It's good to be with you guys today.
My name is Kyle. I serve as lead Pastor.
So if you're visiting with us today, thank you for being here.
I'm glad that you've chosen to worship with us.
Today we are continuing a series called Happy the Home, which is
exploring God's design for families that titles taken from
an old hymn called Happy the Home When God Is There.
And so that's the, that's the intent, right.
We want to, we want to establish homes where God is present.
And so if you have your body, you can turn to Genesis Chapter
2, Genesis Chapter 2. We're just kind of we've been
following the storyline of creation.
And so we're going to continue with that today as your turn
there, I want to give you a brief updates on Winnie Kate's
kids. So Winnie Kate's kids was
founded in honor of Mina Patricia's daughter who passed
last September, so a year ago. And it was founded with the the
gifts that were given in her memory to disciple the nations.
And so with those initial gifts which were somewhere around 22
grand. Is that right?
If I remember right. OK we.
Well, Dustin, for the from the disciple, the nations, there's
pastors that we've that disciple nations has been training in
Malawi. Dustin's been getting with them
and other missionaries have been helping train these pastors in
Malawi for, gosh, about three years now.
I guess it's been a while and I've had a chance to sit in on
those a couple times. Anyway, these pastors have
daughters who needed to be able to go to secondary school,
secondary schools, essentially junior high, high school.
But you have to pay for it. It's, it's really a privilege
and Malawi to be able to do this.
It's not granted to children like it is here to just be able
to go to school. And so it had to be paid for.
And so with that initial money, we were able to cover the cost
for these four daughters of these different pastors that are
being trained to go for their first semester.
And so quickly we were able to then commit to helping the girls
finish school because of all the funds that had come in.
And so one of the girls just finished, I forget what it's
called, it's, it's the end of secondary school, but it's the
final installment of that, the final semester of that.
And so she's looking at being able to go to university, which
is just another great help, especially to women in this
culture. And so, so we're looking at
being able to pay for that, which I think the Lord has
provided the funds to be able to do that.
And so praise the Lord that will be able to do that, I believe.
But also I want to make you aware that there was a cholera
outbreak recently in which one of the pastors, his niece, lost
both her parents to cholera. So she is now in his home and
living with them and he was asking on Thursday if it would
be possible for Winnie Kates kids to help send her to
secondary school. And I just need you guys to say
yes or no to that. Yes.
All right. So we're excited to be able to
help with that. But there's another issue as
well. Malawi was hit with a cyclone
earlier this year. DTN had come alongside these
fasters and had helped provide resources to plant crops.
Crops they they plant normally, but to to be able to help in a
way that could get them ahead to where they could have bumper
crops, crops that they could then sell and make some funds
off of and they were about two weeks away from them to harvest
those crops when the cyclone hit and wiped out everything and
it's been a really devastating time.
And so each of these pastors have orphanages within their
churches where they're taking care of children.
And so the the food they're raising and preparing and
growing and harvesting is also used to help take care of people
in the church, help take care of children.
And so that Winnie Kate's kids is also going to come alongside
and just help provide food as well.
Now you can feed each of these pastors and their churches for
about two weeks on about $100 per pastor, I think, if I'm
remembering the the numbers correctly.
So really cheap. But Duncan, the kind of the lead
guy here, the guy that that all of this has been operating
through over the last three years and he's been getting
these other pastors to come together and he is working on
preparing crops currently. Right.
But you can't. It's not like going to the
grocery store where you prepare a crop and then it's, you know,
the next morning you can pick it, you can harvest.
So he's having to wait. But.
So I'm just asking you to pray. Pray for Malawi.
Pray for these pastors there in Malawi.
Pray for the people under their care.
Pray that when he gets kids disciple, the nations will be
able to provide funds. If you're interested in being
able to help with that, you can go to either disciple
thenations.org or Winnie Kates kids.org and give through those
those links there to help do those things.
But so I'm coming to you with pray request updates, but also
just the ability to praise the Lord that Winnie Kate's kids is
already in a place to be able to help.
And that's in large part due to the faithful giving of you all
just through our church. And that's not counting whatever
you give outside of it running through the church accounts.
But you've given a little over $22,000 just this year to Winnie
Kate's kids. Winnie Kate's kids?
Yeah, praise the Lloyd praise from the end and the account for
Winnie Kate's kids, which has done a lot already in a year's
time, less than a year's time it was founded in October, but in a
year's time, there's $47,000 sitting in that account
currently, which is incredible what the Lord's done.
And that's that's really without, I mean, very much
effort at all on our end. And so there's much to do.
There's requests from missionaries through DTN
currently. There's ways we can can help in
other parts of the world as well and and also locally we're
examining things as well. So please continue to pray for
Winnie Kate's kids. I thank you for your continued
support of it, that your love for our family, your love for
Winnie, your love for the Lord and and helping take care of
those things. If you've stumbled into this
today, you're like what in the world is he talking about?
You can go to those links as well and learn more.
So anyway, let's get into the sermon.
Now, surely you've had enough time to find Genesis 2 at this
point, right? So you're like, no, I got
distracted. So Genesis 2, we'll be in verse
21 here in just a moment. But just want to recap a little
bit what we've done the last few weeks.
So in week one, we looked at how God created this male and female
for his own glory, all right, He he created us male and female,
that we might bear his image on the earth.
He created us in his image and his likeness for his glory, male
and female. And so we talked just just a
high view of creation there. What does it mean that God
created us, male and female? We just looked at a few of those
things, But largely we were just saying mankind is the crown
jewel of creation, and it's meant to bring God the utmost
glory. All right.
And so we looked at those things and then, excuse me, as we got
into chapter 2, that was from chapter one.
As we got into chapter two, we looked specifically at how God
created man. I created him from the dust of
the ground. He placed him in the Garden of
Eden and instructed him to work it and keep it.
And so we said that God created the man to bear his image by
working and keeping all that God grants to him.
And then we looked at last week the creation of woman and her
purpose. And we saw there that God looked
at Adam and said it's not good for the man to be alone.
I'm going to create a helper fit for him.
Or as the King James says, that a help meets right is maybe the
word you've heard through the years.
And so God created a helper fit for Adam.
Now this helper was to bear the image of God by nourishing and
cherishing all that God grants to her.
And so we see more today or in the sermon today, we're going to
see more about how the man and the woman come together under
this covenant of marriage. It's an institution, A prefall
institution in command from the Lord.
And the only other one we have is to keep the Sabbath to rest,
right? We have that one instituted as
well. And so you might say that the
Sabbath was given to us for the preservation of the church, that
we would worship God on the Sabbath, that we would seek the
Lord on the Sabbath, that we would spend our day praising God
on the Sabbath. It would be a break from work
and a time to come together with God's people.
So it's for the preservation of the church.
Marriage is instituted for the The way I want to word it for
you today is this is a God created marriage for the godly
progression of the man and the woman and the godly preservation
of societies. Marriage is instituted for the
help, the maturation, the growth of the man and the woman.
But it's also instituted for the preservation of societies.
It's, you know, God created the man and the woman, then he gave
them a command. He blessed them and said be
fruitful and multiply, right, subdue the earth, exercise
dominion. So it was for the the
preservation of societies. But I think what we'll see too,
especially as the series goes on, you'll see that God intends
for marriage to be one of the great sanctifying efforts of the
Spirit in your life. And all the husbands and wives
said Amen, right? Because it is.
And sometimes that's in heartache, Sometimes that's in
hardship, Sometimes that's in difficulty or strife among the
man and the woman. But in most cases it's through
the help of one another. And so they're coming alongside,
being near to each other, the man working and keeping the
woman nourishing and cherishing, and all of that together, being
fruitful and multiplying. Amen.
So God created marriage for the godly progression of the man and
woman and the godly preservation of society.
Would you stand to your feet? I'm going to read Genesis 221
through 25. We're going to stand in honor of
the reading of God's Word. When I'm finished, I'll say this
is the word of the Lord and you will reply, thanks be to God,
let's read. So the Lord God caused the deep
sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of
his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made
into a woman, and brought her to the man.
Then the man said, this at last, is bone of my bones, and flesh
of my flesh. She shall be called woman,
because she was taken out of man.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and hold
fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
And the man and the I'm sorry. And the man and his wife were
both naked and were not ashamed. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for your word. We ask, Lord, that you would
help us to hear it, to believe it.
Lord, help us today to have hearts that are quick to obey
you, that are quick to repent of our sins and eager Lord, to
abide in Christ. This morning, Lord, we thank you
that your word does not go out and return void, but that it
goes out, and it bears much fruits.
And so we ask that you would prepare our hearts by your
spirits to be good soil, that the Lord, that the word of the
Lord would land on our heart today, and that it would bear
fruit. Fruit that multiplies.
Lord, we thank you for the institution of marriage.
We thank you, Lord, that despite any efforts by man to destroy
it, it will last, it will stand, and it will prove always to be
the God ordained way for societies to flourish.
We love you in Christ and we pray.
Amen. Amen.
You can be seated. I'm struggling with some
drainage this morning. All right, so over the last 50
years, the marriage rate in the US has dropped nearly 60%, is
nearly 60%. Less adults are getting married
now than they were 50 years ago. This is a problem.
There was another staggering thing I saw as well that the
number of women. Women entering their first
marriage between the ages of 40 to 59, first marriage after 40,
has jumped 75% since 1990. And before you read that or hear
that rather as an indictment on women, I think it's an
indictment on men, most, one secular sociologist quipped.
It used to be a basic institution, he says, that
everyone had to buy into an early adulthood talking about
marriage. You got married, then you moved
in together and then you got a job.
Marriage is now becoming the last step into adulthood, the
last step into adulthood. Well, if you ask that
sociologist, what's the blame, he said that it's due to a
reduction in tax benefits and there's some other legal
structures he mentioned, but ultimately it's about the laws
of the land. That's why there's a reduction
in marriage. He also mentioned that the
societal pressure to get married is eroding.
I agree with that. I will say that about what he
said, that this is like diagnosing and treating a brain
tumor is simply a headache. It's it's really all he's doing
is looking at the fruit of what, which is typically what
sociologists do. They're just looking at the
study of humanity and what's come from it.
What what can we observe about it without really diagnosing the
issues or the problems. They leave that up to
psychologist, which is another problem.
But this is not a sermon about those things.
So but the issue is, is that this is like scratching the
surface to to see what the problem below might be without
really doing any digging into what it might be, right.
It's just, well, it's tax benefits, it's the laws of the
land, right. They they've changed and so
marriage has changed. So I would ask you, you know, to
consider what's changed in the last 50 years.
If we want to ask these like we want to observe these things, we
need to know, right? We need to understand what's
taking place in the last 50 years.
And a whole lot has happened in the last 50 years, right
Inception of the Internet, the cell phones you now carry, you
know, a very powerful computer in your pocket everywhere you
go. I mean those are some
technological advances we've, we've seen what the world
causes. Relationship advances too.
Although I would say they're not advances at all, they're the
degradation of relationship. It's degrading.
So what we had within the last within post World War 2 anyway,
probably a little longer than 50 years now since we're in the
2000 twenties. You had the rise of feminism,
which we dealt with a little bit last week, but post World War 2,
rise of feminism, I think that helped lead into.
I'm not saying it's the cause of it, but there's been a grotesque
sexualization of society because of those computers in your
pockets. The ease and the ease of access
and then the subsequent addiction to things like
pornography has risen incredibly quickly.
The The rise of pornography has led to men who are enslaved by
pixels on the screen rather than committed to a wife in front of
them. And so that brings on the rise
of things like adultery, fornication, the inception of no
fault divorces, the celebration of sexual perversion within the
legalization of what I think we should call gay mirage, not gay
marriage in 2015 That has set us on a self destruction course at
lightspeed, really, and and so much more.
But all of this has led to a low view of marriage and that's
really what we're dealing with today.
It's led to a low view of marriage and and a low view of
the necessity of men and women to mature and for societies to
flourish. It's it's godless and it's one
of the great works of Satan in our day, these things that the
destruction of marriage. So the question then comes down
to us as Christians, what must we do?
What? What are, what are the responses
to this? How do we live?
How do we respond? How do we act?
What do we say? What do we believe?
And this matters a great deal for society.
You know that, right? You can you can feel the
pressure of such things I think first, just like we talked about
in week 1 how we must recover a high view of male and
femaleness. We must also recover a high view
of marriage. How has God created marriage.
What is the purpose of marriage? And so I don't look into the
darkness and and see this dimness.
And, you know, at times it feels like there's no light at all.
I don't think we look into that and we we become a people with
no hope. I don't think we look into it
and we begin to think, my goodness, there's no answer to
this. I don't think we look into it
and we think that there's nothing we can do either.
I I think that as Christians, what we ought to understand.
I mean, we, if you're in home groups with us, just two weeks
ago we were studying how Christ is the light and the light has
come into the world. So the world's always been dark,
is what I'm saying. But the hope of Christ is the
light, right? And so there there is light.
And I think that the fact that the the darkness seems to be
gaining ground. Is all the more reason for for
hope because light shines brightest in the darkness,
right? The the reformers back in the
1500s had a a phrase they used post Tenibrous Lux.
It was after darkness comes light.
They believed that they were living in a very dark time as
well, but celebrated that by saying that after darkness comes
light. And I think we live in the same
We need a reformation of marriage.
We need a reformation of relationships in our societies.
Yes, even in the church. And so again, I'm laying before
you today that God has created marriage for the godly
progression of the man and woman and the godly preservation of
societies. Evangelicals across the West has
begun to soften their message on marriage over the last two
decades or so. You see, there's never a
shortage. You can see it in the New
Testament that there's never a shortage of selfproclaimed or
even at times affirmed teachers of God's Word.
Who will not, or who will, sorry, change their perspective
or their stance when the winds blow the right way?
There's no shortage of that, even in the New Testament.
And so it shouldn't shock us that today, among our own ranks
have gone out those who seek to change the message on marriage.
Because the world likes a different message now, and their
purpose is to gain a great following and to make more
money. Follow the dollars, always.
And so they'll make apologies for what scripture says about
marriage. Well that's you know, God's
commands about homosexuality are only in the Old Testament.
Well that's not true. But even if it were, it's still
God's commands. Just because it was in the Old
Testament doesn't it doesn't abolish it.
Christ said as much. I didn't come to abolish the law
came to fulfill it. Christians have made apologies
for the God ordained roles of man and woman in the home and in
the church and in society. You know that that that was a
different way back then. Well the problem is, is that
much in those arguments it's tied to creation.
God created the man and the woman and we come back to that
always. That was Paul's reasoning in
First Timothy 2 as he says that the church should not have women
pastors. This is not how God has ordered
his church. Doesn't mean that women can't
teach, doesn't mean that they can't.
They they're called and taught us too, to teach other women.
Older women are to train younger women to be lovers of husbands
and children and to take care of their homes and to be self
controlled and respectable. And there's a whole list there
of what older women are to train younger women at.
And so there is teaching that goes on.
And so we we must not ever stoop so low as to think that
softening God's work as if we're more knowledgeable than he is,
or more wise than he is, or if we think that his his book is a
bit outdated and so it needs some updating, right?
We can't stoop so low as to think that if we'll do that,
we'll gain more followers. Now maybe you will gain more
followers, but what's the issue there?
Those followers are not drawn to what the God.
They're not drawn to the God of the Bible.
Nor are they drawn to what the God of the Bible has instructed
us to do. Rather, they're drawn to the
teachings of a man who has deemed the Bible and the God of
the Bible unfit for teaching. They've made gods of themselves
and for themselves. Again, we see this in the New
Testament. Solomon really was right and
writing Ecclesiastes when he said there's nothing new under
the sun. Even evils repeat themselves.
The devil may be cunning, but he's not real creative.
It's the same thing always. And so I think we have to work
on that which we're sobered a bit here.
I think we have to work on recovering a high view of
marriage, a godward view of marriage.
What does marriage exist for? And so as we do that I want you
to remember in the text that we've read, this is after the
man was asked to help God or I got gave him a task.
He told him to name all of the creatures which he had created.
And it says that all of the creatures that God brought
before him, and whatever Adam called them, that was his name.
And then at the end of that, it was it said there that Adam did
not find a helper fit for himself.
He was alone. God helped him come to this
realization. God knew it already because
before you read any of that, it says God looked at the man and
saw that he was alone and said this is not good.
And then in chapter one we read that after God created the man
and the woman, he called it very good.
So there was a moment in that where God looks and says this
isn't good, right? And he wants the man to
understand this. And so, as we look at marriage
from creation, God has given the man a purpose.
His purpose is to work and keep, and so he's working and keeping
in this moment by naming the animals.
And he finds out that it's not good for him to be alone.
So it's not good for him to even work and keep alone.
Working and keeping should involve the help of another,
namely, a wise He needs a helper fit for him.
He needs a wife who will nourish and cherish all that God gives
to them, right He He works it and keep it, keeps it.
She nourishes and cherishes. We use the example last week
that the man may be in the field plowing and planting and
harvesting, but he brings the goods into the to his wife, who
then prepares those raw materials into food and keeps a
home and a table, right? Feeds children, constructs them,
and how to to eat or to cook and eat and take care of a home, so
that they work and keep together, they nourish and
cherish together. These things work side by side.
And so look at verses 21 through 23 again.
So the Lord God caused the deep sleep to fall upon the man, and
while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place
with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God
had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to
the man. Then the men said, this at last
is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman because she was taken out of
man. You got to imagine the scene
with me just a little bit. It's not good for you to be
alone, Adam. Adam gets to the end of this.
He sees that he's alone. He feels the weight of that
there's not a helper fit for him.
And so God causes him to sleep. One of the things that's worth
pointing out there is as you trust in the Lord, you can rest
as he brings provision. All right.
He not going to apply to anything, but especially to
praying for a spouse. Men trusting the Lord to provide
a wife for you. Ladies, trusting the Lord to
provide a husband for you, God creates the woman from the rib
of the man. He closes up the flesh.
And then what does he do? Well, it says that he brought
her to the man. And I don't know how the scene
actually played out, but I'll I'll tell you what it looks
like. It looks like when a father
walks his daughter down the aisle, it says the the Lord God
brought her to the man. He ushers her into him and it's
like a father walking his daughter down the aisle.
The Lord God brings this woman to the man.
And I can. I can remember that day in my
life where Patricia's dad brought her to me.
There's a real blessing in that, right?
A father's entrusting one of his maybe the most prized
possession. So the most prized thing in his
life, his daughter to you. And here we see that you must
trust the Lord in this way. So are you single?
If so, are you pray? Are you preparing yourself for
marriage by living a godly, upright life?
Now you know. Are you asking God for something
you're not yet fit to to take on?
Matthew Henry said this. He said those are likely to
settle to their comfort, meaning they're marry.
They marry to their comfort, who by faith and prayer and the
humble dependence upon Providence put themselves under
a divine conduct. That wife, he goes on, that is
of God's making by special grace and of God's bringing by special
Providence, is likely to prove a help meet for a man.
Amen. Amen.
And then, if you're married already, you can.
You can settle your comfort in marriage by faith and prayer.
Still you don't get to outgrow faith and prayer.
It's trusting depending upon the Lord and praying for His help.
His guidance in in your marriage that trust that faith and prayer
informs then your works and your words within your marriage,
right? It's it's part of God's work and
maturing you by His spirits as you depend on Christ.
Christ helps you by His spirits as you trust in Christ for the
help of your spouse. Christ helps your spouse by His
spirit and maybe even through you.
We'll talk a bit more in a moment on what it looks like for
God to use marriages in this way to sanctify us.
But for now we must see the gracious generosity of God who
created all things, including marriage, right?
The man gains a help meet, the woman gains a husband who was to
be her head. And we talked again.
She was created from the side of man, not from his head that she
would be over him and not from his feet, that she would be
trampled on him, but from his side, that they would be near to
one another and walking together in marriage.
And so I ask you it in the text, is he thrilled by God's
generosity, or is he a little sad about it?
Well, he's thrilled he's thrilled.
He he speaks in poetic terms, like only a rough, gruff man can
speak in poetic terms, right. I mean, it's this at last is
bone of my bones. I tried that on Patricia once.
I didn't get an all. How sweet.
It's just this flesh of my flesh.
Oh, babe, you're so kind. No, not at all.
Right. Like she shall be called woman
because she was taken out of man.
That was an old joke. It's really kind of crass.
So I'll just. I want to correct it this way.
Got Adam did not name the woman the woman, because he said whoa,
man, when he first saw her. It's it's far deeper than
outward attraction. It's far deeper than that.
He declares the power of their union.
He declares the with great with the greatest intimacy he can
muster. He He declares in poetic terms,
no less, what it means for him to have gained a help, meet one
who is like him in nature. She is human.
We read in the New Testament that man was made in the image
of God, a woman was made in the image of man, that that both
were made in the image of God in that way.
And So what he's saying is, is this at last is bone of my
bones. This is last is flesh of my
flesh. He had just gone through all the
other creatures on the earth, right, and did not find one who
was like him. I don't know how many that was
at creation. You know, I'm sure we've gotten
many different kinds over the years, but he named every
animal, every creature flu on the above the earth, every
creature and beast that roam the earth.
And he names them all and he finds that there's not one fit
for him. So what does he do now that he
finds one who's fit for him? Well, he names her.
He says she shall be called woman, which in the in the
Hebrew is Isha. And the reason that's important
is because in the Hebrew, man is ish.
So you see the intimacy at play here.
You see what's going on. He is restating his own name and
her name, declaring the greatest intimacy possible.
I mean that these two were literally, God intends for them
to become one flesh in this marriage union, right?
But he's literally stating right out of the gate we are one.
This is my wife. I think it's beautiful.
That doesn't sound like it. When you read Bone of My Bones
and Flesh of My Flesh, it's kind of like that.
Oh no, it's kind of sounds Halloweenish, you know, But it's
it's deeper than that. He's rejoicing in what God has
done, which is the good and right response, right?
When a when a man gets married, he should rejoice.
When we receive good gifts from the Lord, should we not rejoice?
We rejoice in the Lord always, right.
And so God's Matthew Henry says that God's gives to us are to be
received with a humble, thankful acknowledgement of His wisdom
and suiting them to us and His favor and bestowing them on us.
So we receive it with thankfulness that why in the
world would God give such an amazing gift to me?
This is prefall Adams saying this.
How much more can sinful Adams say this?
Sinful sons and daughters of Adam and Eve as we are.
But God created marriage for the godly progression of the man and
woman and the godly preservation of societies.
He brings them together for this purpose to be fruitful and
multiply, as you see in Genesis chapter one, verse 28.
And God bless them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply
and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the
fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over
every living thing that rules and moves on earth.
Sorry, that moves on the earth. All of those creatures you just
named Adam, you and your wife are to go and exercise dominion
over them. You are my vice regions on the
earth. You do you Lord.
Over them and my stead. I'm your Lord.
You are there, Lord right. But you do it together.
You rule together. And we see this as the two
become one flesh. In verse 24 here we read
therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and holds
fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
And so this is what I mean by marriage is meant to preserve
societies. The man and the woman come from
who? I mean, here they're coming from
God, but every man and woman after that come from who?
Their mother and father. Right.
You men, you have a mother and a father.
Now, whether or not they were good or not, that's we're not
discussing those things yet, right?
We're just saying you have a mother and father and who of
whom you come from. And ladies, you do as well.
And so here we read that they leave mother and father.
The man leaves his mother and father, he leaves his home.
He leaves his kindred and he joins.
He holds fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
So the man and the woman leave. Father and mother hold fast to
one another, which perpetuates and preserves societies in godly
fruitfulness. To become one flesh means the
marriage was to be consummated. It's the reason you shouldn't
live a life of fornication. You become one flesh with
everyone you sleep with and so a piece of you is is a part of
them. This is This is why fornication
leads to the degradation of societies.
And I'm not going to travel so far down that road as to say
that God doesn't heal and that God can't restore or redeem.
Absolutely he does. In Christ Jesus, all of our sins
forgiven, healed of all of those things.
Amen. We praise God for that.
But it's why bragging about things like body counts is
utterly stupid. It's foolish and and it's not
doing anything for you. In fact, it's destroying you.
So. So we must be smart here and
understand that, you know, as a as a man becomes more hard after
years of pornography abuse, years of fornication, as his
heart becomes hard, and as he decides that marriage is not for
me. That is not a blessing of God.
That's that's a hardening of his heart towards the things of God
because of his sinfulness. And This is why marriage rates
are on the decline. Least one reason.
Again, I submit that there's many, but this is 1 sober reason
why men, you're called to leave mother and father and to be
joined to your wife. Not to be joined to pixels on
the screen or to many women, but to your wife.
And a lifelong monogamous relationship lived unto God
Almighty. And this is where you'll find
the blessing of God. This is where you'll find true
joy and true happiness that lasts a lifetime.
It's in the hard work of building a home with your wife.
It's worth every effort. You can see how great the bond
here is because they're called to leave mother and father be
joined to their wife, right? The the two are called to leave
what is natural to them, and to be joined to something which is
supernatural, and acted upon them by God through the two
becoming one flesh. I mean naturally, to whom can
you be more firmly bound together with than your Father's
and your mother's who brought you into this world?
Yet you must leave them to be joined to your wife.
The daughter must forget them to be joined to her husband.
Scripture elsewhere. The reason we're no, we're not
supposed to take multiple wives just because Scripture elsewhere
makes that explicit. See how firm the bond of
marriage is here? It's not to be divided or
weakened. Christ goes on to say that as he
expounds upon this text later in the gospels, he's being asked
about marriage and the difficulty of it and and the
likes. He he says that have he says,
Have you not read that the man shall leave his mother and
father, be joined to his wife, the two shall become one flesh.
And what God has joined together, Christ the heads let
not men separate. So this marriage union is not to
be divided or weakened or broken.
You can see how dear the affection here is between the
couple, right? That they would leave mother and
father, be joined to their husband or their wife, such as
they become 22. Flesh has become one flesh.
And so then they are they act as though they are one soul, even
they're that near to one another, that close to one
another. You know, there's so many
naysayers about marriage that it really is disheartening.
It's disheartening for a young couple like every.
And I can remember this being the case for me.
I worked in an office on my way to marriage, was engaged to be
married in just a couple of months and took a job in an
office working alongside. I think there's one other male
in the office and a bunch of other ladies and I just remember
how awful marriage was talked about.
It was even from women. It was like don't do it, you
know, it's terrible. You know, the first year is the
hardest. Watch out for the seven-year
itch. Like it's all these different
warnings and like, my gosh, who wants to be married?
And then ultimately, it would just go back to Patricia and
have conversations with her. And I would think, praise God,
I'm not married to one of those women, of marrying this woman.
This is different. And so you kind of kind of about
you a holy rebellion, right? It's a, it's a rebelling against
what society thinks is good and right to live unto the the thing
that God calls holy. But I remember those days well,
and I remember now, even like as you do marriage counseling with
young couples, I hear much of the same thing like this, This
is perpetuated. This is how we're discipling
people to think about marriage, and often times it comes from
people who are Christians. This is terrible.
This is not how we perpetuate societies.
This is how we got into the mess we're in now.
Is Christians beginning to say marriage ain't worth it?
Yes, it is. It's good and right said so by
God, it was. It was ordained before it was
ordained, at the beginning of world history.
In fact, it's how world history was to come about.
Was a married man and woman carrying out the acts of God in
society, right? Building homes and helping those
homes be fruitful, multiply and then so on and so forth.
And so Patricia and I'll be married in for 15 years in on
December 6th of this year. Four children gone through the
death of a child together. We've gone through heartaches
early in marriage, dealing with with my failures and handling
pornography, meeting the pains of that on her face and in her
voice, and then receiving grace that only the Lord could supply.
That has a way to strengthen a man, is what I'm saying this
this is what God means when when you're giving a help meet at the
beginning of creation, it's easy to think, well this was prefall
world, how hard could it be? But the problem was is marriage
doesn't end in Genesis 3 when the fall happens, in fact
they're still to go and be married and to be fruitful and
multiply. We still get those same commands
through the scriptures. So you have to learn now in a
postfall world, how are we going to be fruitful and multiply?
How are we going to live for the Lord?
How are we going to submit ourselves to His rule into His
government of our lives, for the good of our children and for the
good of churches and for the good of societies and nations?
Right? Like you have to ask the
question at the heart level. What do I need to change?
How might the Lord rule my heart?
As a husband or as a wife? Where am I missing the mark?
How can I submit to Him? Right.
There's all these different questions you can come to with
the scriptures, and the Lord wants to answer your questions.
Who wants to help you live as a man who loves the Lord with a
wife who loves the Lord so that you raise children who love the
Lord? Happy to home when God is there.
God wants to be in your home and he commands you to make him Lord
of your home. And so if you resist the Lord
and don't make him Lord of your home, well then you're not going
to incur the blessings of God. It's amazing to me how many, how
many of us will pray for God to bless in some way as we're
actively living in disobedience to God.
It's quite an arrogance to think that the blessings I need, or
the things I need him to answer the circumstances I need him to
change. Are they not possibly a result
of my disobedience? Are they not possibly God's way
of chastising those children whom he loves dearly?
As Hebrews tells us? Yeah, it's possible.
They are. And so we must submit ourselves
to him, right. And that that requires a help.
Meet men, ladies. That requires a husband who
loves the Lord. And for you to follow such a
man. God created marriages for the
godly progression of the man and the woman.
You leave mother and father. You're joined to your wife.
You leave mother and father. You're joined to your husband.
God intends for that relationship to mature you in
many of the same way, well, in many ways that build upon how
you were matured as a son or a daughter.
Does that make sense? I kind of confused my wording
there. So as you leave mother and
father, that relationship that you were discipled in and
brought up in and hopefully brought up to love the Lord, and
you're now joined to your husband or your wife for further
discipleship, for further growth and sanctification in Christ
likeness. And that's going to come as you
endure hardships. It's going to come as your
spouse sins against you or you sin against your spouse.
And these things are brought up and now you have to deal with
them. It's going to come in all sorts
of ways, but God is going to bless your home as you submit
yourself to Him and seek kill promise you this.
Not because my promise is any good, but because the Lord has
promised. It's a it's a weird.
The next verse is weird right? Naked and unashamed.
But what I'm telling you is this is describing life in marriage.
Pre fall, the man and his wife were both naked.
And we're not ashamed, and we get in Genesis 3 after the fall
that they were naked and ashamed and so they covered themselves.
It wasn't that they learned they were naked, it was that they
sinned and realized their sinfulness.
But what we have here is an evidence of the purity and the
innocency of of that the the state that Adam and Eve in their
marriage existed in, in which they were created to live in.
They were naked. They didn't need clothes for
defense against colder heat. Nothing could injure them.
They didn't need it for ornaments, all right.
And we're trying to dress up, make themselves look pretty.
They were naked and had no reason to be ashamed.
They they knew. They didn't even know what shame
was. That's the beauty of it.
Now when we we Matthew Henry says that when we blush now,
it's the product of virtue. It's the color of virtue he
calls it. It's an understanding that
that's shameful and we shouldn't do that.
So we we blush. But it was not the color of
innocence he said they did. They didn't know blushing.
Those that had no sin in their conscience might well have no
shame in their faces, he says. Though they had no clothes to
their backs. And so it's a it's a hard text
to preach in the company of children because there's there
is a great restore. There's a restorative nature
about godly marriage that gets you to a place where you can
exist naked and be unashamed with someone again.
So. So here's what I mean.
If if you all knew every sin that I dealt with, if you knew
everything that crossed my mind, if you knew every heart issue
that I possess, I have no doubt some of you think I'm awful,
right? But I'm just kidding.
But but I'm more awful than you can imagine.
And that's not like some piatistic saying like that's
true. I recognize that about my own
heart, that I'm more sinful even than I realize.
But you can exist in marriage and a godly marriage.
There's a restorative nature to where you can exist in all your
sinfulness, naked right before your wife, in the sense of
everything is born before her, in your heart, your mind, and
you. You can live not, You can live
unshamed. She's not going to shame you.
I'm not saying you won't be unashamed for your sinfulness.
Sure you will. That's conscience.
That's God's work in your life to get you back on track and to
help you see true North and to repent and believe right?
But what I'm saying is, is that you can exist as your marriages
grow, you can come to this place where you are glad to be with
your wife and for her to know all of your wrongs and your
faults and your failures. And she's not lording them over
here. And the vice versa is true.
You're not lording them over her, but you're washing one
another with the word is Christ citizen, or as God instructs us
through Ephesians. 5. And so there's a sanctifying
effect, a deep, incredible sanctifying effect to marriage,
Christian marriage. And This is why I say we got to
have a high view of Christian marriage.
But we've got to restore this view of Christian marriage.
We've got to have God change our minds about marriage if we think
that marriage is not useful, that marriage should not be
pursued, or any of those kinds of things because God wants to
use marriage most often. There are cases of singleness
and celibacy and the like, but they're fringe accounts in
Scripture. Most often, God wants to use
marriages to bring you to a place where you can be naked and
unashamed to get. It's going to sanctify you
through your marriage. It is one of the great benefits
of sexual intercourse, It really is.
And I won't go any further than that because of the the nature
of the congregation this morning.
But that's a part of what God's doing to restore being naked and
unashamed, to bless marriages, to to bring them together that
they would 2 flesh's become one flesh.
And we ought to praise God for this.
And This is why the marriage bed should be undefiled.
This is why you should save yourself for marriage.
This is why you should commit your sexual engagement to your
spouse only forever and if unmarried, to your future
spouse, because God has created marriage for the godly
progression, the maturation of your soul and for the
preservation of societies. And then Paul, examining this
mystery in Ephesians 5, will preach at another day, but has
to be mentioned here. Paul's looking at the mystery of
marriage, this mystery of a man leaving his mother and father
being joined to his wife. And he says, essentially that
the mystery of the marriage union from creation reveals the
union of Christ and the church in the new creation.
As we become in the fall, you become a Sinner.
You are bound to sin, and when Christ saves you, as we see in
the New Testament, you become a new creation.
In Christ Jesus. Old things pass away to hold.
All things become new. You're now able to put off the
old man, to put on the new man. You're able to live in a way
that honors the Lord, right? Once you freely chose sin, now
you can freely choose to live for the Lord because your your
will is not bound to sinfulness anymore.
Paul saying that that all of this that we see in marriage
reveals to us the relationship of Christ in the church.
He says in Ephesians 531 and 32. He says therefore a man shall
leave his father and mother and hold faster his wife and the two
shall become one flesh. So he's just quoting Genesis 224
there verbatim word for word. And then in 32 he says this
mystery is profound. So to marriage is a mystery, was
a mystery. And now he's saying it's being
revealed. He's saying I'm saying this
refers to Christ and the church. And so born again believers, you
have been united fully to Christ Jesus.
He is the head. You are his body.
We are one with him by the power of the Spirit within us.
The same spirit which raised grace Christ from the dead now
lives in us to raise us to new life in Christ.
And then and Paul is saying the mystery of marriage, the fact
that a man leaves his father and mother is joined to his wife.
In this way the two become one flesh.
And that's kind of the mystery, right?
It's like how do they become one flesh?
Paul is saying that that reveals Christ in the church as a as a
as a man and woman, albeit imperfectly, dwell together in
the union of marriage. It reveals to others Christ and
His love for His bride, the Church.
And we'll get into more of that and the weeks to come.
But I want to leave you with that.
And so this is my call to you today.
And that because if you feel the weight of any of the sins we've
named today, and the Lord is acting on you now by His Spirit
through conviction, you need to repent today.
You need to commit yourself to Christ Jesus.
You need to make Him Lord of your life.
If you've never done that before, you need to trust him
fully for the forgiveness of your sins.
He is. He is kind enough to forgive.
He is loving enough to erase the effects of sin on your life.
And so I I beg of you to submit yourself to him if you never
have. If you're here today and you
say, well, I am a believer, but I I'm bound by some of these
things you've mentioned. My marriage isn't happy.
Like, we struggle, we're having issues, we're going through it.
You don't understand, right? Like.
Any of those kinds of things. The Lord is acting on you now as
well, to repent and to believe and to trust in him.
And so I ask you to commit your life to Christ in that way, to
trust him. God created marriage for the
godly progression of the man and the woman, and for the
preservation of societies. We're going to see more of that
as we go through the series. But today we must respond in
obedience. And so let me pray for you and
then I'm going to give you a few moments just with some.
I think the team will play instrumentally during that.
But just a moment for you to pray and to seek the Lord as
well, for you to deal with whatever the Lord's laying on
your heart this morning let me pray for you.
Heavenly Father we thank you for today.
We thank you, Lord, for the love that you've shown us in Christ.
And we ask, Lord, that you would help us to believe in him and to
trust him today. And so, Lord, in whatever ways
you're moving by your spirit on your people today, I pray, Lord,
that you would help them to obey you, to repent and to believe
today, to trust you in whatever ways they need to.
Father, we love you and we thank you that you love us.
Help us to recover a high view of marriage, especially our own
marriages or the pursuit of our own marriages.
Helps to do that hard work of believing in you and trusting
you and prayerfully depending upon you, and then acting in
faith and what we say and then what we do so that our homes
might be fruitful places for your Kingdom.
Lord, we love here. It's in the name of Christ, I
pray. Amen.