Our scripture reading and the text for the sermon is Ezra chapter 10. Ezra chapter 10. In order to understand this chapter, we need to have a bit of historical background to this book. The book of Ezra is a historical account of the captives who returned from Babylon after some 70 years. And the theme for this book really is found in chapter 1 in this amazing record in chapter 1, the very first verses of the chapter in Ezra 1. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the lord by the mouth of jeremiah might be fulfilled the lord stirred up the spirit of cyrus king of persia that he made a proclamation throughout all the kingdom and put it also in writing saying thus seth cyrus king of persia the lord god of heaven have given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has charged me to build him and house at jerusalem which is in Judea. Amazing proclamation by an unbelieving king that God used to set the captives free. As the king goes on in this proclamation, anybody who's interested in building the temple should go back to Jerusalem and begin this work. He provided them money and supported the cause And so the people went back to Jerusalem and began to build the temple. And the building of the temple was really a picture, because the temple is a picture of the church. And by that I don't mean the church building, but I mean the church itself. the people of the church and it's a picture of reformation of church reformation bringing the church back to what it should be according to the scriptures so the the captives did that they built the temple it took them many years they went through many obstacles opposition from many different places but eventually it's built and they can settle down in the land. About 60 years later, Ezra comes on the scene, the one after whom the book is named, and he has now been appointed by the king to be ruler in the land, and he has come as a scribe, as a teacher, to instruct the people in the law of God, and he discovers that things are not good. There are many things that people have departed on, and one of them is that they have given They've taken to themselves women of the land, non-Israelites, heathen women, and brought them into their homes and were living with them in their homes either as wives or concubines or simply in a relationship of fornication. But they are living with these women. And it's in that context that we read chapter 10 of Ezra. Let's read that together. Now when Ezra had prayed and had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there assembled unto him out of Israel a great congregation of men and women and children. For the people wept sore. And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God and have taken strange wives of the people of the land. Yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Now therefore, let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my Lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God, and let it be done according to the law. Arise, for this matter belongeth unto thee. We also will be with thee. Be of good courage. and do it. Then arose Ezra and made the chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel to swear that they should do according to this word. And they swear. Then Ezra rose up from before the house of God and went into the chamber of Johanan, the son of Elishaib. And when he came thither, he did eat no bread nor drink water, for he mourned because of the transgression of them that had been carried away. And they made proclamation throughout Judah and Jerusalem unto all the children of the captivity that they should gather themselves together unto Jerusalem. That whosoever would not come within three days according to the counsel of the princes and the elders, all his substance should be forfeited and himself separated from the congregation of those that had been carried away. Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves together unto Jerusalem within three days. And it was the ninth month on the twentieth day of the month. And all the people sat in the street of the house of God, trembling because of this matter and for the great rain. And Ezra the priest stood up and said unto them, Ye have transgressed and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel. Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers, and do his pleasure, and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives. Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, as thou hast said, so must we do. But the people are many, And it is a time of much rain, and we are not able to stand without, neither is this a work of one day or two, for we are many that have transgressed in this thing. Let now our rulers of all the congregations stand, and let all them which have taken strange wives in our cities come at appointed times, and with them the elders of every city, and the judges thereof, until the fierce wrath of our God for this matter be turned from us. Only Jonathan, the son of Asahel, and Jehaziah, the son of Tikva, were employed about this matter. And Meshulam and Shabbatai, the Levite, helped them. And the children of the captivity did so. And Ezra the priest, with certain chief of the fathers, after the house of their fathers, And all of them by their names were separated and sat down in the first day of the tenth month to examine the matter. And they made an end with all the men that had taken strange wives by the first day of the first month. And among the sons of the priests there were found that had taken strange wives, namely of the sons of Jeshua, the son of Josedek, and his brethren, Maasaiah, and Eleazar, and Jareb, and Gedaliah. And they gave their hands that they would put away their wives, and being guilty, they offered a ram of the flock for their trespass." Now we have the names of some of the descendants of these priests. And if you will go next to verse 23, we see, and also of the Levites, and names of the Levites are given there. Verse 24, of the singers also, those appointed to sing in the worship services at the temple. And then of the porters, those who would care for the building and the furniture of the temple. And verse 25, moreover of Israel, in a long list of names which we will not read. And finally, verse 44, the last verse of the chapter, all these had taken strange wives, and some of them had wives by whom they had children. So far we read God's holy word, and there we end the text for the sermon. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, this chapter is part of a book that has as its theme the building of the house of God, as we pointed out. And the house of God was under extreme attack. It wasn't the attack that you might recognize immediately. It wasn't like Nebuchadnezzar coming with his armies and pulling down the walls of Jerusalem and destroying the temple so that there was no building left for them to worship at. It wasn't an attack such as the Jews had faced earlier when the nations around them opposed the building, tried to prevent them from building the temple. It wasn't that kind of attack. In fact, many people in Israel didn't even recognize that it was an attack on the house of God. Amazingly, it's the Israelites themselves, the Jews, who were the instruments of attack on the house of God. Satan is behind this, seeking to corrupt the Church of the Old Testament in this day and bring God's wrath upon the Church. This is something that Satan used many times in the history of the Church, to attack the Church, bringing ungodly people into the Church, corrupting the Church, polluting the worship of the Church, and thereby bringing God's wrath upon the people of the church. It is noteworthy that when Satan seeks to introduce godless living and bring unbelievers into the church, this is an attack on the house of God, on God's own church. Ezra recognized the attack, recognized the danger. When Ezra heard that the people had been marrying heathen wives, taking women into their homes from the heathen around them, His response to that was astounding. He grabbed a hold of his hair and he began to rip out pieces of his hair. And he grabbed a hold of his beard and began to pull out the hair off from his face. And he took his outer cloak and ripped it. And took his inner garment and ripped that. And he sat down, astonished, staring. in front of the temple of God. He understood the seriousness of this. Chapter 9 is a confession of sin wherein he reminds the people by this prayer and confesses the sins of the people that this is exactly what Israel had done in the past. And God had brought them into captivity for associating with the heathen and living like the heathen. And now they had gone back and done the same thing all over again. This was a very serious matter. Those who had returned from captivity were in danger of losing the house of God and everything that God had restored to them once again. It was that serious a matter. And therefore, because the sin was that serious, it would call for a solution, a remedy, which was extremely hard. And that is God's word to us tonight. We consider these verses under the theme, putting away the strange wives. We'll notice in the first place, the danger of strange wives. Secondly, the hard remedy. And finally, the abiding lesson. The danger of strange wives, the unbiblical marriages that Israel had engaged in, And perhaps even we could broaden it, we need to broaden it, and say that it isn't merely marriages, but the unbiblical sexual activity of these people was grievous in the sight of God. Understand that the word take to themselves, when this speaks of lives, is not the ordinary word for marriage in the Old Testament. And the word for putting away in the chapter, as it's found only once, is not the ordinary word for divorce, for putting away. They were taking women. Some of them were marrying them. Some of them were simply living with them. But it was a grievous situation. They were disobeying the command of God from every perspective. Before Israel even entered into the land of Canaan, God warned them, you're going into a land that is polluted with the abominations of the heathen. Do not associate with them. Do not marry them especially. Do not bring them into your homes. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons because they are idolaters and they will corrupt you as a nation. Prostitution is associated with their idolatry and even taking children and burning children to the idols that they worshipped. This is what was found in the land of Canaan. But Israel did not listen to the commandments, to the strong warnings that God gave them before they went into the land. They intermingled with the people. and began to marry their beautiful women of Canaan. And now, after being thrust out of the land, the captives have returned to the same sin. Even the priests were marrying, were taking these women into their homes. Priests who were to be holy unto the Lord, who before they would go to work had to wash their hands and feet to symbolize the fact that they had to be holy, sanctified unto the Lord. And the Levites who assisted them, who had to be holy unto the Lord as well. And the chief offenders were the princes. Those are the elders. The elders of the congregation of the church in the Old Testament were guilty of bringing these women into their homes. It's astounding. And this is why Ezra is so shocked. He confessed the sin. And the people gathered more and more to the temple, weeping because of the grief that this was in Israel once again. You understand that this is an attack that Satan uses and the same sins today are found in the church and are grievous offenses against God. Paul had to warn the church in his day of the same thing when he wrote to the Corinthians, there were those in Corinth who still were committing fornication. Some of them even with prostitutes. So he has to warn them in 1 Corinthians that this was a grievous sin that they were committing. In 1 Corinthians 6, verse 15, No ye not, he says, that your bodies are the members of Christ. He'll go on to say, your bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. They're temples to be kept holy. And then he says, shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of an harlot? God forbid. And he goes on to show the seriousness of it as it's connected to marriage. What know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh. And Paul was not saying that if you would commit fornication, you are now married. But he's saying, look what you're doing to marriage. The most intimate love that is found in the earth is in marriage. And you're using that in fornication with a harlot and perverting marriage and the beautiful love that is found in marriage. Not only that, but marrying unbelievers as the Israelites were doing is something Paul had to warn the church in his day against. Again to the Corinthians he said, do not be unequally yoked together with an unbeliever. And surely marriage is being yoked together. In chapter 7 he has to tell them, if you will marry, Marry only in the Lord. Only a Christian is the only one you may think about marrying as a believer. There are unbiblical relationships that Paul had to warn against. Fornication, marrying an unbeliever, and He had to warn against the sin of unbiblical marriages after a divorce. Jesus had already warned about that in Mark chapter 10. Jesus said to them, Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her. Adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband and be married to another, she committeth adultery. Paul explains that further to the Romans in chapter 7 verse 3. So then, says Paul, if then while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband be dead, she is freed from that law. But so long as her husband is alive and she marries someone else and remains in that marriage, she shall be called an adulteress. This is a threat, this sin, these sins of unbiblical sexual relationships and unbiblical marriages have been a threat that have led historically to the corrupting of the church. The Old Testament examples can be multiplied of how this happened in the church. Think of Israel in bondage in Egypt. And some of the Egyptians saw the beautiful Jewish girls and desired to have them as wives. And perhaps these Jewish girls and maybe their parents thought that wouldn't be so bad. Maybe we can escape some of the rigors of bondage here as slaves. So they went ahead, gave their daughters to be married to unbelieving Egyptians. But when Israel went out of the land of Egypt, some of these unbelieving Egyptians went with them. While Moses is up in the mount receiving the law of God from God Himself. You children know what was happening. They made a golden calf. They were dancing naked around that calf, drunken and naked. Why a golden calf? Because that was one of the main gods of the Egyptians. Those unbelieving Egyptians led Israel into the grievous sin of making a golden calf and worshipping it. Or think of the time when Balak, king of Moab, tried to get Balaam to curse Israel and he couldn't do it. But then Balaam had another plan. And that plan was, send your beautiful women in among the Israelites, cause them to commit fornication, and you will bring God's wrath upon Israel. And it worked. God sent a plague among Israel because of the sins of Israel in response to the young women of Moab. But the most grievous and the saddest example of all is Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived on the earth save our Lord Jesus himself. We read in 1 Kings 11, but King Solomon loved many strange women. Together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, ye shall not go in unto them, neither shall they come in unto you. They will turn your hearts away after other gods. Solomon claimed to them 700 concubines, 300 wives. And it came to pass, we read, when Solomon was old that his wives turned away his heart after other gods. Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, he wrote books of the Bible. And these women turned his heart to serve the gods of the heathen, turned his heart from Jehovah God. Not completely, of course, not that he became an unbeliever, but he walked in grievous sin. This is the threat. The threat is alive and well in our day and for the church. right here today. There are men, and I'm not accusing any men here, but the reality is there are men sitting in Protestant Reformed churches in the pews who have thousands of strange women in their homes. It's called the Internet. It's pornography. And they have thousands of women that they lust after. But before we feel too self-satisfied that we do not have that, how many of us will pay a cable company to bring strange women into our own living rooms? Wicked women, parading around in their movies and television programs that have no business being in our homes. And fathers will allow their sons and their daughters to be exposed to the wickedness of this world. It's not surprising then that some of those sons and daughters of the covenant will lust after that kind of lifestyle and that kind of young man or young woman and pursue those who have only external beauty. and have no internal love or beauty at all. And they get married. And fathers give their children into such relationships. And they become part of the church, even though they do not have any love for the truth, any love for God. And now we have fathers in the home that have children in church. have very, very weak homes at best. This is a threat to the covenant, to the covenant of God, because of the families that come out of this. Fathers, they're the head of the home. They are the ones who set the rules, not only, but the spiritual climate is determined by the father. The children will imitate him. But a father that's an unbeliever who has no interest in the truth, obviously, does not lead his family in devotions, does not see to it that his children learn their catechism, has no interest in reading the Standard Bearer, the Beacon Lights, or any spiritual thing, or to go into any society, has no interest in that whatsoever. And that's the climate of the home. For an unbelieving wife, they raise the children, the mothers in the home. Nehemiah chapter 13 records exactly what happens when wives are brought into the church that do not love God, do not know God. We read in Nehemiah 13.23, In those days also I saw Jews that had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon and of Moab, and their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews' language, but according to the language of each people. children in Israel who did not know the Jewish language. You could say the name Jehovah to them and it wouldn't mean anything. You could describe to them the God that created the heavens and the earth. They wouldn't even understand the language you were using. That's what happens. Children that are brought up in the covenant, children who are brought up in Reformed churches that have no idea of the language of the Reformed faith, justification and sovereignty and irresistible grace. It means nothing to them. They don't understand it. The result is the covenant is profaned. The seed are not instructed. Children grow up and they do not know the truth. You understand that's not merely a sad thing that they don't understand, they don't know the truth anymore, they can't give a good confession of faith. But if you do not know the truth, you do not know God. You do not know Jesus Christ if you do not know the truth. That's how serious it is. Children growing up in the church that do not know God. It's also true when this threat is also a part of a church that allows unbiblical divorce and allows remarriage. Because if you open the door to any form of divorce and remarriage, you encourage everybody in the congregation who's not very happy at the moment with the marriage Well, get a divorce then. If we would open that up, I shudder to think how many marriages we would see that are struggling. Pastors know some of them, but there are many more. And in any given marriage, at any particular time, we can come to the point and say, I think I could get out of this. But few things destroy a covenant home and the instruction of children as divorce. One of them leaves and lives in unbelief. Now the children are required to go to him or to her and the unbelieving spouse pumps them as full as he can of the world and the ungodliness and a hatred of God and of his church. That's why God hates divorce. That's what he says in Malachi chapter 2. The Lord hath been witness, Malachi 2.14, between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously. Yet she is thy companion and the wife of thy covenant. And did he not make one? And why one? Why did he make husband and wife to be one that he might seek? a godly seed. It's the children that he's concerned about. And divorce destroys that, that unity, that instruction of covenant children and bringing them up in the fear of the Lord. This is the seriousness of it. God gathers His church in the line of continued generations. Building the church, that's what Ezra is all about. Building the church is something you do in your home when you teach them catechism, when you send them to the Christian school, when you instruct them in your own home. As you are instructing them, you are building the church. That's what you're doing. But you destroy that home. You bring corruption into that home. You bring unbelieving spouse into that home. and you do tremendous damage to the covenant seed. That's what concerned Ezra and the people that gathered around him. Even those who had not taken any strange women into their homes, they came to the temple weeping, weeping because the wrath of God was upon them, weeping because of their own children, what they would face. For the cause of God, for His church, for His covenant, they wept. That serious sin, therefore, all these serious sins, called for a very hard remedy. And that remedy was, put away the strange wives and put away the children that are born of them. This was the council of Shekinah. We don't know anything really about Shekinah, so I can't tell you anything about the man. He was apparently a leader in Israel. And he first made a confession of sin. In verse 2, we have trespassed against our God. Literally, we have been faithless against our God and have taken strange wives or women of the people of the land. Yet now he says, there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. There is a little bit of hope. The wrath of God is upon us, but it hasn't destroyed us yet. If we will confess our sins, if we will turn from this, if we will do what God demands of us, there is hope. There is hope. And so we advised Ezra as the God, as the king appointed ruler now of the land in verse three, now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives and such as are born of them according to the counsel of my Lord and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God and let it be done according to the law. Be of good courage, he says, do it. Do it. You have the authority to make this go forward. And so they did. They called together every single man of the whole nation. Thousands of men under penalty of excommunication if they would refuse to come to Jerusalem. And when the people came together, He told them what they had to do. This is what you must do. You must swear before God, vow before God, to put away the strange women, to put away the children that are born of them out of your houses. And the people agreed in verse 12. Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, as thou hast said, so must we do. It couldn't be done in a day or two. It took a couple of months to go through one family after another, after another, and the witness of the judges of each city, the rulers of each city, and finally two months later they finished the work. Making an end to it, says the Scriptures. Obviously, there were women to be sent away. There were children to be sent away. There was support that had to be given for those women and their children in particular. A hard remedy. There are principles that apply to us. And first of all, the first thing that we need to say here is not that we are here getting a new ground for divorce. It's not that. Again, as I pointed out, marriage isn't the word used here, and God is not saying, well, if you married an unbeliever, then you have a right to divorce her. That's not the message that He is giving us here. We'll talk about that more later. But certainly there are things that apply to us, and first of all, It indicates that repentance demands forsaking sin. Repentance demands that we break it off, that we put it far away from us. If we do not take that sin and put it far away from us, it will continue to be a snare. We cannot hope that we will now be able to live in the presence of that sin and still fight against it and go on obeying God. It will not happen. It will drag us back. Repentance means that we make a break, a complete break from the sin. Secondly, anything that leads to sin in our lives must be put out of it. Jesus said the same thing in a way that is so striking. In Matthew 5, 29 and 30, Jesus said this, And if thy right eye offend thee, that is, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and that not thy whole body should be cast into hell. And now we're thinking, really? Take my eye out and throw it away? And if we think he's not serious, then he says, and if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee for the same reason. Now, when you examine that, you think there are two things here that Jesus has just referred to that are probably the two most important things we have on our bodies, our eyes. We need our eyes to be able to see, to be able to function, to be able to gather information. And we need our hands, because this is how we do everything, with our hands. When Jesus word to us then, It does not matter how important this thing is to you. If it's causing you to sin, get it out of your life. Get it out of your life. You must. It will be a snare. No matter how painful it may be, We must be willing to do what is necessary to root sin out of our lives and to root sin out of the congregation, as Ezra was doing here in this chapter. God calls us to antithetical living. That's another message from this chapter, antithetical living. And that's something very hard for us, because we have a flesh that loves sin. It doesn't matter what the world puts out there, there's a part of our flesh that is attracted to that. And therefore, it's a desirable thing for our flesh now that we walk as close to the line of the world as we possibly can, without being consumed by it, we hope, but sometimes stepping over the line, because after all, we enjoy, our flesh enjoys some of the life of the world. This passage is showing us that will not work. You must not walk as close as you can to the world, but you must rather get as far away from the world as you can. Put that ungodly person out of your life. There's no room for that. You cannot live in the same home with an unbeliever and walk as a child of God. That cannot happen. You may not be unequally yoked together with an unbeliever. But that brings up a very difficult question. Do you put away a wife for that? For the sake of being obedient to God, as we just outlined here, that we repent and put away the thing that causes us to sin, live an antithetical life, could it possibly mean that we would actually put away a wife, send away children? in order to be obedient to God? And the answer of the text is yes. Under certain circumstances, yes. Especially, of course, in this passage when they were not legitimate marriages. They were not legitimate. But the important thing is that we are willing to do what is necessary to be obedient to God, no matter how hard, no matter how painful that may be. That's true of all our relationships in life. Jesus said something else that is astounding and something difficult to understand when He said, Whosoever does not hate father and mother, brother and sister, husband or wife, is not worthy of me. What does that mean? All the children here know that we are supposed to love our father and mother. That's the commandment. Honor thy father and thy mother means love them. Every husband here knows, the Bible says repeatedly, love your wife. Every wife here knows, the Bible says, love your husband. And yet Jesus says, whosoever does not hate father, mother, brother, sister, husband or wife, is not worthy of me." What does that mean? He doesn't mean, well, you have to love them less than you love me. But this is the kind of hatred referred to in Psalm 139. Do I not hate them that hate thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred. We're talking about a father or mother who is seeking to lead us into sin. a father or mother that hates God and has made that abundantly obvious and is trying to lead us as His children into abominable activity. We're talking about brother or sister that has turned against God and therefore hates Him and is seeking to draw us away, or even a husband or wife. And that's a very difficult thing because there's a part of us that still has to love them and say, I could wish that they would be turned from their iniquity, but so long as they manifest their hatred of God, we must hate them. And the same thing is true, the same painful reality is found with an unbiblical marriage, with someone who is divorced and then married again. This is the Bible's position. They are living in adultery. The only way to escape the adultery is to end the marriage. And that's hard. And that's painful. And I've dealt with that as a pastor. I know the pain. And somebody may come and say, really? You think the Bible demands of me that I leave this husband of many years? What about the children here? This is too hard. God would not require of me that I would send that man out of my house. But you see, Ezra 10 says God does require that sometimes. He does. Painful though that may be, God does require even that sometimes in our lives. A hard remedy. But for us, an abiding lesson. And the lesson is, first of all, live in obedience. That's what this chapter is all about, obeying God. Israel was disobeying God, going back on old commandments, turning them around and disregarding them. Especially as regards relationships, because that's particularly what's at the forefront here. They were having improper relationships with the heathen of this world, taking them into their homes, even marrying them. All our relationships, all our relationships. Now we have to be very introspective here and not point fingers around at the other people or at other church, other areas of the church. All my relationships, all your relationships must be pleasing to God. The question is not, do I have fun with this friend? The question is not whether this friend is popular, whether this friend can do something for me in the future. The only question is, does God approve of this relationship that I have with this person? Does God approve? If not, send them away. And especially in marriage, because marriage is the most important relationship we have in this life. It's the most important relationship because it is a picture of Christ and His church. And when a believer takes an unbelieving woman and takes her into his home and marries her, what he's doing is perverting the picture of Christ, who died for His church, who couldn't live with this polluted bride unless he would purchase her with his own blood and sanctify her by his blood and spirit. Only then can he live with her. And we're perverting that. Or when a believing woman takes an unbelieving man to be her husband, she is perverting the picture and it's like the church turning away from Christ and turning to other lovers in this world and worshiping them instead of Jesus Christ. It's a perverting of the very beautiful picture of Christ and His church. It's the most important relationship, practically speaking, because it's the single most important decision that anyone here will ever make. Whom you marry will determine who your friends are, what your home is like, where you will go to church, everything. Whom you marry will set the course of your life to the end. and the importance for the church and covenant. Those who marry unbelievers bring them into the church, weaken the church, will bring those who do not delight in the truth or in a proper worship of God, and eventually will worship idols. If they become dominant, if they take over the church, The church turns into, the worship service turns into idolatry, not the worship of Jehovah God. We must not think, oh, not in Byron Center PRC. It can happen in any church. If the covenant, if the unbelievers marry into the church the covenant seed, is affected tremendously. Will your children be trained in the truth? Will they know the truth and love it and be stalwart sons and daughters in the congregation? Or will they despise the truth, want nothing to do with it, and leave it as fast as they can? That's what we're talking about. It's the future. It's the children. That's why marriage is so vitally important for the Church of Jesus Christ. So it comes to us as parents that we heed the lesson that we never ever give our daughter to an unbiblical marriage. Never allow them to be in a relationship that is unbiblical. That we not allow our son to marry a woman that is an unbeliever. We may not. Husbands and wives, parents have to be involved in their children's selection. Not that we set the marriage, not that we determine who our children marry, but we instruct them. And we don't wait until they're about our height and they're about ready now to go out on their first date. But it starts when they're this tall. And we're telling them Bible stories such as Abraham sending his servant off to a faraway land to find a suitable wife for Isaac. Why? Weren't there any beautiful women in Canaan? Weren't there any women in Canaan who were rich and prosperous that would be a good match for Isaac? Weren't there any women in Canaan who were athletic and popular? That's not the question. There were no godly women in Canaan. Abraham had to make sure that Isaac married a God-fearing woman. You start instructing them when they're five so that when they're 15, there's no question about what kind of a husband, what kind of a wife they are seeking. And to us as covenant youth, we need to hear this. It starts with keeping ourselves pure from a sexual point of view. What we're watching, what we're listening to, what we're reading, what entertains us, not the world. Wrong standards, wrong in every point of view. And with dating it means that we start with an unbeliever, we wouldn't even think about dating an unbeliever, a Christian only. And if it's a Christian then obviously we want a reformed Christian. We want someone who will be one with us in the faith. Someone who is truly reformed or who wants to be reformed so that there can be unity in the church not only but unity in our own home. We want that. We seek that. The way of obedience is the way of blessing. Even if there is sin, yet there is hope in Israel. If there's a turning away from it, if there's doing what God demands of us, there is hope in Israel. There is a blessing, a home that is united in Jesus Christ. A home where father and mother are teaching the children the same thing, so that you don't have dad coming home from work and the children run up and say, dad, dad, mom said this. And he says, oh no. She's teaching them that. But rather, he can say, that's right. That's exactly what we believe. Because husband and wife are unified in the faith. and they're giving children the instruction that is consistent from both of them. That's the blessing of obedience to Ezra chapter 10. Let us heed the warning and let us do it for the sake of God's church and His covenant. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, Thou art faithful, and Thy ways are good always. We are the ones who confess our unfaithfulness, and we pray, Lord, that Thou will turn us, make us to be obedient, and bless us in the way of obedience to Thy commandments. Bless us especially as the youth-seeking godly spouses And bless us, especially in our marriages. Preserve us, O Lord, by Thy grace and Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Psalter number 27. We start out singing, O God, preserve me. And then we sing of our love for God's people. All the stanzas, number 27. Christ be the Lord, he looks above, in yonder round he lies, and as the Lord he saves me, though in his grace he lies. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.