Christian Marriage- The Institution of Marriage

So, this morning, we're going to be starting a sermon series entitled Christian Marriage. And there are two main reasons I've chosen to talk about marriage. The first is that marriage is one of the things that's under attack in our society. And I was explaining to someone earlier in the week, not from our church, but outside, they were asking about our church. And I said, you know, part of what we understand our mission to be is that we ought to make disciples right at the point of attack. That we wouldn't be doing people... as much good or perhaps any good if we taught them to be more like Jesus at the places where there was no cost associated with it. Because it's not at those places that they're going to struggle and die. It's going to be at the places where Satan's attacking, and marriage is one of those places. And so I thought first that it would be good for us to learn what Christian marriage is for that reason. Additionally, there are a lot of new marriages in our congregation, and there's more on the way. There's a lot of people

who've been married, if I were to ask you, raise your hands if you've been married less than seven years, the majority, I think, of the people here would raise their hand. That's a good thing. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's delightful. But I do remember those days. They aren't so far behind my wife and I. And the older, those of us who've been married longer than that, remember the struggles and the hardships of those times. And I thought, well. Here we are, the Lord's given us this blessing of all these new marriages. We ought to make good use of it. And so one of the things we can do is study what a godly marriage is. As many of us are starting out our marriages, as many of us are even just into them a few years and trying to figure out how our expectations of what marriage was supposed to be like or what we thought it would be like, how do we reconcile that with what we're actually dealing with? And additionally, those of us who aren't married, I trust want to get married.

And it's a good thing to prepare for. It's not the sort of thing that you start preparing for once someone has a ring on their finger. It's the sort of thing that we prepare for all through our coming up years. And so my hope is that this will be helpful. The sermon series will be helpful to everybody. Godly marriages that are happy, they take time to build and faith and a lot of hard work. And so it's my hope that this series will help us do that work. Now, I mentioned the young people, the young marriages. And unless the older people feel like, well, what about us? We don't have marriage all figured out. Because every older person I've talked to, that's what they've said. We don't have marriage all figured out. What I actually think is that the older people will get more out of the sermon series than the younger people. Because they're worn out. And they're more willing for help. To say it simply. They've had their hopes of what marriage was supposed to be.

melt away, fall through their fingers and they've went, well, and then they've gotten angry about it or frustrated or bitter and they've played the blame game and this isn't fair and they've fought through all of those struggles. And they're going, that doesn't work. It hasn't worked. It hasn't produced good fruit. It hasn't solved the problems that we are facing as a couple. And they're more willing to say, okay, I'm willing to do the stuff you tell me to do instead of the stuff I'm inclined to do. I often describe premarital counseling as frost seeding. Most of you probably don't know what frost seeding is, but what it is is when a farmer will go out in March, usually, when the ground is still frozen, he'll go out into his fields, hay fields or whatever, and he will overseed. He'll go out and actually cast seed just right on top of the frozen ground, which may seem like a strange thing to do, but he does it because that's when he can get the seed.

on the field, once the ground thaws and the spring rains come, he can't get his equipment out there because the field's all wet. But that's when things are growing. So he goes out ahead of time and he says, I'm going to get my seed out while I can get my tractor out there and I'm going to just lay it on top. And then when the spring rains come and things soften, those seeds are going to sink down into the ground and then they're going to grow. And that's really what I... do in premarital counseling is I just try to frost seed because every couple I meet with, they have these ideas of what marriage is going to be. And I can tell them, I always tell them, I say, listen, what I'm saying, I'm not saying specifically to you. I say this to everybody. And they always think, no, it won't be like that for us. They really do. And my wife and I kind of chuckle inside and we go, we'll be here. And we tell them that, we'll be here. If it does get hard for you, we'll be here for you.

And we do try to meet generally with couples after they've been married and after some of the, there's some chips in the road's colored glasses and they start to see that things aren't the way they thought they were going to be. I want you guys to know that when you feel that way, you're younger people, the older, I and the older couples would tell you, all's not lost. It's not, you're not without hope, but you're starting to be tenderized. And being prepared to do the hard work of building a godly marriage. And it is hard work. And if you're to have a godly marriage, you will have to do the work. There's not any Christian marriage or any two Christian people that come together and you go, oh, well, they have an easier time of it. My marriage is hard, but their marriage is easy because they have more similar interests and gifts or whatever. Every marriage has trouble. Every marriage has trouble. People who get married really young, they have certain types of troubles. People who don't get married until later in life, they have other sorts of troubles.

When young people marry older people, they have troubles. And so what I want you all to know is I hope that this will be helpful for all of us. I think that the series will probably be 10 to 12 weeks long, so it's not going to be short. I could make it longer, but I'm sure we'll have other conversations along the way. And so this morning... What I want to do is talk about the institution of marriage. We sort of have to lay the foundation. It's not something we talk about a lot. It's not something that I spend a bunch of time in premarital counseling talking about, because after all, I'm talking with Christians, and there are some things that we assume for the sake of time and don't really delve into. But if we're going to have an extended sermon series on it, I think we ought to take some time to look at the foundation, such as it was. And so that is the institution of marriage. We're going to be studying Genesis chapter 1.

Verses 26 and 27, this is the account of God reasoning with himself to create man and woman. And the point of this morning's sermon is to understand that as a husband and wife, we're not free to define marriage however we would like to. Marriage is one of God's unique creations, and he is the one who defines what it is. He's the one who gives us our job description, if you will, as a husband and as a wife. Would you please stand now for the reading of the word of the Lord? From Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated. Now, this passage typically, you may be familiar with this passage, and in it you have what's called the cultural mandate, where God says this is what man's going to do. He's going to rule over the fish and over the birds and over everything that creeps on the earth. This is going to be his job. He's the pinnacle of creation. What does this passage teach us about marriage? Well, simply and firstly, it teaches us that God created marriage. When he said, We're going to create man and woman. What he was doing is saying that there's going to be a marriage. There was never a time when Adam was intended to be single. Now, if you were to go ahead to Genesis chapter 2, you have a longer description of how Adam and Eve were created. We know that they weren't both created at the same time, but that Adam was created first. And that there was a time where Adam was alone, where Eve wasn't with him. And in that time, what did Adam do?

Well, the Lord brought every animal before him to see what he would call it. And Adam named all of the animals. And when he's done naming all of the animals, what does it say about Adam? It says that there was not a helper found that was suitable for him. It means there was no wife. He was incomplete, and his mate, the part that would complete him, didn't exist among the animals. Which, incidentally, is where you should go when you talk of... people marrying animals or which seems crazy in our in age or maybe to our sensibilities but those days are coming when people want to marry and and and consider that they can they can have an animal as a spouse you say no in the scripture right here at the very beginning that was forbidden because when it was all when when adam went through all the animals there was not a helper found suitable for him and i know it's like oh yeah i don't want to talk about that that's gross i don't even want to think about it but i'm telling you we're going to have to face it at some point

And this is where one of the places in scripture you would go to to say, that's not ever in any way acceptable. That is straight up rebellion and sin. That is not a marriage. Can't be a marriage. But at the end of Adam naming all the animals, it says there was not a helper found suitable for him. And so then the Lord caused Adam to go into a deep sleep. And he took one of his ribs and he fashioned it into a woman. And he presented this woman to Eve. And Adam says, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. He met his wife. She was taken from him. She was part of him. And so from the very beginning, even though we have in chapter 2 of Genesis, we have the description of how Adam and Eve were created, we find before that in Genesis chapter 1 in our text that God always intended for man not to be alone. That before he created, he said, let us make man in our image. And when he says man here, he's not saying Adam. He's saying the race of men. Let us make

Mankind in our image. And to that end, we're going to make them men and women, male and female. And in the beginning, there was marriage. Adam and Eve didn't date and wonder and figure out if they wanted to be together. They were married. From the very beginning, how does the scripture describe them? Just a bit before this. They were both naked and unashamed. This is a husband and this is a wife. And from the very beginning, I want you to understand, it's always been God's intention that man would not be alone, that woman would not be alone. And I know in our minds we think, well, what about single people? And I'm going to preach a whole sermon on singleness in the weeks to come. Because I know it's an issue. I know it's a question. And I don't want to pass over it and say, oh, it's no big deal. What I want us to understand from the very beginning, the foundation, is that God created in his intention in creation.

of mankind was that men and women would be married. And if you look across history, you will find that in every culture, you have this union. This is not unique. And it's because God made it that way. It's written into his creation. And so marriage is central to us as men and women to fulfilling God's design and his intention for us. And this is important for us to realize, even at the risk of there being some pain for those who are single yet. It's important for us to realize that the desire that even the singles have to get married is a testimony to the truth of what I'm saying here. They're not content being single. They don't like being alone. And so instead of shying away from the pain of not being able to have that desire satisfied, we ought to say, okay, we see that pain. We know it's real. It's there. But what was God's intention in his design? His design is that men and women would be married.

This is the most basic fundamental building block of our race, of being a human being, being a man, is marriage. It's right there at the beginning. And it's important for us to understand that because of the way that marriage has been denigrated and put off and God's authority over marriage has been shunned. It's one of the reasons Christians have such trouble understanding what marriage is. Marriage isn't just hard in our society, but I think it's particularly hard in our society because We haven't been taught what marriage is or how to be a husband or a wife. We've been left to observe. We've been left to dream. But we haven't been taught the way we should be. And so as people enter into marriage, they go, I don't know. The wife says, I don't know how to be a wife. I'm very scared of that. The husband says, I don't know how to be a husband. I don't know what it means to care for and to love a woman.

And so my hope is that we can say, okay, these are the troubles that we face. Let's talk about it. Let's see what God says. Now, why is marriage important? Why do I bring it up in this passage? Well, because marriage demonstrates to us a complete or a fuller picture of the image of God in man. At the beginning of our passage, God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. And then at the end, he says, male and female, he created them. And so I want you to think for a minute. about a picture here, an analogy. It's not a perfect one, but I think it will be helpful to us in understanding it. I want you to think of a lock and a key. If I were to hold up a key and say, what is this? Tell me everything you can about a key. You could list off quite a bit of things, right? What's one of the things you would tell me? You'd tell me, that key is not nearly as useful. It doesn't have near the value that it could have if it...

if you don't know what lock it goes in. Some of us, I'm sure, have keys on our key rings that we've forgotten what lock they go to. We don't have the lock anymore. And that key, all of a sudden, you can say, it's made for a lock. It doesn't have any other purpose other than to be put into a lock and to open something. If you don't have the lock, then the key is not nearly as useful, not nearly as productive, not nearly as helpful. Same thing could be said for a lock. If I were to hold up to you a master lock, you'd say, oh, it's a lock. You need a key. Or you need bolt cutters, right? A key and a lock go together. They're designed to go together, to fit together. And with locks and keys, you can't just take any old key and put it into any old lock and have it work, right? Keys and locks are meant to fit together particularly. And this is the way it is with man and woman in marriage.

Now, some of you might be thinking, do you mean that there's like, are you talking like there's a soulmate, like there's this one perfect person? People worry about this. Christians especially worry about this. I'm not going into that discussion. I'm not inclined to think that there's just one person in the world. I'm convinced that God knows the details of our lives and knows who we will marry and knows the future because he's omniscient. But the idea of, are you the perfect woman, the perfect man? Are you my soulmate in this world? It's an impossible question because how in the world are you supposed to answer it? Except according to your feelings. And how many of us can say that our feelings are a trustworthy guide in such things? They wax and they wane, they change. You know, the sun goes behind the clouds for a week and all of a sudden our feelings about all of life change. Not a good guide. So talk of...

my soulmate, I think is very unhelpful for Christians. I don't think it's the rubric we should use to process whether we should marry a person. Because it won't provide any stability or any structure when we feel differently about our marriage. And so marriage works, men and women work, very much like a lock and key work. They're made for each other. And as a couple moves toward marriage, One of the questions I will ask them that gets at this reality when people are saying, well, we're dating and we want to know, you know, we're thinking about getting engaged or, you know, starting to talk about getting married. One of the things I'll ask them is, well, how well do you know them? And they always say, well, I know them well. And I'll say, well, what do you know about them? What do you love about them? And they'll give usually a pretty good answer. And then I say, what are their sins? What are their sins?

And they're like, sometimes they know and sometimes they don't know. And that's okay. I'm not saying it to say you failed if you don't know. The reason I'm saying it is to say you want to know what that is. Because if you're to get married, if this lock is going to go with this key, we do want to see how they line up, how the tumblers line up. We need to know what our responsibilities are going to be if we marry this person. Because it's not just a man and just a woman. We are very different and very particular. And we do want to know whether we're going to get along and do well together or whether it's going to be a constant struggle. And if so, why? And so I say, do you know what their sins are? And then they might tell me. And then I'll ask them, I'll say, what are your sins? And they'll tell me. And I'll say, if it's a man, I'll say, does she help you with those sins? And usually they say, well...

She doesn't really know about them that much. I kind of try to hide them. I don't say that, but that is actually what engaged and dating couples do. There's sort of this conspiracy between them to not tell the whole truth, to hide what they really are. And that's part of what creates this letdown when they get married is they go, oh, I didn't know that about him. I didn't feel like he was, I didn't know. And I say, I know. I didn't know the particulars, but I knew that would be true. And we have hope and we have faith that we can work through these things together. Because now you, this key, and you, this lock, have been put together. And so now we have to figure out how to rejigger it so it fits in the ways that it doesn't. This is marriage. This is the work of marriage. But we try to do some of that work beforehand. And I've not yet found a couple that comes into counseling or dating and says,

I'm going to process this very objectively. And if I come to the realization that this is not a good fit, I'll walk away. I have yet to find a couple that actually will do that because they have a desire in them to be filled out, to have a mate. They are a key and they want a lock to go with. It's often said that men and women are different. We talk about the way men and women are wired. Often causes a lot of conflicts. This usually has a lot to do with the conflicts in marriage. Men are problem solvers. They look out at the world. They generally don't want to deal with details, and they also tend to be impatient. Not all men are that way. But if I had to say, are women more this way or men more this way, I'd say men are more this way. They prioritize accomplishments and goals and production over relationships and process.

Women are different. Women will bear an incredible amount of pain, personal pain, and frustration, and hurt, and offense for the sake of relationships. And it drives men bonkers. Why don't you just tell her to stop that? And the woman goes, I can't. And then, yes, you can. And she goes, no, I can't. And she cries, and this is our life. The people who've been married. See, the young people are looking at me like, and the older people just laugh because they're like, uh-huh. What we need to see in that is God's design. He's made men and women differently and he's made them to fit together in marriage and together to fill out the reflection or the picture or the image of God. Men by themselves are not a good, complete picture of the image of God. We reflect part of it. Women reflect a different part of it. Together in marriage.

As a man and a woman love each other and care for each other and grow together and repent of their sins that attend their nature, you get a clearer picture of the image of God. But there is a necessary blurriness or obscurity. when you just look at a man. Because if you were to take me as an example, there are things that, yes, I'm good at. You all would say, this is what Dave is like, and this is what he's good at. But you'd also be able to say, some of you probably with good accuracy, these are the things Dave's not, this is where Dave's not like Jesus. And other people are. My wife is. And what are the gifts that we have except a portion?

Marred by sin, but a portion or some picture of the image of God that's been imprinted on us, into us, in creation when he created us, male and female. So much talk of marriage, particularly marriage counseling, is getting men not to despise women's weakness and getting women not to hate men's vision or desires or lack of taking into account the cost of the things they want to do. But we as Christians should understand that those things are part of how God is. Both his mercy and his tenderness and his compassion and his kindness and his strength and his power and his desire to build something. Both of those things are true parts of the image of God. And together, a man and a woman, when they get married, they bring those things together and it's their job to rejigger it so that they are a better reflection.

Jesus Christ. Well, so it means that the man has to learn things from his wife. She's going to teach him. A wife will teach in many ways. She will teach her husband how to be a husband. She'll say, you're bad at this. You're a real impatient jerk. And that's not how Jesus is. And she'll be helpful to him, even when she doesn't say it perfectly. And a husband will teach his wife how to be a wife. He'll teach her what's important, what he needs. her to do and to be and to prioritize so that his desires can be accomplished. He needs her help. And so he has to tell her and train her up and bring her along so that she's able to help him. And generally, if the wife tells the husband, you're not treating me well, he says, you don't have the place to tell me that. Sure she does. And if the husband says to the wife, I need you not to give all of your time and energy to this, I want you to do this.

You can't tell me that's part of my, that's like woven into the fabric of my being. You can't tell me to change that. Sure he can. And I'd hope that he would do it graciously and kindly and that he'd be patient and that he'd bring you along and cultivate you. But sure he can tell you to change. Now if he's telling you to sin or if his desires are sinful or if he's saying, you need to be all these things because I'm lazy and I want you to facilitate my laziness. Well, no. But if a man has a vision for... and a desire to serve God in a particular way, particular calling, particular job. And it means his wife has to get on board with what that means for their life, whether that's financial or whether that's time or whether that's where they have to live or the cars they drive or whatever it is. Yeah, she's got to come along. That is the rejiggering of the lock so that the key works. And so marriage is a better reflection, a better picture of the image of God than any one of us can do as a single.

person, man or woman. And isn't it wicked that in marriage what we do when we get hurt and offended or frustrated, whether it's with our spouse, whether you're a man or a woman, you think, I can do this better myself. I can take care of myself better so I won't tell him that he hurt my feelings. I can just get the work done better without having to deal with her worrying about whose toes I'm going to step on. I'll just do it myself. And in all of those things what we're saying is, Not the image of God. We're saying, I'm better off by myself. And I say, no, you're not. Next week, we're going to talk about companionship. And companionship is one of the purposes of marriage. And it's one of the reasons that's so important is that it's not good for a man to be alone. It's not good for a woman to be alone. One of the problems is you don't know or understand or see or experience the full image of God by yourself.

And when you're married, you do. And it's hard work. And there's lots of tears and lots of frustration and lots of hardships along the way. But what godly Christian couple after years of being married would say, if I had known it was going to be like this, I wouldn't have done it. I can tell you marriage is very difficult. You'll see your own sins in ways that you never even thought you sinned. And you'll go through... many sleepless nights, lots of frustration, lots of dreams and hardships that not being the way that you wanted them to be. And you will also say, if I'd have known before I got married that I was going to face all of these troubles but receive all of these joys that go along with it, I'd do it again. This is what a godly Christian couple would say. I realize there are people who would be hardened in their sin and that's not what they would say. They'd say, if I knew he was going to be such a whatever, whatever, I never would have married him.

Well, all right. Those sorts of marriages have other problems in them that really do need to be worked through. But basic Christian marriage is, and the struggles that we face on a normal day-to-day basis end up producing both us saying, this was hard, and I'm glad I'm married. For all the hardship, I wouldn't change it. Now, as I said earlier, I... I don't want to disparage those who are single or discourage them. Primarily mostly because they want this. They would like to have the hard work that we tell them about. They say, I'll do it. Help me. Figure it out. I'll do it. The timing of the fulfillment of your desire belongs to God. And our dismay at his timing shouldn't be used to diminish what he's created. It's a common temptation in our hearts that we don't want.

because of our covetousness. We don't want other people to have good things that we don't have ourselves. And that's a sin. And it applies to single people with marriage. They can become very jealous and angry and bitter that other people have something that they want. But the grief of not having what you want is not a justification or any sort of good reason to denigrate or to cast shade on what God's made. Marriage is a good thing. God's timing in bringing you a spouse is also a good thing, even if in the moment you don't see how or why. So God's made marriage. He's made it between a man and a woman. And he's made men and women different. And our differences, I've alluded to them some, go much deeper than our body parts, our physiology, our strength, our ability to conceive or not. The differences that exist between men and women are on the inside of them.

And we have to, as Christians, not despise those differences, especially in our spouses. Because when God said, let us make man in our image, and then he proceeded to create them immediately, a man and a woman, he did so with a purpose and with an intention in mind. And we as Christians can't despise that. You know, I've heard women talk, as an example, about what a good women's Bible study is and a bad women's Bible study is. And I'd ask you, what's a bad women's Bible study? What happens at a bad women's Bible study? I don't know what that means, Isaiah. You've never been to one, so I don't even know how you could tell us. I did. I was asking the women. Yeah, Wendy and someone back there said, when the women are complaining, what is it they complain about? Their husbands. And it's like, it's what they get together and do. And that's called a bad Bible study. Because what's going on right there is a hatred or a rejection.

of the image of God. We all want to say it's their husbands and it's the man. No, we love God and Jesus, but it's this awful husband of mine. And I say, you just can't separate it. You just can't. Yes, husbands sin. Yes, wives need support and a place to process how to love their husbands and respect them even when their husbands aren't perfect. For sure, you can have a good Bible study where that goes on and it's not marked by complaining. But what's being complained about? Well, what's really being complained about is the image of God that's imprinted on a man as it's been corrupted by sin. And so we have to learn to strain out the difference between what a man is and what his sins are that are attached to it. If we were to take little boys and use them as an example, I think you would understand it. What do little boys, what are they by nature inclined to do? Destroy things.

Right? They're not naturally inclined to build things. They're inclined to use their strength to break stuff. So what's the problem? Is their strength the problem? No, their strength is not the problem. The problem is they're using their strength, which is a good thing, for destruction. And if you root out their strength and you turn them into sissies, you will have broken them and done as much or more damage to them. What you have to do is take their strength and go, strength is good. Destruction's bad. Building is good. I want you to use your strength to build something. Instead of throwing Legos across the room, let's build something. You build a castle and you build a fortress and I'll build one and we'll have a war. And the boys will get involved in that. They'll say, I can do that. I can build something. And you take their strength and you say, let's put it to a good...

A good end. Same thing can be true of women. Men generally have no idea what to do with a woman's emotions. She starts crying. Men, it's like we have the exact opposite response. We go like super logical, super linear. I want to talk about facts. And it's a self-protective thing that men do because we don't know what else to do. So we're just like, okay, well, I feel like you're in a free fall and I don't want to jump into you. So I'm going to grab hold tight with both hands and dig my nails into the facts of life. because you don't look pleasant and happy and content, and I don't want to join you there. And in so doing, the husband pours gas on his wife's trouble. And what's the problem? What do both of them at the end of it end up thinking the problem was? Oftentimes, it's her emotions. Oh, you got emotional. Now it's true. Can a woman's emotions cause problems? Just as much as a man's strength can cause problems. Are the emotions bad? They're really not.

And the hard work for a husband is to figure out how to take that iteration of the image of God, that he's imprinted onto women by his desire and his will, how to take it and sort out the craziness, the destructive sort of outworkings of her emotions, and say, this is not how we want this river of emotion to run. We don't want it to spill over here. We want it to run this other direction. It needs to stay over here. It can't get out of its banks. Let's do this other thing with it. But in the same way that women will get together and gripe and complain about their husband's insensitivities and forgetfulness and general laziness or being a slob or whatever it is, men will get together and be like, she's crying and she's all upset and she wants to talk about the same thing again. These are the categories we ought to think of as...

image of God that he's placed into men and women. And when he puts a man and a woman together in marriage, yeah, sparks fly between those things, but they're much better equipped now to reflect the whole image of God and to understand more in their own marriages about who God is than they were before they were single. And so we ought not, as Christians, to despise the differences between men and women because those differences are meant to teach us about God. And we have a responsibility as a husband or as a wife to reflect are part of the image of God, well, we're not free to be like, well, I don't want to become a tender, patient husband. I just want to be able to run roughshod through my house and have what I want when I want it. The cost of that being none of my concern. Not allowed to do that. That's not a faithful way for us to process these sorts of things. Same thing could be said to a woman. You're not free to let your emotions or your intense desire to protect relationships

corrupt and ruin your marriage. It has to be disciplined. The sins have to be strained out of the good stuff. That's the work of marriage, and that work is the work of men and women saying, we're here. When God made Adam and Eve, he said it wasn't good for us to be alone. He's brought us together, and we now are under obligation as a man and wife to reflect the whole image of God. That's our most basic responsibility as... A married couple. And you'll spend the rest of your life working out the details of it. And it's good work. But we have to do it. I want to move on from this point of God having been the one who made marriage and say a couple of other things about marriage that we need to not be ashamed of or flinch at when there's something else. One is that God made marriage to be between a man and a woman. And at the risk of preaching to the choir, I want you not to have any shame or be bashful.

about that reality because whenever we speak about marriage we're not speaking about something that we've made we're speaking about something that God has made and it's the nature of man to take what God has has made and claim it for themselves to steal away his glory and and gay marriage is just one of the ways that that happens and we ought not to have any uh timidity about loving what God has made Protecting it and cultivating. Now, that's not me giving you permission to be nasty or rude or otherwise sinful toward homosexuals. Or maybe you have a family member who's got a partner who's married to someone of the same sex. I'm not giving you permission to be a jerk. Nevertheless, it's not the sort of thing that we ought to accept and go, well, I mean, but they're not Christians, so I don't know what to say. No, it is sin.

It's a corruption. It's a deviation. It's evil. And our work as Christians is, in Ephesians, Paul tells us, we're not to participate in the evil deeds of darkness, but rather even expose them. And you have to understand that in our society, when it comes to gay marriage and us wanting to talk about what marriage is, the cake bakers who say, I can't make a cake for that, are doing the right thing. And we ought not to think that they've done some wrong. We ought to be strengthened by their faith. And so it tells us not to participate in Ephesians, but rather even expose the evil deeds of darkness. What does it mean to participate in gay marriage? Well, it could mean actually participating like marrying. Is that all that's being excluded by us? No, I think that it does go further. I actually think that you ought not to go to a gay marriage. I know that'll cause trouble in your family and stuff.

But you have to trust God and you have to know that's not actually a marriage. Whatever that people call it, that's not a marriage. It's something else and it's sinful. And as a Christian, you're under obligation to the Lord not to celebrate wickedness. And you might think, well, if I said no, I can't come to your wedding because you're marrying a woman, you're saying this to a woman, you might think, well, that's the end of the relationship. What will she ever say? And I go, well, we have to have faith that when we... when we seek to serve God and to do what's right in his eyes, that it won't be to no purpose. That it may be in years to come, there's benefit from you having said from the beginning, that's not an okay thing, and I can't support that. I do love you. You're my friend, but you do still need to repent and trust Jesus, and this thing you're doing is not right. And so our work is to expose the wickedness and to call for repentance, to speak the truth in love. Marriage is also monogamous. When marriage was made,

The fact that it was made before the fall has implication for us. It's not the sort of thing that we take on and put off when we feel like it or when things get hard. And many people are afraid at the idea of their spouse sinning against them, being unfaithful. It's a scary thing. That's normal. I don't know any couple that would be like, yeah, well, we'll work through that if we have to. I don't think there's a Christian couple who would approach it that way. This is their life they're talking about after all, and that's a sort of sin that strikes right at the root of it, has the potential for destroying the marriage. And in a time when divorce and infidelity are so common, I think there's a danger for us to downgrade the severity of these sorts of things. One man and one woman, Adam and Eve, is the model that we have set for us before the fall.

And all of the twisting and contorting that's come after the fall as regards marriage is not meant to teach us that fidelity is not as important. What did Jesus say when he was questioned about Moses issuing certificates of divorce? He said, from the beginning, it was not this way. And so our commitment as Christians has to be in our marriages, in reflecting the image of God, we will not. seek relief from our marriage when things get hard. Now, I'm not saying that there is never an occasion where the Bible does permit divorce. I'm not saying that. I think that there are. Precious few. But you have to understand that when you get married to someone, you vow until death separates us. For better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death separates us. And those words matter.

And they don't just matter for your sake or your kid's sake. They matter because you and your spouse are under obligation as members of mankind and especially as Christians to reflect the image of God. And divorce is taking a sledgehammer to that mirror. And so you have to have a pretty strong commitment to not doing that, not even entertaining it. It's never a word that gets spoken in your house, no matter how angry or hurt you get. Because the image of God is at stake. And you may not throw it away. There is help. And God is faithful to bring you through those sorts of hardships when they come. And if they come into your life, the thing you may not do is throw it away. Not because your feelings are hurt. Not because someone sinned against you. Even if they were unfaithful. You don't get to run to divorce and go, this is my pressure relief valve. It's not. Now that's scary. That's kind of heavy. That's like...

You mean I've got, I'm not free to do what I want here. And I say, that's the whole point of this sermon is for me to say, you're not free to do what you want as a husband and wife. Because you together were created to reflect the image of God. And that has to be what you're driving at through over every bump that you hit in your marriage. Ask for help when you hit bumps. You will hit bumps. I'm not going to look at you and go, what happened? You terrible people. Why did you do that? When you need help, you come ask for help. You talk to the church. You talk to the pastors, the elders. You can talk to your parents. You talk to people who will be helpful to you. As we go through this sermon series, I'm going to have a week on what the church's role in marriage is. And we're going to talk about and flesh out this idea of what is the church for with regard to your marriage. And we'll talk about what husbands' roles are and what women's wives' roles are. We'll also talk about what a father's role is.

What is a father supposed to do with regard to marriage? Some of you older people have daughters that are going to want to get married. How does that work? We're going to talk about that kind of stuff. But in all of this, we have the image of God to reflect, to project, to proclaim. That's what Christian marriage is. That's what we do. And it's a good work. Hard. And so as we head into this sermon series, I want you to do two things. I want you to pray. for your marriage, and I want, if you're married, and I want you to, or if you're wanting to get married, if you're dating, engaged, what have you, I want you to pray for your marriage, and I want you to ask God to show you and convict you of the ways that you've thrown out his design and his image, the ways that you've neglected and cast aside the image of God, and when I have things more important to me than that, I have desires stronger than that, have to be met. Ask God to show you the ways where you've sinned in this way.

So that you can repent. It's not so that you can feel bad all week. It's so you can see and go, oh, okay, well, Lord have mercy on me. I don't want that to be the case. The second is that when you see the differences between you and your spouse, I want you to remember that those differences were put there by God. Yes, sin has corrupted it. And yes, you have an obligation, husband or wife, to help your spouse root out that sin in their life. But you're working with them, not against them. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don't despise the strength of a man or the emotions of the woman because those are the ways they've sinned in agreement with their nature. Work through it. Realizing that what you're doing is cleaning the mirror, getting the smudges and stuff off of the mirror that reflects the image of God that is your marriage. Next week we'll talk about companionship. Genesis 2.18. It's not good for a man to be alone. That'll be our text next week. The next three weeks we're going to go through the purposes of marriage.

and dig into them. So next week it's companionship. Let's pray.