Marriage-101B

Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Genesis chapter 2, and while you're turning, I'm gonna move this pulpit up. I don't think it's, nope, I'm gonna have to leave it down here. OK. Can you guys hear me?

All right. Genesis chapter 2 verse 24, and we are doing a series on marriage that we began last week. I know it takes a lot of courage actually to show up. If you're married and struggling at all in your marriage, I know it takes a lot of courage to actually show up not knowing what you're gonna get.

and if you're gonna be convicted or whatever of the spirit, I just applaud you for being here and just wanting God's word, whatever God has to say, to you, and thank you for being here on a Sunday where you lost an hour of sleep. Maybe some of you are thinking you're gonna catch up on that hour right now. So, maybe that's why you're here. All right.

anyway, Genesis chapter 2, in his book, Evangelism as a, Lifestyle, Jim Peterson tells the story about a Brazilian young man whose name was Mario. Who was a Marxist intellectual and a political activist in Brazil. Jim Peterson started a relationship with Mario and ended up having 4 years of regular Bible studies with this man. Until one day, Mario believed in Christ and called upon the name of the Lord for salvation.

Several years later, Mario was talking to Jim Peterson and he said to Jim, hey, Jim, do what it was that caused me to accept Christ? And Jim Peterson said, no, I don't. What was it? And Jim Peterson shares in his book how he was expecting Mario to say that it was his rich, deep, theologically rich, deep Bible studies and his intellectual arguments that persuaded Mario to become a Christian, but Mario did not say anything.

About those things. Instead, here is what he said. He said to Jim, remember that time, that first time I stopped by your house. We were on our way someplace together and I had a bowl of soup with you and your family.

As I sat there observing you, your wife, your children, and how you related to each other, I asked myself, when will I have a relationship like this with my fiance? When I realized that the answer was never, I concluded I had to become a Christian for the sake of my own survival. What this young intellectual activist saw was a relationship between a husband and his wife and their children, and he was literally undone by what he saw. He suddenly saw his own spiritual poverty and was left asking, when will I ever have this relationship with my fiance?

Imagine that Imagine having a relationship with your spouse and with your children. That is such that when an unbeliever sees you and your relationship, He suddenly sees his own lack. And decides that he simply must become a Christian for the sake of his own survival. That's at least one way of thinking about our goal in this marriage series that is entitled The Gift of Gospel marriage.

Our goal in this series is not simply to just help improve your marriage and to make it a little more personally satisfying and fulfilling for you. This series ultimately is about your marriage getting caught up in the larger story. of what God is doing in the world. It's about your marriage being so filled with the grace and the beauty and the power of the gospel that it draws people to the Savior.

This series is about your marriage being a blessing to other people. To you, and then extending out to anyone whose life you touch. That's our goal and to that end, we start in marriage kindergarten. Last Sunday, we started at the beginning and at the foundation and we reminded ourselves of some basic truths about marriage.

Last week's message was marriage 101 A. And this week's message is marriage 101. There's 7 basic truths about marriage that you can actually either observe directly in Genesis 2:24 or infer from it and the surrounding verses. And last week we looked at the 1st 2 truths about marriage and today we're going to learn 5 more.

So 7 basic truths about marriage that we want to remind ourselves of as we are launching the series on marriage. Truth number one, we learned last Sunday, is that God created and owns the institution of marriage. God created and owns the institution of marriage. We saw last week how God is the inventor of marriage.

He created Adam and Eve, and then he brought Eve to Adam. And then after they were wed, essentially, God turns to all people in every place of every generation, and God says for this reason, In other words, because of what I have done here with Adam and Eve, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. With this statement, God defines and he regulates the essence of marriage for all time. We see in Genesis 2 that marriage is not a social construct invented by man.

God created marriage, and as the creator of marriage, he owns the institution. It is his intellectual property and therefore, God is the one who gets to define it and regulate it. And the only thing that's left for us to do is to look to Him and learn from Him. As to what to think about marriage and how to behave inside of our marriages.

We learned last week a second truth about marriage, and that is that God created marriage to be heterosexual. The text of Genesis tells us twice that God made the first married couple, male and female. We saw that last Sunday. Genesis 2:24 has God saying to us for this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined literally to his woman.

And the two shall become one flesh. We learned last week that marriage by its very nature is an institution that addresses the gap between the sexes. A person looks across the gender divide. And chooses one member of the opposite sex and enters into a lifelong covenantal union with that opposite gendered person and then engages in the task.

of achieving lifelong union and oneness with that person. Fortunately, the Bible teaches that God made the sexes complementary. In other words, they complete each other. So it is in marriage that a man joins with a woman who completes him in profound and mysterious ways as God intended.

On this side of the fall, achieving oneness with an opposite gendered person is hard. Not just hard, but hard. Yet there is a growth and a flourishing and a completing. That emerge from those frustrations that transcend anything that a same-sex relationship could ever produce.

There's something else about marriage that can be observed in Genesis 2:24, and this brings us to the third truth, and this is where we're getting into new material today. And that is that God established or God elevated marriage to be a couple's most important human relationship. God established or elevated marriage to be The husband and the wife's most important human relationship. God says in Genesis 2:24, for this reason.

A man shall leave his father and mother. And be joined to his wife. For a child growing up in the home, their relationship with their parents is the most important earthly relationship in their life, right? It is the child's duty to obey his father and mother and to honor his father and mother at every turn.

That's his most important covenantal responsibility in life. Yet in this passage, God is saying that when a man gets married, he is to leave his parents. Evidently, marriage is not simply entering into a new relationship with your spouse. It also entails altering your relationship with your parents.

And the word that Moses uses to describe that alteration is the Hebrew word for leave. And it could be translated for sake. This is a strong word, when marrying a woman, a man forsakes. His parents.

Interestingly, Jewish culture in Bible times was such that a man did not always physically leave his father's house when he got married. He often continued to live in his father's house sometimes or near it. It was the woman who did all of the leaving. of her family, but that fact makes what Moses says here all the more compelling.

Here in Genesis 2:24, we are told that even the man has some forsaking to do, even if he is still near his father and mother's house. God is telling the man that when he gets married, he too, not just his wife, but he too is to forsake his father and mother and be joined. To his wife. So let's ask the question, what does it mean?

To forsake one's parents. It means at least two things. It means that when you get married, you forsake dependency. On your parents, financially and otherwise.

It also means that you remove your relationship with your parents from the top shelf of your life. And you put your relationship with your spouse in the place of that. On that top shelf. It means that your spouse now assumes the position of becoming your first and highest loyalty even now over your parents.

Obviously, you continue to love your parents and you continue to honor your parents, but you stop being dependent upon them. And you now become more devoted to your spouse than you are to your parents and you live your life accordingly. Does that make sense? Let me say a word to parents here.

As a parent, you do not want your child's first loyalty to be to you after they get married. Think about it this way, one of your goals in parenting is to raise your children to demote you one day. And to put somebody else in the place that you once held in their life. And when that demotion occurs, you should rejoice in that.

You should be able to look at your children and say to your married children, you will honor us, your parents, you will honor us best. By honoring us less than you do your spouse. Do not be a clingy parent who makes it hard for your children's first loyalty. To be to their spouse.

Honor your children's marriage. Give them space to forge their own identity as a couple, even during the holidays. Don't make demands upon them as to how much time they need to spend with you or how often they need to let you see your grandchildren. Give them space and just simply be grateful for any time that they give you, even if it is less than what you might want.

And be careful as a parent, not to let yourself fill a role that your child's spouse is supposed to fill. You should never want your child who's now married to feel torn between you and their spouse, and you definitely don't want your child's spouse to ever feel that you are a threat to their marriage. You guys tracking? As for you husbands and wives, I would challenge you to give some thought to what job you are doing with leaving and cleaving.

I know this might look different in different situations, but talk about this with each other before you get married and throughout your marriage. Go to your spouse, go to your fiance, whatever, and talk about this subject. And if you're married, ask your spouse, how do you think I am doing and leaving my father and mother and cleaving. To you Ask that question, and then let them answer and then talk it over.

Don't just trust your own judgment and assume that you're doing fine. Your spouse is the best judge, I think of how you're doing. I remember a shopping trip that Donna and I took during the first few months of our married life together and I needed a new pair of pants. And Donna went with me to help me find what I needed.

Up to that point of my life, it was my mom who always went with me. When I needed clothing or a pair of pants and so this was actually my first shopping expedition with my new wife, Donna. and we actually found a few possibilities for pants for myself, but I didn't feel comfortable or confident enough in making a decision. So without thinking, I said to my wife, I'll just come back later with my mom.

Let's close in prayer. That was honestly, that goes in the hall of shame. That's one of the dumber things that I have said in my married life, and I honestly didn't mean it as a slam on Donna. It just came out because that way of thinking was so natural for me up to that point of my life.

But what I said was hurtful to her and it indicated that I needed more than a pair of slacks. I needed to put on my big boy breeches. And take another step and leaving my father and mother and cleaving to my wife. So this is something you grow at and especially in the early stages of your marriage, you feel your way along and get better at it, especially with input from your spouse.

Also, this principle of the priority of marriage over the parent-child relationship works downward towards our children and not just upward toward our own parents. Think with me on this. If it is true that your marriage relationship as a husband and wife ranks higher than it does, than your relationship now with your parents, right? And if it is true that you want to raise your children to one day get married and rank their marriage relationship over their relationship with you, you tracking?

Then it goes without saying. That you, husband and wife, should value your relationship with each other even more highly than you do your relationship with your children. You heard me right. Your marriage relationship should rank higher than your relationship even with your children.

Your spouse is still number one. Your marriage existed before your children came along, and God willing, your marriage will still exist after your children are gone. So you wanna make sure that you cleave to your spouse first and foremost, even above cleaving to your own children. What that means is that you want to avoid.

Having a child-centered home. Make your marriage or make your home a marriage-centered home and look for simple ways to demonstrate your devotion to your spouse. Let your children see you showing affection for each other as husband and wife. Look for ways to demonstrate to your children that your spouse is the number one person in your life.

The truth is that children feel safest. When they know that mom and dad love each other most of all, they will find security in that and they will actually thank you for it. You are actually loving your children best when you are loving them less than you do your spouse. Do you understand that?

When I left home to marry my wife, Donna, I remember initially being worried about whether or not my mom and dad were going to be OK with me not at home. which shows you a little bit how arrogant I was at that stage, but my parents actually seemed happy for me to go. To my amazement, and they even said this, but it was, they clearly gave me the vibe that they were looking forward to being able to enjoy each other even more now that I'm gone. And knowing That my mom and dad loved each other most of all in that way made it easier for me.

To leave my father and mother and go cleave to my wife. Parents, if you are in that stage of your life where your children are growing up and leaving home and getting married, do not underestimate what a comfort it is. To them. What a comfort it can be to your children for them to know that you and your spouse love each other.

And that you value your relationship with your spouse above all other earthly relationships. If I can throw one more thought in here along these lines, we all know and agree that the parent-child The relationship was viewed as the highest of all human relationships, second only to the marriage relationship. So it should go without saying that if Genesis 2:24 is teaching that your marriage relationship should be valued above your relationship with your mom and dad, which ranks at the top.

Then it goes without saying.

That you should rank your marriage relationship above all other relationships. In your life That ranks somewhere below your relationship with your parents. Hence your relationship with your spouse should be a higher priority than your relationship with your friends, your boss, your co-workers, your job. You should rank your marriage more highly than you do your relationship with your hobbies.

Guys, you should rank your marriage more highly than you do your favorite sports teams, your video games, and even your iPhone. And I'm just preaching the sermon notes as Donna wrote them, all right? So, Man, I just wanna ask you, does your wife know that you value your relationship with her above all other human relationships? Does she know that?

Does she feel that? There may be a wife sitting here hearing what I just said and you say to me, preach it Pastor Milton. My husband is messing up in this very area and that's why I'm angry, that's why I don't talk to him anymore. That's why I pulled away from him and that's why I can hardly stand to be in his presence anymore.

Well, I appreciate you sharing that with me. It sounds to me like your relationship with your husband is not your number one priority either. Sounds to me like you are valuing your grievances above your husband. If God, wife, told you to forsake your expectations and to forsake your grievances and cleave to your husband, would you obey Him?

For this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother. And cleave. be joined to his wife. There's a 4th truth that we can learn about marriage which serves to explain why marriage is ranked as the highest of all relationships in your life, and that is number 4, God established marriage as a covenantal relationship.

God established marriage as a covenantal relationship. For this cause, a man shall leave, and you might want to underline the word leave his father and mother and be joined, underline those words be joined to his wife. The word leave and the word be joined are covenant terms. In the Old Testament, God enters into a covenantal relationship with Israel at Mount Sinai.

And then reestablishes this covenant. A little bit later before they enter the Land of Promise, and God makes promises in his covenant, and he gives to Israel her covenant duties. And the Israelites respond and make promises to God that they will keep covenant with God. Yet throughout Israel's history, Israel is often accused of leaving Jehovah.

And the Hebrew word for leave in Genesis 2:24 is the word that is used to describe the Israelites forsaking God in a number of passages. Also in the context of God's covenant with Israel, he repeatedly tells the Israelites that they are to be joined to him. As a part of their covenant responsibilities, and the Hebrew word translated be joined in Genesis 2:24 is the word God uses to convey that. For example, in Deuteronomy 10:20, God says to the Israelites, fear the Lord your God and serve Him, cling to him.

And the word translated cling is the same word that we find here in Genesis 2:24. Because of these uses of the word leave and be joined. In this way in the Old Testament, every commentator on Genesis 2:24 will tell you that the language used here in Genesis 2:24 clearly denotes that marriage is a covenantal relationship. And the covenantal nature of marriage is demonstrated further in passages like Malachi 2:14, where Malachi speaks of a man's wife as a woman who is your wife by covenant.

In Proverbs 2:17, Solomon speaks of the immoral woman who leaves the partner of her youth, that's her husband, and forgets the covenant of her God. Speaking of the covenant she made before God when she got married. In Romans 7:2, Paul. Teaches that a wife is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives and the language of binding until death is a clear expression of the covenantal nature.

Of marriage. This is why throughout history, the bride and the groom typically stand before an audience of people and they make public lifelong promises in the wedding ceremony. And they don't just make those promises to each other. They first faced the pastor.

Who represents everyone that is gathered, including God who is present. And when the bride and the groom say, I will, in response, or I do in response to the questions that the pastor is asking them, they are essentially making a promise to God and making a promise to everybody that's present. And then the couple turns and they face each other. And they make promises to each other, promising how they will live and how they will love and how they will keep themselves for each other so long as they both shall live until death parts them.

Their vowels do not end or at least I've never attended or officiated a wedding where the vowels end with these words until we have irreconcilable differences. Or until you hurt me so deeply that I don't want you anymore. Or until I fall out of love with you. Or until such time as I realize that you don't make me happy anymore.

Or until I find somebody better. No, the vows say until death do us part. So don't get married until you are willing to make Lifelong promises to your spouse and you are prepared to abide by those promises no matter what happens, for better or for worse. And getting married, you become a covenant maker and in being married, you must be a covenant keeper.

God is a covenant making God and a covenant keeping God and the marriage relationship is the ultimate relationship in which we reflect this aspect. Of his image to one another and to the world. Think about the role that the covenant plays in the relationship itself. The world is an unpredictable place where so much is uncertain, but as one writer beautifully says, in making a covenant, a husband and wife are creating a small sanctuary of trust within the jungle of unpredictability.

A safe place. The spoken promises that a husband and wife make serve to provide a safe and stable context in which intimacy can be achieved in the years that follow. Inside of that covenantal bond, the husband and wife are now free to live in full transparency and authenticity knowing that they are in a binding relationship with someone who has pledged to them for life. Timothy and Kathy Keller.

In their book, The Meaning of Marriage expressed this beautifully. They say the legal bond. of marriage creates a space of security where we can open up and reveal our true selves. We can be vulnerable, no longer having to keep up facades.

We don't have to keep selling ourselves like we did when we were dating. We can lay the last layer of our defenses down and be completely naked both physically and in every other way. Love needs a framework of binding obligation to make it fully what it should be. A covenant relationship.

is not just intimate despite being legal. It is a relationship that is more intimate because it is. Legal Keller goes on to say, the willingness to enter a binding covenant far from stifling love is a way of enhancing even supercharging it. It's astounding to me how people change after getting married.

They change physically over the years and in so many other ways. Some gain weight. Some lose weight. Our bodies change shape as well and usually in ways that we don't.

Prefer. All married people grow wrinkled. And gray and become less physically attractive. Over time, some experience sicknesses and injuries and medical conditions and some become disabled.

Who of us could really know all that we're in for? When we enter into the covenant of marriage, our personalities change. After Getting married. I don't think there's any married person that's been married for longer than 1 year who at some point has not looked at their spouse and said to themselves, who did I marry?

Who is this person that I married? We change our personalities undergo changes to the different seasons of life. There are things about me that have changed since I got married to Donna. For example, when I was younger, I used to hate puns.

I never, I never saw the humor in them. They bothered me. But as I've grown older, it's been weird. I've grown to love puns and the cornier, the better.

Because nothing makes me happier. As I grow older, then to see the pained expression on Donna and my children's faces. When I hold forth with some corny pun. So I've changed.

I've noticed that change about myself. And this and other ways, and my wife may not be excited about those changes, but she's committed to me for life. Amen. One writer says this, in Christianity Today back in 1983, Louis Smead said this, when I married my wife, I had hardly a smidgen of sense for what I was getting into with her.

How could I know how much she would change over 25 years? How could I know how much I would change? My wife has lived with at least 5 different men since we were wed and each of the 5 has been me. We change, but what the constant is?

The one constant is the promises that you made. On your wedding day Those promises never change, and the God who helps you to keep those promises never changes either. That's the power and the beauty of marriage being covenantal in its essence. That leads us to a 5th fundamental truth about marriage that we observe in scripture.

And that is that God sanctioned marriage as the context for sexual intimacy. God sanctioned marriage as the context for sexual intimacy. Genesis 2:24, the text says, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother. And be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

The expression they shall become one flesh speaks of sexual intimacy. This is confirmed in 1 Corinthians 6:16, where Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for having sex with temple prostitutes in the city of Corinth, and he says, do you not know that one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For he says, and now Paul quotes from Genesis 2:24, the two will become One flesh. Clearly, the act of sex makes two people one flesh, and here in Genesis 2:24, God is saying that marriage is the divinely approved context in which this one flesh union can take place.

And for this reason we can say, That in Genesis 2:24, God points to the institution of marriage, and he says, this is the context in which a male and a female can experience sexual intimacy. The gift of sex is so sacred, so transparent, so vulnerable, and so powerful that God only wants it to occur. Within the safe context of a lifelong covenantal union between a man and a woman who have pledged themselves to each other for life and taken upon themselves all the responsibilities that go with caring for each other in a marriage relationship.

It is not until a man and a woman look at each other in front of an audience of people and vow to love one another and save themselves for each other for life that God says, OK, now you can be sexually intimate with each other.

Sex in any other context is a cheap thing. This week I read that the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci is worth over $700 million. That's That's pretty valuable. You don't take the Mona Lisa painting and hang it on the bathroom wall of a rundown gas station by the side of an interstate road.

You put it in an art gallery that is designed and built for the purpose of housing such a painting and drawing out its beauty. The same is true for sexual intimacy. Sex does not belong in a casual relationship or a consumer relationship. It belongs only inside of the covenantal confines of a marriage relationship, which has been specifically designed and built by God to house such a meaningful act and to draw out its meaning and its beauty.

What is not to love? About This view of sex. What is not to love about a God who looks after us in this way? Ladies, God does not want a man.

Coming into your life and being sexually intimate with you who has not pledged himself to you for life. He's looking after you. He's looking after men and women when he says, here's the deal, pledge yourself to each other for life, take upon the responsibilities of caring for each other for life, and then you can be sexually intimate with each other. If it is true that sex is reserved for the covenantal confines of the marriage relationship, Then you want your marriage.

To include the enjoyment of this precious gift as long as you are physically able. When a man and a wife are being intimate and when they are loving each other in a way that provides a meaningful context for that intimacy, a million things are happening on the profoundest of levels. And when sex happens, it fulfills God's purpose in moving that couple towards oneness. Don't feel like you have to wait until your marriage is perfect or that your spouse is perfect before enjoying.

Sexual intimacy, sexual intimacy is part of the path toward the maturity of your marriage. It's part of the path toward the oneness that God wants for you. God says the two shall be one flesh, meaning that this decree actually has the force of a command. God is literally commanding the married couple to be one flesh and to enjoy intimacy with each other.

God is pleased when a husband and a wife enjoy sexual intimacy with each other. They are enjoying the gift he created and they're being moved toward the oneness that he designed. That God would earmark marriage as the only context in which we should experience this one flesh union. Not only tells us how to behave inside of our marriage, but it also tells us how we should behave outside of the context of marriage.

A married person should not be seeking one flesh unions. Outside Of their marriage, that's adultery, and God forbids that. A single unmarried person should abstain. From one flesh unions prior to marriage.

That's immorality and God forbids that. The Bible teaches that those who practice immorality in these ways without repentance will not see the kingdom of God. These are offenses against a holy God. And young people that are here today, I call upon you to save yourself from marriage.

Save sex for marriage. Obey Paul's instruction in 1 Thessalonians 4:3. When he says, you can write this reference down. 1 Thessalonians 4:3, he says, abstain from sexual immorality, which literally means keep yourself distant from sexual immorality.

He's not just saying don't commit sexual immorality, he's saying keep yourself distant from Sexual immorality. This is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus and God is fighting for your pleasure. When he gives you this command. Commit yourself to guarding your own sexual purity and the purity of others.

If you're in a relationship with someone, love that person you're in a relationship with by being a guardian of their purity and help them. Through your influence to save themselves from marriage. Realize, young man, if you're dating somebody that Jesus died for your sexual purity, and he died for the sexual purity of your girlfriend. That's the premium that Jesus places on your girlfriend's purity.

Christ valued her purity so much that he was willing to give up his life and die on a cross and shed his blood for her to be pure. And I ask you, what are you willing to give up? For your girlfriend's sexual Purity Will you place the same premium on her purity that Christ places on her purity as well as your own? Will you find joy?

And loving your girlfriend by being a guardian of your and her sexual purity. If any of you are in a dating relationship with, with anybody, especially you gals, with a young man who is not honoring your sexual purity and not willing to put the same premium on your purity that Christ does, you need to break off that relationship. He is not loving you like Christ loves the church. This is very serious.

You violate scripture and it hurts on the other end, and God is fighting for your pleasure when he speaks to you in this way. If you have already been immoral, I call upon you to run to the foot of the cross and do this beautiful thing that we call repentance. Jesus died for exactly these kinds of sins, and he will be delighted to forgive you, but you need to repent and confess your sins to Him and seek forgiveness from him, and he will be pleasure to forgive. Please know that.

This leads us to a next truth about marriage, which is that God blessed marriage as the context for procreation. God bless marriage as the context for procreation. As stated in Genesis 2:24, God's will is for the husband and wife to become one flesh. And God is so ordained it that this one flesh union will sometimes result In children being conceived and born.

And that is part of the reason why God only wants sexual intimacy to happen inside the context of marriage. Not every marriage will produce children. Not every marriage will produce the same number of children, but it is God's design that children be born in the context of a marriage relationship in which a mom and a dad love each other and are pledged to one another for life. Notice that God gives the blessing and the command.

To be fruitful and multiply. To a married couple in Genesis 1:28. Later in Genesis 9:1 and 97, God gives the same blessing and command to Noah and his sons, each of whom were married. It's to married people that God blesses and commands to be fruitful and multiply.

Because God wants children to be born in the context of the husband wife relationship where there is a mom and a dad who are covenanted to each other for life. This is God's ideal plan. For the fundamental makeup of society. I recognize in our church family that this is not the experience of everyone due to the brokenness of sin.

Some of you precious souls find yourself in circumstances that are less than God's ideal due to sins and some cases that have been committed against you. I want you to know that God's grace is there for you to supply you with the healing that you need. And to give you what you need to be faithful to Him in your present circumstances and know that if you're in a broken family situation right now, where pieces are missing and there's brokenness, please know that God finds special delight in showing his power in broken situations.

And I know, I know that some of you that are in these situations of all people could stand up here today and preach a better sermon than I ever could.

Advocating for the beauty of God's ideal design. And scripture That children be born. In the context. Of the husband-wife relationship.

God's ideal design is beautiful. When a man and a woman enter into a covenantal relationship with one another in a lifelong embrace and start doing life together, they come together. In physical intimacy and they're ready to receive whatever children come about as a result of that. Into such an environment, children are not unwelcome, they are welcome.

There are couples in our church who love each other so much and who are experiencing such sweetness in their relationship with God and with one another. That they are longing for and praying for God to bring them their first child or to bring them additional children so that they can welcome those children into the growing wholeness that they are experiencing in their marriage. That's the way it's supposed to be. All married couples should want children if that is what God wants for them.

God may give them children or he may not. He may give them 1 child or he may give them 7. Or more. But all married couples should be open to God giving them children.

If he so chose. Children are a blessing from the Lord and should be received as such. This does not mean that parents cannot at any season of their married life use birth control, but it does mean that husbands and wives should be open to and even pursuing. God giving them the blessing of children.

A marriage should be the most hospitable place on the planet. For children Where they are welcome There's one final basic truth about marriage that is tied to Genesis 2:24 and we'll look at this quickly. This is actually the greatest truth of all and it'll serve as the foundation for where we go from here and that is that God created marriage to display the glories of the gospel. God created marriage to display the glories of the gospel.

In Ephesians 5, Paul is telling husbands and wives how to relate to one another, and he tells wives to submit themselves to their husbands as the church submits herself to Christ, and he tells husbands to love their wives the way that Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. He tells husbands to nourish and to cherish their wives the way that Christ does the church. And at the end of those instructions, the husbands and wives, Paul quotes from Genesis 2:24. Which says for this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

And then right after quoting Genesis 2:24, Paul blows the cover off of marriage and lets us in on an astounding secret. A secret so great that the Old Testament could not contain it. And the very next verse, Paul says this mystery is great. But, in quoting to you from Genesis 2:24, I am speaking with reference to Christ.

And the church. And making this statement that I just read, Paul alerts us to the fact that he is not simply borrowing from the language of marriage when he describes the relationship between Christ and the church. What he's saying is that the institution of marriage itself is borrowing from the gospel. In the mind of God, the gospel came first.

God was looking at gospel truth. When he created marriage back in Genesis 2, and he patterned the institution of marriage after the gospel, and God created marriage to be a powerful medium. This is God's design. He wants marriage to be the most powerful medium through which the grace and love and forgiveness of the gospel can be put on display.

We're gonna unpack this truth and other truths in coming weeks. Our goal Last Sunday and today is simply to review some basic truths about marriage to move us in the direction of experiencing the gift of gospel marriage. If you're here today and, and you're struggling in your marriage, I want you to be encouraged. First of all, I'm just, I'm so appreciative of the fact that you're here.

I respect that But I want you to know that the marriage institution that you find yourself in right now is actually patterned after the very gospel that should give you hope. Regardless of where you're at right now in your marriage. Christ died for your sins and for your spouse's sins, and he didn't just die for you, Christ died for your marriage. Jesus died so that you could have atonement and forgiveness for any sins that you have committed, all the ways you've fallen short in your marriage, he died so that you can have hope, no matter how broken your marriage is right now.

If anybody is all in. On your marriage and ready to do whatever is required to help mend your marriage, it's Jesus. And that's why we can have hope. As I mentioned last week, Donna and I We have had some very painful seasons over the 28 years of our married life.

About 12 years ago, we began a journey of trying to put the gospel at the center of our relationship and what a fumbling effort it was. But we turned a corner, the changes did not come overnight, but they came. And I can tell you guys that here, standing here in the twenty-eighth year of our marriage, Donna and I have never loved and adored each other more than we do today. And that's a miracle.

Our children have been witnesses at times to our brokenness in our marriage, and I don't actually regret that because it sets them up, I think, to appreciate God's work of grace. In our marriage that he has done and is doing. We still get it wrong so often in our marriage, but I'm here to tell you that if you look to Christ, Jesus Christ can make your marriage a slow motion miracle. You'll reach a point Where a harvest will come, where every kiss is a grace, every holding of the hand is a miracle, and every smile from your beloved is a precious mercy from God that will blow you away.

And on top of that, God can use your marriage. To put on display the glory and the hope and the beauty and the power. Of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that's worth striving for, right? Let's pray together.

Lord, I just pray that you would pour out your Spirit upon us as a congregation. Our needs are so vast. We're talking today about Our marriages. And so we ask Lord that your spirit would just Lavish your grace and kindness upon our marriages.

And that we would surrender to you and say, God, I don't know what all this is gonna take, but I see that you lay down your life for me and for my marriage, and I'm surrendering myself to you and saying, Lord, do with me whatever you want. To make our marriage whole and to make our marriage something that glorifies you to where our marriage is a part of this larger story of what you're up to in the world and that people can look at us even in our brokenness and our failures and see what you're doing in our marriages and And gain hope for themselves and know that there is a savior.

Who can save. And teach his people to love.

I pray for our young people, Lord, that you would prepare them well for marriage, that you would protect them from the devices of the evil one, protect their eyes, their minds, and their hearts. And their bodies and where any of our young people have failed in any of the ways we've seen that they would run to the foot of the cross and know that you are a savior who is pleasured to forgive. And that they would receive that grace from you and that grace would serve as the wind beneath their wings that would enable them to soar spiritually to heights of love for you and for others that they've never known before.

Those who are forgiven much love much, and I pray that they would taste of your forgiving grace so deeply that they would fall madly in love with you.

You're a good God and we thank you for the counsels of your word. Give us hearts ready to hear everything that your spirit. is saying to us, This morning. We thank you for this opportunity to give of our offerings to you, Lord, receive these funds, do much with every penny that is given in this offering for the glory of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, and all God's people said,