Well, because you don't want to somehow affect his pride, right? See, we get older, we think we know what we're doing, and we're unwilling to listen. We don't have the humble heart of a child. Well, in marriage, sometimes we have to recognize we need to be like children again and just learn the ABCs of how we love one another. So there's always room for us, especially those of us who are married, to go over the same material again. But there's other reasons. The church makeup is quite different. A lot of you weren't even here five years ago. And so even though the church as a whole has gone through this material before in one way, many of you haven't heard it yet. So there's lots of reasons in the culture, in our church, in our local church, in our lives for us to look at the subject of marriage once again. Now I've given you a handout. That's kind of a rough outline of how we're going to look at everything. I'm also trying to write out the content of this in written form. so that it can be preserved in some kind of handbook. I don't know if I'll be able to keep that up so far so good. So don't be deceived by this. I'm not this orderly in my mind. Thoughts just kind of jumble around. I could just read you what I'm writing, but then I'm not really engaging you in the same way. So what we sacrifice in terms of the smoothness of the presentation and the preparation and how I'm going to say it, we sacrifice that so that we can have a little bit more engagement. And I personally think that that's a better way to approach it. So we're going to begin in this first section to look at what we call the nature and the purpose of marriage. Now this first section, of course, is what many would think of as more theoretical. We're not diving right into the nitty-gritty of interpersonal problems and difficulties and struggles and the how-to. We're taking a step back and we're looking simply at what is marriage. Now, although it's more formal, although it's more theoretical, remember that quite often the reason we're having trouble in our marriages is because we're kind of forgetting what marriage is. And one of the most basic things is the fact that in marriage, God has put you together. you're having trouble, you're having difficulty on whatever level, the first thing you need to do is say, wait a minute, God joined me to my spouse. Now I have a context to think through, how do I sort out my problems? And that context starts with God. So although this is more quote unquote theoretical, it really is the starting point for addressing how we can do better and be better honoring to God in marriage. Now when we talk about the nature of something, what are we describing? Just in general, if it's anything. If we're talking about the nature of a chair, the nature of a human, the nature of God, the nature of marriage, what kind of a question are we asking? What's another way to put it? Okay, what are the characteristics of it? We're just simply asking the question, what is it? Right? What is it? Before we can really speak intelligibly about anything and describe it in detail, and especially how it relates to something, because marriage deals with relationships, before we can understand how they relate, we need to understand what it is that's relating. So when we ask about the nature of marriage, we ask, what is it? What is it? Now, there was a time where you might think that that question was somewhat unnecessary. Doesn't everybody know what marriage is? Well, not at all today, right? In fact, you know, the question out there in the culture that's a pretty powerful one is, what is a woman? That's a tough one to answer for many. Well, what is marriage? Well, it's kind of whatever you want it to be. Well, when we talk about something's purpose, what are we saying? What are we asking? The nature of marriage is, what is it? What are we asking when we ask about the purpose? What's another way to simply put it in a question? Okay, why? Or if we're to keep on the what, we could say, what is it for? That's the purpose of something. So we begin by looking at that. that subject and looking at it in this way. So that's kind of our first lay of the land. And after that, we'll dive in. We'll look at the roles of men and women in marriage. We'll look at the differences between men and women biologically, emotionally, and their different outlooks and approaches to life. And of course, most fundamentally, there are the similarities between men and women. Because men and women, as much as they are different, they're more alike than they are different. We'll talk about communication in marriage, we'll talk about sex in marriage, resolving conflict in marriage, what it means to love one another in marriage. And then after we talk about marriage, we're going to talk about the family and children in the whole second section of the class. So we begin by just introducing ourselves to the subject and getting the lay of the land. And the reality is, right now, there are huge challenges to the very idea of marriage in the culture and in the church. I mean, when you really survey the land and the forces that are against a simple, basic institution like this, it's kind of overwhelming. There's challenges in two places. at least as I outline it here. There are challenges that, of course, appear in the culture. Marriage is not just for the church, it's for all mankind. And we have a lot of challenges that appear in the culture. And then, of course, there's challenges that come from within the church in terms of compromises that we have. So what are the challenges to marriage? Well, look at the political landscape we're in. There's all these discussions about colonial patriarchy, feminism, LGBTQ+, minus, divided sign, equal sign, whatever, an endless alphabet soup of sexual preferences. In all these areas that are hot button political issues, marriage is front and center in all of them. Marxism, this idea that all of life is to be viewed in terms of an imbalanced power structure between the powerful and the weak, that also is affecting the way marriage is seen. Racial politics, many view marriage as kind of the remnants of a colonial white supremacy, which perpetuates these injustices, men to women and race to race. Likewise, we could say in the culture there is a strand of religious fundamentalism. Worldwide, that's probably most strongly seen among Islam, where there is a kind of patriarchal, tyrannical view of marriage, in which women are not only subjugated to men in a tyrannical way in the family, but in society more broadly. There's lots of challenges here, aren't there? And marriage is front and center in all of these. Like, for example, let's just think of the whole idea of colonialism. One big criticism of the West today is that it's colonial. And in the colonial mindset, there is an imperialism. And the idea is that one culture comes and dominates another culture, changes that culture, violates the integrity of that culture. And of course, in the postmodern world, colonialism is a great evil because it essentially says one culture is a better model than another. And of course, we can't say that. Now, were there abuses to colonialism? Yes. However, it's a lot more nuanced than people like to admit. This simplistic idea that colonialism was all bad is just totally false. You have to be discerning, you have to pick out the good from the bad. But the reality is, although there were some abuses, colonial empires were among the most benign in many instances in world history. Not always. One great example of an abuse, of course, is genocide among South Americans when the Spanish came. And it is true the Spanish could be particularly brutal, at least the men who went there and did that. But it's interesting that many of those abuses, when they were discovered, they were rebuked by the Spanish monarchs and the church. Now, were they rebuked strongly enough? Probably not, right? Likewise, it's said that North and South American natives or indigenous peoples, if you're offended by the term native, that many of them suffered mass extinction. That was largely from disease. They were introduced to European diseases and no one had any idea that the diseases would happen. Now, there are plenty of other injustices, right? So we want to be humble about that and not have a slanted view of it. But the point here being marriage is seen to be the fruit of this colonial imperialism because in it, of course, in marriage, you have a man in authority. over his family, and that's the basic structure or root of that whole colonial thing. So if we're going to just deconstruct colonialism root and branch, we have to do it by redefining and basically getting rid of marriage. Now we can do this in all other kinds of ways, because it's not just In terms of the colonial idea more generally, the whole idea of race relations gets tied into this, where the family structure is basically the fruit and root of racism and all kinds of other things. In other words, the point is that marriage is no longer kind of this isolated institution that is kind of immune from all these political arguments. It used to be that way. As recently as 10 years ago, you could listen to President George Bush or Barack Obama, and if you asked them about what's one of the biggest problems among people today, they would say, fatherhood. There's not enough fathers out there. Go look it up online. You can hear Barack Obama give a speech on fatherhood. It's a good speech. It really is. That speech would not be given today, very likely. Fatherhood is not the problem. The lack of it is not the problem. In fact, just being men or having men, that's the problem. So we've flipped quite a bit, and it's all tied into all this stuff. So the point is, in politics, in culture, in media, in art, in movie, in video, in literature, this is everything now. Everything flying at you is not saying, like it did when I was a kid, marriage and family is a good thing no matter who you are, no matter where you live. For example, how many of you remember the Cosby Show? It's a great show. It was a great show. It's funny. It was, for the most part, pretty wholesome. It dealt with practical family matters. And it always presented the solution coming from a wise, generous, loving, capable, competent father who led with some humor and a mother who was supported and loving even while she, in her own way, supplemented the support of her family with her own work and her own gifts. And of course, it was an African-American family. That was sending a very strong message that not just for people of one race, but people of many races, this was really the core of the problem. We needed families that functioned well for kids to succeed. And when the kids had trouble in the show, the parents would come and help them. And they would be able to work through it, not through their friends, not even through their teachers at school. In fact, you barely ever saw them at school. You saw them at home in the family. That's gone. In fact, nowadays, although there are families, there's just a whole load of confusion. It's interesting to me how in every sitcom today, there's some character of perverse, weird sexual preference. At least one. Usually more than that. It's introduced and infused into everything, and all of this stuff slowly undermines the family. Again, this is a market shift from 25 years ago, and part of that is due to not just the cultural, but now the legal changes with regard to marriage. What's the big legal change? Gay marriage, the Obergefell-Hodges decision. And in that decision, the Supreme Court voted in a 5-4 split that marriage could not be limited to one man and one woman, that same-sex marriage was therefore considered lawful. Now, it's very interesting if you go back and read that decision and read the debates around that decision, because people would say, look, if we don't have marriage between one man and one woman, that's going to lead to perhaps polygamy. the normalization of pedophilia, all kinds of things in terms of transgenderism and whatnot. And that was 2013. And were they right? Yes, they were, right? Now, that's a huge monumental decision. I mean, homosexuality has always been present in the world since the fall. You can read about it in the ancient world. The Romans were aware of it and spoke about it. But that was never thought of in the context of marriage. Marriage was always a man and a woman to some degree or another. Now, I want to just reflect on this for a minute because it's interesting how the gay marriage decision comes in the name of freedom. And there's this line in the Obergefell Hodges decision, which is written by Kennedy, mostly by him anyway. And Kennedy says in there that part of freedom is discovering the mystery of human existence. In other words, Hertz's conception of freedom is that there's this undefined world out there, this total mystery of what is. And part of our freedom as humans is just to discover for ourselves what that could be. Now that sounds nice, right? It's a very fluffy kind of thing, but the whole notion is absurd and leads you to all kinds of contradictions. And let me just point out one. What is the LGBTQ plus minus divided sign equal sign movement? What do they say it's all about? They say it's about diversity. We can't have this narrow view where there's only one kind of way you can express your sexual identity. We need a diverse view. And so we have a flag, which has like pink and orange and green. It's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. You know, the pride flags. I mean, they're really terrible looking. I mean, at least like, you look at the, like the communist party, their flag, you know, it had at least some visual power to it, although it's evil, right? You look at the ancient Romans and their worship of the gods. They made artwork that in itself you could say has some beauty to it. The pride flag is just nasty to look at. Again, take away my opinion on it. If you are a pride advocate and you want to make a better case for your cause, design a nicer looking flag. You can do it. But it's all about diversity. But what is the diversity that they're saying? Well, they're saying that a man can marry a man. That a woman can marry a woman. That's really most fundamentally what it is. Now I know there's all kinds of variations on that theme, but the reality is the number of those people are very small. And quite often people who re-identify themselves as non-binary, or a man who's a woman, or a woman who's a man, if they're going to live with somebody else, they live with somebody else who's made the same decision. Most of the time, that's what happens. A man who decides to live as a woman is going to want to be with another man who decides to live as a woman. But the irony is, is that really diversity within that relationship? No, it's not. It's the opposite of diversity, because we're talking about homosexuality, which is the same. How does that make any sense? The only marriage union in which there is true diversity is, guess what? Traditional marriage, in which that which is different unites and becomes one. Again, this is not just humans. This is all throughout mammalian biology, right? All mammalian species. It's that the males don't look for males, the females don't look for females. They look for that which is different. And in marriage, by God's design, you have true diversity, in which those that are built differently, made differently, on all these wonderful levels, come together and become one, and become complete. So, in spite of the fact that The culture is filled with and fraught with all kinds of contradictions. They are running headlong, not only into advancing their own viewpoint, but calling evil those who would say that it's not correct. These are big challenges that we face because of course they're affecting the church. And really the bottom line is, it used to be that Christians did have an extra support in God's providence out there in the culture, because there was represented in the culture, at least, the form of what marriage ought to be. One man, one woman, caring for one another, loving one another, and taking care of their kids to make them responsible people. That form was at least out there. It's gone now. In fact, that, the tendency, the trajectory now is to see that as evil. It's the normalization and the privileging of what they call cisgendered relationships. Cisgendered relationships. I know there's all this new vocabulary you have to learn. That's just one man and one woman together. That's viewed as an institution that has been privileged in the past. And if you've been privileged in the past as an institution or a group, what do you have to do now? You have to check your privilege at the door and humble yourself and recognize you've had too much privilege and others need to be elevated. All that is is a big ruse for people in political positions to have greater power. That's the irony of it. It's advanced as a tool to advance the influence of the powerful at the expense of the weak. They're doing the very thing they're critiquing. Quite a world we live in today. But it's easy for us as Christians, I think, to sit back and say, oh yeah, look at that evil culture. So terrible. They're going crazy. It's all going to pot. We're just going to sit back, eat our popcorn, and watch it go down in flames, right? But the reality is there are lots of challenges that come from within to marriage, and that's within the church. And in particular, churches that, rightly, maintain the biblical teaching of male ordination to office are particularly in need of being watchful on this point. Because in many of the conservative churches that still maintain the biblical principle that only men are to be appointed to ordained office, the tendency in anything like that is to become proud. Well, we hold to this, unlike these other churches that don't. It's compromised. And when that happens, what often comes after pride? It goes before fall. And even where the church, I don't think, is necessarily negligent in holding its people accountable, that becomes an opportunity the devil might use to bring a black mark on the church. And we have to admit, as conservative Reformed churches, that there's plenty of reason for the devil to be able to do that. All too often, we hear stories of ministers of missionaries even, that turn out to be wolves in sheep's clothing, that have devoured the flock, that have abused not only their wives, but also others in the church. Now, in our denomination, in our presbytery even, these things have been exposed. I think the church has done it right, has handled it properly as a matter of discipline. But that doesn't change the fact that it still hovers like a dark cloud over us. It's a reminder we need to be vigilant, one to another, especially the ministers, to hold each other accountable and be watchful for these very things. So within the church, just as in culture, there's two errors we need to avoid when we deal with marriage. One is what we could call chauvinism. And the other is a kind of radical feminism. What do I mean by chauvinism? What's it mean to be chauvinistic? Well, essentially, it's to think that men are just better than women, period. All right, that tendency, we need to reject it. But what do I mean by feminism? Well, that's a hot button word. Because feminism, in one respect, can identify real injustices. It can identify real patterns. of evil in society and culture and the way men and women relate as that's enshrined in society can find real problems with that. And to the degree that feminism uncovers those and says, we need to do it differently. That's not a bad thing, is it? No, it's not a bad thing. But when I speak of feminism here, I'm speaking more of a radical feminism. which instead of just identifying, I think what we all regard as injustices towards women, that they're actually flipping things on their head. It's the reverse of chauvinism. Chauvinism says men are better than women inherently. Feminism says the opposite, which is women are better than men. So we have to avoid these two errors. Now, everybody comes to this subject of marriage from a different set of experiences. Some people, maybe you grew up in a home where you had a domineering tyrannical father. OK, well, then you're going to be more sensitive to this. Some may have come from a home that was more dysfunctional with a manipulative, overprotecting mother. By the way, those are the two twin heirs, tyrannical fathers and manipulative, overprotective mothers. Those are the two errors we want to avoid as we discuss marriage and as we think about it. And we need to be very careful here because, again, we all come from different sets of experiences. And what can happen is somebody who grows up or is in an environment where their radar is up to this, they will sometimes be blind to the problems associated with this. Right? And likewise, those that are deeply concerned about this more corporately and generally will sometimes think, well, it's not that big a deal. And one of the arguments will be like, well, in the past it's been like this, so maybe we need a little bit of an overcorrection in the other direction. No, we don't. Again, I should say too that I sometimes hesitate even to talk about marriage in the church corporately or in society generally because I don't really think there is one problem out there. There isn't. And I've grown a little bit forlorn about how two sides of an issue on this, often which really agree, end up fighting. And they're really fighting over, well, we think the problem is more this as opposed to that. I don't think it's really that helpful to speak of problems in marriage generally. Marriage generally doesn't exist. Marriage exists among individuals who are married. Now, I'm not saying it's totally illegitimate to analyze on a corporate level, in terms of society or culture in a church. Sure, there's patterns. But the reality is, quite often, the rubber meets the road in the interpersonal relationship of the husband and the wife. And marriage is most fruitfully discussed, especially if there's troubles to be addressed individually, personally, in the context of the local church and the ministry and oversight of that. You know, it's like folks that, you know, when they're feeling sick, they don't want to go to a doctor. They go to WebMD. Now, is WebMD helpful? Is it? It might be. I mean, I had what are called sebaceous cysts. here on my arm. Anybody here have a sebaceous cyst? I'd never heard that term before. But when I heard it, I was in excruciating pain. And I'm like, wow, that sounds terrible. I'm going to integrate that phrase into my vocabulary now. Hey, kids, stop acting like a sebaceous cyst. Sounds really good. Well, if you go onto WebMD and you look up bumps under the arm in this area, what do you get? Yeah, it's like, well, it could just be a pimple. Like, oh, yeah, that's no good. Could be a sebaceous cyst. Ew, what's that? It could be cancer. Oh, man, I'm going to die tomorrow. Right? And I won't get into the detail, but it was quite painful. They did have to cut into him and get the stuff out. But anyway, the doctor knew that. And she saw it right away because she was an expert in diagnosing it. We're often very, very bad at self-diagnosis, medically as well as spiritually. Very, very bad at it. And especially in marriage. Because we're so embedded in it. And when you're deeply embedded in relationships that have problems, it's really hard to step outside of it and be able to see it clearly. So, that's why God has given us not just Sunday school classes or books for us to read and diagnose ourselves, although that's not forbidden, right? We certainly can do that. But we need to be very careful how we look at ourselves. Because as is true in all relationships, it's very easy to see the sin in the other person. And we tend to be pretty blind at that which is in ourselves. And so we want to be sure that marriage, on the most fundamental level as we address it, it needs to be personalized. And that needs to be done in the context of a local church. Marriage, of course, involves vows, one to another, and church membership involves those vows. And it's very important that these discussions happen within that context. It's within the local church, especially if you've been in a church for a while, that people know you, know the patterns of your life, know your personality, and will be able to give you a good diagnosis in love. Now, does that mean you're going to like the diagnosis? You go to the doctor, do you like his diagnosis or her diagnosis? No. Sometimes you want to go get a second opinion? Yeah. And sometimes that's important because churches can be wrong, right? But who's going to be in a better position to diagnose you? A good doctor who's known you for 20 years? Or the new one you just met? It could be, but not necessarily. So, marriage, as we address it, again, requires that we submit ourselves to God before His Word and recognize the need for it to be personalized. Now, I want to do one more thing before we leave this point, because I want to look at these twin heirs. I want to put some concrete pictures biblically on them. Because I think if we think of an example of a chauvinistic man in the Bible, like, to the extreme, I think Absalom is a figure of that. Because what did Absalom do? Yeah, and his sister. Right? So he was in a position of power as the son of the king, and he raped his sister because he was in love with her and raptured with her beauty. And it says in that text that after he did that, the hatred that he had for her was greater than the love that he had for her. And all that was the fruit, of course, of David in his dark side and evil in the murder of Uriah and the adultery with Bathsheba. I mean, and then this guy goes and tries to destroy his own father to get the throne. I mean, and I think we all recognize the danger of the tyrannical husband and father. At least you should. The answer to feminism is not just to say we need to reassert male authority. If that's your only message, you're preaching tyranny. Yes, it's authority, but not authority of a tyrant. It's the authority of a servant in the mold of Christ. Now, I personally think that right now in the church, the radar is up for this, and for good reason. But I will sometimes hear things like this. Well, in this article, I'm only going to talk about male abuse of women, because that's 90% of the time how it happens. Now, it's certainly true that that form of tyrannical abuse is mostly male. But does that mean that we don't need to have our radar up for the other side of things? No, we do. Because who is the picture in the Bible representative of the evils of that radical, manipulative feminism? Jezebel is one. And we could certainly go there. But I was thinking too of Potiphar's wife. Eve? OK, Eve. But I like Potiphar's wife. Well, I don't like Potiphar's wife. Let me rephrase that. I like the example of Potiphar's wife because in that story, Joseph is utterly pure. He's utterly pure. And Potiphar's wife is utterly impure. And what's Potiphar's wife's concerns? She wants to satisfy her lusts, and she also wants to be connected to power. Because Joseph is on the rise. And after she propositions him twice, and he resists, what does she do after that? What she accused him of? She accuses him of doing the thing she did. Now, does that mean that, okay, anytime there's an accusation of sexual abuse, that we can say, oh, well, you're just like Potiphar's wife? No. Right? But likewise, we can't listen to every claim like that and say, ah, you're Absalom. Because guess what? The devil's really shrewd. He's really, really shrewd. And any angle he can get, he will take. So again, we have the twin evils of the tyrannical, abusive man. But then we also have the manipulative woman, who uses that which is one of the greatest things she can harness in terms of her pursuit of power, which is sexual attraction. But then when she doesn't get what she wants, what does she do? Well, she becomes a snake and tries to devour him. So when we're dealing with this subject, with ourselves and with others, we have to be real shrewd. It takes a lot of patience to kind of uncover and unpack things. And most of all, it involves humility. If you're a man, you need to understand that at every point, that's going to be your tendency, your temptation. And if you're a woman, it's over here on this side. Now, that doesn't mean there's going to be physical violence, per se, or the false accusation. But it is interesting that these are the two things. So it's like brute force and power here, represented in rape. But then on her side, it's reputation destruction. Now, again, men and women are more alike than they are different. I'm sure there are women that use force, and there's men that use manipulation and reputation destruction. But it's interesting that that seems to be the tendency of each group. So we know ourselves, we know how sin affects us, and we know the complexities of how the devil works, and we're not going to have the wool pulled over our eyes. The devil likes to mask himself as a victim. He's a wolf in what? And what's a sheep? It's just this little fluffy helpless little thing. Oh, it's so terrible. How could you do this to me? And by the way, the old Disney movies have wonderful manifestations of a lot of these principles. The old Disney movies actually have a lot of very interesting archetypes in them. The new ones stink for the most part. I mean, you want to see the example of the manipulative mother, right? Watch the Tangled movie. The mother in the Tangled movie? Oh, man. You know, the one that kept her locked in the tower so that she could maintain her youth and is constantly flipping things around? Oh, man. That character is just... I think Tangled's probably one of the last great Disney movies. Probably one of the last great ones. Sorry if you like Frozen. Anyway, we're getting too far afield. Alright, so there's all these challenges. Challenges in the church, challenges in the culture. Man, what are we going to do? Well, we need to recognize that there's an opportunity for us in our marriages. When the power goes out in your house, what's the first thing you do? Go to the breaker. Okay, but how do you get there? What do you need to get there? Flashlight. You need a flashlight. Now, it's interesting because if you have just a candle or a flashlight and your house is fully lit, does it do much good? No, it doesn't do much good at all, unless you got one of those really bright ones. You know, my kids sometimes have the ones on their head. You know, they get these things for like their birthday or Christmas, and then they walk around the house with the big bright light in their head. Hey, Dad, look at this. Ah, turn it off, dude. You look for a light because you can't see. Well, it's interesting because I think Christian marriages for a long time in our culture, they were kind of like having flashlights in a pretty well-lit room. Did it do some good? Yeah. But did it really stand out? Nope. I mean, because the basic essence of what you'd find in terms of the form and structure of a family was present everywhere. You could kind of see it, right? You could see it at church, but then you kind of saw a shell of it on the Cosmos show. But what do we have now? Is there any common light out there? Well, less and less. It's a pretty dark, dark place. Think of even kids, right, who grow up, whether they don't have a father or a mother, maybe they grow up with two dads or two moms, and they're in schools, or they're at the parks that you go to. And they've never seen that before. They've never observed it before. And now, just by you going out to eat, going to the park, taking care of your kids, engaging in public as a loving parent, guess what you are? You're a bright light now to people that sit in darkness. And so while it can be overwhelming to look at all the legal and the cultural challenges to marriage, what a wonderful opportunity. And what a sobering thing for us to recognize that when I got trouble in my marriage, there are things that are making me unhappy, whoa, simply by doing the simple things of loving my wife and family and being a faithful father, a faithful mother, I can be a light, not just to the common institution of marriage, but to Christ. Marriage has more and more now, because of its degradation in culture, it has become a Christian institution. Now understand what I mean by that. I'm not saying that there isn't a gift of marriage that's given to all men. It is. What I'm saying is the only place that's being preserved, at least in the West, is primarily among Christians. Now we can include Jewish people and to a degree Islamic people, but of course marriage, most fundamentally, isn't just a human institution. What does it reflect? It reflects Christ and the Church. All right, I'm going to pause there for a minute if you have any questions or thoughts about what we said. If you hesitate, I'm going to move on. OK, we're going to go. All right, so then, next thing we discuss here, where did my outline go? What about if you're single? No. Why should this class be of interest to you? I mean, you're not married. Why have it? Maybe you're frustrated. Here they go again. This church full of families and I'm single and I don't fit in here. Okay, well wait. Wait a minute. Why should you, if you're single, still be interested in this class? Well, a few reasons. First of all, marriage deals with people. And when you're married, if you're husband or wife, the most fundamental thing you're doing is you're dealing with another person and you're learning to love them. Guess what? your quote-unquote skill in learning how to do that wisely, according to God's Word, is very, very much the same as what you're called to do with other people. In fact, marriage is really a concentrated manifestation of everything we have to deal with with others, which is humbling ourselves to confess when we sin against them, and being willing from the heart to forgive them when they sin against us, and to perform acts of sincere selfless love towards them. That's what it is to live in a church. That's what it is to live in society. And that's what it is to live in marriage. So the stuff we're going to talk about here, especially in the instructive part of it, applies just as much to other relationships as it does to marriage in terms of the general principles. If you're not married, you may be married at some point in the future. If you're young and single, you may be married in the future. So this information will prove helpful to you. Maybe you're widowed. Who knows? Maybe you'll get married. And of course, even if you're not married now, you can be a help and support to married couples in the church, and having a better understanding of that will help you do that. Even as those who are married should be of help to those who are single, and help them in whether it's their loneliness or feeling of disconnectedness from the church, and be the family of God for them. Okay, so let's jump in then and look at the nature of marriage, the definition. Again, we recognize that we live in a time when millennia of consensus has been shattered. Now, it's true that throughout the millennia, there have been variations on the basic idea of marriage. Sometimes polygamy was tolerated. Homosexuality has always been present, but it's never been thought of as marriage, up to 2013. The idea that a man could be married and have mistresses, widely accepted in the Roman world. In fact, there's this speech given by a Roman nobleman. I can't remember who did it and exactly how it says, but in it he says, He says, we men are thankful for our mistresses, because they give us pleasure. We're thankful for our concubines, because they help us take care of all that we have. But we're most thankful for our wives, who give us legitimate children and help elevate us in society. You look at that and you go, really? I wonder what they thought after hearing that speech. It was widely accepted in the Roman world that a man would have mistresses. and for the purpose of satisfying his pleasure. So even though in Roman society marriage, you could find that part of marriage, a union between man and one woman, there were compromises. So I'm not denying that there were compromises. What I'm saying is that there's this core inheritance from the West, especially the Christian West, in which marriage was thought of to be the lifelong union and communion of one man and one woman. In other words, the nature of marriage, that's what it is. It's the lifelong union of a man and a woman. In 2013, that was shattered. And before that, really in other countries where same-sex marriage was legalized. And again, the issue is not just the legalization and normalization of same-sex relationships, it's the negation of the exclusivity of marriage as being between one man and one woman. That is a radical, unprecedented shift in human society. Now as we look at this definition and as we unpack its meaning, again, lifelong union and communion of one man and one woman, we'll see how really in the last hundred years, most elements of that definition and when we get to the purpose of marriage, most conceptions of the purpose of marriage have kind of eroded. It's very fascinating. Really all we're left with is that marriage is just a union of some kind and the purpose is just mutual help. Period. Not children, not prevention of sexual immorality by any means, but it's just, it's a union, whatever you want it to be, because you want to be together, and if you don't, fine. So, let's unpack this definition. Marriage is the lifelong union and communion of one man and one woman. It's what Jesus tells us, quoting Moses in Matthew 19, discussing divorce, He says, Have you not read, this is verse 4, Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." So, marriage, first and foremost, is a lifelong union. Now, what can sever the bond of marriage? There's really only three things. And they're very limited in narrow circumstances. One, obviously, is death. When your spouse dies, you're no longer married to them. Now again, a lot of times we're like, well, of course, of course that's true. But let's think of the implications of that, because what does Jesus elsewhere say about the resurrection and marriage? There's no marriage in heaven. In fact, you know, the Sadducees come up and like, come on Jesus, tell us, figure this one out. Man has like eight wives. And he has kids of all of them. In the resurrection, which family is going to be there? Ha ha ha. Proof that the idea of resurrection is absurd. And what's Jesus' answer? You don't know the scripture or the power of God, because we'll be like the angel of God, we'll be neither married nor given in marriage. So marriage is a lifelong union, and that applies to this life. Now, many of us have a really hard time figuring that one out. Maybe if you've had a spouse die and have been married again, then it hits home, right? How am I going to sort this one out when I get to heaven, right? Well, no, that's not what it's going to be. Now, how does that work out? Well, the scripture doesn't tell us a lot of details, but what we do know is that the union and fellowship we'll share in heaven is greater and deeper and more meaningful than anything we can have in this life in marriage. How that works out? You know, eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for those who love Him. We have to, I think, in part, take on faith how that's going to be the case. But it's interesting that this really was the first part of the definition of marriage to go in Western culture. Now, there's always been the acknowledgment and recognition of limited circumstances in which someone could be divorced. Women had rights for divorce throughout even medieval Europe. There's a very interesting article on this. And of course, in addition to adultery, impotence on the part of the husband was also regarded as grounds for divorce, discovered after marriage. So again, the idea that the whole history of the West is just this unqualified patriarchal tyranny in which women had no rights just isn't true. And it's neither true biblically. If you look in the Old Testament, there's plenty of provisions that preserve inheritance rights and other rights of women in the context of marriage. In fact, the fact that Moses commanded that a certificate of divorce be given was primarily to protect the rights of the woman. Because if the husband is just going to divorce her for no reason, well then that brings shame and a lack of support for the woman. The certificate of divorce would guarantee to the woman that she'd have a legal record that she was not treated properly and would not be ostracized in society. In fact, Christianity, far from being that which suppressed women, in that context was something that elevated women. Women were now viewed as creatures made in God's image, fellow heirs of the grace of life, with their husbands. Now there was still, by God's ordination, an order to the marriage in terms of authority. The husband's the head. The wife is the body. The man has authority. The wife is called in her particular way to be in submission to her husband. But it was a structure of authority in the context of a partnership. You see, in every partnership, there's some structure to it, right? Somebody's got to take the lead, right? There's a difference between a partnership in which there's a leader appointed and a tyrannical domination in which somebody just, by their brute force, rules and dictates. Marriage, the authority in marriage, is a real authority given to men, given to the husband, but it's not an authority of tyranny and domination. It's authority within the context of a partnership in which things are worked out together. Now, this is a point we're going to make again and again here. We have to learn again to distinguish between authority that is based on tyranny and authority that is based on responsibility and competence. This is not the authority the Bible speaks of in marriage. This is the authority. Whether it's the husband and wife who both have authority over their children, or whether it's the husband who has authority over his wife, it is the authority in the context of a partnership, in which there's a give and take, in which there's listening, in which there's a subordination of our concerns to the concerns of the other, But nevertheless, a real leadership, a unique role that the husband has in love, in service, in self-sacrifice to lead his wife and to lead his family, and a duty on the wife's part to acknowledge that and respect that and to be in submission to that. Again, not a submission to a tyrant, but in the context of an agreed upon partnership. Very important. Because nowadays, I think we're at a point in the culture where we can't even distinguish between those two things. All authority is just viewed through the context of tyranny. And part of that is because of postmodernism and Marxism, as that's affected social analysis, in which everything is viewed through the lens of power structures. The primary means of operating is according to power. We try to create these hierarchies, which one dominates the other. By the way, it's really interesting, because even in the study of animals, tyranny doesn't work. long term. They've studied apes, because apes are very hierarchical, right? There's one big silverback ape, and what's he do? Well, he stands around, he pounds his chest, and he dominates. But you know what happens if a silverback oppresses the people in his tribe? What ends up happening to him? Orangutans, too. If somebody rules in a tyrannical fashion, those beneath them team up and kill him and throw him out. Even in nature, tyranny don't work. God will humble the tyrant. The ones that have a lifelong kind of tribe that are over them are the ones that balance. keeping order with benevolence. They go and hunt and provide that, right? And give it. I mean, it's really fascinating. You see this even in the mammals. Now, of course, the modern people are like, oh, proof of evolution. And I'm like, come on, you people. It's not proof of illusion, it's proof of a designer who's put a mirror image of human interactions among the beasts, so that when at some point, maybe in the early 21st century, when we go completely nuts, we can look at the apes and say, wow, they've got it figured out, and learn something from them. So, again, I know a lot of Christians today, they kind of feel really confused. They're like, really? I mean, it seems like everybody doesn't believe. Am I nuts? Am I crazy? No, you're not crazy. You're not crazy. They're crazy. And we just need to remind ourselves of that. But anyway, back to the lifelong union part. Nowadays, of course, you have no-fault divorce, which was, again, something that largely came up in the 20th century. Gradually, states began allowing for no-fault divorces. Now, could you argue that perhaps the laws were so strict that women who were truly in abusive relationships had no way out when they should have had one? I think you can make that case, depending on where you're at and what state you're in. There are some states that were so strict in their divorce laws that if you were a woman and you were in an abusive relationship, you had no legal recourse. Now, that's not to say that the Department of Justice What's it called? Not health and human services, but child protective services and all that. That they're all right in everything they do. I'm not saying that, right? But I'm saying some role, something like that, right? Where there is some protection for people in abusive relationships. I think we all need to acknowledge that that happens. There's no church involved in these families, but the wives in them are being abused and they have no way out, right? So, yes, we can make the case that maybe there should have been some changes, but what kind of changes did we end up getting? It was no-fault divorce. You don't want to be married anymore, you don't have to be married anymore, you don't have to have a reason for why. So marriage is no longer a lifelong union. It's as long as you want it to be. And if you want to get divorced for any and every reason, you can and marry somebody else. In the Bible, it's lifelong except for, of course, as we said, death, adultery, or what we call willful desertion. And we'll talk more about that later. But it's not just a lifelong union. It's a certain kind of union. And what kind of a union is marriage? Well, marriage union has two sides to it. It has a legal side, and then it has kind of a substantial real side. When we're talking about the union, we're talking about what binds them together. But what really binds, in reality, binds a man and a woman together such that they want to be married? Why do they do it? Or what should be there? Man, a woman wants to marry a man because he makes lots of money, right? Guy wants to marry a girl because, well, she's really pretty. Is that it? No. What is typically also there? Well, they love each other, right? They have affection for one another. They have a desire to be with one another. They enjoy one another. They're delighted in one another. They have a desire for each other, right? They love each other. So, substantially, the thing that unites a husband and wife in reality is love. That love as an affection, particularly in that romantic sense. But, does that mean there needs to be no legal side to marriage? Well, let's ask the ladies. Is it enough for the man to say, hey, let's live together because I love you? No, the ladies are like, look here, buddy. Here's the contract. You sign it or I'm coming near you. No, not quite like that. But it is interesting because women are way more selective in choosing their spouses than men are. And there's good reason for it. Getting married affects women in a way it doesn't affect men because, of course, it's not the man that has the baby, right? It's the woman. That's a greater effect on her. So even though the substantial side of the union is love, there is a legal side ratified in vow. Alright, well we're coming up to our time here, so we'll have to pick up next time where we leave off. Any questions or thoughts as we conclude? Man, you guys are easy. Alright, well let's pray. Prepare for worship. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of marriage. Thank you for all that your Word teaches us about it, and in spite of the challenges that we face, help us to be faithful as Christians. not only in having clarity in our minds as to what you've designed, but also those of us who are married, help us to remember that the best way that we can confront these challenges is by being faithful in our married lives, loving our spouses, honoring Christ in them, caring for our children, nurturing them in their faith. And may, Lord, your love shine through us that the world may see light in its darkness. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.