. It will know none dearer, yea, none so dear as one's spouse. And your spouse must feel that, and your children must feel that. And when your children feel that, they actually will be grateful for it. It will give them a sense of security. My mom, my dad really love one another. And in a happy, healthy home, I believe that is shown. It's shown in words, it's shown in all kinds of nuances and interactions. It's healthy when children, within reason of course, see their parents showing affection to one another. So that the kids know, my mom and my dad love each other like crazy. And particularly in our world, that becomes even more important with so much marital breakdown. I remember when one of our daughters came home from school in first grade, she found a picture at school of two swans, beautiful white swans, and they had their beaks together, kissing each other. She came home and she said, here's you and dad, mom. And she said it with love, because The kids see the affection, they feel the affection in the home and that gives them so much help, so much security. So those moms especially who say, I'm going to put the kids first and kind of leave the husband in the outer circle and the family becomes mom and the kids and the man then buries himself all the more in his work, that's not a healthy home. The kids must understand, yes, they're important. Yes, the father and the mother will give them lots of love, lots of training, but the main relationship is the husband-wife relationship. You model for them how they should be husband and wives one day when you do so. And then thirdly, marital love must also be sexual love. There must be joy and exuberance. In fact, the Puritans were the first group of church fathers who spoke about the joy and exuberance of sex within marriage. Ancient church had a negative view. Augustine said, well, to have children, you need to have it, but there's sin even in it, within marriage. No, no, no, said the Puritans. William Perkins said, it's a debt you owe to one another. Due benevolence, he called it. Husband and wife owe this to one another. In fact, the Puritan said, your own body doesn't belong to you when you're married. Your body belongs to your spouse. And you're to give your body regularly to the other in the marriage bed to a right and lawful use to show a singular and entire affection one towards another. And they call this the preservation of the body in cleanness, not in uncleanness. So that you would glorify God in physical intimacy within marriage as a type of the intimacy between Christ and the church. And so the Puritans were romantics within marriage. And they celebrated romance. And it's interesting because we have a number of letters of Puritan ministers who would travel, leave their wives at home with the children on different preaching itineraries. They would write letters home. Often they would do it in the third person, which is really strange, but anyway, that's what they would do. So I want you to become, you women, you are now Mrs. Thomas Hooker. Thomas Hooker was a famous New England Puritan preacher. and your husband's gone, and you just got this letter in the mail, you were having your morning coffee, and the mailman came, and you sat back, and, ah, another letter from my husband, my dear, dear husband. You sat down, you're sipping your coffee, and this is what you read. The man whose heart, the man is, of course, Thomas Hooker himself, whose heart is endeared to the woman he loves, which is you, He dreams of her in the night. He has her in his eye in apprehension when he awakes in the morning, even when he's gone from home. He muses on her as he sits at table. He walks with her when he travels, and he parlays with her, that's flirts with her, in each place where he comes. This is all what's going on in his mind. Then he adds this, When he's gone, she lies in his bosom, and his heart trusts in her, which forces all within him to confess that the stream of his affection, like a mighty current, runs with full tide and strength to her." Now, you weren't worded exactly that way today. But to the Puritan mind, you see, this was very romantic. I think Mrs. Hooker would be very pleased to receive this letter from her husband far away. Now, the husband's duties in particular, there was a focus on delighting in your wife, even to the point of doting on her, showing her affection, showing her that you care, and doubly so in sickness, said the Puritans, or when she's pregnant, giving her special delight, special love in times of need. And a husband must accept the functions that his wife performs, and he must regard her as his heart, the Puritan said. Matthew Henry put it this way, it's a famous statement, you've probably read it on Hallmark cards or something, but actually it comes from the Puritan, Matthew Henry. He said, a husband's duties best when he said, the woman is not made out of the man's head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him. And the wife's duties, in addition to showing submission and reverence, contain many unique responsibilities. It's a wife's business, said Henry Smith, to be a kind of woman physician to her husband. Now we men don't want our wives to treat us like as if they're our mothers, but when we're pretty sick, we don't mind a little mothering from our wives, I'm afraid. And so Smith is picking up on that. Men need their wives to care for them and their physical needs. They have a better wherewithal about that than we do. And she should be content with her husband's work, social standing, financial status. She should manage the affairs of the household effectively. She should help her husband establish Christ's glorious kingdom in their house. She should be thrifty without being miserly. consistently persevering and completing her duties, handling herself with sobriety, mildness, courtesy, obeisance, and modesty as the Bible commands. Well, there you have it. This is the Puritan view of marriage. I conclude by this statement of Thomas Gattaker who wrote a book on marriage. He said, there's no society more near, more entire, more needful, more kindly, more delightful, more comfortable, more constant, more continual than the society of man and his wife, the main root and source and original of all other societies. So that's how the Puritans viewed it. Marriage is the foundational society, the first society established, Genesis 2. Out of that comes the family, out of that comes the church, out of that comes the work society, out of that comes the national society, out of that comes the international society. Everything boils back down to nations. and churches having good marriages that honor and glorify God, and that's the best society of all. And yet, Gettiger then goes on to say, even in that best society of all, that society doesn't end in itself, but it ends in Jesus Christ. because that society is destined for eternity. And therefore, Gettiger says, the beauty of marriage is that having lived together for a time, a short time, as co-partners in grace here, we may reign together forever as co-heirs in glory hereafter. That's the goal. Be married to Christ personally. and then be married to a God-fearing spouse with whom you can be co-partners in grace here and be traveling to that great eternity where in Christ you will become co-heirs in glory hereafter. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, we thank Thee so much for the Puritan view of marriage, so biblically grounded. We pray that we may learn from them, that we may intentionally live along these covenantal and Christ Church lines and duties and principles, and that we may seek by grace to follow them and to be grateful for our spouses, so that both spouses in a marriage can say, I have received so much better in my spouse than I deserve. Lord, we thank Thee above all for the perfect husband, the Lord Jesus Christ, and we pray that one day every married couple in this audience may be co-heirs in glory looking to Jesus in that heavenly eternal family which shall never be dissolved. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.