Marriage-101A

Well, let me have you turn in your Bibles this morning to Genesis chapter 2. Genesis chapter 2. We are starting today a series on marriage and we'll be looking at more than one passage of scripture today, but most of our time will be in Genesis chapter 2. But as we begin, Our series this morning.

Let me, start off by reading a story, to you. Herschel York is a pastor and also a professor at Southern Theological Seminary, and last February, he, wrote, the following on the Southern Seminary blog. He tells this, this story, and I wanna, begin by reading it to you. the story goes like this, when my wife, Tania, and I volunteered to help a couple in our church move, the wife looked appreciative but a bit worried.

I need to tell you, she said in a low tone as she leaned forward, my sister Debbie will be there helping us too, and she's a, a stripper. Well, my wife answered with a laugh, she's not going to practice while we're loading the truck, will she? Assured that we would be fine and that we actually look forward to meeting her sister, the woman seemed relieved. On the day of the move, we were delighted to meet Debbie and we're struck by two things about her, how ordinary she seemed and what a hard worker she was.

Still, I could only imagine how she viewed men. And I took care that day to stay very connected to my wife, Tanya, especially in front of Debbie. Little touches, light banter, and occasional peck on the cheek as she passed me with a box filled with sweaters. When we stopped for a quick lunch, Debbie was observing us closely.

We talked with our friends about church and about what God was doing there. She asked a few questions about how we met and how long we had been together, but mostly we were just ourselves and enjoyed each other's company. We finished the move, invited her to visit our church sometime, and said a warm goodbye as we held hands and walked to our car. A week later, our friend called to say thank you for helping them move, but she said, I really called to tell you some incredible news.

My sister Debbie was completely blown away by your relationship. This past week, several times she would ask me if you guys are for real. And finally, she asked me what made the difference in your marriage. What do you have that makes you love each other like that?

I saw my opportunity to tell her that it's Jesus that makes the difference in your lives, and I shared the gospel with her and she has trusted Christ. Herschel York goes on to say this. That happened more than 20 years ago, but some variation of that story has happened many times in our 34 year marriage. In fact, without question, Our relationship is the greatest evangelism tool we have.

Our relationship is the greatest evangelism tool we have on a beach, at a restaurant, on a plane. In a mall, it just happens. People notice that we are in love and that we cherish and adore one another, and they'll start a conversation about it and eventually they get to the question, what is your secret? If marriage is a picture of Christ and his love for his church, then much more is at stake than my happiness.

The world should long for what Christians have. If our marriages aren't filled with kindness and joy, why would anyone want what we offer? But when they see in us a mutual delight, a gentle and easy trust in one another, they can't help but ask, what's your secret? And we can tell them that it's no secret at all.

It's Jesus. If you are married, I want you to imagine. Your marriage being at a place where you can honestly say it's the greatest evangelism tool. That you have Imagine your marriage being at a place where people are drawn to Christ, not in spite of your marriage, but through your marriage.

We live in a society today that is full of so much brokenness and dysfunction that a growing number of people don't even believe That true and lasting love is possible. But imagine Cornerstone being a church filled with grace-filled marriages that display the glories and the beauties of the gospel to such a degree that people are made to hope again and are drawn to the savior. That we worship from Sunday to Sunday. Is that a worthy goal?

For our marriages. Is such a goal worth the work? And the repentance. To make that happen.

You say, Pastor Milton, I'm, I'm just about ready to walk out of the service right now. My marriage is so not there. And if that's how you're feeling, that's OK. Donna and I have had our struggles also.

And we've had to seek counseling on a number of occasions. There have been many seasons of our life where our marriage was so not there. And my wife and I are very challenged by this story that I just read. As well.

But imagine that you and Donna and I Let God change our marriages into something. That is beautiful. God wants to, right? If God did, then where your marriage is now with all of the brokenness and the struggle.

will simply serve to make the story of what God does in the coming days and years all the more amazing. So the question is, will you humbly come to God this morning and ask him to do a good work. In your heart and in your marriage through this series. I hope so.

In the weeks to come, I wanna be your servant and just come alongside and be a help and a blessing and an encouragement to you. In your marriage as we look at God's word together in the coming weeks. Actually, my goal in this series is not simply to give you a few tips. To help get your marriage to a better place where you're doing OK and you're getting along better and experiencing more personal satisfaction in your marriage.

That's not the goal of this series. This series is really not about your happiness, your fulfillment, or even how to make your marriage more satisfying to you, even though all of those things hopefully will happen, this series is about the larger story of what God is up to. In the world and how God wants to use your marriage. As a powerful means through which he can put on display the beauty and the grace and the power of the gospel.

To others And with that goal in mind, we're launching today a several week series entitled The Gift of Gospel marriage, where you're experiencing that gift in your own marriage and your marriage is a gift to everybody in your life, whose life you touch. And as we start this morning, I feel like I need to say just a few things by way of providing perspective of who this series is for. first of all, I would like to think That this series is for everybody, not just for those who are already married.

The series is also designed to be a help to those of you that are single right now and who plan to be married one day.

If I could live my life over again and be a 15 year old again, I would be listening with rapt attention to messages like these in order to prepare myself for marriage. If you're a dating couple or an engaged couple, or if you're a teenager or even younger, pay attention to what we're gonna be saying in these messages as we look at God's word together, asking God to give you wisdom that prepares you to be a good husband or wife one day. The series is also intended to be a resource to you parents.

Parenting is, among other things, premarital counseling.

It's 18+ years of premarital counseling. God may not want all of your children to get married, but you should parent them from their earliest days in a way that gets them ready for marriage if that is what God has in store for them. And this series can serve as a help to you as you, you disciple your children and do the premarital counseling of your children over the 18+ years that you have them with you. The series is also intended to be an encouragement and a resource to those of you that are single or divorced or widowed, and who may never get married or remarried.

Even if marriage does not lie in your future, I know that you appreciate the fact that it is in everybody's best interest that Cornerstone be a community that is filled with strong marriages, right? And I hope that you appreciate the fact that you have a powerful voice in helping to make that happen. If you are a divorced mom or dad, living without a spouse, I know that you want your children to have marriages that honor the Lord. I know that you wanna do your best to teach them and influence them toward that goal.

I know that you, in your heart, agree with the statement of one writer who says, every person Married or single has a stake in building a strong marriage culture. Years ago, we had a married couple. In our church who experienced a number of ups and downs in their relationship. Imagine that.

We used to have a couple. That experience ups and downs in their relationship., sometimes they didn't get along and they would argue and they would be unkind to each other even in front of other people. but there was a single divorced mom in our church. A single divorced mom who was a good friend to this couple.

And this woman would sometimes start crying when she saw this couple fighting with each other. And she would exhort them to knock it off and be grateful for each other and stop fighting. I never saw this happen myself, but I know that it happened because this husband and wife told me what a help this single divorced woman was to them in such moments. And I cite this example for a couple of reasons.

First, here is a single divorced woman in our church family who is literally experiencing pain. As a result of the way that a husband and a wife And our church are relating to each other. She was being profoundly affected by somebody else's marriage. I share this example also because this same woman asserted herself and she played a meaningful role.

And helping to make this husband and wife's marriage better. I think than it would have otherwise been. That's what the church is all about. It takes a whole church to make good marriages and everybody.

Everybody has a role to play in that. So I wanna urge all of you in the coming weeks, regardless of your station in life and your own marital history and marital future, to listen to these messages and allow God to work in your hearts so that you can apply what you learn both in your individual life and in your ministry to other people. Is that fair to ask? So how do we start this series today?

We're gonna start with what we're calling marriage 101A. I want us to go back to some basics as we begin the series and observe what amounts to 7 basic truths about marriage that we see taught in scripture. And in the coming weeks, we're gonna, repeat and even build on some of these truths as we work together toward a culture of stronger marriages here at Cornerstone. This morning, we're only gonna have time to look at two of these seven truths.

So this is marriage 101A. Next Sunday is marriage 101B as we look at the remaining five. So what we have time to do today is to look at two basic truths about marriage that we see affirmed in scripture. And truth number 1, this is the beginning for us, is that God created and owns the institution of marriage.

God created and owns the institution of marriage. We're able to look at the subject of marriage in this way because we provided a context as we've studied through Genesis up to this point. And so we're gonna be reminding ourselves of some things that we've already learned from the Book of Genesis, but with that understanding of the Book of Genesis, especially in the early chapters that we have studied, we're set up to really understand and appreciate some of these things about marriage.

The first of which is that God created and owns the institution of marriage.

In Genesis 2, we're told that God looked upon Adam prior to Eve being created, and the text says, That God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. The expression helper suitable for him literally means helper opposite him or helper corresponding to him.

In other words, God wanted to make someone who would be a helper to Adam. And who would be his opposite in a way that perfectly corresponds to him and completes him, making him whole. So that's God's intention. What does he do?

Look at verse 21. The text says, so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept. Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman, the rib which he had taken from the man.

What happens next is the wedding ceremony. God does not just create Eve and then leave it to Adam to find her at some point. In verse 22, we learned that God created Eve and then he brought her to the man. Eve was God's daughter, as it were.

And as the father of the bride, God walks Eve down the aisle to Adam. And in that moment, Adam sees Eve for the very first time. Imagine what that had to have been like for Adam. Some brides and grooms will try not to see each other.

on the day of their wedding until the moment that the bride comes walking down the aisle. In fact, how many of you tried to do that? OK, some of you did that. but imagine, and so it's, it's cool, it makes it a powerful experience when you see her walking down the aisle for the first time that day.

But imagine seeing your bride for the first time ever. The moment that she comes walking down the aisle. That's how it was for Adam and not only had Adam never seen Eve before, he had never even seen Such a thing as a female. Until the moment that Eve came walking down the aisle.

On their wedding day. What a moment that had to have been for Adam. So how does Adam respond? Well, he waxes poetic and he utters the first poem in human history, Genesis 2:23 says, and the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Let's say the end of that this way, she shall be called Isha. Because she was taken out of each. If you don't think Adam's poetry here is all that great, just realize that he's making it up on the spot.

And it's his first stab at poetry anyway. My Hebrew professor at the Master seminary, I remember him saying that a part of what Adam is doing here is he's speaking in superlatives here, saying this is the best flesh and bone I've ever seen. This is Adam's way of saying, wow. Notice something else here.

As Adam is speaking, up to this point of the narrative, Adam has never been referred to as I. In the creation narrative in the 16 occurrences of the word man up to this point in the text, the Hebrew word is always Adam or Adam, which is the Hebrew word for ground. That word Adam was an appropriate word for Adam because Adam was taken out of the ground. It described him in relation to the ground that he came from.

But now here is Adam referring to himself not as Adam. He's referring to himself in a different way than we've seen up to this point of the narrative. Hence, what we have here in Genesis 2:23 is not just Adam naming the woman, but also naming himself. What this means is that in this moment, Adam is not just discovering a woman for the very first time, he is discovering himself as a man.

For the very first time. As one writer says, thus he, Adam, discovers his own manhood and fulfillment only when he faces the woman, the human being who is to be his partner for life. Up to this point, Adam has been referred to in relation to the ground that he came from. But now here, Adam is naming himself in relation to his wife.

He's saying, from now on, I am Ish and you are Isha. R. Kent Hughes says the sound play in these two names celebrates their relationship. Adam is restating his own name embedded into hers.

Clearly Adam is making 2 discoveries in this moment. He sees Eve for the very first time and he now sees himself in a whole new light. As a result of having seen her, Adam will now forever think of himself and see himself in relation to Eve. This is a wonderful ceremony and a wonderful moment for Adam and for Eve and for God, but what relevance does that first marriage have for us today?

It's at this point that God turns in the narrative to all people of all times and says in verse 24, for this reason, In other words, because of what I have done in this first marriage, a man going forward shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So here's a Bible trivia question for you. What was the last thing that God created? On day 6 of creation.

It wasn't Eve The last thing God created on day 6 of creation. Was marriage. The institution of marriage is the apex, the crown of God's creation. Everything has been leading up to this.

We did not know that. But now we know this as we read the text. It's at this point of the narrative that we can now think back on all the previous 6 days of creation. And realize that all along God has been getting ready for a wedding.

He's been decorating the heavens and the earth for this wedding. We also realize that because God is the inventor and creator of marriage, we have to say that God owns the rights to the institution of marriage. Marriage is his intellectual property. And because it is his intellectual property, God is entitled to legislate for all time the definition of marriage in Genesis 2:24.

And God has every right to make the rules that govern. How a husband and a wife are to behave inside of their marriage. Take for example, the iPhone. I did not invent the iPhone.

So I cannot just make something out of paper and call it an iPhone and try to sell it as an iPhone on eBay. I don't have the right to use that word in any way that I choose to describe anything that I wish. I also don't have the right to remove the glass screen from the front of an iPhone. And tape that glass screen onto a wooden 2x4 and call that an iPhone.

The iPhone is not my intellectual property. I can't just take one part of it and slap it together with something else and call it an iPhone. The same is true of marriage. God is the inventor of marriage, so he owns the rights to it.

He gets to define it, and he gets to make the rules that govern it. In fact, let's say it this way, when you get married, you're stepping into an institution that doesn't even belong to you. It's not your institution. Marriage is God's institution that he allows you to enter into and experience its responsibilities and blessings.

Think about it this way. Imagine the institution of marriage as a very expensive car designed and owned by God. When you get married, you are getting into that car and you are driving it around. But it's still God's car.

He's simply allowing you to drive around in his car for the rest of your life with somebody else. And he has every right to give you instructions about how to drive his car, how to take care of his car, and how to behave and treat your fellow passenger in his car. This is why it is that in Matthew 19:6, you can write that reference down. Jesus quotes from Genesis 2:24, and then he says, what God has joined together, let no man separate.

When a couple comes together in a covenant relationship and they consummate that covenant with sexual intimacy, it can be said that God is the one who's joining them together. The couple is not joining themselves together. God is joining them together through the institution of marriage that he created. And so the question for us, and this is a pressing question for us in our culture today, do we believe that God created marriage?

Do we believe that God has exclusive rights to regulate? Marriage. Do we believe that marriage is his institution to define and regulate how he sees fit? Or will we see marriage as some social construct invented by man that we can tamper with and define and redefine however we please?

Recently, I was looking at an online debate forum on gay marriage and the person who was arguing for the legitimacy of gay marriage started his side of the debate with these words, word for word what he says. Marriage is a social construct invented by man. That's how he begins. That's his starting point.

And if that's your starting point, You can now go in any direction you like, right? But here's what the Bible teaches, marriage is a social construct invented and owned by God. And with that starting point, we're left with only one thing to do, and that is to look to God and let him lead us and speak to us regarding all that he wants us to believe about marriage and how he wants us to behave inside of marriage. So the only question is will we look to him?

For this guidance. We're gonna do that in this series. We're gonna do that even this morning and next week. We're gonna do that and see what else.

If he is the one who defines it and regulates it and tells us what we need to know about marriage and it's his intellectual property to do that, then God, what do you say about marriage? This leads us to a second fundamental truth about marriage that we'll look at this morning, and that is this, God created, here's the news flash of the decade. God created marriage to be heterosexual. God created marriage.

To be heterosexual. This fact is clearly communicated in the passage that I just read. God sees that Adam is alone and he decides to make a helper suitable for Adam. So God takes a rib from Adam's side and he builds that rib into a what?

A woman God then brings the woman to the man, and in the decree that follows, Moses speaks these words. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined, literally the Hebrew says to his woman. And they, the man and the woman, shall be one flesh. If that's not clear enough in Genesis chapter 1, verse 27, the text says male and female, he created them, speaking of the first married couple.

In Genesis 5:2, the text says, again, he created them male and female, speaking of the creation of the first married couple. Such language indicates that from the very beginning, marriage is the union of a man and a woman. But the question you may ask is, well, is this notion of male-female marriage binding on all cultures of all times? Well, Genesis 2:24 makes clear that it is.

Remember that Moses is writing the words that we read when we read Genesis 2:24, and he's writing at least 2500 years, a minimum of 2500 years after Adam and Eve's marriage. And after his description of their marriage, He says, 2500 years after their marriage, for this reason, in other words, because of what God did 2500 years ago at least, on day six of creation, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his woman. In addition to that, another 1500 years go by. And Jesus finds himself in a debate on marriage and divorce.

And he enters that debate. By pointing to this passage. And another passage in Genesis saying, look at what he says, have you not read? Have you not read?

That he who created them from the beginning, made them male and female and said for this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave. To his woman His wife. Jesus goes on to reason from that starting point, to settle the marriage debate that was raging in his day. Now the debate on marriage and Jesus' day was not over the heterosexuality of marriage, but there's every reason to believe that Jesus would do exactly the same thing today.

There are those today who say, why does marriage have to be between a male and a female? Why can't it be two males or two females? Such people may say, I don't want to embrace someone of the opposite sex. I will only embrace someone of my own gender, and I want to call that a marriage.

There is 0 doubt. In my mind that Jesus would point to these very same passages in Genesis and tell us to find direction in them and he would say, have you not read? Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, so he, the one who created them, male and female, he said, for this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his woman. And the two.

Shall be one flesh. Biblically speaking, there is no way around the fact that marriage is by its very nature, a heterosexual union of two people of the opposite sex embracing one another in a lifelong covenantal union. Marriage happens when a person stands on one side of the gender divide and looks across the chasm between the two genders, male and female, and picks one opposite gendered person and enters into a lifelong covenantal union with that opposite gendered person. This is marriage as God intended it to be.

So don't let anyone fool you today. Homosexual marriage is a form of marriage that actually institutionalizes a profound discrimination of the opposite sex. In fact, it is a wholesale rejection of the opposite sex. A person wanting a same-sex marriage is saying there's not a single member of the opposite sex that I would want to enter into a lifelong covenantal union with.

Not a single one. I will only enter into such a union with someone who is of the same sex as I am. Ironically, it is the people who reject the other gender like this and who only want to embrace someone of their own sex who try to represent their lifestyle with the colors of the rainbow, as if they are the ones who are all about embracing people who are different. They really should represent their lifestyle with a single colored rainbow.

Because they refuse to covenantally embrace someone of the opposite sex with all of the complexities and all of the differences that come with that embrace of an opposite gendered person. This is why marriage by its very definition is hetero, meaning other. Marriage forces you to embrace someone for life who's truly different than you in profound and mysterious ways that go with gender differences. It is those who embrace heterosexual marriage.

Who are the truly adventurous ones, who are open to embracing variety with all of the difficulties and personal growth and completeness that come with the embrace of an opposite gendered person. Listen to how Timothy Keller describes this fact about marriage. He says marriage in the biblical view addresses the chasm between the sexes. Marriage is a full embrace of the other sex.

We accept and yet struggle with the gendered otherness of our spouse, and in the process, we grow and flourish in ways otherwise impossible. Because as Genesis says, male and female are like opposite each other, both radically different and yet incomplete without the other. He goes on to say, I have had homosexual friends, both men and women tell me that one of the factors that made homosexual love attractive to them was how much easier it was than dealing with someone of the opposite sex.

I have no doubt this is true.

A person of one's own sex is not as likely to have as much otherness to embrace. But God's plan for married couples involves embracing the otherness. To make us unified and that can only happen. Between a man and a woman.

Does that make sense? I totally agree with what he's saying there. I am a heterosexual man, yet I feel no shame in admitting to you, this morning that I can achieve psychological and emotional and spiritual unity with other men far easier than I can. With a woman.

why? Because most guys already think more like me and see the world and process things more like me than any woman. Does Give a group of guys a big screen TV and a box of pizza on a Saturday afternoon. And they can achieve amazing levels of emotional and psychological unity, right?

It's easy because guys think the same way. Yeah, there's differences between us, but by and large, in a lot of ways, we see the world and we process things in a similar way, but put a man And a woman, a male and a female together and tell them to achieve spiritual and emotional and psychological and physical oneness over the long haul of their life. And I promise you in a few years, both of them will tell you that the task of achieving that oneness is the hardest thing they've ever had to do in their life, right?

When I was young, like I was very aware of the physical differences between males and females, but I had no idea of how different males and females really were.

And how they think and feel and how they see the world. Until I got married. I get why some people say that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. That's not theologically true, but I get why people say that.

Men and women are that different from one another, and that's by divine design. Even if Adam and Eve theoretically had never fallen into sin, I am sure that Adam would have many times been left scratching his head. In amazement over how differently Eve thought and felt and saw the world. And she'd be amazed at how differently he thought than her.

And then on this side of the fall that we're all on, sin complicates and confounds these differences, making the pursuit of true emotional and spiritual and psychological and physical oneness between a man and a woman more complicated and harder to achieve. This is why many marriages end in divorce and why many surviving marriages struggle so mightily. There are homosexuals who might say to us, well you heterosexuals happily marry someone of the opposite gender because that's natural for you.

Heterosexual marriage is easy for you.

Because you are heterosexual. It's easy and natural. That's actually such a myth. Heterosexual marriage is not easy.

Anyone in a successful marriage will tell you that achieving true unity with their opposite gendered spouse is the hardest thing that they've ever had to do in their life. It requires a whole lot of sacrifice and dying and death to self more than would ever be required in a same-sex relationship. But it's also the most rewarding. And it perfectly accords with God's plan.

Timothy and Kathy Keller capture this beautifully. They say someone or loving someone of the opposite sex is hard. This is one part of the glory of marriage in the biblical conception. Two people of different sexes make the commitment and sacrifice that is involved in embracing the other.

It is often painful and always complicated, but it helps us to grow and mature in ways no other experience can produce. And it brings about deep unity because of the profound complementarity between The sexes. What is not to love about God's design? For marriage.

This is so true. Earlier in mine and Donna's marriage, I kept waiting for Donna to mature spiritually and start thinking the way I think. And she was waiting and praying for me to grow up and mature and begin to think the way that she thinks. But 28 years into our marriage, I love The way Donna thinks.

I love how differently she and I think and feel and see the world and it's actually changed me. It is changing me and making me more complete. I don't want her anymore to think like me. I like how her way of thinking has made me wiser over the years.

Sometimes I find myself in a situation or in a meeting. And Donna's not even around, and I think to myself, I not only know what I think of what's going on right here, but I also know exactly what Donna would think. And in such moments, I feel like a richer man for having Donna's thinking embedded into my own in that way. Having two ways of thinking now, in my head and in my heart, and it gives me a depth of perception that I would never have had apart from her.

In some situations that I may be in and Donna's not around, I'm not even sure what I think, but I know what Donna would think. And that at least gives me something to go on. About a year or so ago, we were, having an elders meeting and we were discussing a particular issue and we were a little stuck on it. I wasn't even sure what my opinion should be on the issue and we were stuck in the discussion, but about 30 minutes into this discussion on this issue that we were stuck on, it hit me.

Wait a minute, I know exactly what Donna would think. About this. So I said to the elders, I said, I'm not sure what I think about this, but I know what Donna would think, and so I'd like to share that. with you and I shared that with the elders.

And I drove home that night from that elders meeting feeling proud of myself for knowing what Donna would think in that situation. So when I got home, I told Donna what we were discussing, what we were stuck on, and I told her how 30 minutes into the conversation, I realized what she would think about that issue and how I shared it with the elders. And after explaining, How I thought that she would think about the issue, I said to her, did I get it right? Is that how you would have thought about the issue that we were discussing?

And she said, yes. And then she said, why did it take you 30 minutes to figure that out? OK, so I'm slow. But it made me really happy.

It made me really happy to know that her way of thinking, her way of processing, her way of seeing the world is so embedded enough in my own mind and heart. That it completes how I think. We're gonna stop here for today, but for now guys, I just, I want you to appreciate the genius of God and the way that he designed marriage. Be grateful for that opposite gendered person who is your spouse.

Stop resenting the ways that your spouse is different. Your spouse is supposed to be different. Also cherish how God has made you and all the ways that you are different from Your spouse. Your differences don't make you superior to your spouse, and they don't make you inferior to Your spouse Your differences also don't put you in competition.

With your spouse. The things about you and your gender that make you unique from your spouse are supposed to be the very things that you use to serve your spouse. And make them complete. While at the same time looking for your spouse to supply your deficits.

And make you complete. It's together as male and female inside of marriage that you can display the image of God. And recognize also, we'll talk more about this in the coming weeks, but recognize the gospel reality that lies underneath. The heterosexuality of marriage.

Listen to John Piper on this. He says God made man male and female with their distinctive feminine and masculine natures and their distinctive roles so that in marriage they could display Christ in the church. The basic roles of wife and husband are not interchangeable. The husband displays the sacrificial love of Christ's headship and the wife displays the submissive role of Christ's body, the church.

The mystery of marriage is that God had this double display in mind when he created man as male and female. The profoundest reality in the universe, which is the gospel, underlies marriage as a covenantal union between a man and a woman. And this is why we dare not tamper. With the heterosexuality of marriage and it also explains why we should honor our spouse and honor the gender differences of our spouse rather than resent them.

Let's leave the genius of God alone and respect that God is up to something cosmically grand. In the way that he designed marriage to be a heterosexual union. Also realize. That Your marriage is not your marriage.

It's not your marriage. And don't live another day as if it is. Your marriage is God's marriage. If you are married, you are driving in his car.

And I ask you, are you treating your marriage, his marriage with the honor that it deserves? Are you taking care of his institution? Are you looking to God and doing what he tells you to do as a husband or wife? Or are you getting your wisdom from the world?

Or from your own head and making up your own rules and exceptions and excuses as you go. You cannot, nor can I sit in judgment of our society today for ignoring God on the subject of marriage if we are just as guilty of doing the same inside of our own marriages. The way to fight the culture war on marriage is to do many things, but first and foremost is to fight for our own marriage. And to love our spouse, to repent of our sins when we fail, and to respect the gendered otherness of the spouse that God has given to us and to let God make our marriage a powerful tool through which he displays the grace and the power of the gospel to everyone who sees.

So that when people see our marriage, And watch us. Observe us. They might say to us, what's your secret? What's your secret?

What is the secret to your relationship? And we can respond by saying it's no secret at all. It's Jesus. It's Jesus.

Let's pray together. Hm. Lord, we are so small in the face of such grandeur when we consider your greatness, your glory, your gravitas, your unsearchable wisdom. There was so much going on in the way that you designed marriage in Genesis 1 and 2 that There were secrets even that were not revealed until the New Testament of all that you were thinking when you were designing the first marriage and creating the institution of marriage.

I pray, Lord, that You would help us to see our smallness and your greatness and to see the grandeur of your genius and what you are up to in creating the institution of marriage and, and that we would also get caught up in the larger cosmic story of what you're wanting to put on display through our marriages and that we would be more than about, man, I just wanna get along with my wife, I, I just wanna stop the fighting. I just want our marriage to get to a place where I'm experiencing more personal satisfaction.

Lord, you're up to something so much bigger, so much bigger. You want through our marriages to put on display the beauty and the glory of the gospel to the principalities and powers for them to see.

And for everyone in our life, our children. And our brothers and sisters and nonbelievers whose lives we touch that they see you in our marriages. That our marriages would be among the most powerful evangelistic God glorifying tools. In our life God, I just pray, this is just a start, but I, I pray that you would just, your spirit would fall on us and that we would experience just a real unusual openness to you, just saying, God, I may be a mess right now.

Our marriage may be a mess. There's so much brokenness. We're pulling our hair out. We're at our wits' end.

But we know that you wanna do something great and glorious, and we're just surrendering to you and giving you every right and our permission to come into our marriage and to change us and to make us whole. So that Our marriages become powerful vehicles through which your glory, your grace, your love, and your power is displayed. That's my prayer, Lord, for mine and Donna's marriage. I trust that that's the prayer of every Married couple in this room.

And we invite you to come in and have your way with us. You're a good God and we thank you. For Speaking to us on this subject from your word. We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you, receive these funds, do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus, in whose name we pray, and all God's people said, Amen.