Adult Sunday School - Marriage and the Eternal State

Please be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this morning that you've given us, for this day that you've given us to worship you.

I pray that you would bless this whole day, but most especially this hour that we're about to have, that you would help us to think clearly about your word, about marriage, about the afterlife, and about anything else that you draw to attention.

Pray also that you would bless the children's Sunday schools during this time, that they would learn much, that would stick with them for the rest of their lives.

In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so we've been going through the

Historia Salutis, which means the history of salvation, and taking to heart what it says in Ephesians 5, that husband and wife, that relationship, should be modeled on the relationship between Christ and the church, and specifically that relationship as it exists in salvation.

And so looking at every aspect of salvation, and seeing how does this apply to marriage, and so we're at a final session.

We've done, I think it's about 12 sessions, going all the way from election, and then here, past the final judgment, the consummation, and now the eternal state.

So this is the state that we will be in forever, after that wedding feast.

Okay, and in a lot of ways, that's not the end, but the beginning of everything that is to come after.

All right, so first of all, let's talk about inheritance. The Bible speaks of Christians being co -heirs with Christ.

Through our union with Christ, we enjoy the same rewards that he enjoys. Romans 8, 16 says, the

Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.

So those who suffer along with Christ are also joint heirs with Christ. What does he inherit? He inherits everything.

He is the heir of all things, and so we likewise become heir of all things with him. So that union between Christ and the church, this notion of an inheritance has implications, once again, for marriage, for the relationship between husband and wife, and particularly, as you think of inheritances, to finances.

All right, so first of all, financial accounting. How does this apply? One, the fact that we are counted as co -heirs with Christ does not negate the fact that he is the heir.

All right, so his status, the same thing with being a son of God, right?

We're sons of God, but he's the only begotten son, so he has the primary status, and it's in him that we secondarily share a status with him through our union with him, right?

That is how we're counted as sons of God. So that inheritance is ours.

We are joint heirs with him, but this is true in a secondary sense, right? He is the primary heir. Likewise, a wife shares all her possessions with her husband.

They're all hers, but they're hers in a secondary sense. Yeah, the husband's possessions are his own, and he is the ultimate say in their direction, but they are fully the wife's.

Just as head and body are one, husband and wife are one in their possessions of their own assets.

If 1 Corinthians 7 says that you have authority over your spouse's body, how much more true is that of all that pertains to the body, your possessions?

So there are a lot of couples that will keep their finances separate, right? And this is not just for different bank accounts, not just for accounting convenience or anything like that, but to make sure that resources are intentionally unshared.

This is your money, this is my money. They don't think of their expenditures as being something that is for the good of each one.

We've talked about that in the past, that all of a husband's and wife's actions should really be with the other mind.

Even things that you're spending on yourself should be an understanding that if you are connected to the other, then your good is the other's good.

And so those things don't have to be divorced, where this is for you and that's for me, and if you spend this on you, well, then

I need to be able to spend this on me, or anything like that. So yeah, the kinds of things that couples often do to make sure their resources stay unshared would be contrary to what we have indicated by the relationship between Christ and the church.

All right, now that being said, of course, in a fallen world, it can be the case that one's spouse is excessively wasteful, right?

And in such cases, it might be necessary to set up barriers to mitigate against that.

And this is especially the case if it's the wife that's wasteful, given the possessions are primarily the husband's.

However, yeah, in ideal situations, that doesn't promote fairness so much as it promotes division, okay?

So in general, separate bank accounts, bad idea, that kind of thing.

Any questions on that? Okay. All right, now when we talk about inheritances, a lot of times we're thinking of children in mind, right?

Inheritances, extended children. While the church shares Christ's possessions with him, the children of Zion share those as well.

So we've talked about this analogy before. I know there's some people here, new here, might not have heard this, but in that analogy between Christ and church, it is the church that is married to Christ, not us individually as believers married to Christ.

What we are individually in that analogy is the children of Zion, right? That is frequently said, we're the children of the church.

And so the children enjoy those possessions, right? The children are co -heirs in a sense because through Christ, through the church, we enjoy those possessions.

So wives and husbands' possessions should be passed off to their children. It says in Proverbs 13, 22, a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the righteous.

All right, so when should that wealth be handed off to children?

So you notice a couple of things. First of all, in the case of the father, right, the father is passing these things off to his son.

These things are enjoyed by the church, apart from any kind of death of the father, right? So there's a sense in which that kind of, there's a way in which inheritance should be passed on even while the father is alive, a human father is alive.

But it's also the case that something special is happening through the death of Christ. Hebrews 9, 16 says, for where a testament is, or will, for where will is, and in Greek, the words will and covenant are the same words.

There's kind of a pun going on here in Greek. For where a testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him that made it.

For a testament is enforced when there has been a death, for it has no power while he who made it lives.

So there's a special way that inheritance is being passed on through death. So yes, during your living life, you should pass off things to your children, but also at death, things should be passed on.

Also, I'll add this. There are some people who claim that Hebrews was originally written in Hebrew and not originally written in Greek.

This verse is the best proof that it was originally written in Greek because this whole pun where he's talking about covenants and then treats them as a will where someone needs to die in order for it to take effect, that pun that he's making there, that rhetorical observation only works in Greek.

It doesn't work in Hebrew. So yeah, there are certain Hebrew roots movements or basically modern

Judaizers who will, as part of their arguments, they will say that Hebrews was originally written in Hebrew.

A lot of times what they're trying to do is make the passages that talk about the deity of the sun less clear.

They say, oh, well, if this were written in Hebrew, it wouldn't say that so clearly. A lot of times they're doing things like that.

But anyway, this verse shows that it must have been originally written in Greek. All right, so yeah, a lot of couples live for themselves.

They do not live with having in mind passing off an inheritance to their children.

They consider this to be primarily their children's own task. They need to learn to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps.

There are some wealthy celebrities that have pledged away all their money so they don't have to give it to their children.

Yeah, it's kind of like Corbin in the New Testament, where the son is pledging away all his money so he doesn't have to help his parents.

It's kind of like that today. I think the Zuckerbergs have made statements to that end and there are other wealthy celebrities that I can't pull to mind who have said that they've pledged all their wealth away to charity so that their children have to build it up for themselves.

And this is considered virtuous, right? In this world where you've got this socialist ideology as the ideal, that would be unequitable.

It would be unfair for parents to give their children some particular advantage. You look at successful people who started off with a million or two and built that into something more, and that's considered cheating by a lot of people, right?

Like, oh, he doesn't, yeah, but his wealth wasn't really built up by him. He started off with a couple million or something like that because his father passed it on to him.

That mindset that wants some kind of fairness, some kind of equity across people in that way is slavery to a socialist ideology.

And, yeah, and it is good for parents to pass on things to the children to make sure their children have as good a start as they can not just a start that brings them up to average.

And if you wanna teach your children the value of hard work, you can do that without depriving them of anything, right?

You teach them while you're raising them, you don't spoil them, you don't give them more than what's good for them, and you teach them hard work, then when they are adults and they're imbued with a lot of self -control, then you can trust them with larger things and pass off a large inheritance to them, and then they can use it well, and that's something very good.

And we see that in the death of Christ, which establishes an inheritance for us that he's willing to give us a very great inheritance.

He's not limiting it for us so that it's not too much or something.

Yeah, so a lot of parents, like I said, live for themselves, they live for their own comfort. They retire and spend excessively on themselves.

You know, I know a number of people who are parents who are doing this late in life, right?

They're spending a lot on themselves because that's what they save that money up. It's not really for their children.

Maybe their children will get the house or something, right? But what they saved up for was to blow it all in their later years and enjoy it.

Yeah, or some people will even get a reverse mortgage, right, so like the equity in the house slowly dwindles so that finally on their last day, they have absolutely nothing.

And yeah, you know, a prodigal parent is as bad as a prodigal son, if not worse. It is the duty of parents to save up for their children, as it says in 1

Corinthians 14. Yeah, so, and consider also the man who built barns for himself, right?

He built larger barns and then he told his soul, now I'm going to enjoy it all.

And it says, you fool, this night, your soul is required of you. That man was a fool even if his soul hadn't been required of him that night, right?

Even if he had been able to live much longer, he would have still been a fool.

And so someone who acts this way, who lives just to enjoy their own wealth and not to do something greater with it, to pass it on, et cetera, is acting as a fool.

And they're the wicked person of Proverbs 13, 22, right? A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children and the wealth of the sinner is just laid up for the righteous.

What does the sinner do? The sinner passes off as everybody else gets to enjoy it after he's dead, right? Not his children's children, not some line of godly people.

All right, any questions on children inheritance?

Yes. Yes, that's a good question.

Like if you know that they're going to be wasteful with it or something. I mean, hopefully you've raised them well regardless of whether or not they're a believer so that the self -control issue is not the main issue.

I don't believe that parents owe it to their children to evenly split it up among all of them, right?

You do see in scripture that it was divided unequally and at a time where currency is not so clean, right?

It's not like today where it's really easy to liquidate almost everything and turn it into dollars that can be evenly split.

Like if you have a family business that's being passed on, you know, that's passed on to one in particular. It can't be passed off to all of them.

So I don't, you look at the pattern in scripture and I don't think that parents have an obligation to split things evenly. So if you've got, if you have one son who is less trustworthy with things,

I think it would make sense possibly to reproportion it so that it's a better investment in your legacy.

But as far as just withholding it completely, it is the duty of parents to do this, yeah.

Okay, any other questions? All right, let's move on and talk about concubinage.

Yes? For disinheritance? I mean, so what about like someone disinheriting, right?

Like what if you reproportion it so someone gets none? What are your thoughts?

Right, yeah, his father's wife is a Reuben, that's right. Yeah, and then so he receives a different kind of blessing.

You know, it's, yeah. He still receives that, but I mean. A category for removing that entirely.

Like if you have a son, like if you have a son with a really bad son, you just tell him that son is such a heinous.

Right. You're dead to me.

Right, yeah, so that's what I was about to say is that it's an equivalent question to is there a time where a father should ever disown his son?

And I think it is possible for someone to be so dishonorable that you would, yeah, you would not want any part in what they're doing.

You know, if they're, yeah, if they've killed the rest of your family members, right, and you're the only two standing or something.

Like there's all kinds of really crazy situations that you can imagine. If there's crazy situations, that's the case that you would disown him.

Then it would. Yeah, exactly. Right, yeah, right, there's no death penalty being enforced, that kind of thing.

And so you have this one who has, you know, earned in God's eyes a justice that would be death even in this life.

Yeah, I think that would make sense. All right, concubinage. Yes, was that a question?

No, okay. Okay. I do. Okay, so.

Okay, so today that word can refer to a situation where a woman lives with a man even though not having married.

In the Bible, that's not really what it's talking about. Who knows what it's talking about in the Bible when it talks about a concubine? Yes. Okay, so Solomon has like 1 ,000 wives and he's got, you know, 600 concubines or whatever it is.

I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but he's got, it's not just first and second. There's something more going on there. Anybody else?

Yes. Right.

Right. So it is a different status, but there's something very concrete about what makes that status different.

Okay, it is the inheritance, right? They don't have the same rights of inheritance.

And you'll see in Scripture that concubines, they are wives, they are called wives.

So for example, let me read Genesis 25, one through, yeah, one through six.

And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Keturah. So he's calling, it's calling her a wife.

And she bore him Zimran and Jochshin and Midian and Midian, Ishbak and Shuah.

And Jochshin fathered Sheba and Dedan, and the sons of Dedan were Asheron and Lechashim and Leomin, and the sons of Midian, Ephah, Epher, and Hanach, and Abida, and Eldah.

All these were the children of Keturah. And Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac, but to the sons of the concubines, which

Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts, and he sent them away from Isaac, his son, while he yet lived, eastward to the east country.

So he gives gifts to the children of the concubines, but they aren't heirs of all things, right? You know, he's just being kind to them, but the wives, you know, if he were to die, they would receive all the things.

And the, yeah, and the children of the concubines don't receive anything inherently.

First Chronicles 132 follows up on this and say, and the sons of Keturah, Abraham's concubine,

Shebor, Zimran, and Jokshin, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah, and the sons of Jokshin, Sheba, and Dedan, and the sons of Midian, Ephah, and Epher, and Hanach, and Abida, and Eldah, all these were the sons of Keturah.

So Keturah's called a wife in Genesis, she's called a concubine in First Chronicles. So concubines are a kind of wife, it's a wife without inheritance rights for herself or her children, okay?

So that is the difference. All right, so if, if the model of marriage is, if it should be modeled after the union between Christ and the church, what does that say for this sort of thing?

All this, if there is an obligation for a parent to save up for his children, that would proscribe, that would forbid concubinage.

You can't really redefine marriage so that it has less obligations. Now, this is tolerated in the

Old Testament, but that doesn't mean that it was a good thing. This is what happens when you, yeah, when you accrue a number of wives, right, and then you don't want to pass off your things to many of them because you just don't have enough resources to pass around to every single one, right?

So you start deciding which ones are going to get inheritances and which ones aren't. So this is kind of a, this is a feature of polygamy that you have to start limiting how well you fulfill your duties to some of the wives.

All right, yeah, and marriage is defined by God. You can't, you can't redefine it and make it your own thing, and so trying to remove some of the peripheral duties of marriage is not appropriate and doesn't reflect the union between Christ and the church.

All right, any questions about concubines? Now you all know, if you were thinking, well,

I was going to go get a concubine, but now I'm not. I know these aren't like a lot of very common modern problems, not in our culture anyway, but hopefully that gives you some clarity on what's going on, because a lot of people read this and never, never totally know what a concubine is.

All right, prenuptial agreements. Okay, implications for prenuptial agreements.

You cannot change marital obligations just by mutual agreement.

Once again, if there's implications for concubinage, if you can't just change your peripheral duties to your children, to your wife, that's true even without thinking of the second wife situations.

It's true with prenuptial agreements where you would decide, in the case where, in the case where we divorce or on inheritance, or et cetera, like where you limit your duties to this other person.

Those things would be, likewise, an attempt to redefine the obligations of marriage.

Now, that being said, our modern legal system does not actually really enforce a lot of justice when it comes to marriage with innocent parties.

I could see a situation where a prenuptial agreement establishes a more just form of marriage than what our government currently enforces.

So you could imagine that, like a prenuptial agreement not designed to pervert justice, but designed to uphold justice.

That could be appropriate. However, it would have to be really low effort in order for it to not violate other principles of marriage.

It'd have to be something already set up and real easy to do. Otherwise, you'd be essentially expending substantial energy and preparing for, typically, divorce.

I guess a prenuptial agreement could affect other situations like death, but yeah.

Yeah, you want to enter marriage with the trust and commitment that marriage requires of it, not something less.

So I'm describing a hypothetical case where a prenuptial agreement could be a good thing where it reestablishes justice and it's not a lot of effort to bring it about.

Any questions there? Yes. Accountability?

Okay, sure. So right now, it's the case that if, there's no fault of force, right?

Like things aren't really decided based on fault. It's based on notions like more ostensibly compassionate notions of who deserves what, et cetera, right, not based on biblical notions of right and wrong.

And it would be good should you find yourself in the situation where, if you are being divorced, that justice would be upheld and not whatever the government says is equitable, right, but something else.

And so if you wanted to have a prenuptial agreement between you that should one ever commit adultery, et cetera, this is how the property would be divided, et cetera, in the case of divorce.

That would, once again, you'd want to go into the relationship with a commitment and without the anticipation of each other cheating on each other.

But if it were something very common that, you could imagine the world going so crazy that the church, that churches have just a real easy way for people to do this as they're entering marriage to uphold justice.

And then you just sign it as you get married and it's really not like a lot of effort spent into hedging your bets or whatever, yeah, okay.

All right, yes. An example. So I don't know a lot about how the law works.

I just know that a lot of times guys especially will get the wrong end of the stick because a lot of, because there's a lot of compassion given to women regardless of whether or not she was the one who cheated or something like that, right?

And so there's not, and so that, I may be speaking legally ignorant, but if you imagine a situation where it doesn't matter who committed adultery on who, the wife always gets 50 % of the property, right?

Having a prenuptial agreement that says in the case of a divorce where the wife has committed adultery, she does not get any of the property, right?

That would be more just, right? Because it's her who has brought this on herself, not something where, oh, they just couldn't get along, you know, and that would, yeah, it would be more just to recognize guilt in the situation.

Maybe not zero, I'm not sure what exactly would be just. I'm just saying that the guilt has to be accounted for and typically it is not.

Oh, really? I mean, it's not. Okay.

Basically, their point is to say that the assumption that a prenuptial is necessarily a violation of.

Right, right. Because of the nature of the beast right now. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

If it is true, like if a lady were, she could still get all the kids, still get stuff.

Right. And so I think the suggestion of figuring it out and providing a way for you to enter into an agreement that reestablishes what the obligations are.

Then that wouldn't reduce to just two parties having to go back and forth.

Right, negotiating what their marriage is. What is their, yeah. Yeah. I mean, but that may be something.

It doesn't have to be in that way.

Right, yeah. Okay, cool. Oh, that'd be interesting.

I'm not sure that would be necessarily a good situation either, but I suppose you could arrange that, right? Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah.

Churches are good, but you don't wanna just like trust a church indefinitely that 20 years from now they'll still be, you know, as trustworthy or whatever.

Right, like it's a, that's a. Yeah, it'd be good to just have as many terms as you can, you know, set up correctly, either in the law or in something contractual that amends the law, yes.

Yeah, yeah, that's unjust. That's very unjust. Right, right.

Okay, let's move on to talking about the presence of God.

So before we were, all that was related to inheritance, to the inheritance that we enjoy in the eternal state.

So now let's talk about the presence of God that we enjoy in the eternal state. Yeah, glorification ushers in a blessed state of continually dwelling together with the

Lord. Revelation 21 three says, and I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they will be as peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their

God. So this is the fullness of that name, Emmanuel, God with us, right? So of course that's going to have implications, right?

The church is finally with the bridegroom. This has implications for husband and wife.

They should be with each other. So the first one is cohabitation. One obvious implication of this is that husband and wife should dwell together.

In the words of William Gouge, who's one of the main guys who I'm reading on all these things on marriage, he says, body and soul must be severed one from another before husband and wife.

In other words, people should die before they're severed from, before wife and husband are severed from one another.

I thought that was an interesting way of saying it. Body and soul must be severed one from another before husband and wife. First Peter three, seven says, you husbands likewise dwell with your wives according to knowledge.

So there's a, of course that's not the part that we're usually focused on, but husbands are supposed to dwell with their wives.

And this is why it is said that the husband, and by implication the wife, is to leave father and mother behind and cleave to his wife, right?

Otherwise, why bother leaving father and mother behind? Yeah, so husband and wife should not depart from each other without cause, and they should not depart without some kind of plan to reunite.

And although this is, this should be obvious, like there's a lot of passages that would strongly imply this and make this clear, including the one

I just read about husbands dwell with your wives according to knowledge. It's manifestly biblical, but this is a distinctly

Protestant doctrine. This is, during the Reformation, this was one of the contention points between Protestants and Rome.

Let me quote from the Council of Trent. This is 24 .2 .8 in the Council of Trent.

If anyone saith that the church heirs and that she declares that for many causes a separation may take place between husband and wife in regard of bed or in regard of cohabitation for a determinate or for an indeterminate period, let him be anathema.

So Rome anathematizes this view that husband and wife should dwell together and always have a plan to reunite.

They anathematize that, isn't that crazy? You know, their view is that, you know, there's a lot of reasons why you could just indefinitely, and for things like becoming a monk or whatever, right, and just leave your wife and never show up again, or whatever it is.

Yeah, now there are several reasons to forgo living together for a season. Some of them are kind of obvious, right?

Someone's imprisoned, someone's banished. If there's a severe contagious sickness, right, like Ebola or something.

Seasonal work that requires travel, civil duty or military service. Let me read another quote from Gogue.

When Reuben Gad and the half -tribe of Manasseh passed over Jordan to help their brethren in battle against the Canaanites, they left their wives behind them and their families.

When Uriah went to war, he left his wife at home. When Moses was to bring Israel out of Egypt, his wife remained at her father's house.

So a few points should be made regarding these exceptions, like how do you determine whether or not dwelling apart is acceptable?

First, involuntary reasons of absence are more justified than voluntary reasons, right?

You cannot opt out of being imprisoned or captivity. Matters like contagious sickness would require wisdom to determine whether or not it truly warrants an absence, but that would also be something that has less of a degree of voluntariness to it.

People might look at their professions as being something that's involuntary. Oh, I have to do this for work.

But husbands should consider whether or not they should change professions if they really are required to be away for long periods of time.

Maybe it's not a job that is appropriate for marriage. Right, and a lot of people will do this for legal reasons regarding immigration or any sort of thing, and you have to ask yourself at what point it goes beyond a period of time that is to the, where you are trading one thing for another and you are trading the health of your marriage for something that is not worth the exchange.

All these issues have to be balanced out in wisdom. Okay, so second thing to consider, involuntary circumstances.

It must be with the consent of both parties. Okay, so involuntary circumstances, obviously you're not gonna have the consent of both parties if one is imprisoned.

But if it is voluntary, there should be the consent of both parties. If man and wife may not even give themselves to fasting and prayer without consent, like it says in 1

Corinthians 7 .5, then, yeah, then they can't live apart for lesser things without consent.

Right, even, the Bible says that even to devote yourself to God and fasting and prayer, you have to do that with consent before you depart from your wife.

Okay, third, they must not enjoy living apart. So this is another thing you can use to discern whether or not the absence is warranted.

Can't enjoy living apart. It should only be done with appropriate grief and longing to be reunited.

That doesn't mean you can't have the joy of the spirit while you are away, but yeah, they shouldn't particularly enjoy their absence from one another.

All right, fourth, if one is able to visit the other, they should make frequent use of this opportunity.

This applies especially to communication, right, in our era where it's so easy to even video chat with people.

This is something that wasn't even enjoyed by people, you know, 15 years ago, right? It was pretty uncommon to video chat 15 years ago.

Now this is something we have all the time, and it's very easy to access. This is something that should be made frequent use of.

Your life situation should not be an excuse not to communicate with one another as you are able.

Fifth, shorter periods of absence are more easily justified than longer periods of absence.

Yeah, shorter periods of absence are more easily justified than longer periods. So someone has to go on a week -long work trip, that's much easier to justify than a month -long work trip.

Someone has to go on a month -long work trip, that's a lot easier to justify than a year -long work trip or deployment, et cetera, right?

Not saying that any of these are necessarily in themselves unjustifiable, but that it requires more to justify longer things.

Once again, don't just say, oh, well, it's just my job. You have to, if you're committed to your spouse, it's something that requires serious evaluation whether or not you're fulfilling your obligations to one another.

All right, six, while these matters are important at every stage of marriage, they're most important during the early stages of marriage when that fledgling bond of unity must be nurtured carefully.

So consider Israel had laws about this, Deuteronomy 24 -5.

When a man takes a new wife, he will not go out in the army, neither will he be charged with any business.

He will be free at home for one year and will cheer his wife whom he has taken. Okay, so more important even in the early years of marriage.

All right, yeah, our egalitarian times have ways of justifying husbands and wives not cohabitating, and it might seem like this is something that started recently, but it's really not.

You look through church history, and even, gosh, even people, saints who are praised often really neglected this aspect of their life.

One I am aware of, or that I had in mind to be able to write down because I can't remember the names of some of the others

I've read about, but Fanny Crosby, her and her husband began living apart after 22 years of marriage.

They were like, you know, we're good friends. We're still married, but this is, they just enjoyed their time apart more than they enjoyed their time together and stopped living together.

That's, this is not a really upholding marriage. Yeah, there's a number of people who had, who are praised by the church, but have a really terrible marriage.

John Wesley was another one. His marriage was very poor. Okay, now we talked about cohabitation, dwelling in the same house.

Narrowing that down, dwelling in the same rooms. Yeah, the point isn't about being in the same house.

The point is about having a nearness with each other. Another quote from Gouge. Too near to the forenamed kind of unlawful separation do they come, who though they live both in one house, yet make that house by, yet make that house by their estranging themselves one from another as two houses, the man abiding in one end thereof and the wife in another.

And this, this is pretty common in the homes of the wealthy that, where they're large enough, right?

Where the wife has her own space and she spends all her time in that, the husband has his own space, they spend all their time in that.

He spends all his time in that and they don't actually spend time together. So they're living in a single house, but effectively it operates as two homes.

This is not really them spending time together. So a husband and wife are to enjoy their time together, not tolerating prolonged separation, even within the home.

That could still be a separation in a way. And if someone finds their spouse's presence irritating, they need to work on their heart with that rather than just deal with it by going elsewhere and then calling it a win because you're living in the same house.

Yes? Yeah, you can if it is,

I mean, these are things that are not, like where the line is is kind of hard to determine, right?

But if he has his own office space and that is where he is never talking to his wife ever, not just using it for a little bit of focus as needed, but yeah, really trying to avoid his wife.

And so that's something you have to evaluate. All right, sharing a bed, narrowing from various rooms to specifically, yeah, the bedroom and then the bed.

Yeah, if husband and wife are supposed to be married, they should share a marriage bed. Hebrews 13, four says, "'Let marriage be had and honor among all, "'and let the bed be undefiled "'for fornicators and adulterers

God will judge.'" So marriage and the marriage bed is supposed to be held in honor. That requires that one actually exist for it to be held in honor.

And the concern here goes beyond mere sexual intercourse, right, two couples that have committed to being one flesh are not one flesh if they remain apart and try to stay apart as much as possible.

I have a lot of quotes from Gouge today, here's one more. Or if the straightness of their house will not suffer them so to be part of other rooms, if they will have several bed chambers or at least several beds so that they shall be called, so as they that shall call them bedfellows shall but nickname them.

Thus they rob each other of that due benevolence which they mutually owe one another. They expose themselves to the devil's snares.

They more and more estrange their hearts one from another and deprive themselves of such mutual comforts and helps as by matrimonial society they might afford to in receiving from one another.

So there are couples who will, they will sleep together but then they will not, or sorry, they will sleep together in the sexual intercourse sense but then will not, but then will sleep in other rooms for most of the week or whatever when they're not engaged in that.

And they have all kinds of excuses for that, right. He snores too loud, we disturb each other when we sleep, we like different mattress firmnesses and we haven't bought one of those sleep number mattresses that let us adjust to our own side yet.

Yeah, these are unsatisfactory excuses to refuse to honor the marriage bed as the marriage bed.

Now, some might point back to former times and be like, well, didn't people used to sleep in different beds, wasn't that pretty normal at times that had less problems than our own?

Well, first of all, do not ask yourself why the former days were better than these for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

You know, every time has their own problems. So if you're wondering, well didn't Lucy and Ricky sleep in their own beds?

Okay, so part of that is the fact that there are censorship laws in Hollywood that required not depicting a couple in a single bed.

Okay, so this is not necessarily depicting what was common at the time. However, it is true that between 1850s and 1950s, it was kind of a pop health fad to sleep in two different beds because then you wouldn't be disturbing one another.

So that was promoted between 1850 and 1950 by like different magazines and things like that.

So it is actually something people do. It wasn't just on TV, but that doesn't make it good.

Even if it is healthier to sleep in two different beds, does that make it worth it? I don't think that makes it worth it.

All right. Okay, walking together also. Okay, so not just sharing the same bed, but sharing the same life.

This dwelling together that you see in Revelation between Christ and the church is a restoring of what existed in the

Garden of Eden. Genesis 3, eight said, and they heard the voice of Jehovah walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah amongst the trees of the garden.

So there was a life that was shared between God and his people prior to sin, and that life will be restored and even better in that time that we see depicted in Revelation in the future where the church and the bridegroom enjoy time together.

And that has implications, once again, for husband and wife. The point isn't just that they spend time in proximity, but that they have the same life and the same purpose, and that they're working towards their purpose, actively building a home together.

They will be more bound together. I think I've mentioned this before, but a lot of people really approach the health of marriage as being primarily found in leisure time together, right?

Like if you are, it's really important for husbands to date their wives. That's a really popular thing right now.

Like, oh, if you don't have date nights, you're not gonna have a healthy marriage, as though people didn't live without that for thousands of years.

The real bond that happens in marriage is you both pursuing the same purposes in the meat of life, not just the stuff on the peripherals.

This is the cake, right? And the leisure time is just the icing on the cake. And if you make the health of marriage centered on the icing on the cake, you're not gonna, if you imagine a cake being about this much like actual cake, and then the rest of it being icing, that's not gonna be a healthy cake.

It's not gonna be a good cake. Not the cake that's necessarily ever healthy. But this is not going to be a healthy marriage.

Healthy marriage is sharing purpose in the heart of life together.

What you're doing, building a home together, the active stuff, the work. These are things that are to be shared together, to really draw you together.

And then leisure time on top of that together is icing on the cake. But that can't be the heart of it. All right, any questions about any of that?

Sharing spaces together and life together. Okay. All right, yes.

Caring for children, right? Talking about the education of the children together. Maybe things around the house that need to be done.

Now, obviously the husband's typically gonna be working outside the home. So I'm not saying that they have to be spending all their time like in actual proximity together, working on the exact same thing.

But if the husband and the wife are communicating about the state of the home, both physically and spiritually, right?

And they are mutually concerned with that. The husband telling the wife things that he sees that they need to work on together, et cetera.

Like these are things where you're building a home together. Trying to think of specific things.

Improvements to family worship, improvements to the kids' education, improvements to the meal schedule, improvements to, you could just name anything about home life.

And if husband and wife are communicating in this together and doing their mutual parts to work towards that end, this is something that builds bonds with one another, right?

Sure, but what you see in scripture in Proverbs 31 is her making purple garments and selling them.

That is the home. Like, yeah, you are, this is for the good of the home. Or, yeah, you could be volunteering at church together, right, volunteering at church together.

You know, there's a number of times Sarah and I are working together on, like, you know, either t -shirts for the church or whatever it is, because she does a lot of the graphic design around here or whatever, stuff like that.

And so these are things where we're communicating, we're working together, and this is building our bond way more than, you know, the time we play board games together, even though that's fun and enjoyable, right?

It's superficial in a way if it's by itself and not founded on something much greater shared together.

All right. Let's talk about ruling. So moving on from inheritances to dwelling with Christ to ruling.

We've talked about Christ's reigning before. On that last day, his reign becomes completely manifest.

First Corinthians 15, 23 says, but each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits, and they that are

Christ's at his coming. Then comes the end when he will deliver up the kingdom to God the Father when he will be the

King of the world. And he will have abolished all rule and all authority and all in power. Isaiah two describes it this way.

And it will come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of Jehovah's house will be established on the top of the mountains and it will be exalted above the hills and all nations will flow to it.

And many peoples will go and say, come and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the

God of Jacob. And he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion will go forth the law and the word of Jehovah from Jerusalem.

And he will judge between the nations and will decide concerning many peoples. And they will beat their swords and the plowshares and their spears and the pruning hooks.

Nation will not lift up sword against nation, nor will they learn war anymore. O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the

Lord. Okay, so Christ rules. That rule becomes fully manifest.

I believe Isaiah two is actually referring to now, not that fully manifest rule, but in first Corinthians 15, it is talking about that fully manifest rule that will be.

But he delegates his rule to his people. Revelation 2 .26 says, and he who overcomes and he who keeps my works to the end, to him

I will give authority over the nations. Revelation 3 .21,

he who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with me in my throne as I also overcame and sat down with my father in his throne.

Revelation 24 says, 20 verse four, says, and I saw thrones and they sat on them and judgment was given to them.

And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God and such as worshiped not the beast, neither his image and did not receive the mark on their forehead and on their hands.

And they lived and reigned with Christ 1 ,000 years. Okay, so the church is reigning with Christ.

So likewise, there should be a delegated rule over the home. Yeah, consider what this looks like in Proverbs 31 that we just mentioned.

The wife has a delegated authority over the property, over the house. Proverbs 31 .16, she considers a field and buys it.

With the fruit of her hands, she plants a vineyard. There are a lot of people you hear today who point to this verse and say, oh, see, she was a businesswoman.

She's basically trying to justify an egalitarian view of the role of husband and wife.

But what this is pointing out is that she has delegated authority over the home and is taking care of the home and annexing property to it.

Taking care of it, building a vineyard, et cetera. All right, yeah, so we've talked about finances and women's authority over assets, but this applies to more than just physical assets.

It applies to even all kinds of reigning over the house.

Specifically, we can also think of a delegated rule over household members. Yeah, scripture does not merely speak of the church ruling over the rest of creation, but even some ruling over others.

The 12 disciples in particular are told that they will judge the people of God. Matthew 19, 28 says, and Jesus said to them, indeed,

I say to you, that you who have followed me in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on the throne of his glory, you also will sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

Luke 22 says much of the same. So the role of wife is not merely to operate in a delegated authority over the inanimate aspects of the home, but even over other members of the household.

Most obviously, this includes children. Our own culture is not one that typically has servants as household members, but in houses that do, that would be the case as well.

The wife would have that kind of delegated authority. Yeah, and this applies to adult male members of the home as well.

Yeah, well, it's generally inappropriate for a woman to exercise authority over men. If her authority is merely an extension of her husband's, yeah, it would be appropriate for her to direct servants, et cetera.

Yeah, now I, there are aspects of this that I haven't totally worked out. Let me read you what I wrote, and maybe someone might have an additional thought.

When it comes to matters like family worship and her husband's absence, if there's a man present who is better suited to lead in worship, these duties should be passed off to him.

I'm actually not sure what it should look like in a home that has adult male members in it when a father is away, who should be the one leading family worship, especially if that's mixed with those who are unbelievers, et cetera.

I have, yeah, uncertain thoughts on those things. I think I've asked you recently,

Tim, about this. Do you have anything, any clear thoughts you want to share with anyone? No, okay.

Yeah, so that's one I haven't totally figured out, but yeah. Yeah. Okay, any questions on any of that?

We're at the end here, so, okay.

All right, well, let's go ahead and close in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity that we've had to walk through what your word says about salvation and apply these things to our marriages.

I pray that you would help us to keep marriage an honor, even for those of us who are not married. I pray that we would be one to honor marriage.