Rediscovering God’s Vision for Marriage

A Pre-Marital Curriculum

By: Rev. Mark A. Tuso

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 Table of Contents

I. The Command of Marriage……………………………………3

II. The Covenant of Marriage…………………………………...12

III. The Challenge of Marriage…………………………………..26

IV. The Charge of Marriage……………………………………...35

V. Gods Plan for Marriage…………………………....................43

VI. Treason……………………………………………………….45

VII. Let Marriage be Held In Honor Among All (John Piper)……51

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Title: The Command of Marriage; “God Invented Marriage”

Text: Genesis 2:18-25

Textual Idea: This text tells the story of the creation of marriage on the sixth day.

Dominating Theme: Marriage is a creative work of God.

Introduction:

Series – On our way home from our vacation, we stopped off at a little place called “The Little
Grand Canyon”, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Georgia. To look at it, you would think it
really was a little grand canyon, a really, really little one. But it was still a big chasm fixed between
the two sides. We took some pictures of it, and when I look at them, I am reminded of the great big
difference between the Biblical vision, or understanding of marriage, and the modern day vision of
marriage that we are all affected by in the church and outside of it. In fact historically, the human
understanding of marriage has always been way off. It was true in the Old Testament, it was true in
the New Testament, it has been true throughout history, and is possibly even more true today. The
culture, and the unquenchable appetite of the flesh, has defined marriage for too long. As a result,
our culture has a terribly cheap, low, informal, easy come, easy go, it’s all about what I want
attitude toward marriage. So much so, that the Biblical view of marriage just seems to be ridiculous
in comparison. That is why I have entitled this four part series, “Rediscovering a True Biblical
Vision of Marriage”.

If you are married, or if you are not yet married, then you need to be fully aware of what that
Biblical vision is. God designed it one way and it is not up for revision, by anyone. Of course, you
might think, well, hey, I’ve been married for more than twenty years, or thirty years, or more, so
there isn’t anything that I don’t already know. Well, let me suggest something right before we
begin. When we would go out in the field in the jungles of Okinawa, we would set up Howitzer
cannons and shooting positions. To cover them up from the air, we would erect giant tents of
camouflage netting. That way if the enemy, were to look down from above, everything on the
ground would appear normal. Well, many marriages in the church today are like that. They have
erected a very convincing outer, protective disguise, but on the inside, just like a rotten egg in a
white shell, they are diseased.

We need to remember that just because a marriage is a lasting one, doesn’t mean that it is working
the way that God intended. You often hear folks say, “Well, we’ve been married for forty, years, so
we must be doing something right”. Well, maybe, but maybe not. See, lots of couples today are
merely tolerating each other; they have some kind of an arrangement, but not a Biblical marriage.
Other couples might even be “happy” together, but honestly, it doesn’t take much to be happy with
someone so long as you get what you want. Being happy for forty years doesn’t mean that your
marriage is working the way God intended it to either. In fact, you don’t even need God in your
life, or in the center of your marriage today to have the appearance of happiness.

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On the outside, many relationships look good, or strong, but on the inside they are either failing,
falling apart, or on their way. And at the core of our most common marriages problems we can find
the same roots, time after time. Modern day Psychology, and even so called Christian psychology
will tell you that you need to adjust your behavior, or maybe you need to find an outlet, or maybe
you need to channel into your past and look at how your relationship with your mom or dad is
affecting your marriage today. At the core, they tell you that the biggest problems in your marriage
are outside of you. In the Bible, however we find that more times than not, that is the opposite of
the truth. With the exception of cases of violence, or abuse, in most cases the biggest problems in
marriage are in ourselves and they are the results of persistent unconfessed sin, weak, faltering or
even dead faith, and bad theology. In this series we will examine each of these roots and look at
how they affect our marriages each and every day.

Sermon – To start with, this morning I am going to suggest that some of the biggest problems that
we face in marriage are a result of bad theology. Now, theology is simply what you believe to be
true about God, in this sense, and what you believe to be true about God’s world, including what He
wants for you. Everyone already has a set of beliefs like that, the problem though is that your
theology is either right or wrong, there is no in between. And what you believe to be true about
god, about the Bible, about yourself, and about God’s design for marriage, will in fact affect your
marriage, and we are going to see that this morning.

Jay Adams suggests that a false or wrong vision or understanding of marriage can and often will
lead to:
• Wrong expectations
• Wrong or sinful attitudes
• Wrong or sinful practices

Remember, God created marriage, and it isn’t up for revision. It isn’t up for revision by the world
that wants to redefine it altogether, with the advent of so called same sex marriage. I said so called,
because there is no such thing as same sex marriage, it is a total destruction of the word marriage.
And it isn’t up for revision by professing Christians that seek to use it to their own sinful advantage.
The Biblical vision of marriage is not another option, or a good option, or even a better option, but
rather it is the only option. So this morning we are going to step back, get out the blueprints and
take along hard look at the Biblical vision of marriage.

Interrogative: What does this text teach us about the true Biblical vision of marriage?

Transition: This passage describes three individual creative acts of God that reveal the true Biblical
nature of marriage.

Motivating Thrust: To awaken people to a true Biblical vision of marriage.

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Point #1: God Created Man With a Need for Companionship
Text: Genesis 2:18a, “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone”.
Explanation:

The beginning of the Bible, the first chapters of the Word of God, is some of the most important in
the whole thing. It is there that we are introduced to God, His creation, the devil, temptation, sin,
the fall, the first promise of a coming Messiah, the first blood sacrifice, and the covenant that God
made with Abraham, which is still in tact in the New Covenant. A close Pastor friend of mine said
it this way, “The first eleven chapters of Genesis contain eternal and absolute truths that are
foundational and formative for a Christian worldview”.

It comes as a shock, out of nowhere really, everything that God made up to this point was good, and
ultimately at the end of the sixth day everything would be very good, but for now, things are not
good. What did God mean when He said that the work of creating man was not good? Well, He
certainly wasn’t implying that there was anything bad, or inherently evil, for sin had not yet entered
into God’s creation. God wasn’t even finished with creation for that matter! No, to say that
something was not good was to say that something was not finished. So what wasn’t finished?

Moses records the words of God. He writes, “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man
should be alone”. Really this is one simple little statement, and it is really quite clear. The very
reason that the current state of man was not good was in fact because man was alone.

Now I want to point something out here. Look over in your Bible at Genesis 1:27, “So God created
man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”.
There we see that God created man and woman on the sixth day, and at the end of chapter one we
read, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening
and the morning were the sixth day” in Genesis 1:31. Chapter two then reopens the story of the
sixth day of creation. Ultimately what we find in chapter two is merely an expansion of the events
of the sixth day that were merely summarized in the first chapter.

So as the sixth day was winding down, maybe Adam was a couple hours old at this time, though
created as a full grown man, God placed him in the garden and kind of gave him the run down on
how things worked around there, and just then, God noticed something. But notice, it wasn;t that
God was learning something here that He previously did not know, no, He was merely further
revealing His design for man.

Consider the statement though, God created man in such a way that he was immediately incomplete.
He was created with a need, a very specific and important need for companionship.

John Calvin asserts, “The commencement, therefore, involves a general principle, that man was
formed to be a social animal. Solitude is not good, excepting only him whom God exempts as by a
special privilege”.

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Illustration: To point out how lonely people can be, Charles Swindoll mentioned an ad in a Kansas
newspaper. It read, “I will listen to you talk for 30 minutes without comment for $5.”
Swindoll said, “Sounds like a hoax, doesn’t it? But the person was serious. Did anybody call? You
bet. It wasn’t long before this individual was receiving 10 to 20 calls a day. The pain of loneliness
was so sharp that some were willing to try anything for a half hour of companionship”

Online Dating Magazine estimates that more than 20 million people visit at least one online dating
service a month. (Online Dating Magazine - 2007)
- Online Dating Magazine estimates that there are more than 120,000 marriages a year that occur as
a result of online dating. (Online Dating Magazine - 2007)
- 31% of adults in America say they know someone who has used an online dating service. (Source:
Pew Internet & American Life Project Report: Online Dating, March 2006)
- In 2003 it was estimated that three million people paid for an online dating service listing.
(Source: Jupiter Research)
- In the first half of 2003, consumers spent over $214 million for online dating services. This
number is 76 percent higher than the same time last year. (Source: Online Publishers Association)
- On average, those paying for online dating services spend a total of $239 per year. (Source: Jupiter
Research)
- It is estimated that the financial growth of online dating will reach $642 million in 2008. (Source:
Jupiter Research)
- As of February 2005, 33% fewer consumers are browsing online personals today than one year
ago, causing the industry growth to slow considerably. (Source: Jupiter Research)
- Consumers spent $214.3 million on personals and dating content during the first half of 2003, up
76 percent from the same period in 2002. (Source: Online Publishers Association).

Application: While a few people are given a gift whereby they can live single, and not struggle
with either sexual sin or loneliness to the degree that it would lead to sin, the overwhelming
majority of us are not. The reason is that God never intended most of us to be alone; in fact many
who are alone today and are suffering in devastating loneliness are doing so as a result of both the
fall of man and the ravages of sin in this world like disease, disaster and death, or are enduring the
consequences of sinful decisions.

Often times before a divorce is final you will hear a spouse say, “I don’t need him to be happy”, or
“If I have to put up with a woman, I would rather be alone”! They are suffering from a lack of
understanding of a Biblical vision of marriage.

In the Garden God commanded man and woman to first have dominion over all the animals, and
second to be fruitful and multiply; two things that can not be done alone. Man was made with a
need for companionship.

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Point #2: God Created Woman as the Only Perfect Companion for Man
Text: Genesis 2:18b-22a, “I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the
LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto
Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that
was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every
beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God
caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up
the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a
woman”.
Explanation:

Just as soon as we learn that man is in need, specifically in need of companionship, so that he would
not be alone, God steps in as He always does and graciously provides the solution, Woman!
Someone has asked the question, “Does that mean that women are just a necessary evil”? All I can
say is that man shouldn’t have asked that question, bad idea. Moving on, we need to spend some
time in this text to learn the true biblical origin of women here. It is true that every single man and
woman that has ever been born in all of time outside of the garden ultimately came from woman.
But, in the beginning it wasn’t that way, woman came from man in the beginning.

Moses records God’s gracious response to man’s problem of loneliness, “I will make him an help
meet for him”. Let me give you the ESV translation of this text, for I think it will be helpful for our
study. God says, “I will make him a helper fit for him”. In the KJV it sounds like God is
promising to make a “Help-Meet” for him, which some might think is an old English way of saying
“Help-Mate”. In fact, there is a popular book out there in some circles entitled, “Created to Be His
Help Meet”. In that sense, the word “Meet” works as a noun, like mate. But in the Hebrew, it isn’t
that way, in fact, it is an adjective that modifies or explains the noun that should simply be
translated “Help”. If you read it slow you can see this, a help, meet for him.

John Macarthur explains, “The Hebrew is “Ezer Kenegdo”, and it means a helper like him, or
corresponding to him, or worthy of him is also contained in that idea. Someone who is a perfect fit
for man”.

Notice though what God does next, He doesn’t do what you think He is going to do. Moses writes,
“And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air;
and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every
living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of
the air, and to every beast of the field”. Animals? Why the animals Lord? I mean, I know what
they say about a man’s best friend, but a dog will never meet your needs for companionship. God
put Adam to work naming all of those animals that were created, and friends that is a ton of
animals. And so there he is naming them all one by one, for hours maybe, and in his heart he sees
some nice animals, but they are all missing something aren’t they? He would have noticed that
there were male and female animals, they would have been obvious by appearance. He could see
how they would go together.

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And so Moses comments, “but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him”. Nope, not
yet. Those animals aren’t made in the image of God, they don’t have the capacity to function as
Adam’s companion. Sure, the dog might sit quiet, give you respect, or leave you alone while you
nap, but it can’t love you. It can’t listen to you, it can’t be there for you, it can’t experience God’s
grace with you. No, these animals would never do, and we are getting a sense that God is
demonstrating that to us, lest we think, I don’t need anyone!

So listen to what comes next, “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he
slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the
LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman”. God performs the first surgery, right there
in the garden, anesthesia and all! Let’s focus on two things here, the word rib, and the significance
of the whole thing. First, the word here that is translated rib is “tsela”, and out of thirty five uses in
the O.T., it is only translated rib here in this account. All the other times it refers in some way to
man’s side. Men don’t have one less rib than women and we aren’t to conclude that Adam was first
made with one extra rib. No, I think that Moses is conveying under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit that God took more than just a rib; even Adam says that it was bone and flesh.

Second, consider this. Why take something out of Adam in the first place? I mean God formed
Adam out of the dust of the ground and breathed life into him, why not do it that way? Now I want
you to see this, all of this is designed to show is the significance of marriage. It is called a creation
ordinance. It came before the church, it came before everything, and we are to see it as central to all
of life in God. But consider that in taking something out of Adam, God created a situation whereby
marrying Eve would make him complete again, he gets his rib back you might say.

John Calvin comments, “He lost, therefore, one of his ribs; but instead of it, a far richer reward was
granted him, since he obtained a faithful associate of life; for he now saw himself, who had before
been imperfect, rendered complete in his wife”.

Notice that God made a woman, nothing more nothing less. If God created marriage, then He alone
gets to define it. If culture is allowed to be the creator and the designer of marriage, then she is free
to redefine it as much as she wants. But culture had nothing to do with it. So terms like “same
sex”, or “gay” marriages are really contradictions, they are nonsense terms and we really shouldn’t
even use them.

John Calvin suggests, “Now, since God assigns the woman as a help to the man, he not only
prescribes to wives the rule of their vocation, to instruct them in their duty, but he also pronounces
that marriage will really prove to men the best support of life”.

Illustration: Someone has said, “Woman was created from the rib of man, she was not made from
his head – to top him; nor of his feet, to be trampled upon; but out of his side, to be equal to him;
under his arm, to be protected; and near his heart to be loved”.

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Application: God’s solution to man’s loneliness and need for companionship is a woman. And the
same is true of course the other way. If you are single this morning then I want to encourage you to
wait. Wait for God to provide you a spouse; don’t go out knocking doors down trying to find one
yourself. God saw Adam’s problem and He provided him with a wife, He does the same thing
today when we commit it to Him. Young ladies, listen to me this morning, those boys are coming
after you, but you need to remember this morning that you need to wait for God to bring you that
perfect mate. Boys, you need to do the same and stop looking at every girl with lust. God has
someone for you as well, and you need to wait.

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Point #3: God Created Marriage as the Framework of Their Companionship
Text: Genesis 2:22b-25, “and brought her unto the man. And Adam 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.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they
shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed”.
Explanation:

The next question that needs to be asked and answered is this: how do these two come together to
fulfill God’s plan? Today, younger people are waiting longer to get married. Maybe not as much
here in the south, but predominately that is what is going on. Instead of marriage they are choosing
to live with their boyfriend or girlfriend instead since it is more convenient and doesn’t involve the
risk of commitment. What does God have to say about that?

God didn’t just knock Adam out and make Eve, no, He did something more, He acted as both Eve’s
Father and as the minister both giving her away to Adam and then conducting the service.

Jay Adams suggests, “The purpose of marriage is to meet man’s need for companionship. Marriage
was designed to defeat loneliness. Companionship is, therefore, the essence of marriage”.

And we can see that connection in the Scriptures. Consider Proverbs 2:16-17, “So you will be
delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words, who forsakes
the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God”. And consider Malachi 2:14,
“But you say, "Why does he not?" Because the LORD was witness between you and the wife of
your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by
covenant”.

Now there are two elements of companionship that come out in these two different Hebrew words
translated “companion”. The first word gives the idea of an “intimate relationship with someone”.
The second term gives the idea of “being united together with someone”. As Jay Adams suggests,
“Together, they speak of a relationship in which there is constant commitment and intimacy.
Intimacy apart from commitment to remain together is not adequate; commitment to remain in
association apart from intimacy is equally deficient. Both elements are necessary to defeat
loneliness”.

Adam then recognized that, as he began to affirm God’s plan for his marriage. Notice this though,
God must have told Adam what He had done, how He had divinely and sovereignly chosen and
even formed Eve to be His helper suitable for Him. Listen to what he 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”.
What did Adam do here?

• Adam received Eve, he didn’t try her out, or reject her

• Adam recognized that she was a gift from the hand of God
• He immediately affirmed her as such
• He unconditionally accepted her from God

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And then listen to God’s commentary on what had happened. We know this is God talking because
that is what Jesus said later when he told this story in the context of divorce. So what did He say?
Moses recorded it this way, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall
cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh”. There are three major components of this first
marriage that translate over into our marriages.
• There is a receiving
• There is a leaving
• There is a cleaving

And notice how God describes their new relationship. God, though they are clearly still two
individuals physically, declared that they are one flesh. God does a supernatural creative work
when two people get married, He knits two spirits together and this is a final work, it is in place
until you die. This is what Jesus said in Matthew 19:5-6, “Therefore a man shall leave his father
and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no
longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate”.

Illustration: Today there is an alarming trend among our youth called “sexting”. Simply put it is
sending indecent pictures from person to person via a cell phone. It is merely one of the latest
examples of how for years God’s ideal of marriage has become increasingly ignored. People would
like to have some of the benefits of marriage without the risk of commitment. Studies show that
one in five teens have sent these types of photos or received these types of photos from their
phones. Other reports have it as high as 38%. The great danger is that kids are now being
prosecuted under child pornography laws for sending or keeping these pictures.
At the same time there is another rising trend known simply as “friends with benefits”. Simply put,
the term refers to casual sexual relationships without commitment. Our teens and our young adults
are engaging in these relationships at an alarming rate.

Application: God has already defined the framework for meeting the needs of a man and a woman,
it is called marriage, and it lasts a lifetime. Sex outside of marriage, is always, and will always be
sex outside of God’s will. There is not true companionship outside of God’s ideal of marriage.

Conclusion: When we have a proper understanding of God’s vision for marriage going in to a
marriage relationship it will affect everything.

• It will affect the way that we see our needs

• It will affect the way that we see our spouse
• It will affect the way that we see our marriage
• It will and should affect the way that we see God

John Macarthur Jr. writes, “It may disturb you to be brought face to face with God’s design for the
family. But His guarantee is that if you will bow to its power and promise, no matter how it
violates the world’s thinking, you will come into the blazing sunlight of full joy in those most
intimate and essential relationships” Your Family, 1982. Chuck Swindoll writes, “We need to blow
the dust off God’s original blueprint for marriage and the home”.

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Title: The Covenant of Marriage

Text: Ephesians 5:21-33

Textual Idea: In this passage Paul describes the institution of marriage as a covenant.

Dominating Theme: Biblical love is a result of the covenant.

Introduction:

As I said last week, there is currently, and always has been a great big difference between the
biblical view of marriage and the world’s view, or man’s view. Last week, we considered how God
invented marriage on the sixth day in the garden. I talked about how marriage is a creative act of
God. I pointed out that man was created with a need for companionship, woman was created as the
only perfect companion for him, and that marriage was the only framework that God created for that
companionship to work in. We saw how the world’s vision of marriage and God’s vision of
marriage when it comes to the nature of marriage are two totally different animals. This morning, I
want to move on from looking at the nature of marriage to the foundation of marriage, or rather the
fuel of marriage; what keeps it alive and going.

Ask the Beatles and they will tell you simply, “All you need is love”. In fact, ask just about anyone
and they will agree. The overwhelming majority of people both in and outside of the church believe
today that love, romantic love is the foundation and fuel of marriage. If you have it you can make it
through anything, but when it’s gone, so is the marriage. Well, what would you say this morning if
I told you this was a pagan idea?

You have heard it yourself, you might have even said it before, “I love you with all of my heart”.
These are pretty familiar words, right? Well, do they really have much meaning? AS one preacher
has rightly said, “Nowadays, “I love you with all my heart” eventually gives way to “I never want
to see you again”, or “I just don’t love you anymore”, or worse, “I have fallen out of love with
you”, or worse yet, “I have fallen in love with someone else”. Today, we describe love like we
would some kind of infection. You never know when it is right around the corner. You never know
who has it. You never know when you are about to get it. You can’t stop it once you have been
exposed. You can’t control it, it just comes over you. And when it leaves, you can’t get it back. It
is this very misunderstanding of love that takes two starry eyed people that stood at the altar boldly
promising to stay together “till death do us part”, to “I just don’t love you anymore, give me half”.
This doesn’t come from God; it comes from a pagan myth.

Maybe you are familiar with that chunky half naked little guy with wings and a bow and arrow
named Cupid. He’s the one that gets worshiped every year at Valentine’s Day. Today, at least in
the greeting cards, he is the one that floats around the world shooting people in the hindquarters
causing them to “fall” into this infection type love, and uncontrollable, overwhelming, emotional
force that comes and goes.

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Well, the story today is kind of twisted. We get it from Roman mythology. As the story goes,
Cupid was the son of Venus the goddess of love, and Mars the god of war. One day, Venus got
bent out of shape and jealous of this little princess named Psyche that was so attractive that folks
began to forget about worshipping Venus. She got so mad that she commanded her son Cupid to
make this little princess fall in love with a horrible animal. But, when Cupid saw how beautiful she
was he took the arrow meant for her and shot himself with it, causing him to fall madly in love with
the princess his mother hated. The only problem was that this little princess was a mortal, she
wasn’t a goddess. So the two couldn’t really be together until one day, as a result of their desire to
be together, Jupiter the head of these fake gods gave her the gift of immortality so they could be
together.

Of course that story is a myth, but it is remarkable how the devil has cleverly helped this myth
become the single biggest problem in our understanding the foundation and fuel for marriage today.
As a result, we have an unbiblical view of marriage on display for us in both modern culture and in
marriage. It leads us to believe and to accept several unbiblical lies that ultimately destroy God’s
vision of marriage (From Dr. Voddie Baucham):

• Love is a Random Force – “We don’t choose who we fall in love with”
• Love is an Overwhelming Force – “This thing is bigger than both of us”
• Love is an Uncontrollable Force – “We just fell out of love”, or “I think I am falling in
love”
• Love is a Sensual Force – sex equals love

This kind of love is not only unbiblical, but it is unworthy and unwanted.

Praise God, and thank God, there is a better way, it is the love that is described and prescribed by
God in the Bible. There we learn that love is not a force in marriage, but rather a function of
marriage. Consider the passage that Jewish worshippers recite over and over again to this day; the
Shema. It comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is
one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your might”. This passage gives us a biblical definition of love, the kind of love that flows out of
marriage, which we can understand and work with.

First, we learn that this love is something you decide to have; it is something that is controlled.
Simply put, love is a choice. We are to love the Lord with all of our heart. The Hebrew word for
heart does not refer to the big muscle in your chest that pumps your blood. It refers to your “inner
man, mind, or will”. That is the definition of the Hebrew word “lebab”. Therefore, love is first and
foremost an act of the will.

Second, we learn that this love is something that is accompanied by emotions, but not based upon
them or led by them. That second word, soul, refers to the inner man as well, but not necessarily to
the seat of the will, but of the emotions. And you could hardly imagine loving someone without
feeling it to some degree.

Third, we learn that this love is something that leads to something, to us doing something. We are
instructed to love with all of our might. Literally it means force or effort. True biblical love always

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does something for the object of its love. It keeps God’s commands, and it serves its wife. Love is
something that you show, not merely something that you declare.

So here we have a biblical definition that is so different from the popular definition of love.
According to God, love is a choice, filled with emotion that you demonstrate. It us a giving type of
love, and this love is never described in the Bible as the foundation or the fuel of marriage, but
always as the result.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the
marriage that sustains your love”.

Your marriage is both put together by God and held together by God. Marriage, by design, is
patterned after Christ’s covenant commitment to His church. Therefore the ultimate bond you share
with your spouse is not love, it is covenant. That means that love won’t keep your marriage
together, and it won’t keep it going. There will be days, and you know this, where romantic love,
the love that you feel, the love that expects, won’t be there, but that doesn’t mean much for your
marriage. Your marriage will keep together and keep going because it is more than just an
agreement of convenience; it is a covenant that is made with your spouse and God. That covenant
will produce the love; it will become the foundation of that love.

The implications of that statement are huge! It means that your relationship with your spouse will
be both built and sustained by a love that comes from the covenant that you made with God and
your spouse. That kind of love looks much different. Principally it is a love that gives, not a love
that takes and expects. It is a love marked by:
• Submission
• Sacrifice
• Grace
• Mercy
• Forgiveness
• Forbearance
• Patience
• Selflessness

In our passage this morning, we are going to take a good hard look at the way the Apostle Paul
described the order of the home and of marriage. In this text he reveals the biblical order of the
home. Now, this message is not about headship and submission principally, though we will talk
about that. It is primarily about the covenant of marriage that Paul refers to. In this text, Paul
makes it clear that marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church and it is to
be like it in all ways possible. Of course we know that the relationship between Christ and the
church is a covenant, it is the new covenant. And therefore in this text Paul describes the covenant
of marriage. This morning we are going to look at some of the characteristics of the love that this
covenant produces.

Interrogative: What can we learn about the covenant of marriage from this text?
Transition: This passage outlines five characteristics of covenant love.
Motivating Thrust: To challenge Christians to be committed to the Biblical nature of marriage.

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Point #1: Submissive Love
Text: Ephesians 5:21-24, “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Wives,
submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the
wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the
church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything”.
Explanation:

This passage begins with a transition. Verse 21 is the end of a really long sentence in the Greek that
began in verse 18 that commands us to be filled with or to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. Paul
commands, “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God”. This is not an option for
Christians, this is not for the Bible thumpers or for the really religious folks, this is for all blood
washed Christians. Then Paul reveals that one of the results of that submission to the Holy Spirit is
this thing called mutual submission. Do you remember when Paul said, “Count others more
significant than yourselves” in Philippians 2:3? Well, this is what he is talking about. The Christ
life is a life of submission. As Christians we submit to Christ in every way. We submit to His
teachings, and to His Spirit. In the same way, the Bible teaches us to submit to each other in love.

Talk about a counter cultural statement. Today, submission is seen as weakness and failure in the
world, yet Christ esteems it and commands it. In fact, He did more than that; He did it Himself
serving others in love while He was with the disciples. He did that to set the example for us. For
Him it was easy, but for us it is hard. But it is possible in the power of the Holy Spirit. Outside of
that you and I are a bunch of self centered ego maniacs that could care less about others and what
they want and really wouldn’t mind if everyone else served us.

John Macarthur writes, “Only those who have died to sin and are alive to God, those who are
servants of righteousness, those who are spiritually minded, those who are empowered by the Spirit
will rejoice for the privilege of living in the Lord’s standard. Reverencing and adoring Christ is the
basis of such a spirit of submission”.

Submission however will fix your marriage and make it Godly. One of the characteristics of
covenant love is that it submits to others, specifically to its spouse. When that doesn’t happen, then
there will be conflict. James 4:1, “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it
not this, that your passions are at war within you”? Our conflicts in the relationships that we have
are a result of our own hearts. The conflict comes when someone gets in the way of what we want,
what we desire, that is what James said. When these conflicts come, you can be sure that we are not
being led by the Holy Spirit, but by self. That self life always wants more, it always wants to be
right, and it won’t stop until it gets what it wants, submission is out of the question. The Spirit
filled life is one that is humble, one that seeks to meet the needs of others. Paul described it in
Philippians 2:4, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of
others”.

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The Greek word for submit in this text is “υποτασσω”, which means to arrange under. Originally it
was a Greek military term meaning “to arrange [troop divisions] in a military fashion under the
command of a leader". In non-military use, it was "a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating,
assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden”. Macarthur suggests, “The main idea is that of
relinquishing one’s rights to another person”. Paul used this term to describe the Christ life, or
rather the Spirit filled life in a few areas. As Christians we are called to submit to Christian
ministers, or leaders, and Peter informs us that we are supposed to submit to human institutions as
well, as in government, or even the police. It isn’t that these people in these offices are somehow
superior to us, but rather that is God’s order. The home is no different, it must be ordered, and it
must follow God’s order if it is to accomplish His purposes and endure successfully. As a result of
the fall, this order has been affected in that the woman has been cursed with a desire to usurp that
authority. And today, unfortunately, too many husbands are dead beat dads either physically,
spiritually, or both. As a result, the woman takes the lead in his absence.

Husbands and wives, men and women are spiritually and physically equal in every way. We know
that from verses like Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor
free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. However, in function, God
has given them different roles to assume in the covenant of marriage and He did so for a purpose.
We can see that in this text.

Now, remember that Paul is writing to a completely pagan culture that had done jut as much
damage to God’s vision for marriage as we have today. So these words would have been just as
shocking and as hard for them as they are for us today. He writes, “Wives, submit yourselves unto
your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is
the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body”. Ok, so Paul is talking about the
structure of marriage here, or the order of the home. Of course we have already seen that both the
husband and the wife are to submit to each others as Christians, but here there is a special command
given to wives. They are told to submit to their husbands “as unto the Lord”.
There is an analogy between the way that a woman is supposed to submit to the Lord and to her
husband. Let’s take a closer look at this one. Granted this can be tough for many women to do.
And as a result of the fall, their flesh resists it. But I think we will find here something more for the
husband than for the wife. See, when the woman submits to Christ, she submits to Godly leadership
doesn’t she? So implied in this text is a command for husbands to provide Godly leadership to their
wives, isn’t there? This is a command for the husband to lead like Christ. And what kind of
leadership was that? It was servant leadership. Do you see this principle of mutual submission
rising to the top again?

Now I am not too naïve to know that some sinful men take this verse and try to use it as a license to
wrongfully rule over their wives. All I can say is God help that man when he stands before God.
Kent Hughes put it this way, “Headship has definite limits. It can never command what God
forbids or forbid what God commands”.

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Paul finishes the picture when he writes, “Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the
wives be to their own husbands in everything”. Now let me just point this out for a moment. Why
do you think that the church gets lumped into this discussion here? Well, the main point that Paul is
making is that the relationship or the covenant between husband and wife is a picture of the
covenant between Christ and the church. So the woman, the bride is compared to the church, the
bride of Christ. And Christ is compared to the husband.

Illustration: I heard a story of a woman that approached a Godly man at church one day to ask him
a question. Her husband had asked her to do something clearly unbiblical, and she was fearful that
she might either sin against God by doing it , or sin by not submitting to her husband. When she
asked this man what she should do, he wrongly told her, “Look the Bible says you are supposed to
submit to your husband, end of story”. “It isn’t your place to ask questions just to keep quiet and
obey”.

Application: Remember Christ is the perfect example of what a husband is supposed to be. He is
the perfect spiritual leader, the perfect provider, the perfect protector, and the perfect head. Men,
you are supposed to be following His example.
• Christ serves the church doesn’t He? Men do you serve your wives, or do you expect to be
served?
• Christ directs the church spiritually doesn’t He? Men are you the spiritual leader of your
home? Do you know the Bible as you should? Do you spend the time studying it and
following God’s commands? Do you provide strong faithful biblical leadership for your
family?
• Christ constantly prays for the church doesn’t He? Men are you praying for your wives like
that?
• The church is Christ’s beloved bride isn’t it? Nothing is more prized to Him, for He
purchased it with His blood. Men, do you treasure your wife like that? One Godly man
said, “I would rather have a sandwich with my wife, than sex with another woman”. Men,
do you treasure your wife like that?
Covenant love is marked by mutual submission and Godly leadership. Men if you want your
marriage to work the way God intended it to then give your wife Godly leadership. Women if you
want your marriage to work the way that God intended it to then lovingly submit to your husband’s
leadership. Men, this will mean that you put your wife first, yes even over your hobbies and your
amusements.

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Point #2: Sacrificial Love
Text: Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave
himself for it”.
Explanation:

The second characteristic of this covenant love is that it is a sacrificial love. This is the key
distinction between the way the world looks at love and marriage and the way that God does. Men
and women all over the land yesterday were married in churches, and courtyards, and beaches, and
courthouses. Few of them that pledged to love their spouses with sacrificial love, which usually
comes out in the vow, “In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, as long as we both shall
live”, will really do just that. What they might have said is “Until the death of your meeting my
needs do we part”. Love today expects to receive, not to give.

Think about it. When a young woman, engaged to a man describes that man, she generally
describes him by what he can do for her. He is handsome, so he meets my desire to be with a
handsome man and to be thought highly of by others. He is rich, so he will be able to meet my
unquenchable desire for stuff. His family has a lake house, which meets her desire to be able to
brag to others about their status. He loves my friends and my family, which meets her desire to
make her family and friends both happy and impressed. All in all, she loves him because of what he
can do for her; she has little intention to do anything for him.

Of course it works the same for men, only they generally only have one big desire that just plays out
in different ways. She is beautiful, which meets all of his needs, really, because he really isn’t
concerned with anything else. She is kind of like a good rifle, or a good pair of work boots. She is
there to do a job, to make him feel good about himself and to meet his needs, and when she can’t or
won’t do that anymore, then he doesn’t have any use for her anymore. He doesn’t go into the
marriage with an intention to sacrifice things for her.

Now, as we heard last week from Paul Tripp in the video conference, this is clouded by the dating
game. No, I don’t mean that old game show; I mean the process of dating whereby people pretend
to be something they are not in order to get what they want. You know the guy who tells his
girlfriend that he likes to watch the TLC channel, or the cooking channel. Or the guy who tells his
girlfriend that he likes to just go to the beach and walk around or lay out. Or the guy who tells his
girlfriend that he likes to read, or go to the mall, or even listen to her stories about things, or to just
sit and talk. He is lying, he doesn’t like any of those things because they don’t satisfy what he
wants, he doesn’t really care what she wants. It works the same way with the girlfriend that says
she likes to watch football, or racing, or go to the mud bogs, or look at old cars, or shoot guns, or
play with knives, or even ride in your truck. She is lying for the same reasons.

Paul Tripp points out that later after they get married, they decide, “You aren’t the person I married
five years ago”. But they are wrong, he is the person you married, it’s just that he never was the
guy you dated!

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Let’s look at how Paul just destroys this kind of worldly give me what I want or what I need love.
He writes, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church”. Do you see the
problem here? Again, notice that this is a form of submission here, so it isn’t just the woman who
submits. Here though the husband is commanded to love his wife. Seems easy enough right?
Well, not when we are talking about biblical love. Notice that he is supposed to love her the same
way that Christ loves the church. How do you think we can describe the way that Christ loves the
church? Does He love us with a worldly give me something love? Well, if He did, He would be
pretty disappointed. Guess what we can offer Him. Guess what we bring to the table with Him.
Nothing, that’s right. We bring nothing. Therefore, His love for us must be different, it must be a
love that seeks to give and not a love that seeks to take or to receive.

Notice what he says next, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and
gave himself for it”. The degree to which the husband is supposed to give to his wife is described
here quite clearly. How much did Christ give? Well, He gave it all didn’t He? Consider
Philippians 2:5-8, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who,
though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but
made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being
found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even
death on a cross”. Christ displayed His love for us by stepping down out of heaven and up onto an
old rugged wooden cross to give it all. His love is marked and even defined by sacrifice.

Ask yourself this question though. Did we deserve it? Consider Romans 5:7-8, “For one will
scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to
die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. Of
course we didn’t deserve it. That means that this kind of sacrificial love gives regardless if it thinks
the other person is worthy, or deserves it. It gives because it is the will of God to give. Men, if you
are married now, it doesn’t matter if you think that your wife isn’t what you want her to be, you are
commanded to love her. The weight of this command is that it requires you to die to self, to put
your desires to death and to live for hers.

John 13:34, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved
you, you also are to love one another”.

Illustration: James Boice recounts the story of the wife of one of the generals of Cyrus the great
ruler of Persia. The general’s wife was accused of treachery and was condemned to die. At first her
husband did not know what was taking place. But as soon as he heard about it he rushed to the
palace and burst into the throne room. He threw himself on the floor before the king and cried out,
“Oh, my Lord Cyrus, take my life instead of hers. Let me die in her place.” Cyrus, who by all
historical accounts was a noble and extremely sensitive man, was touched by this offer. He said,
“Love like that must not be spoiled by death.” Then he gave the husband and wife back to each
other and let the wife go free. As they walked away happily the husband said to his wife, “Did you
notice how kindly the king looked at us when he gave you the pardon?” The wife replied, “I had no
eyes for the king. I saw only the man who was willing to die in my place.”

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Application: Men, this is the kind of love that God commands you to have for you wife.
• You won’t have it if you are not saved, for you will not know how to love her that way, nor
will you have the Holy Spirit to enable you to.
• This kind of love requires you to put your own needs that never go away to death, to put
them in the back seat. Your wife must always come first in everything. If you choose
otherwise, you always choose wrong!
• You must spend time with your wife, to show her that you love her. Saying it means
nothing if you don’t show it.
• This means that you will always only be faithful to her and her alone, both with your body
and with your mind!

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Point #3: Sanctifying Love
Text: Ephesians 5:26-27, “That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the
word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any
such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish”.
Explanation:

The third characteristic of covenant love is that it is sanctifying. Now this one is going to take a
minute to unpack, but it will be just as bad as the first two. This part falls apart if the husband in not
serving God actively is lost, or is living in sin. In fact, failing to love your wife in this way is sin, as
we will see. Simply put, men, your wife should be more like Christ because she is married to you.
She should be growing in her faith as a direct result of the way that you love her, of the way that
you exercise grace, and patience, and forgiveness, and mercy, and Godly leadership.

Paul is still talking about the way that the husband is supposed to love his wife, only now the
category has shifted and he is talking about sin. Let me explain. Christ not only died for us, gave it
all up for us, giving husbands an example of how to love their wives sacrificially, but He loved us in
spite of our sin and even worked to both protect us from it and to deal with it or to remove it.

Men your wife will sin against you, I promise. Women, your husband will sin against you, I
promise. This will never change on earth, and you will always have a ready supply of sins that you
have endured to deal with. Men, Paul is saying that what you do with those sins is critical to the life
and health of your marriage. Today, most men do one of three things when they have been sinned
against.
• They get angry and attack their wives in an unloving manner and treat them like they are the
only ones who have ever sinned. They put them in prison with their unforgiveness and
punish them forever.
• They get going and consider the failure of their wife to be an excuse to leave and to just run
away from their problems.
• They get even and go out to get some payback. They go and do a little sinning themselves.

Paul is suggesting something radically different here. Paul points out that Christ’s love is a
sanctifying love, that is, it seeks to make us holy. He does that by responding to our continued
sinfulness with grace, and mercy doesn’t He? In fact, that is what He wants to do in all of us, to
make us holy, just as Paul says here. To do that, He died in our place making atonement for our
sins, past, present, and future. And then daily, He gives us grace instead of condemnation to help us
grow.

Men, Paul is banning grudges, unforgiveness, bitterness, and even fear and doubt. He is
commanding us to return our wife’s evil for good. That is a hard pill to swallow for many men,
myself included because when I feel like I have been wronged I feel like I have to do something
about it. But Christ already did something about it and the worst part of his or her sin is not that it
is against you, but that it is against Him.

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At the same time, Paul is showing us that we are supposed to protect our wives from sin and not
lead them into it. Christ never takes us down the path of sin, and neither can we as husbands.
Consider the husband that just won’t come to church and sooner or later his wife, not wanting to be
away from him, follow his lead. That man is in sin and now he has compounded it by leading his
wife into sin. He has failed to love her with a sanctifying love. This applies in every area of your
life. If your wife sins because of what you are leading her to do, or because of your example, then
you are failing. Your goal is not that she or you would have a little religion, but that you would
follow the example of Christ and, “That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not
having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish”.

Illustration: The other day I got kind of aggravated at home. Our dryer keeps messing up my dress
shirts. Somehow the corners of the collar keep coming out black and all chewed up after a few
washes. So, I didn’t take it out on Michal, but I did open up the trash can and throw it away. I told
her it was shot. She didn’t think so. She asked me to take it out to let her try to fix it. I told her it
couldn’t be done, but if she wanted to try it fine. Well, the next day she politely showed me my
shirt, it was fixed, even though I didn’t think it could be. She soaked it in bleach and it cleaned it
right up. Husbands, you might not think it can be done, or that you are up to the task, but you are
supposed to be like bleach in your marriage, you wash the stains of sins right out with your loving
grace and forgiveness.

Application: Men, consider this, is your wife more like Christ because of you, or in spite of you?
Are you working to love her with grace and mercy and forgiveness? Are you working to protect her
form sin by setting a good example and by never leading her into it?

Men, it is your job to disciple your wife, not mine. You are the spiritual head of your home, that
role belongs to noone else. If she knows more than you, well, I suggest you put down the remote,
put up the guns, put away the rod and reel, and get your Bible out and get to work. In fact, even if
she doesn’t know more than you, this is your job. If you want your marriage to be a Godly one,
then you need to be the spiritual leader of your home that loves your wife with a sanctifying love.

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Point #4: Self Love
Text: Ephesians 5:28-30, “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth
his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth
it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones”.
Explanation:

The fourth characteristic of covenant love is this; it is an expression of self love. Now self love is
not good, in fact, it is the root of all of our problems. When we love our self more than others we
begin to see other people as mere obstacles in our lives when they aren’t helping us or gifts in our
lives when they are. It turns us into split personalities at home. But it cannot be denied that we do
love ourselves, and God knows that. That is why in the Great Commandment He used that as an
example, or as a standard to describe just how much we are supposed to love others. Do you
remember Matthew 22:37-39, “And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first
commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. How much do
you love yourself? Paul commands us to love our wives that much.

He writes, “So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth
himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the
Lord the church”. Paul says that men should love their wives as they love their own bodies, but he
says this for a reason. Remember, marriage is a creative act of God whereby He makes two
individuals, spiritually one. The one flesh relationship means that my wife and I experience a type
of unity that is similar to the relationship that we have with Christ.
And because we are one, and because we all love ourselves and take care of our own basic needs,
we are to both feel those needs in our spouse and work to meet them. This is what I mean by self
love.

So let me ask this, husbands do you know what your wife needs? Do you regularly provide for her
needs? When you do, you show that she is a real treasure and you cherish her. When you ignore
her needs or expect her to take care of them herself, you really show that you don’t care about them
or her.

Isn’t this what Christ does to the church? Doesn’t He meet all of our needs? Doesn’t He reveal
how much He loves us by doing it? Consider Philippians 4:19, “And my God will supply every
need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus”.
Application:
Consider these two words here that are used by Paul to describe the way that Christ takes care of the
church and the way that we take care of our own bodies. The first one is “nourish”, and it has the
idea of feeding. Christ feeds us what we need through His Word and His Spirit. And we never, I
mean absolutely never, forget to feed ourselves do we? Paul is saying that with that same intensity
and with that same regularity and with that same urgency, we are supposed to be busy meeting our
wife’s most basic needs. Of course this covers the physical and the spiritual categories. The second
word, “cherish”, is an interesting one. It literally means to warm or to keep warm. It reveals
closeness and tenderness. Of course you never forget to get a coat when you go out in the cold. In
the same way Paul says, always be mindful of when your wife needs you the most.

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Point #5: Shining Love
Text: Ephesians 5:31-33, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be
joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak
concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his
wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband”.
Explanation:

Finally, the last characteristic of covenant love is that it is a shining love. Now this one is going to
sound super spiritual to most folks and some won’t want to agree with it. Last week I told you, and
we saw that the purpose of marriage was to meet our most basic needs for companionship. Well,
what I didn’t tell you at the time is that this is only part of the purpose, maybe not even the biggest
part. Paul is going to suggest something radical here. He is suggesting that the main purpose for
your marriage is to reveal Christ to the world. Done right, your marriage should be a picture of the
Gospel to the world, and that is what God intended. Your marriage is supposed to show others what
Christ’s covenant with the church looks like, what grace looks like, and what true biblical love
looks like. Your marriage exists to display the glories and the promise revealed in the covenant
between Christ and the church. That is why divorce can be so bad. It not only destroys God’s
covenant creation, but it misrepresents Christ and His covenant with the church.

Paul writes, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his
wife, and they two shall be one flesh”. Let me make one comment about the one flesh relationship
in this context. Here, Paul is pointing to the permanent nature of the marriage covenant. Jesus of
course agreed with Paul, and we are very familiar with His commentary on this passage from
Genesis chapter two when He added, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man
separate”.

Think of it this way, how permanent is the covenant between Christ and the church? Let’s ask
Jesus. He promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age”. Therefore, Paul argues, your
marriage should be just as permanent. This doesn’t mean that it will perfect, or that it will be free
from sin, because it won’t. It means however, that it will be lasting; it will be committed to the
covenant promise.

Paul goes on to say, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church”.
This is where we started, looking at the connection between the covenant of marriage and the
covenant between Christ and the church. But think about it this way. This also means that marriage
has always been a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church. So for all of those
years before Christ came, marriage, done right, was there preaching the Gospel and looking forward
to the day that Christ would come.

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Illustration:

Imagine your wedding day. The sanctuary is beautiful, the candles are burning, the instruments are
playing and everything is perfect. The groom stand confidently in the front as the doors swing
open, the congregation stands, and the bride, in all of her splendor, begins to make her way towards
her new husband. Words cannot describe what they are feeling now. They take their places, hold
hands and listen as the Pastor utters those fearful words, “If there be any here who can give a reason
why this man and this woman should not be joined, speak now or forever hold your peace”! The
church was silent, patiently waiting for him continue, when out of the corner rose this old rugged
voice, “How do you know”? There he was sitting on the back pew, clutching the pew in front of
him. “I mean no disrespect”, he added, “but how do you know, I mean, really know that this
marriage is going to work”? He was sincere, not evil. Then, he lowered his head and finished with
these words, “how can anyone know”?

Of course some folks were indignant. Others just stared at him in wonder. But those words, that
question, seemed to echo back and forth throughout the church. People began to think.

They are compatible, this marriage can’t fail.

They had great parents, a great example to follow.
They have plenty of money and investments.
They have really prepared themselves.
And finally, they are in love.

So which is it? Which is it for you? How can you know that a marriage will work? Folks today
will tell you that you can’t. But they reject the Biblical vision. You can know today that it will last
because that is what biblical marriages do, they don’t do anything else. The strength of the
marriage is the covenant made between two souls and with God.

Application:

So let me ask this question. Is your marriage an accurate picture of the way that Christ relates to the
church? Is your marriage an accurate picture of the way that the church relates to Christ? Is your
love a shining example of Christ’s love?

Conclusion:

The true foundation and the true fuel of the Christian marriage, which is what keeps it together
when it might otherwise fall apart is not romantic love that you feel, but it is a covenant promise
made between two people with God. That is the true foundation of marriage, and biblical love
flows out of it, it doesn’t produce it.

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Title: The Challenge of Marriage; “When Sinners Say I Do”
Text: Colossians 3:12-19
Textual Idea: In this passage the Apostle Paul calls the church to extend the grace they have
received to others, and to allow that grace to lead them to victory over sin.
Dominating Theme: The covenant of marriage should be characterized by grace.
Introduction:

This morning we are continuing this little series entitled, “Rediscovering a Biblical Vision of
Marriage”. I must say that God has used this in my life and in my marriage already and I give Him
glory for it. We have, over the last two weeks, in three messages taken a close look at two things;
the nature of marriage and the foundation of marriage. We saw in the Word of God how marriage
is a miraculous creative act of God by nature. It is the temporary, supernatural spiritual knitting
together of two souls. He designed it for many reasons, all of which are to give Him glory.
Principally, we learned that God created marriage to be the only acceptable and successful platform
for man’s need for companionship to be met on. We also saw that the foundation or the fuel of
marriage; that is, what it is built on, and what keeps it going is not love, but rather covenant. The
world is sure that love is the foundation, but God is clear in the Word that marriage is built upon a
covenant that becomes the well spring for true biblical love. We learned that the world has
distorted our understanding of love. Love in the Bible is a choice, which you feel, that leads to
action, or that you demonstrate. That is love, and it flows out of the covenant of marriage.

This morning, we are going to shift our focus ever so slightly, and consider how our relationship
with God should affect our relationship with our spouse. Simply put, the covenant of marriage
should be characterized by the same thing that our covenant with God is characterized by; grace.
Your marriage should become a stage upon which God’s grace is displayed to the world, and to
your spouse, over and over and over again until you die.

Why grace? Well, grace is getting something you don’t deserve. In case you didn’t know yet, there
are times that you and your spouse do and say things to each other that are bad. God calls that sin.
When that happens to you, and it will, you will not feel as if your spouse deserves to be shown
grace, but God is not concerned with your feelings. Just as you have received grace from God to
cover your sins and because you have received grace from God to cover your sins, you should and
you must cause that grace to flow out of your heart and onto your spouse.

Many marriages today suffer from clogged arteries. When your arteries clog up, it restricts the flow
of blood in and out of the heart and at times it begins to harden. Many marriages suffer from
something similar. When a husband sins against a wife, she gets mad, blames only him, considers
herself to be the victim as usual, and she cuts off her heart as it hardens. She doesn’t let any love
flow out of that thing, because all she gets into it are fatty deposits from her husband. But she is
overlooking something. She is getting fatty deposits from her husband for sure, but she is getting
grace from God. It flows in and opens those arteries up for a reason, so they can begin to flow
outward. God gives us grace in this life, in this marriage so that we can let it come into our hearts
and then flow right out onto our spouse. And never forget that you need God’s grace, a lot.

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Have you ever experienced one of those moments where you were just so mad at your wife or your
husband for some dumb reason, and your mind just got going and you couldn’t stop thinking about
how horrible they were and how you were so perfect? Well, has that ever been interrupted by God
revealing to you in a special way that you are ten times worse to Him and yet He loves you and
forgives you? Have you ever wondered why those times come so seldom? Have you ever
wondered why you always feel like it is her fault or his fault, and never yours? The problem is that
your spouse isn’t at the root of your marriage problems, you are!

See, do you remember back when you stood at that altar with your beloved and how you got to that
magical moment when you both said “I do”? Well, the only thing magical about it was the way
your stomach felt, because it didn’t change who you are on the inside one bit. It didn’t make you
any less of a selfish, prideful, sinful person. In fact, things didn’t get better for your battle with sin
when you got married; they got worse, much worse! Now you have to deal with your own
sinfulness and your spouse’s. The problem is that it is much easier to see all of her sin and to ride
her for it and to hang it over her head. Seeing your own sin is tough, it requires humility,
submission, and honesty; three things most Christians hate to do.

The Apostle Paul, arguably the most righteous and faithful Christian to ever walk this planet, rightly
understood his own sinfulness and that is what made his ministry and his relationships, and his life
so great. Consider, 1 Timothy 1:15, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance,
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost”.

What was he saying there? Did Paul actually mean to compare himself to every other person alive?
And if he did, could he seriously have concluded that he was the worst one? Of course not, that
would be ridiculous. So, what did he mean then? See Paul knew Timothy’s outward sinfulness.
He could observe him sin at times. But Paul didn’t know what was going on in his heart and in his
mind. Paul knew that he was a sinner himself, and worse, he knew his own heart and his own mind.
Paul was saying in effect that he was the biggest sinner he knew. Imagine that. Go back to the
beginning. Ask yourself this question; Is that a saying worthy of my acceptance? Do I feel that
way about myself? If you do, then you are well on your way. Paul knew he was a sinner, but he
also knew that he was a sinner saved by undeserved grace.

Consider the next verse, 1 Timothy 1:16, “But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the
foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to
believe in him for eternal life”. Paul was a sinner that got a gift from God, and he understood that
this gift wasn’t just for him, it was for others. In the context of marriage, that grace is not only for
you, but it is for your spouse.

As a sinner, married to a sinner, you have two choices, deal with the sin in your own life that spills
over into your marriage and watch it glorify God and work. Or, refuse to deal with it, blame it on
your spouse, or your circumstances, or anything but yourself and watch it fail to glorify God, and
ultimately fall apart and end in bitterness.

The marriage will not work, and you will struggle, until you begin to see that your biggest problem
is not your spouse, or your kids, or your job, or your finances, or your disability, or your extended
family, or your background, but that your biggest problem is you. You can’t fix the horizontal until

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you fix the vertical. Thomas Watson said, “Until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet”. Dave
Harvey changed it up a little and said, “When sin becomes bitter, marriage becomes sweet.”

How can you make bitter things turn sweet? You got to add something to it to sweeten it up a bit.
When the ladies get the Wednesday night supper ready they always make that great big jug of tea.
You might not know it, but there is a great big rolling tub of sugar back there and they have to dig
deep into that bad boy to get enough sugar out to sweeten that tea up. Well, the way that we change
the bitterness of sin that rules our marriages is to sweeten it up with grace.

Your marital war is a result of your war with the flesh. That means that your conflict is a result of
sin, sin in your own heart first. Galatians 5:17, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit,
and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you
from doing the things you want to do”. When you lose that war in your heart, you will turn on
your spouse. God gives you grace to cover both wars, to give you victory in both areas, but you are
the one that puts it into place.

Interrogative: What does this passage teach us about the way that grace is supposed to work in
marriage?
Transition: This passage points us towards two ways that grace is supposed to function in
marriage.
Motivating Thrust: To give hope to those in hurting marriages, and direction to those married, and
not yet married.

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Point #1: Grace Enables
Text: Colossians 3:12-15, “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of
mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and
forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also
do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the
peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye
thankful”.
Explanation:

Ravi Zacharias tells the story of a long haul truck driver that spent most of his time on the road
away from his wife and children. This truck driver often made some very inappropriate stops on
long trips to try to meet his need for companionship. Some of his trucker friends recommended that
he stop by a certain place to meet a certain woman. When he arrived there, he was escorted to a
room where he was to wait for this woman to come out. After a few minutes, to his surprise, the
woman came out, and she was his wife. Furious, and in a fit of rage, he beat her within an inch of
her life for doing the same thing that he was.

You might think that story to be an outrage, but don’t we do something similar when we refuse to
forbear and to forgive our spouses when they sin, knowing that we are sinners too?

Have you ever asked yourself this question; if I love my spouse, why do I treat him or her the way
that I do? Why do I say such hateful things? Why do I do such hurtful things? Why can’t I seem
to do better? Or why do I have such a hard time dealing with my family, with the way that my wife
constantly aggravates me, or gets on my nerves, or just keeps me going? How come I can’t
lovingly deal with her? Or how come I can’t seem to get over it when she sins against me? Why
can’t I just forgive her and let it go? Why does it have to linger on so much and take so much out of
me?

Well, if you have, I have some great news this morning, not easy news, but great news. God’s
grace, the grace that you and I have received by faith in Christ that covers our sins, enables us to
forbear and to forgive when we have been wronged by others, including of course, our spouses.

***CONTEXT*** - Now in this third chapter of Colossians Paul is quite simply urging this young
church that had been plagued by some false teaching, to consider the implications of following
Christ. He was calling them to begin to live outwardly what they already were inwardly in Christ.
The idea is to match your spiritual identity with your physical identity. You can only do that
through God’s power. Paul reminded them that they had that power by faith.
o 3:1, “If then you have been raised with Christ”
o 3:3, “Your life is hidden with Christ with God”
o 3:4, “When Christ who is your life”
Paul then gives them a long list of things to stop doing by this power:
 3:2 – don’t set your minds on things on earth
 3:5 – put to death the sin inside of you
 Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, anger, wrath,
malice, slander, obscene talk, lies, etc..

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Then he begins to talk about the positive implications, or rather the things that they are to start
doing.

“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved”.

• “elect of God” – We need to see here that Paul is going to set the stage for some pretty
difficult commands here. First, he reminds them that God chose them. This is true of all of
us, God chose us, because on our own we wouldn’t choose Him and we are not worthy of
being chosen.

• “holy” – Paul reminds them that they have been set apart by God and for God for a very
specific reason. They are set aside as His own possession. They are already spiritually holy
due to Christ’s life applied to theirs by faith.

• “beloved” – Paul reminds them that they are loved by God. God is on their side.

• “put on therefore” – Because of who they are to outwardly dress like their insides.

“bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one

another”.

First, we must become merciful from the inside out. Mercy has to be the stuff that is deep inside of
us if these other things are to work.

Second, we must be kind people. You can’t be kind, which refers to relating to others, unless you
are a merciful person deep within.

Third, we must be humble people. Humble people do not think to highly of themselves, and the
direct result of that is that they don’t think to lowly of others either.

Fourth, we must be meek. Meek people put others first on purpose.

Fifth, we must be long suffering, or patient people. These people have a long fuse, they are slow to
anger, quick to listen, and slow to speak.

• “Forbearing one another” – If you have all of those things going in your heart and in your
mind and out of your mouth, by the power of the Holy Spirit, then you will be able to bear
with others. That is what this means, to bear with others, or literally to endure. Paul would
not have said this if he didn’t fully expect each of us to be in relationships were we would be
hurt, were we would have to bear with sinful people. God’s grace, the fact that He bears
with you to some extent enables you to bear with others.

“and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you,
so also do ye”.
• “forgiving one another”- Forbearing will not fully deal with the sin though. There must be
forgiveness inside of your marriage when you have been wronged. This forgiveness is built
upon and born out of the forgiveness that we have experienced with God in Christ.

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Colossians 2:13-15, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your
flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the
record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the
cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over
them in him”.
God gave us grace, and interestingly, that is what we are to give others. The word for forgive here
is “χαριζομαι”, which contains the word for grace, right in it. The idea is that to forgive another is
to give them a gift of grace, something that they do not deserve, as far as justice is concerned.
***BTW, when we refuse to forgive, we not only sin, but we fail to believe that God will turn out to
be perfectly just. If the person that we are having trouble forgiving is saved, then their sins have all
been paid for by the death of Christ. If they are lost, and they go to hell that way, then God will
give them what they, and we for that matter, deserve. This is the biblical principle of returning
good for evil.

• “if any man have a quarrel against any” – Again, Paul knew that there were going to be
times when we would need to forgive others that have wronged us. Notice that he removes
all limitations here. There is no person, and o situation that believers in Christ are not to
forgive in God’s power.

• “even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye” – Christ is the standard.

“And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of
God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful”. Paul
then tells us that the love of God and the peace of God are to be the fuel of this thing.

Notice the phrase “peace of God”. This peace, which comes to us from the work of Christ on the
cross and by our relationship with Him by faith today, can be seen in two different ways. There is
peace with God, which we enjoy as a result of the substitionary death of Christ, and the peace of
God which floods our souls and our hearts as a direct result of the presence of Christ in our lives
constantly. Well, Paul here urges us to let that peace, which God gives, rule in our hearts. The
word for rule here is “brabeuo”, a word used only here in the New Testament. This word takes us
out to the softball field. You know how when the teams are arguing about whether or not a player is
safe at home or not they always look to the umpire to give a ruling? Well, Paul says let the peace
of God be the umpire in your life, let it make decisions for you. Let it protect you from all of those
hurtful, selfish, manipulative, controlling, sinful words and arguments with your spouse.

Application:

The grace that you have experienced in Christ enables you to forgive and to forbear with your
spouse when he or she sins against you or hurts you in any way.

John Piper puts it this way, “And the way husbands and wives showcase it is by resting in the
experience of God’s grace and bending it out from a vertical experience with God into a horizontal
experience with their spouse” (Momentary Marriage”.

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Piper argues that your wrath for your wife can be overcome by grace if God’s wrath for your sins
can be overcome by grace.

Not only are you to forgive them, but you are to count them righteous in Christ, whether they are or
not.

Proverbs 19:11, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense”.

Dave Harvey writes, “Marriage is joined upon a field of great spiritual battles. But it rests within a
war that is already won. Our real opponent is not on the opposite side of the bed, but within our
hearts. Our enemy is the desires of our flesh that oppose the desires of the Spirit. This is the
fiercest and only true enemy of our marriage.”

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Point #2: Grace Empowers
Text: Colossians 3:16-19, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and
admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your
hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God and the Father by him. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands,
as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them”.
Explanation:

Maybe this morning, you are thinking, “Well, it would be nice to be able to forbear and to forgive
my wife, or my husband. That would certainly make my life better and our marriage stronger, but
does that mean that there is no hope of either of us ever changing? Do we have to keep our faith in
high gear every second of everyday to deal with all of these sins, or will we start to get better at not
sinning? Is there any hope of victory over sin and real change in our marriage? Will I ever stop
hurting her”? If so, you raise a good question. Of course, forbearance and forgiveness without
change would be better than breaking the covenant through divorce, but it isn’t God’s ideal. God’s
ideal is that you would harness the power of God’s grace and use it to help you stop sinning and to
experience real change. Grace empowers you to change. Grace should change our desire to be
right, and to win battles, and to punish and get revenge to a desire to show the love of Christ to
others. John Piper writes, “Grace is not just the power to return good for evil; it is also the power
to do less evil – even power to be less bothersome”.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord”. Paul is
changing gears here from instructions on what to stop doing; sin, to instructions on what to start
doing righteousness, to how this can be accomplished in the life of the believer. If you want to do
these things and to begin to treat your spouse and others this way, then you are going to have to go
to the Word. This is the Gospel, the Good News about Jesus Christ. This news is the power to help
you stop sinning and the power to help you defeat temptation.

To let the word of God dwell is to let it occupy time and space. Consider Psalm 1, “Blessed is the
man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the
seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and
night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf
does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers”.

How can I get it to dwell in there? Well, through teaching and being taught. Through being
admonished in it and admonishing others with it. Through singing it back to the Lord reflecting His
grace.

“And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to
God and the Father by him”.

Then my actions will be able to follow. To do everything in the name of the Lord is to do
everything with Christ in mind. That is to do everything in His presence and with His knowledge.

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“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your
wives, and be not bitter against them”.

Then we see this connection now between this first section and marriage. I believe that these ideas
are connected. How else can you lovingly submit and faithfully love without bitterness unless you
are one quick to forbear and forgive?

Illustration:
In his book, This Momentary Marriage, author John Piper draws a fitting analogy of how this
impacts your marriage. He writes, “Picture your marriage as a grassy field. You enter it at the
beginning full of hope and joy. You look out into the future, and you see beautiful flowers and trees
and rolling hills. And that beauty is what you see in each other. Your relationship is the field and
the flowers and the rolling hills. But before long, you begin to step in cow pies. Some seasons of
your marriage they seem to be everywhere. Late at night they are especially prevalent. These are
the sins and flaws and idiosyncrasies and weaknesses and annoying habits in you and in your
spouse. You try to forgive them and endure them with grace.
But they have a way of dominating the relationship. It may not even be true, but sometimes
it feels like that’s all there is – cow pies. Noel and I have come to believe that the combination of
forbearance and forgiveness least to the creation of a compost pile. That’s where you shovel the
cow pies.
You both look at each other and simply admit that there are a lot of cow pies. But you say
to each other: you know there is more to this relationship than cow pies. And we are losing sight of
that because we keep focusing on these cow pies. Let’s throw them all in the compost pile. When
we have to, we will go there and smell it and feel bad and deal with it the best that we can. And
then we are going to walk away from that pile and set our eyes on the rest of the field. We will pick
some favorite paths and hills that we know are not strewn with cow pies. And we will be thankful
for the part of the field that is sweet.
Our hands may be dirty. And our backs may ache from all the shoveling. But one thing we
know: We will not pitch our tent by the compost pile. We will only go there when we must. This is
a gift of grace that we will give each other again and again and again. Because we are chosen and
holy and loved” (Piper, 59).

Application: Over time when those cow patties begin to build up we start to see the farm
differently. We can no longer see the green meadows and the rolling hills, all we see are cow
patties. The choice that we have to make concerns the cow patties, what do we do with them?
Most of us get sick of the smell and the annoyance and begin to believe that the answer is to move
to a new farm, one with a green pasture. We begin to believe that this one is too far gone. We
leave the farm and go off to a new one only to find out that all farms back up with cow patties if you
don’t work them. So the other choice is to work them, to make that compost pile so that those
patties can begin to have some redeeming quality. Those arguments and those sins can begin over
time to turn into opportunities for God’s grace to work and to be victorious.

Conclusion: The covenant of marriage must be characterized by grace. That grace, that we receive
from God enables us to forbear and forgive when we have been wronged and it empowers us to
change and to become more like Christ.

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Title: The Charge of Marriage; “Fill the Earth with Disciples”
Text: 2 Timothy 3:14-15
Textual Idea: In this passage Paul encourages Timothy to continue in the sound doctrine that he
had been taught since childhood by his family.
Dominating Theme: Marriage is for making disciples
Introduction: SERIES RECAP –
• Sermon 1 Marriage creative by nature
• Sermon 2 The foundation of marriage covenant not love
• Sermon 3 Marriage characterized by grace

(EMPTY NEST)
Recently at the hospitals I ran into a youth pastor that I know from many years back. He was telling
me how his kids were doing, how the older boy (that was in my first youth group as a youth pastor
when he was in middle school) was about to graduate from college and how his daughter was about
to graduate from high school. He told me that he was about to be an empty nester. It is funny how
right away I knew what he meant; in fact everyone in our culture knows what an empty nester is. It
implies that marriage, is supposed to be something of a nest where the little birds are fed, protected
and trained until they reach the right age and gain the ability to fly, and gather worms on their own
and to protect themselves. Every home is a nest, and every nest is designed to raise babies.

(CHRISTIAN NEST)
The Christian nest is unique, or at least it is supposed to be unique. For us the environment of that
nest is very important. We are to work tirelessly as mommy and daddy birds to not only provide for
our little ones, but also to protect them, and train them. A big part of this nest environment is the
way that they learn all about Christ and all about the church by watching mommy and daddy live
out their marriage covenant before their eyes.

In the world today, the nest is no longer sacred; in fact, it is no longer necessary in some cases. In
the world, the little birds are left to fend for themselves, or they are given over to the squirrels, or
left out for some predator to get them. In the world, the nest is a disastrous environment where the
mommy and the daddy attack each other, use each other, yell at and mistreat the baby birds. Or
worse, they spend all of their time outside of the nest, maybe down by the pond, ignoring or
rejecting their role, and neglecting their young.

Now, of course we know that some Christian nests have turned out to be just like the worldly nests,
but God has a better plan. In the Scriptures it is clear that God’s will is for married couples to have
babies. Of course, as a result of the fall, not every married couple is able to have children. They
can still have a nest and do the work of producing little birdies for Christ and we will talk about that
later. The same goes for those who have already cleared their nests, or who never had one.
Nevertheless, God’s plan in the Word of God is crystal clear:

• Genesis 1:27-28, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he
created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God 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 moves on the earth”.

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 • Genesis 9:1, “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and
multiply and fill the earth”.

The Psalmist reveals the great blessing that it truly is to have children in Psalm 127:4-5, “Like
arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his
quiver with them”! And we know that Christ loved little children, He loved to be with them, to
minister to them, and to express His love towards them.

So let’s ask this question. Did God design marriage to be a nest in which Christians are to conceive,
deliver and raise children just for the sake of filling the world with children? Is our main goal and
our main focus in the Christian nest, in raising these children to simply be their health, their safety,
and their education? Or is their something more? Is there a higher calling for Christian parents, is
their a greater more God glorifying purpose behind God’s command to fill the earth?

Piper, “God’s purpose in making marriage the place to have children was never merely to fill the
earth with people, but to fill the earth with worshippers of the true God”. We get hints of this all
over the Scriptures:

• Ephesians 6:1-4, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your
father and mother" (this is the first commandment with a promise), "that it may go well
with you and that you may live long in the land." Fathers, do not provoke your children
to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord”.
• Proverbs 6:20-21, “My son, keep your father’s commandment, and forsake not your
mother’s teaching. Bind them on your heart always; tie them around your neck”.
• Deuteronomy 6:6-7, “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in
your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise”.
• Matthew 28:18-20

As Christian parents, we are responsible for the spiritual training of our children. This is not merely
a minor aspect of their overall training; this is to be the center. We are called to prepare them for
the Christian life of service, sacrifice, and worship. We are preparing them to become fully
equipped disciples of Christ. And God has created marriage in such a way that it is the perfect
framework to build a nest on. Think about it. Marriage is a covenant between two believers that
closely matches the covenant between Christ and the church. That means, even when they don’t
know it, from the time that they are babies, they are learning all about how Christ loves His own
and how His own are committed to Him. God gave us a head-start and a short cut in marriage itself.

Interrogative: What are the critical elements of the family discipleship process?

Transition: This passage uncovers two elements of the family discipleship process.

Motivating Thrust: To challenge Christian parents to refocus their efforts towards raising
disciples.

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Point #1: The Meat
Text: 2 Timothy 3:14, “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been
assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them”.
Explanation:
“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from
whom you learned it” (ESV).

What is the meat? The Christian faith found in the Word of God.

What do we feed these little birds in this Christian nest? And are we the ones that are responsible to
feed them, or is someone else? Timothy was raised in something of a Christian nest. In fact, his
faith was a direct product of that nest according to Paul.

***CONTEXT*** -
• 2 Timothy written between A.D. 64-68
• Written from a Roman jail where Paul was uncertain of whether he would be executed or
whether he would be set free
• Written to encourage and to exhort Timothy his spiritual son in the faith (2 Timothy 1:2,
“my beloved child”)
• Focus on the sufficiency of Scripture and of the necessity to live a life of long obedience in
the same direction.
• 1:13, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith
and love that are in Christ Jesus”.
• 2:15, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need
to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth”.
• 3:1-9 includes a warning to avoid godless people

In that context, Paul once again reminds Timothy to stay the course, to continue in the faith. Let me
say this here this morning. The Christian life and church together are not worldly pursuits to be
measured with worldly standards. The goal of both is a long obedience in the same direction; it is a
lifelong faithfulness to Christ, which is true success. We must not fall prey to the worldly influence
on the church that says that if we are not growing in baptisms, budgets, buildings, or bodies that
something must be wrong and we need to fix it. God has called us to be faithful and to follow His
Word; He then promises to do the rest. Ok back to the text.

Paul writes, “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of”.
• Continue means to remain faithful, to remain steadfast and immovable. It is a present active
imperative command
• Focus on the “things”. What were the things that Timothy had learned and then been
assured of?
• These were “things” which he had learned. Learned comes from “manthano”, which
comes from and is related to “mathetes” which means disciple. So Paul was referring to
the things which Timothy had learned in the discipleship process. What would he have
learned there?
• Those things begin with the fear of God. We know that from Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the
LORD is the beginning of knowledge”.

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 • The immediate context of this verse speaks of things about God and righteousness. Paul is
talking about spiritual truth, about theology, and about Scripture here.
• I would imagine that they would have included:
o The holiness of God, the glory of God, the immutability of God, the faithfulness of
God, the goodness of God, the justice of God, the grace of God, the law, the
resurrection, judgment, and even faith.

So, Timothy had learned things about God, which we will clarify in a moment, but notice that
learning them is not enough. He learned them and then he became assured, or convinced. Literally
he began to believe them. You can know a lot about the Bible and not know Christ.

Paul, then reminds Timothy where he learned these things and who he learned them from. He
writes, “Knowing of whom thou hast learned them”. Now of course, Timothy had learned from
Paul, that is a given. But that isn’t what he is referring to here. Let’s go back to the beginning of
the letter for a moment. There we learn something about who Paul is referring to here.

2 Timothy 1:5, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother
Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well”.

Timothy learned these things first at home from his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois.
Notice though that his father isn’t in the picture. We don’t know much about Timothy’s real father
other than he was a non-believing Gentile. Acts 16:3, “Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him,
and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all
knew that his father was a Greek”. So he was either lost and not involved in Timothy’s
discipleship, or he had possibly died while Timothy was young. We just don’t know. But consider
this. Timothy grew in spite of the marriage covenant not firing on all cylinders, imagine if it had
been.

Remember, the marriage covenant between mother and father, which is a picture of the covenant
between Christ and the church becomes a daily tutor, teacher, and theater for the child to learn all
about how Christ relates to the church and how the church is committed to Christ.

Piper, “Ultimately, marriage is a flesh and blood drama of how Christ (characterized by the
husband) loves His church, and how the church (characterized by the wife) is devoted to Christ”.

Bonhoeffer, “It is from God that parents receive their children, and it is to God that they should lead
them”.

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Illustration:

In January 1996, then first lady of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton, published and began
promoting a book entitled, “It Takes a Village”. The title and the thesis of the book comes from a
well known African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child”. She argues that our changing
culture has decentralized the home and the family and has affected the way that children should be
raised. She suggests that modern parents must team with leaders in their local community such as
police, fire, teaches, mailmen, government workers, etc... to shape and to form their children.
Shortly after its release, Bob Dole, who had just won the nomination as the Republican Presidential
candidate for the 1996 election, strongly opposed the book in his acceptance speech. He said,
“With all due respect, I am here to tell you, it does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a
family to raise a child”. Senator Rick Santorum agreed with Dole in a book he wrote in 2005 with
that very title.
I would suggest that neither of those pictures is biblically accurate or complete. I wouldn’t say it
takes a village to raise a child. And I wouldn’t say that it takes merely a family to raise a child. I
would say that it takes a Godly family, empowered by the Holy Spirit, directed by the Word of God
to raise a disciple of Christ, and that is what God has called us to do, not to merely raise a child.

Application:

As Christian parents, we are called to disciple our children in the faith. We are preparing them for
their spiritual future, first and foremost. That is, we are preparing them to live the Christ life and to
walk in the Spirit for a life time. Shouldn’t that take up more time in the nest than anything else we
might be doing with them or training them for? Why is it that today, he most important aspect of
our children’s growth and training takes the back seat to every and all other distractions like sports,
or hobbies?

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Point #2: The Means
Text: 2 Timothy 3:15, “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able
to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus”.
Explanation:
“And how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to
make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (ESV).

What are the means? The means are intentional, serious, devoted times of training from infancy to
adulthood.

Be fruitful and multiply; be faithful and disciple. Ok, so God commanded us to fill the earth, but
not just with kids, but with worshippers. But I thought that was all God’s job? I thought that our
responsibility was just to take them to church, to get them some veggie tales, maybe even to take
them to Awana on Wednesday nights or something. I thought we were supposed to let the church
handle all of that. Well, consider what Paul said next about Timothy’s time in his own Christian
nest.

Paul continued, “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures”.

• “Child” – comes from “brephos” meaning infant, or little baby. It is the word used to
describe little baby Jesus.
• So Timothy began learning these “things” when he was an infant, a little baby. There was
no waiting here for him to grow up and to make the decision as to whether or not he wanted
to believe or to go to church. His mother and his grandmother made it for him, and praise
God they did!
• Why shouldn’t godly parents give their children options about the faith, or about church? I
mean haven’t we all heard of the kid that was made to go to church and then when he
rebelled he blamed it on that? Well, consider this. If he rebelled against church, doesn’t the
Bible lead us to believe it was because he was lost, and a rebellious enemy of God in the
first place? See, the reason why Godly parents shouldn’t give their kids these options is that
they are not only immature, and unable to know what is best, but they are sinful by nature,
and rebellious at heart. Of course they don’t feel like going!
• Notice that now we learn what the “things” were. They were the Old Testament.
Remember, the Gospel is in the Old Testament. Our kids don’t need a plan of salvation
alone. They don’t need a roadmap to heaven alone. They need to be introduced to the
holiness of God, the seriousness of sin, the severity of God’s wrath, and the beauty of His
grace. We can find those in the Old Testament.
• But why should we? Well, consider what Paul said next.

He writes, “which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus”.

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 • His mother and his grandmother gave him the Old Testament and over time it made him
wise unto salvation. Over time he began to get it and God moved on his heart. That is the
process that should be taking place in our own nests with our own kids right now. They
shouldn’t want to get saved because they are terrified of hell, or really want to go to heaven,
or want to get baptized like their friends or a sibling. They should be convinced of their
need for Christ by Scripture, just like Timothy was!
• All of his training led him to faith, not just to repeating some prayer to go to heaven. A true
and living faith in God was born out of the word of God at the hands of his parents. That is
how we are supposed to lead them to the Lord. That is your job, it doesn’t belong to anyone
else!
• The Jews took this very seriously. Their main focus was on the spiritual education of their
own children at home. We see this all over the Old Testament. They were dependent upon
the Bible, and nothing else. We know it worked when we see examples like Daniel.

Josephus wrote, “Above all we pride ourselves on the education of our children, and regard as the
most essential task in life the observance of our laws and of the pious practices, based thereupon,
which we have inherited”.

Throughout the history of the church, Godly men and women have been committed to discipling
their children in their home through consistent times of training, devotion, and family worship.

Application:

When you had that baby and you left the hospital that was God affirming to you that He has
equipped you and will empower you to do what He wants with those kids. If not, He wouldn’t have
let you left that place. The most significant task of the Christian nest is to pour the Gospel into their
little hearts from the time they are born until the time that they repent and place their faith in Christ
as Lord and Savior. And then the real work of discipleship begins. We shouldn’t just drag them to
church, give them a bunch or rules to keep and sit around waiting or even just praying that they
would begin to “ask questions”. No, God has equipped us with the Gospel and with the Word of
God and has charged us to feed it to our kids each and every day. That way, one day, after hearing
it and being raised in it, and in seeing it play out in mommy and daddy’s marriage, in the nest, they
will come to you and say, “Daddy, Mommy, God has really convicted me of my sinfulness and how
my sins have separated me from Him and how He has to punish sin and how that means that I
deserve to go to hell. And I know now that when Christ died on the cross, He stood in my place and
took my punishment for me, so my sins could be forgiven and so I could have a relationship with
God and have new life. And so this morning, I prayed and repented of my sins and put my trust in
Christ as Savior and Lord once for all”. This is radically different from what we have today, and it
all starts in the home.

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How can we do it?

1. Learn it so you can live it and teach it

2. Put the Word of God in the center of your home
3. Be disciplined
4. Model it
5. Family worship
6. Sunday afternoons
7. Scripture memory
8. Opportunities to teach (younger kids)

Conclusion:

Often you will see a sign at a church either over the door leaving the sanctuary, or at the exit of the
parking lot leaving the property that reads, “You are now entering the mission field”. I like that
sign, and I think it is helpful, but I would like to suggest that the better place to put that sign, if I had
to pick, would be to place it above the outside of the front door of all of our homes to remind us that
our first and most important mission field is the home.

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 God’s Plan for Marriage

God’s position on marriage is that two become one for life;

Mark 10:9, “9What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder”.

God’s position on divorce;

Malachi 2:16, “16For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away
(Literally divorce): for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore
take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously”.

Matt 19:6, “6Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath
joined together, let not man put asunder”.

It seems as if Christ made an exception for divorce;

Matt 19:5-10, “5And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6Wherefore they are no more twain, but one
flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 7They say unto him, Why
did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8He saith unto
them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from
the beginning it was not so. 9And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be
for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put
away doth commit adultery. 10His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his
wife, it is not good to marry”.

God’s plan for reconciliation;

1 Corinthians 7:10-11, “10And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not
the wife depart from her husband: 11But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried or be
reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife”.

God’s view of remarriage;

Mark 10:11-12, “11And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry
another, committeth adultery against her. 12And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be
married to another, she committeth adultery”.

Luke 16:18, “18Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth
adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery”.

The two extraordinary cases in which Scripture may allow remarriage;

1 Corinthians 7:15, “15But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is
not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace”.

Matthew 19:9, “9And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for
fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put
away doth commit adultery”.

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 Matthew 5:32, “32But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for
the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is
divorced committeth adultery”.

Conclusion: It appears as if Christ does make an exception for persons that have divorced as a
result of what looks like hard hearted adultery, yet the Greek word porneia is a very difficult word
to translate literally it is immorality. The biggest difficulty is that if Jesus was referring to adultery
as in the 7th commandment why Matthew didn’t use the Greek word moicheia which means
adultery. Later however Matthew uses both Greek words side by side in 15:9, “19For out of the
heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander”. The
same word reappears in John 8:41, “41Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, we be
not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God”, a verse that retells the Pharisees
accusations that Jesus was born of porneia. But that wouldn’t make sense, because they are
accusing Mary of committing adultery and that Jesus was a result of that act. But Mary and Joseph
were not married yet, they were only betrothed as in, Matthew 1:18, “18Now the birth of Jesus
Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came
together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost”. But in the next verse Joseph sought to “put
her away” or literally to divorce Mary, the same word used in Mt 5:32 and 19:9, and the Bible says
that He was “just” in that, presumably on account of his suspicions of porneia. That may explain
why this exception is not mentioned in Mark 10:11-12, as the primarily non Jewish audience would
not have known about the Jewish practice of betrothal.

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Public Reading of the Text: Exodus 20:14

Title of Sermon / CPS What and What About It: Treason / God condemns both the physical act
and the mental and emotional acts leading up to the physical act of adultery as treason in the highest
sense.

Introduction / Burden: This time of year, election time, we are always informed of the major
accomplishments or advancements that have been made by a certain candidate. It seems as if the
voters are more concerned with “progress” than anything, or at least that is the way that the
candidates are marketed. Our candidate has got this changed, or that moved, or them removed. But
is that really what we are concerned with? Think about other areas of life, success is measured for
the most part by progress or advancement. That is true for the world of science, with medical
breakthroughs and it is true for the world of engineering with design breakthroughs and
advancements in efficiency. We are always looking for something better or something more
advanced. But is that always good? I don’t want to run the risk of sounding like a cave man, but
not all progress is good. For instance, I would venture to say that most of us have seen physical
progress over the years in our own bodies, but you don’t see people jumping up and down and
shouting, “Hey, I’ve gained 25 more pounds, or I’m loosing more hair, or my comb over is thinning
out, or worse of all, my hair is turning gray”! Or you don’t hear about someone calling a friend, or
taking an ad out in the paper to announce, “My siding is dry rotting, or my old Chevy is rusted slap
out”! Yet all of these things are progress aren’t they? So it is pretty clear that not all progress is
good progress. In some cases there is good progress or building up and in some cases there is bad
progress or tearing down. Tonight I want to consider this in light of the seventh commandment,
“Thou shalt not commit adultery”. For instance, listen to what one Preacher had to say about the
way people dress, “We should take the bible more seriously, if we did we would no longer see
lewdness in dress, or in gestures, or in speech, as the world currently provides too excessive a
license. For when men and women dress in such a way as to seduce each other and to entice each
other into adultery, are they not all the more engaged in prostitution? It is true that they argue:
“Oh, I haven’t committed adultery”. But in doing so they only reveal that they are a prey to Satan
and would like to trap others as much as possible. Consequently, they are like a type of adulterer
in God’s sight, as all licentiousness and excessiveness in dress is only asking to be engulfed by the
snares”. Now some of you are thinking, what church is this, I want to go visit and others are
thinking, where does he come off talking like that? Well, if you want to go and hear this preacher
you are about 500 years too late, it was John Calvin and he preached this on July 2, 1555. It says a
lot though doesn’t it, that way back then, when women wore two or three layers of clothing and for
the most part no make up, that he would consider it too excessive. When I first read that I was
shocked, not because I think he was overreacting but that I am probably under reacting. I mean can
you imagine what he would say today? Now last week many of you likely thought, “You know this
really doesn’t apply to me”, though in reality it does for we commit murder when we hate and when
we lash out with our mouths, which for Christians seems to be an everyday occurrence, but now this
one, hits right at home. It doesn’t matter how you live, how much you try to hide yourself from this
sex charged culture, you cannot avoid it, and it’s everywhere. On every billboard, on every bus, in
every newspaper, and magazine, and on every channel of the television, and tragically at times you
can’t even escape it by coming to church. This is all bad progress, tearing down of God’s lofty
standards put in place to protect us, to protect the home, and to protect marriage. I wonder at times

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just how far we have come; the early church fathers certainly had a different take on this. Eusebius
records that Origen castrated himself in strict adherence to Matthew 19:12, “12For there are some
eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which
were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the
kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it”. It has been reported
that Tertullian regarded “the extinction of the human race as preferable to procreation”. Ambrose
said that, “Married couples ought to be ashamed of their sexuality”. And Augustine “was willing to
admit that intercourse might be lawful but taught that sexual passion was always a sin”. It is said
also that “many priests counseled couples to abstain from sex and that the Catholic Church
gradually began to prohibit sex on certain holy days, so that by the time of Martin Luther, the list
had grown to 183 days a year”. Of course as outrageous as this all sounds, these men were
attempting to avoid committing sexual sins. Or take for instance what happened in 1631. The
printers of one edition of the Bible were fined 300 pounds (about $550.00 US) or a lifetime’s
earnings for mistakenly leaving one word out of the Bible. They left out the word “not” in this
commandment and therefore the 1631 edition read, “Thou shalt commit adultery”, and it was met
with utter outrage. Consider what would happen today, would anyone say anything at all? Or
consider even just how far our country has fallen in the political and public arena. Do you
remember Gary Hart and the affair that he allegedly had with Donna Rice? When this came out in
the media the public reacted and he was ruined, subsequently he withdrew form the campaign. But
then only a few short years later, the same thing happened to an incumbent president and publicly
he was protected and to this day the entire incident is officially a non issue. That has to make
you stop and ask the question, “How serious are sexual sins to God”. Obviously the world has
declassified them, but has God? Tonight we are going to hear the truth, God hasn’t “lightened up”,
sexual sins are terrible and the worst of all is the sin of adultery (there are two varieties of sexual
sins in the Bible, 1. Fornication which is committed by a non married person and 2. Adultery
which by definition is a crime that only a married person can commit) which the Bible
classifies as nothing less than treason on the highest level. My prayer though is that we would see
and understand this commandment for what it is, and for what it means by way of application to
every one of us regardless of age or gender. Our country has slipped so far in such a short time that
we have to stop and take notice; we have to stop and realize that we are all in danger and that we
have to take action now. A few years ago a woman by the name of Ann Atkins wrote a letter to the
London Daily Telegraph to be published in response to a prominent Pastor’s marital infidelity that
had recently been discovered. She wrote,
“When I was younger, I used to find some Christian teaching rather gloomy. The doctrine of total
depravity, for instance. I preferred to think everyone’s jolly nice, really. And so we are: we are
made in the image of God with the divine stamp on us all. But the Bible also teaches that we have
fallen from this created ideal and are now rotten through and through – all of us. I have friends
who consider this deeply offensive. But as I have gotten older, I have found it increasingly
liberating. See, I, too, am an adulterer. A few years ago, I was in a remote part of the world, alone
with the owner of a tranquil island. As the days went by he became more attentive and more
attractive. It was an extremely pleasant sensation. I was enjoying myself greatly, my work
required me to be there, and my head insisted that I was above temptation. But I am not. The bible
tells me so. Consequently, I knew I must leave urgently. I did. By the grace of God, I didn’t
commit adultery. Not then. And not yet. But it’s there, in my heart, biding its time. Jesus said that
makes me as bad as the worst offender. Happily, because I’ve always been taught that I am
capable of adultery, I have always been on my guard against it. After all, it doesn’t start when you

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jump into bed with your lover – but months, years earlier, when you tell yourself that your friend
understands you better than your spouse”.
Tonight let’s look at the seventh commandment through those eyes, that we all have the
potential within the sin nature, within ourselves to commit this sin, and therefore we are to be much
concerned as to what God has to say about it and how we can protect against it. Let’s trace a line
through the Bible to follow God’s teaching on adultery and see where we end up.

1) In the Old Testament we have to go all the way back to creation and God’s plan for marriage.

a.) Genesis 2:21-24, “ 21And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he
slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22And the rib, which
the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23And Adam 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. 24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh”. God’s initial plan in
creation was that a man and a woman specifically would come together to complete each other.
Alistair Begg wrote, “Marriage is what the theologians refer to as a creation ordinance. Marriage
is a loving, lasting, binding, solemn, exclusive covenant of companionship in which a man and
woman begin to think, act, and feel as one”.

b.) But immediately this institution of marriage was attacked by Satan. Genesis 3:15, “15And I
will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel”.

c.) The seed is the result of the marriage union, and therefore it became Satan’s number one
objective to attack the producer of that seed, namely the married couple. Early on, Abraham made a
huge mistake that put that seed in danger. Genesis 12:11-13, “11And it came to pass, when he was
come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art
a fair woman to look upon: 12Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee,
that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive. 13Say, I
pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live
because of thee”. But in verse 7 God had just promised him that his “seed” would receive the land.

d.) Shortly after that we can see that at least someone understood the gravity of this crime.
Genesis 39:7-9, “7And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon
Joseph; and she said, Lie with me. 8But he refused, and said unto his master's wife, Behold, my
master wotteth not what is with me in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my
hand; 9There is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me
but thee, because thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against
God”?

e.) That brings us to the commandment that God gave the young Jewish nation at Sinai, second only
to murder, adultery is clearly condemned without explanation or apology.

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f.) The penalty was quickly given in Leviticus 20:10, “10And the man that committeth adultery
with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the
adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death”. And in Deuteronomy 22:22, “22If a
man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both
the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel”.

g.) We are all very familiar of the most famous adulterous disaster in the Old Testament when
David took Bathsheba in 2 Samuel. Later when Nathan came unto David to expose his sin he told
him that he had, “despised the commandment of the Lord to do evil in his sight”.

h.) Later Job described adultery as “a heinous crime to be punished”.

i.) Through the mouths of the prophets God consistently compared their spiritual abandonment of
Jehovah as adultery.

2) In the New Testament Jesus made immediate reference to this commandment, but did so in a way
to expose the spiritual nature of the law (Romans 7:14) and the spiritual nature of adultery. In it He
condemns not only the act, but all the emotions and thoughts, and decisions leading up to the act.
Matthew 5:27-28, “27Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit
adultery: 28But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath
committed adultery with her already in his heart”.

a.) “This commandment clearly intimates that God claims the body as well as the soul for His
service”. We see that in passages like Romans 12:1, “1I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the
mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service”. And in Romans 6:12, “12Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal
body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof”. And in Romans 8:13, “13For if ye live after the
flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live”.

b.) Consider the way that Christ cleansed the temple of the thieves that had set up their sinful
practices within its gates and then remember that Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:19, “19What? Know
ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and
ye are not your own”?

c) Paul had much more to say about this and other sexual sins as well. 1 Corinthians 6:13, “Now
the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body”. And in 1
Corinthians 6:15, “15Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take
the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid”.

d) The most significant however is found in Hebrews 13:4, “4Marriage is honourable in all, and
the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge”. The word “honourable” is
the Greek word, “timios” and it means most literally “precious”. That is the way it is used in 1
Corinthians 3:12 where Paul speaks of “gold, silver, precious stones”. It’s also used by Peter in 1
Peter 1:19 in reference to the “precious” blood of Christ. And Peter also used it to refer to the
“precious promises” of God. So when the writer of Hebrews commands that marriage is
“honourable” in all, we should not miss the idea of being precious. That is what we should think of

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marriage, a precious gift, a precious ordinance of God, a precious union between man and wife. We
should treasure it as such. I have an old baseball that at one time I kept in a nice case because it was
autographed by Mark McGuire. Well he went through a period of just being a pretty average
player, and so one day when I got bored, against my mother’s orders I took that old ball out and
played with it. It got all scuffed up and now you can hardly tell what it is. I keep it in an old sock
in my dresser. When I thought it was valuable I treasured it, but when I thought that its value had
slipped, I started to treat it as common and used it as such. Turns out I was wrong and now he is a
home run king and my ball is worthless, but the same is true with marriage. When Christ described
marriage and divorce in depth to the disciples in Matthew 19 they responded by saying “it is good
not to marry”. Why; well they saw very clearly just how precious marriage is to God and they
didn’t want to mess it up. So He has set the value and it hasn’t changed, that is why He condemns
lusting after another person. Unfortunately this world and really this country in particular has pretty
much designed itself to commit this sin, it has equipped each person with all of the necessary
temptations to commit adultery, they just happen to start with lust. Listen to what James said about
how this works in James 1:13-16, “13Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God:
for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: 14But every man is tempted,
when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 15Then when lust hath conceived, it
bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. 16Do not err, my beloved
brethren”.

3) How then can we protect ourselves and avoid falling in this area? Well, the first thing is to
recognize right now that everyone is capable of committing adultery on some level no matter your
age or your gender. Also recognize that just because you have done this in your mind and other
people don’t know, doesn’t mean that it isn’t just as bad; for whatever reason we have a habit of
thinking that if we can keep it a secret it will be all right. If Satan can attack and destroy the family
with success then he can effectively undermine the purpose of the church. Let me give you at least
four things that you can do to protect yourselves from failing God and your spouse in this area;

1. Practice the Presence of God. Proverbs 15:3, “3The eyes of the LORD are in every place,
beholding the evil and the good”. We need to continually remind ourselves that God is always
with us, always watching if you will. I read an article this week that was explaining that internet
pornography which leads to the sin of adultery and which is in fact adultery according to Christ, is
successful, so popular because it can be done with total privacy, total anonymity, yet the opposite is
true.

2. Memorizing the Word. Psalm 119:9-11, “9Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?
By taking heed thereto according to thy word. 10With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let
me not wander from thy commandments. 11Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not
sin against thee”. As believers we must have a healthy diet of bible memorization. Now I hear a
lot of people say that they just can’t remember things, the can’t remember the Bible, but you ask
them who played running back for the Bulldogs in 87, or who was the quarterback for the Gators in
95, or who drives for DEI, and they know right away. If you mean that you can’t seem to remember
Bible verses after reading them a couple of times, well then join the club. But I have never met
someone that honestly sat down intentionally, disciplined, and determined to memorize the Word
according to this passage and God didn’t cause them to remember the verses.

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3. Watch over the Senses. Job 31:1, “1I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I
think upon a maid”? Sometimes you just have to cover your eyes to protect yourself. Do whatever
it takes, don’t turn on the TV, or don’t go to that place, or don’t start that conversation, or don’t
look that way. Make a covenant with your eyes! Proverbs 4:23-25, “23Keep thy heart with all
diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. 24Put away from thee a froward mouth, and
perverse lips put far from thee. 25Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight
before thee”.

4. Be in Much Prayer. Psalm 119:37, “37Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and
quicken thou me in thy way”. Ask God to protect you, to watch over you and to keep you strong in
the face of temptation.

But most of all be encouraged. This is a very sensitive subject, for you might not have a bunch of
people jumping up and down with excitement, you also won’t have all the people struggling with
this sin raising their hands either. The important thing, the imperative thing is to recognize this sin
for what it is, and to repent and come to Jesus for forgiveness. In Psalm 51 David came to God in
repentance for the same sin and found forgiveness, in the same way come to Him on your knees in
full repentance and find His love, find His grace.

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Let Marriage Be Held in Honor Among All
By John Piper August 11, 1991

Hebrews 13:1-6
Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have
entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them; and
those who are ill-treated, since you also are in the body. Let marriage be held in honor among all,
and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the immoral and adulterous. Keep your
life free from love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, "I will never fail
you nor forsake you." Hence we can confidently say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid;
what can man do to me?"

Uphold the Preciousness of Marriage

Our focus this morning is on verse 4: "Let marriage be held in honor among all." The word for
honor more commonly means precious in the New Testament. It's the word used in 1 Corinthians
3:12 where Paul speaks of "gold, silver, and precious stone." It's used in 1 Peter 1:19 in reference to
the "precious blood" of Jesus. It's used in 2 Peter 1:4 to refer to the "precious and very great
promises" of God.

So when Hebrews 13:4 says, "Let marriage be held in honor among all," we should hear the ring of
preciousness. The Bible is telling us this morning: Let marriage always be thought of as precious.
Let it be treasured like gold and silver and rare jewels. Let it be revered and respected like the
noblest, most virtuous person you have ever known. Let it be esteemed and valued as something
terribly costly like the long, black, marble Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. In other words,
when you think of marriage, let yourself be gripped by emotions of tremendous respect and sanctity.
In relation to marriage cultivate the feeling that this not to be touched quickly or handled casually or
treated commonly. In God's eyes marriage is precious and therefore he says, "Let marriage be held
in honor among all."

Christians as the Salt of the Earth

My aim this morning is to call you, in the name of Jesus and for the glory of God and for the good
of yourself and your community, to be in sync with God about marriage and out of sync with
secular western culture.

We've been reading through Luke as a family this summer, and last Tuesday we got to the end of
chapter 14 where Jesus says, "Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my
disciple." Jesus calls for a radical detachment from things for the sake of the kingdom. Then,
seemingly out of the blue, he says, "Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste how shall its saltness be
restored? It is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill; men throw it away. He who has ears to
hear, let him hear."

What's the connection? I suggested to the family (and now to you): Christians are the salt of the
earth to the degree that we are out of step with the values of the world and in step with the values of

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God. All the nations seek what to wear and eat and drink and drive and play with. But you must be
free of all that and seek the kingdom first, and then you will be salt.

The world is like a blah piece of hamburger. It needs salt to preserve it and make it have the spice of
eternal joy. But so much of the church today is taking its cues from the world—the TV and Radio
and magazines and newspapers and secular culture-shaping voices—that the church turns out to be
just another piece of blah hamburger. And when the church lands on the world, what you get is
NOT a salty hamburger but two pieces of blah unsalted hamburger.

So I am calling you this morning to be out of step with the world on the matter of marriage. To get
your cues for how to think and feel about marriage not from the spirit of our age but from God, who
made heaven and earth and everything in them—including marriage—for the glory of his name and
the good of his people.

The Salty Context of Hebrews 13:4

Let's look at the context of Hebrews 13:4 to get the flavor of this command to honor marriage. It
really is a salty context. This is not a blah list of rules for Christian behavior. It's a context of love
and compassion and confidence and hope and freedom. In other words, it's salty.

• Verse 1 says, "Let brotherly love continue": keep on loving Christians. Build a fellowship of
deep affection for each other.
• Verse 2 says, Don't just love familiar Christians; love strangers too. Show them hospitality.
God will surprise you with unexpected blessings.
• Verse 3 says, Love the prisoners and the ones who are being ill-treated.
•
So, love fellow believers, love strangers, and love prisoners.

Then comes verse 4: Honor marriage and keep the marriage bed pure. Followed by verse 5: Don't
love money—"Keep your life free from the love of money." Followed by the liberating promises
that God will never leave you or forsake you, but will be your helper, so you don't need to crave
money if you trust God.

Now I think this is a salty paragraph. This is radical Jesus-kind-of-living. Don't love money. Trust
God. Love Christians, love strangers, love prisoners, love the hurting. And right in the middle of all
that radical, salty, non-world-like, God-like way of living, it says, "Honor marriage. Keep the
marriage bed pure."

Good News

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I don't know how you hear this command. Here's how I hear it, and I hope you do too. When it
comes right in the midst of Love Christians, Love strangers, Love prisoners, Love the hurting, Don't
love money, Trust God to take care of you—when "Honor marriage" comes right in the middle of
that kind of God-talk, I hear it as good news. Honor marriage is like Love Christians. Honor
marriage is like Love strangers. Honor marriage is like Love prisoners. Honor marriage is like Don't
love money because God wants to take care of you.

And so when I see at the end of verse 4, "God will judge the immoral and the adulterous"—that is,
God will judge those who defile the marriage bed, God will judge those who dishonor marriage—
when I hear that warning, I don't hear a trigger-happy God. I don't hear a quick-tempered God just
waiting to zap a fornicator or an adulterer. What I hear is the sober, truthful reinforcement of love
for people. God loves it when we love Christians, and he loves it when we love strangers, and he
loves it when we love prisoners, and he loves it when we don't love money but trust him for our
needs, and he loves it when we honor marriage. Why? Because love is good for Christians, and love
is good for strangers and love is good for prisoners and not loving money is good for our souls and
honoring marriage is good for us and for our society. And therefore God would be unloving if he
did not judge those who demean marriage and defile it and cheapen it and ridicule it and treat it with
contempt.

So I hope you get the flavor of this passage. It is wonderfully salty. It has a lot of God in it and a lot
of love and a big helping of ultimate issues like the warning of judgment and the promise that God
will never leave us or forsake us if we trust him.

Specific Ways to Hold Marriage in Honor

So when I call you this morning to honor marriage, to keep the marriage bed pure, I hope you hear
it as part of the overall call of Jesus to simply be a radical, free, loving, counter-cultural Christian.
Now let me draw out some specific ways to hold marriage in honor.

1. Don't Confuse It with an Abomination

First, don't confuse marriage with homosexual or lesbian relationships.
Standing Against "the Mainstream Societal Trend"
In March Minneapolis became one of 19 American cities to treat homosexual and lesbian "domestic
partnerships" with some kind of legal standing. City employees can now get sick and bereavement
leaves when their "domestic partner" is affected.

Minnesota, like every other state so far, does not permit legal marriages among same sex people.
But more and more the "partnerships" are endorsed and legal rights are granted in almost every
other way. The Star Tribune reported (May 31, p. 13A), for example, that one group estimates that
there are 10,000 children of lesbian couples conceived through artificial insemination in America.
The Minneapolis School District has offered parenting classes for lesbians and homosexuals since
1987. Minnesota has no state law prohibiting adoptions by homosexuals or lesbians. The Children's
Home Society has no policies on placing children in homes of same-sex partners—so the article
said.
That article closes with these words, "The lesbian baby boom is just a reflection of mainstream
societal trends . . . Marriage is in . . . " Biblical Christians who care about being the salt of the earth

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will stand against this "mainstream societal trend." There is one basic reason: lesbian and
homosexual "partnerships" are not marriage, they are an abomination before God. Leviticus 18:22
says, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." (Cf. Leviticus 20:13.)
Paul makes very clear in Romans 1 that a society that increasingly rejects God will increasingly
degenerate into homosexual activity (vv. 26–27) and, as people are given over by God more and
more to a base mind, they will make an increasingly forthright case that these things should not only
be permitted, but approved (v. 32).

My point here is simply this: to call homosexual or lesbian relationships marriage, or to treat them
as marriage, is to treat an abomination as marriage. And that is the exact opposite of holding
marriage in honor and keeping the marriage bed undefiled. So the first way to honor marriage in our
day is not to confuse it with the abomination of homosexual or lesbian partnerships.

God Is Not a Killjoy, but Is Opposed to What Kills Joy

In the beginning God created man male and female in his own image, and he blessed them, and said
be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth . . . "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and
cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Genesis 1:27–28; 2:24). This is the glory of the
precious and honorable reality called marriage: one man and one woman cleaving to each other
alone in covenant commitment and one-flesh sexual union until death separates them.
God's judgment on homosexual and lesbian relationships is not because he is a killjoy, but because
he is opposed to what kills joy. And our opposition to such partnerships is not because of some
knee-jerk homophobia, as they say again and again, but because of a settled and reasonable
conviction that God knows better than anybody what is good for us and for society.

2. Don't Commit Fornication or Adultery

The second way to honor marriage is to not commit fornication or adultery.

That's what the second half of the verse says: "Let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge
the immoral and the adulterous." The word translated "immoral" means those who commit
fornication in distinction to adultery. The writer has two ways in mind of dishonoring marriage and
defiling the marriage bed: adultery and fornication. Both at root commit the same evil: having
sexual relations with someone who is not your lawful spouse. It's called adultery if you are married;
it's called fornication if you are not married.

But both are a dishonor to marriage and a defiling of the marriage bed, because God made marriage,
and marriage alone, as the one holy and safe and ultimately joyful place for sexual relations (cf. 1
Corinthians 7:2). The text says that God will judge fornicators and adulterers because they dishonor
marriage and defile the marriage bed. In other words, God's judgment falls on unrepentant people
who destroy what is meant for joy.

That word "repentant" leads to a third and final way to honor marriage and keep the marriage bed
undefiled (though there are many more).

3. Live Out Forgiveness and Joy and Hope

We honor marriage when we live out the clean and happy future of our unclean and forgiven past.

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The text says, "God will judge fornicators and adulterers." Just like 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 says that
"fornicators and adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God." But then the very next verse says,
"And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."

Hebrews 9:27–28

So there is judgment on fornicators and adulterers, but not all of them. There is escape from
judgment for some. Hebrews teaches this message very clearly. In Hebrews 9:27–28 it says, "Just as
it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered
once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who
are eagerly waiting for him."

So you can see there WILL be a judgment. But Christ has borne the sins of many—he has taken the
judgment for their fornication and their adultery upon himself. And now he is coming, not to do that
again, but to save us from the final judgment.

Hebrews 10:12–13

Or look at Hebrews 10:12–13, "When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins [for
fornication and adultery], he sat down at the right hand of God, then to wait until his enemies
should be made a stool for his feet."

So again you see two things: Christ took sins like fornication and adultery upon himself and paid
their penalty in his own death. BUT there is coming a time when his enemies will be made a
footstool for his feet. There is a judgment.

Two Groups of People

So what we see is that there are two groups of people: those whose sins are covered and forgiven by
Jesus (8:12: 10:17–18), and those whose sins will come down on their own heads in the judgment.
The difference is in turning from sin and coming to God through Jesus for forgiveness and help.
Hebrews 7:25, "Jesus is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him."
Turn from fornication. Turn from adultery. Draw near to God through Jesus, and he will save for all
time. He will enable you to live out a clean and happy future from an unclean and forgiven past.

Why This Kind of Living Honors Marriage

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And my point is: this living out of forgiveness and hope honors marriage. And the reason it does is
because God created marriage to be a living drama of the loving relationship between Christ and his
bride the church (Ephesians 5). And so the people that honor this intention best are the people that
live out the very forgiveness and cleanness and joy that God designed marriage to portray.
There is so much more that could be said. And I don't doubt that God is speaking to you in ways
that I never dreamed he would. So I leave the rest for the work of the Holy Spirit and the Word of
God and prayer in your life. May God make us a very salty people for the good of our decaying
society.
© Desiring God
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