Guarding the Honor of Marriage - Part 2 (Hebrews 13:4) | Worship Service

Kootenai Church

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January 29, 2024

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Living and Working in a Bad Situation - Part 3 | Adult Sunday School

13:13: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. On the last
13:18: Sunday in February, welcome to Kootenai Church. Would you please stand as we begin? Did I say February?
13:24: Wow, this is going to be a great set. January. Join us as we do a call to worship from Psalm 2, and it says in verses 1 to 4,
13:37: Why do the nations rage, and the peoples meditate on a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand, and the ruler take counsel together against Yahweh and against his anointed, saying,
13:49: Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs, the
13:56: Lord mocks them. So join us as we sing this psalm together, Why do the nations rage? Why do the nations rage?
14:15: The people plot in vain. The kings and rulers of this age against God's holy name.
14:27: They in their mortal rage oppose the
14:33: Holy One. We cast asunder all these chains.
14:40: Karma shall be undone. He clears a glorious form beyond this heaven's glass.
14:51: As anger flashes on to warmth and terrifying wrath.
15:00: Yet I have as the King, according to my will,
15:08: Set my anointed King to be on Zion's holy hill.
15:16: Now God's anointed One shall tell of this deep grief.
15:24: He said, Today Thou art my Son, my happy God, and me.
15:31: To Thee as light or rain, as Thou hast asked of me.
15:39: He asked the earth for me to reign, so dynasties shall be.
15:48: Throughout the lands abroad, the nations shall fell shame.
15:55: As earth and air with iron rot, their kingdom shall not reign.
16:03: Holy Lord, O judge of earth!
16:11: Before the Lord Thou trampling down hath the
16:21: Son. Blest He give anchor's sway. Blest Thou be in His raven tongue and bearish in the way.
16:34: The blessed draw me near. Though He declares
16:41: His own, The Lord His name in holy fear enraptures.
17:23: Mercy, my God, is the theme of my song. The joy of my heart, the grace alone from Thou my soul find.
17:55: Reduce me to utter despair. The truth is revived at my
18:59: Son. All praise to the Spirit whose working divine.
19:05: Seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine. All praise to the
19:11: Spirit whose working divine. Seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine.
19:34: Thou fount of every blessing.
19:53: Tune my heart to sing Thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing.
20:02: Call for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet.
20:10: Sung by flaming tongues above. Raise a mount
20:17: I'm fixed upon it. Mount of Thy redeeming love.
20:41: Hither to Thy foot has blessed me. Thou hast brought me to this place.
20:50: And I know Thy hand will bring me safely home.
20:56: Thou find'st us only when a stranger
21:03: Wandering from the fold of God Keen to rescue thee from danger
21:12: Bought me with His precious blood. Oh to grace how great a debtor
21:38: Daily I'm constrained to be. Let Thy goodness like a feather
21:48: Wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander
21:54: Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.
22:01: Here's my heart oh take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.
22:12: Free from sinning
22:30: I shall see Thy lovely face. Full of raiding blood washed linen.
22:40: How I'll sing Thy sovereign praise. Come my
22:45: Lord no longer tarry. Bring Thy promises to pass.
22:52: For I know Thy power will keep me Till I'm home with Thee at last.
23:19: Just one announcement this morning, and that is that next week is our annual business meeting where we recognize new members and talk about the ministry of the church, things coming up in the next year, and report on some things that have gone on in the past year.
23:32: So we would heavily encourage you to attend that. You don't have to be a member to attend that.
23:38: If you're interested in Kootenai Community Church, this will be your opportunity to see what goes on in the ministry here and to hear about what we are doing.
23:45: And that will be after a potluck right after the service. Will you please turn now to Psalm 84.
23:54: And I would just point you to your bulletin, by the way, for information on what to bring and what to expect for next week.
24:03: Psalm 84. The prescript says this is for the choir director on the
24:19: Gethse, a psalm of the sons of Korah. They are ever praising you.
24:49: How blessed is the man whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. Passing through the valley of Bacchah, they make it a spring.
24:58: The early rain also covers it with blessings. They go from strength to strength. Every one of them appears before God in Zion.
25:06: O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold our shield,
25:12: O God, and look upon the face of your anointed. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand outside.
25:19: I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the
25:24: Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
25:32: O Lord of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in you. Will you stand with me as we open in prayer?
25:42: Let's bow our heads. Our Father, our hearts resonate with what we have just read in this psalm.
25:51: A desire and a longing to be in Your presence and before Your throne. A longing to be in the house of God where the people of God meet together to rejoice in fellowship, to serve
26:03: You and to worship, to sing Your praise. And it is a blessing to us that we get to do that here today.
26:10: That You have called us to Yourself. That You have called us out of the world, out of the kingdom of darkness, and into the kingdom of Your Son.
26:17: You have called us to bear Your name before the nations, to bear Your name before a watching world, to bear
26:24: Your name before one another and to honor and glorify You. You've called us to sing praise, to worship, to offer our lives as a living sacrifice to You.
26:35: And we pray that You would be honored through that sacrifice and through our offering here today. Be honored and glorified in our meditation upon Your truth, our time of worship together, our singing.
26:47: We do pray that the words that are on our tongues may indeed be true and faithful expressions of the sentiments of our heart.
26:56: As we cling to You, as we love You, as we worship You, be honored amongst Your people and glorified in this place today, we pray in the name of Christ.
27:04: Amen. ♪
27:23: Into the roaring oceans ♪ The earth gives way ♪
27:31: For heaven's lights grow cold ♪ Almighty God ♪
27:38: You are my strong defender ♪ Be still, be still ♪
27:46: My soul ♪ All I see ♪
27:54: Are enemies before me ♪ When unbelief ♪
28:01: And doubt have taken hold ♪ O Lord of hosts ♪
28:07: You promised to defeat them ♪ Be still, be still ♪
28:16: My soul ♪ For You I need not fear ♪
28:25: Nor sovereign over all ♪
28:31: For You are good ♪ And always near ♪
28:38: I'll rest in You ♪ Be still, my soul ♪
28:46: O how the wicked ♪
29:00: Seem to prosper ♪ Blame off Your name ♪
29:05: And rise against Your throne ♪ O righteous judge ♪
29:11: Their knees You will remember ♪ Be still, be still ♪
29:19: My soul ♪ For You are clear ♪
29:28: You're sovereign over all ♪
29:36: You are good ♪ And always near ♪ I'll rest in You ♪
29:53: You are sovereign ♪ Always near ♪
30:05: I'll rest ♪ Be still, my soul ♪
30:13: Wars erupt ♪
30:25: You will not leave us orphans ♪ Though nations rage ♪
30:31: You guard us as Your own ♪ O Prince of Peace ♪
30:38: We will not be abandoned ♪ Be still, be still ♪
30:46: My soul ♪ Be still, be still ♪
30:53: My soul Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 to 11.
31:00: It says, But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
31:06: More than that, I count all things to be lost because of the surpassing value of knowing
31:11: Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered in loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain
31:19: Christ and be found in Him. Not having a righteousness of my own, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God upon faith, that I may know
31:32: Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
31:42: Join us as we sing together, Cling to Christ. ♪ And boast of deeds
32:14: I've done ♪ And by pride ♪ I strive to earn ♪
32:21: The favor of Christ ♪ As one ♪
32:26: He alone ♪ Needs my acceptance ♪ All my works ♪
32:33: Must I ♪ So I come ♪ With empty hands ♪
32:40: And I plead ♪ To prostrate ♪
33:02: This hell ♪ Your spirit ♪
33:14: Calls me homeward ♪ With your words ♪
33:21: A storm ♪ Every sin ♪ So I plead ♪
33:27: It's more than I ♪
33:35: Can do ♪ It's not too late ♪
34:16: And time will turn ♪
34:21: He learned ♪ And lost his game ♪ For those who know ♪
34:28: Your love ♪ All the treasures ♪ Of this world ♪
34:34: Will never satisfy ♪ Less joy ♪
34:44: So I plead ♪ To ♪ Less joy ♪
34:57: So I plead ♪ To You may be seated.
35:14: Turn now, if you will please, to Hebrews chapter 13. Hebrews chapter 13.
35:26: We'll read the first six verses of this chapter. Hebrews 13. Let love of the brethren continue.
35:34: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.
35:41: Remember the prisoners as though in prison with them, and those who are ill -treated, since you yourselves also are in the body.
35:48: Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled. For fornicators and adulterers
35:55: God will judge. Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have, for He Himself has said,
36:04: I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you, so that we may confidently say,
36:10: The Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What will man do to me? Let's pray together. Our Father, we come now to Your Word, and we desire to hear the voice of our
36:23: God in the pages of His written Word. We pray, Father, that You would send Your Spirit to give us understanding in this text, so that in our obedience and in the yielding of our lives, our hearts, and our minds to this truth, that we may honor and glorify the
36:40: Son upon whom You have set that honor and glory. We pray that You would be magnified through our contemplation of Your Word, that You would grant us soft and humble hearts to apply these truths and to honor
36:54: You through that. We pray Your blessing upon this time, and Your presence here with us is in Your Word in Christ's name.
37:01: Amen. Well, the world is at war with God's truth. That is obvious even to the most casual of observer, that the most fundamental aspects of God's creation, of His ordinances, of His truth, of reality are under attack.
37:18: And we see this even in the fact that humanity is attacking humanity, and not in terms of war, but you actually have humanity making the case that the world would be better off without humanity.
37:31: We live under a death cult. We are ruled by people who worship at the altar of a death cult.
37:38: And so they make the argument that human beings should be destroyed in the womb, and that the planet, and that the environment, and that all of creation would be better off if more people were dead and less people were alive.
37:50: That is nothing less than a cult that worships death. They do this because Scripture says that those who hate
37:57: God, or those who hate His wisdom, love death. And so those who hate
38:03: God, hate the image of God, and they hate those who bear the image of God, and they therefore reject and kick against and assault and attack anything that reminds them of that creation and of God's creative act, or even of the
38:17: God who created us. And so you have humanity going to war with the very existence of humanity and making the case that humanity should be destroyed.
38:26: Man, in his rebellion, despises God as Creator and hates everything that points to either
38:33: God's creation or the goodness of God's creation. And they do this all the while being earth -worshiping hippies themselves who worship that creation.
38:43: So rather than worship the triune God who made all things, instead they worship the creation itself, worshiping and serving the creature rather than the creation.
38:54: God's creation of two genders, of two sexes in the garden was a good thing that shows
39:00: His image. And by the way, up until about five minutes ago in human history, we all understood that sex and gender were the same thing.
39:07: It's only recently where our culture and people who are insanely at war with God have tried to differentiate between those two things and divide them as if your sex can be different than your gender and your gender may or may not conform to the reality of your biological sex.
39:24: So you can identify with whatever gender you want even while having a certain biological sex and the gender with which you identify may or may not comport to the biological sex with which you are born.
39:35: Does that sound confusing? It is confusing and it's intentionally confusing because the death cult has come up with this ideology.
39:43: And so though God has created man and women and only men and women and He has created these two genders and only these two genders, these two sexes, only these two sexes, since that is true,
39:56: God Himself has the authority to determine the sex of every person that is created.
40:03: So therefore, to deny that, to reject that, is an assault against the
40:08: Creator Himself. It is to say that God has made a mistake, that in His wisdom
40:14: He is fallible, that He has not made a good decision, that He has not ordained a good thing.
40:21: And so it is an assault against God as Creator. And because He has created the sexes and He determines the sex of every person who was born and everybody who has ever existed,
40:32: He determines the roles that each gender is to fulfill and how they are to interact and thus how they are to treat one another.
40:39: He is the one who has instituted marriage and He defines the nature of it. And He is the one who has created sex and therefore,
40:47: He has the authority to command or to forbid the ways in which sex is used inside of marriage and among humanity.
40:57: And we are surrounded by insane people who are at war with all of these basic and self -evident truths.
41:04: All of them. Now, I'm not worried about that and neither should you be because reality has a way of harming those who do not take it seriously.
41:14: On the battlefield of human history, reality is like 1 ,000 and 0.
41:21: Always a winner. Undefeated on the battlefield. Reality always wins. You can fight against it.
41:26: You can deny it. You can go to war with it. But reality will always win. And the institution of marriage is always in the crosshairs of the devil and his people because it is part of God's creation.
41:38: It is a good thing and it is for the flourishing of those who are created in God's image because it portrays the glory of God.
41:44: It shows His redemptive handiwork in Christ. And therefore, the devil hates it. The devil hates it.
41:51: And so, we are inundated daily by overt as well as subtle attacks against marriage and against the family.
42:00: Marriage is dishonored when immorality or divorce or infidelity are glamorized.
42:07: Polyandry, which is having more than one husband. Polyamory, which is having more than one sexual partner.
42:13: And polygyny, having more than one wife, are all dishonorable perversions of God's good gift.
42:19: Spouse swapping, open marriages, throuples, hooking up, shacking up, all have become more commonplace in our culture and they are all dishonoring acts toward God's good and holy gift of marriage and the marriage bed.
42:34: Now these things, polyandry, polygyny, polyamory, divorce, immorality, infidelity, these things are not new in human history.
42:42: It's not like they just broke onto the stage last week and we're wondering, oh what do we do this in a once Christian nation or a once a nation that was founded on Christian principles.
42:50: It's not like these things are new. These things are as old as time itself. It goes back to the garden.
42:57: But the more our culture gets away from biblical truth and the more we regress back to pagan ideas and pagan practices, the more our culture is going to try to replace a biblical morality which always results in the flourishing of God's creatures with a pagan morality which always results in the non -flourishing of God's creatures.
43:19: And so like Indiana Jones trying to swap a bag of grain for an idol, our culture is trying to do this.
43:24: They're trying to change out their moral standards and hoping that we don't notice and that everything, the whole temple doesn't come crashing down.
43:32: Well the whole temple is going to come crashing down when you try to do that. And that's what our culture is doing. God's truth honors marriage.
43:40: God's truth never disparages marriage. God has placed upon marriage the highest honor possible by making it a picture of the relationship between Christ and His church.
43:50: That is why we as part of the church are called the Bride of Christ. It's not that any one of us individually is the
43:56: Bride of Christ, but this body to which we belong is the Bride of Christ. And that analogy that Scripture makes between Christ and His church and the man and the woman in the marriage covenant and that covenant that exists, that is a way of honoring marriage and glorifying marriage and showing how
44:12: God esteems that. So we have in Revelation 19, verses 6 -9, this reference that someday you and I are going to sit down with Christ and enjoy the marriage supper of the
44:23: Lamb. Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters, and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying,
44:30: Hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the
44:37: Lamb has come and His Bride has made Herself ready. It was given to Her to clothe Herself in fine linen bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
44:46: Then He said to me, Write, Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And He said to me, These are the true words of God.
44:54: Revelation 21, v. 9, Then one of the seven angels, who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, came and spoke with Me, saying,
45:00: Come here, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb. That's who you are.
45:06: If you're in Christ, you belong to this Bride, the wife of the Lamb. No higher honor.
45:13: Marriage is a picture of redemption, and thus it was not an afterthought. It was not in the mind of God just 2 ,000 years ago to draw this analogy.
45:20: It was in the mind of God before He ever spoke an atom or a molecule into existence. It was
45:26: His design before the Garden to make marriage a picture of the relationship between Christ and His church.
45:32: So as long as you have been on the mind of God as an elect sinner whom He chose, He has had in vision the relationship between you and your
45:41: Savior, between Christ and His church, and in the Garden when He brought Adam and Eve together, He was instituting that picture.
45:48: Therefore, that is an honorable institution. The Father chose a Bride for His Son and gave that Bride to the
45:55: Son so that the Son then would come into the world, take upon Himself human flesh, live in the place of that Bride, earning all of the righteousness that that Bride would need to be wed to Him.
46:05: Then He died in her place, rose again the third day, and is ascended to the right hand of the Father.
46:11: And that Bridegroom will come again and receive His Bride to Himself. And then we will sit in glory and we will sing hallelujah and praise to our
46:19: God who has done this great gift. And when did He choose you in Christ? Before the foundation of the world.
46:25: When were you elect in Him? Before and ever. And Adam was spoken into existence. As long as God has been
46:30: God, you have been in the mind and the plan and the purposes of God. And therefore, marriage as an institution created and ordained in the garden has been the plan and purpose of God from the very, very beginning.
46:42: When was the beginning? The beginning was begun before there ever was a beginning. That far back. That's how far back you have to go.
46:49: That's when marriage was designed. And so that brings us to our text. Hebrews 13, verse 4, which we got halfway through last week.
46:56: Verse 4, Marriage is to be held in honor among all and the marriage bed is to be undefiled for fornicators and adulterers
47:02: God will judge. And we ran out last week before we had time to finish considering all of the implications of this first part of the verse.
47:09: There is an exhortation here to hold marriage in honor and to hold the marriage bed in honor. And just by way of review, let me quickly bounce off just three, four quick statements to remind you of what we covered last week.
47:22: This is a command in verse 4 to honor marriage because marriage is honorable. It is honorable.
47:27: As God's part of God's design, which is one man and one woman becoming one flesh for one lifetime. That is
47:33: God's design. That is an honorable design. Second, marriage is honorable because God has ordained it. He ordained it before the fall.
47:39: It was in his mind before creation. It was part of his plan from eternity past. And since it was ordained before the fall, it was given to man in his innocence, meaning that also the unity and the sexual intimacy of the marriage bed was a gift to man before sin ever came into the world.
47:57: Before sin ever entered in, that was to be enjoyed in a holy and pure environment with holy and pure and undefiled minds and hearts.
48:07: Third, marriage is honorable because Christ honored it by affirming the teaching of Scripture in Matthew 19, going back to Genesis 2, verse 24, and by affirming marriage in performing his very first miracle at a wedding.
48:20: It was honored by Christ. And then fourth, marriage is honorable because it is a picture of Christ in his church.
48:26: It is in marriage that the Gospel gets really applicable. You take two people who are sinners and you cram them into one house and make them live face to face every day, day in and day out, to go to sleep looking at each other, to wake up looking at each other.
48:43: When you do that, you are setting yourself up for all kinds of conflict. Well, there's good news.
48:49: This is where the Gospel gets lived out. That we confess to one another, we repent to one another, we forgive one another, we are restored to one another, we learn to lay ourselves down for one another, to sacrifice for one another, to serve one another, to do everything for the benefit and the blessing of the other person.
49:09: This is where marriage is. This is where the Gospel is displayed. It is on the stage of marriage.
49:15: There's no greater relationship. I think it was Martin Luther who said marriage is a school for the soul. You want to take your soul to school?
49:24: You could try saying that, especially in front of people. You want to take your soul to school?
49:30: Get married. You will learn the greatest lessons that you can possibly learn inside the marriage relationship.
49:37: You will learn to sacrifice. Marriage will be for you the source of your greatest joys and your most profound disappointments and sorrows.
49:45: It will be the marriage relationship. It is a teacher of the greatest lessons. It is a tool to conform you to the image of Christ.
49:51: And it is not only a means by which you are conformed to the image of Christ. It is the stage upon which you pursue holiness without which no one can see the
50:00: Lord. Now all of that is by way of review. Today, we want to consider how this verse answers some theological and practical errors, three of them particularly, how the verse answers some theological and practical errors, and then
50:12: I want to talk specifically about how it is that we honor marriage and ways in which some people dishonor marriage.
50:18: Let's talk about the errors that this answers first. We can affirm from Scripture that marriage is honorable.
50:24: It is holy, sacred, created by God, given to man as a blessing for his flourishing in the garden before sin.
50:31: It is worthy of holding in high regard and high esteem. It is God's good gift to us and it serves many good purposes.
50:38: Further, you'll notice in verse 4 that the author mentions the marriage bed, that the marriage bed is to be undefiled.
50:45: The word translated bed there is koite, from which we get our English word coitus.
50:50: The word can be translated bed. It can be translated as sexual life or even it is used as conception.
50:58: It describes sexual intercourse or the sex act. It is not describing a piece of furniture upon which two people sleep and never touch.
51:08: It's not describing a piece of furniture. It is describing the expression of covenant love, the marital union, marital coitus, the physical one -flesh relationship or act that is reserved for marriage.
51:23: That coitus is the expression of covenant love and unity and the mingling of souls. It is part of marriage and should be enjoyed regularly inside of marriage.
51:34: Physical handicaps the only thing that might withstand that. This also, the sex act or coitus, is good.
51:43: It is a gift of God, a beautiful expression of service to one's spouse, of expression of love and pleasure and delight and joy.
51:50: And this was God's design. And listen, it was part of creation before the fall. An aspect of Adam and Eve's life before sin ever entered into the world.
51:59: Get that in your mind. It was an aspect of their life before sin ever entered into the world.
52:06: Adam was not tempted to sin by lust. Adam was tempted to sin by a piece of fruit.
52:15: I've never been tempted to ruin all of humanity for a piece of fruit. But probably every man in the sound of my voice would be tempted to ruin all of humanity to satisfy or gratify a lust.
52:27: Therefore, Adam's sexual desire, Eve's sexual desire and the fulfillment of those desires are things that were created by God for human flourishing and given to our first original parents in the garden before there was ever a sin.
52:42: Therefore, coitus is not dirty. It is not disgusting. It is not impure.
52:48: It does not defile. We defile it. It does not defile us.
52:53: We defile it. Notice that the text does not say don't let the marriage bed defile you.
53:00: It says you don't defile the marriage bed. Because it is something that itself is pure and holy and so the purity of it should be guarded at all costs.
53:10: The sexual act does not pollute a marriage. It doesn't defile the spouse. It doesn't tarnish your piety or impede your holiness.
53:18: It doesn't corrupt your mind. It is not a necessary evil or a begrudged obligation.
53:25: It is not sinful within the God -ordained context of the marriage covenant. I'm going to stop there because my wife by this point is probably becoming very uncomfortable with the fact that I have to stand up here and say all of this.
53:37: But the discomfort will only increase next week when we talk about guarding the marriage bed.
53:43: So make sure that you come back for that. And if you're not here, we will all know why you're not here. So we want to answer some practical questions, some practical theological errors that often creep up in our thinking regarding these things.
53:57: Three of them. Roman Catholicism, Gnosticism, and Asceticism. Roman Catholicism, Gnosticism, and Asceticism.
54:04: If you're not sure where any of this is going, I will explain it as I go through this. First, Roman Catholicism, particularly as this applies to Roman Catholic leaders.
54:14: They, that is the Catholic Church, forbids marriage to their bishops and to some of their ecclesiastics.
54:21: In some instances and in some wings of Roman Catholicism, you can be a married priest.
54:27: That is true. If you become a priest or are ordained to the priesthood after you have been married, Rome does not suggest that you take a vow of celibacy.
54:34: Though there are some segments of the Roman Catholic Church that will only choose their priests if they are single and if they are willing to take a vow of celibacy.
54:40: Now to be fair, Roman Catholics would object and say, no, we do not forbid marriage of our priests.
54:46: We do not forbid it. They would say that the vow to celibacy is a voluntary vow.
54:52: They voluntarily give it up. We don't forbid it. They voluntarily give it up. Okay, kind of voluntary like your taxes are voluntary, right?
55:00: You don't have to pay taxes. They're voluntary contributions to a well -functioning government. But try not paying taxes and what do you get?
55:08: So they do forbid marriage as if marriage is not worthy of their holy men.
55:13: In fact, you can go to the Catholic Answers website and read up on this question and Roman Catholics will say, and this is a quote, celibacy is a sign of purity, close quote.
55:25: Celibacy is a sign of purity. Do you buy that? Do you buy that watching any of the headlines about Roman Catholic priests in the last,
55:34: I don't know, 1700 years? Because it's been about that long? You can go back to times in Roman Catholicism where they referred to the pornography, a
55:43: Roman Catholic hierarchy that was known for its immorality. They didn't even make a pretense of being holy.
55:51: As if piety and holiness and purity are incompatible with marriage and with the marriage bed.
55:58: True piety and true holiness comes in denying marriage, they would say. And so John Owen says they vainly imagine that they are more pure than Adam and Eve were in their innocence.
56:10: It was okay for Adam and Eve in their innocence before they sinned, but our priests, they're too holy to be engaged in marriage or in the marriage bed.
56:18: God said it's not good for man to be alone and Rome says no, it's better for men to be alone. And how has that worked out?
56:25: You know, as it turns out, marriage goes a long way when properly used and when properly enjoyed, marriage goes a long way toward prohibiting and preventing sexual immorality and sexual deviancy.
56:39: And when you take men who have those desires and you say holiness is achieved by you denying those desires and not enjoying any of that common blessing, that blessing of common grace, instead you're going to take a voluntary vow of celibacy and then you put them alone with that.
56:53: That does nothing to subdue the desires of the flesh, nothing at all. 1
56:59: Corinthians 7 verse 9 says, If you do not have self -control, let them marry, for it is better for them to marry than to burn with passion.
57:05: In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul does acknowledge that there are times and circumstances in which singleness might be preferred to marriage.
57:13: There are instances in which that is the case. So Paul mentions the distress of the current time and he says it might be that because you sense persecution is coming or things are difficult that you might remain single.
57:22: And if you have that gift of singleness, God gives you that ability to do that and you can do that, then you might remain single for the sake of giving yourself more holy to the
57:30: Lord's service and not having the concerns that come with the family. But, Paul says, there might be people who are not able to do that and they might determine to get married and the one who marries doesn't sin and the one who decides to stay single does not sin.
57:44: And so sometimes circumstances determine that somebody might be better off single and they might pursue that as a legitimate option.
57:51: 1 Corinthians 7, verse 32, says, I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the
57:58: Lord, how he may please the Lord, but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife.
58:05: And his interests are divided. The woman who is unmarried and the virgin is concerned about the things of the
58:11: Lord that she may be both holy in body and in spirit, but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
58:19: I say this for your own benefit, not to put a restraint upon you, but to promote what is appropriate and to secure undistracted devotion to the
58:27: Lord. So, Paul says, there might be instances where remaining single will allow you to give undistracted devotion to the
58:33: Lord. But then for many people, being single doesn't result in undistracted devotion.
58:39: It results in undevoted distraction. So Paul says, get married in that case. So you evaluate your circumstances in that and you apply wisdom to the circumstances and say, man,
58:50: I can't give undistracted devotion. All I'm consumed with is undevoted distraction, and so I have to get married.
58:58: And that's fine, Paul says. To require celibacy for a Christian is the very kind of false doctrine that Paul describes as doctrines of demons in 1
59:08: Timothy 4. Paul says that the spirit explicitly says that in latter times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which
59:24: God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. Both marriage and food are created by God to be abundantly and joyfully enjoyed by those who believe and know the truth.
59:34: And it is a doctrine of demons to forbid marriage or to advocate for celibacy inside of a marriage covenant or to tell somebody that if you really want to be holy, avoid marriage.
59:47: I would say the opposite is the case. If you really want to learn what it means to mortify your sin, get married.
59:54: That will give you opportunity to kill your selfishness faster than anything else.
59:59: At least it should. Second, the Gnostics. Not only the Roman Catholics but also the
01:00:04: Gnostics. Maybe that's not a word that you are familiar with Gnosticism was a it's an ancient heresy that actually predated
01:00:11: Christianity. Nobody knew or called it Gnosticism in the first century but there were forms of proto -Gnostic belief.
01:00:18: Gnosticism as a world view came into sort of full bloom later on after the formation of the New Testament but you can see references to certain
01:00:25: Gnostic tendencies or certain Gnostic ways of thinking in for instance 1 John and the book of Colossians where some of the proto -Gnostic heresies were addressed.
01:00:35: Gnosticism was the belief that there is some secret knowledge that is available out there to only the initiated and that those who are the initiated who know how to get the secret spiritual decoder ring as it were can give you some kind of spiritual insight into the deep truths and in understanding these deep truths then you would come into the fullness of what it means to live in this world and when it crept into Christian circles it kind of manifested itself as the belief that if you knew these deep and profound truths not the ones that are revealed in Scripture but the ones revealed outside of Scripture then you could have sort of a fullness of understanding and come to a fullness in your
01:01:13: Christian life. One of the Gnostic beliefs was the belief that physical and material things are impure and evil and profane and that only the spiritual and the immaterial the soul was pure and good so that all things physical had been corrupted by the fall so anything which had any kind of a physical dimension to it was inherently evil and could have no good purpose whatsoever.
01:01:35: And so obviously they would believe that the physical body is evil and that we are chained to it in this life.
01:01:41: Now Christianity has a direct answer to Gnosticism because Christianity says not that you are going to be free from this body after you die and go to some higher spiritual plane but guess what you're going to get shackled to this very same body but in resurrected form on the last day.
01:01:57: So Christianity doesn't say everything physical is evil Christianity says God created everything and it was very good in the beginning.
01:02:05: It's sin that has corrupted this creation and marred it and in many ways ruined it.
01:02:11: The body is good and God pronounced creation good but we are fallen and broken and ruined by that sin and that is not the ruin is not the result of being in a physical creation because we will spend all of eternity in a physical creation a new heavens and new earth with glorified bodies resurrected glorified bodies and that will be very, very good.
01:02:31: Now interestingly Gnosticism resulted in two very different applications of that theology.
01:02:37: In fact, these are polar opposites of one another. Gnosticism resulted first in exaltation of abstinence and here's why.
01:02:49: If the physical body is evil then the desires of the physical body are evil. Therefore, if I satisfy or gratify the desires of my physical body that is evil.
01:03:00: Therefore, I have to abstain from any kind of sexual activity even within marriage and not give way to any kind of physical desire or physical comfort.
01:03:10: It's almost a form of asceticism which I'm going to address here in just a moment. And so rather than having anything to do with the physical body and satisfying that in any way, the
01:03:21: Gnostic would say you need to abstain from anything that is physical for the sake of keeping your spirit and your soul pure.
01:03:28: That was one sort of application of Gnosticism. The exact opposite of that is something entirely different and that is lascivious sexual immorality.
01:03:38: Because the Gnostic could also say since the body is evil and the spirit is pure, my body and my spirit never mix.
01:03:46: Therefore, the functions of my soul and my immaterial self are never polluted by the functions of my body.
01:03:52: Therefore, I can do anything and everything with my body to gratify its sexual lusts and that will not affect my soul at all.
01:04:02: You could be a Gnostic and be committed to abstinence and you could be a Gnostic and be committed to sexual lasciviousness.
01:04:10: Gnosticism was very popular. Very popular because it did give to the
01:04:15: Greeks an excuse to indulge their every sexual passion.
01:04:23: Anything. And they could maintain then that this had nothing to do with their spirit and with their soul.
01:04:28: And of course, Christianity says we are body and soul. These two things exist together and we can do things with our body that sins against ourself.
01:04:38: And so we need to be careful with how we use our body so we use it for the glory of God and we don't just indulge in these sexual appetites simply because we think that it doesn't affect our soul.
01:04:48: That's the Biblical teaching that the body is good and it can and should be used to the glory of God. So eating and drinking and sexual relations within the marriage covenant properly can glorify
01:04:59: God. And this body will be raised to eternal life. We will be raised male and female in the new creation.
01:05:06: For Jesus Himself had a real physical body in His resurrection. He exists today in a real physical body.
01:05:11: Therefore, physical body is not evil. You can see what Gnosticism then has to do with the resurrection of Christ.
01:05:17: They have to turn it into a spiritual resurrection and deny bodily resurrection because in their mind anything physical is evil.
01:05:26: So we are fallen with sinful corruptions and expressions of these God -given desires. We have wicked desires in our physical body.
01:05:34: That is true. Our faculties, our thinking, our motives, our desires are all wicked and corrupted.
01:05:39: We cannot escape them in this life and so we must constantly be killing the sinful proclivities and desires.
01:05:47: The sinful thoughts, the sinful actions, the sinful deeds, we must be constantly killing them because those are not pure.
01:05:55: They're not holy. They're not given by God. Instead, they are corruptions of God's good gift. So therefore, neither abstinence nor sexual immorality inside of the marriage covenant are proper.
01:06:07: And the Gnostic belief that the body is evil and the marriage bed is evil is wicked and unbiblical. So not just Roman Catholics and Gnostics, but third, ascetics.
01:06:17: Asceticism is the practice of rigorous self -denial in order to be more spiritual. Any cult that you get into or any cult that you observe that talks about this, you can see asceticism is almost in every form of legalism and almost every cult.
01:06:32: Asceticism is the practice of denying yourself things like marriage, food, clothing, comfort, convenience, pleasure, delight, and joy as if the denial of these bodily enjoyments or bodily comforts liberates the spirit to be more in touch with the divine.
01:06:49: As if the way to grow your own piety and holiness and spirituality is to deny your body any kind of comfort.
01:06:58: The goal in asceticism is to be more righteous and more pious and more holy and more pure.
01:07:03: And to be clear, we're not talking here about denying sinful lusts. It's careful to understand that.
01:07:09: When you deny a sinful lust, you are not practicing asceticism. You're practicing mortification.
01:07:16: You're killing the sinful lust. But asceticism says that we deny ourselves things that are not sinful, things that are
01:07:23: God's good gift, that have to do with comforts and conveniences so that we might transcend to some exalted plane, some spiritual plane where we are more in touch with the divine.
01:07:35: That in thinking eventually crept into the church. And I'll give you a couple of examples of this. Anthony, who is credited as the founder of the
01:07:42: Christian monastic movement, he is said to have never have changed his vest or washed his feet. Because doing so would be to pay attention to his own body.
01:07:52: And in doing so, he would think, undermine his spiritual progress. Simeon Stilites famously lived the last 36 years of his life on top of a small 50 foot high pillar where he was exposed to the elements day and night, day after day, year after year for 36 years.
01:08:11: And he denied himself the comforts of shade or warmth, sleep, food, conveniences, bodily delights.
01:08:20: He lived on a pillar with nothing else. And they would raise his food and his waste bucket up and down to him on a rope.
01:08:28: And he lived up there. It was his way of living away from the world and deny himself all the good stuff. Why? It was closer to God.
01:08:34: And fools, like moss to a flame, would gather around that. Look at that. The holy man up there, look what he's denying himself.
01:08:41: That's asceticism. Origen, who lived in the third century, castrated himself thinking that it would free him to more devoutly serve
01:08:47: God. Others throughout church history have starved themselves, lived in silence, taken vows of poverty, exposed themselves to harsh physical abuse, pain, suffering, discomfort, sleep on a bed of nails.
01:08:59: Martin Luther laid down in his room and slept on a cold, hard rock floor without a blanket and used a stone as a pillow, all to try and mortify and kill the fleshly desires.
01:09:09: Thinking that in doing this, he was benefiting his soul and drawing closer to God. As if all of these things would kill fleshly desires and would liberate a pure spirit from the corruption of the body.
01:09:21: Paul, in Colossians 2, verses 20 through 23, deals with this very theology.
01:09:27: He doesn't call it asceticism, but he describes it, and it is a rose by any other name. Listen to what
01:09:32: Paul says. If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of this world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees such as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, which all refer to things destined to perish with use in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?
01:09:50: These matters, now listen to Paul. These matters, which have to be sure the appearance of wisdom in self -made religion and self -abasement and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
01:10:06: Abuse your body all you want. You will never kill your lust.
01:10:12: You can cut off body parts. You can scar yourself. You can starve yourself.
01:10:18: You can deny yourself every comfort that life promises or offers, and you will not kill your lust.
01:10:25: You cannot kill your sinful desires by abusing your body or denying yourself legitimate pleasures. You kill your sinful desires by not indulging the sinful desires.
01:10:36: That's how you kill it. Make no provision for the flesh. Don't feed the flame.
01:10:42: Don't put your eyes on that thing. Don't send your heart down that path. Do not give your mind to meditating on those things.
01:10:51: And instead, you take your members which you refuse, under the power of the
01:10:56: Spirit, to give as instruments of unrighteousness. You take those members and you make them do righteousness.
01:11:04: You put off the old man. You put on the new man. You stop thinking this way. You start thinking this way.
01:11:10: You stop practicing this and you start practicing that. You replace those affections, sinful affections, with new affections, so that the power of a new affection pushes out all those other affections.
01:11:22: So you give your mind, your heart, and your members to that thing. Denying the sinful proclivity.
01:11:28: Denying the sinful desire. Not feeding it. You feed it and you will become its slave.
01:11:34: I promise you that's what Romans 6 teaches. You feed it, you will become its slave. And you will find yourself in bondage to that sin.
01:11:43: Those are the practical and theological errors that this verse corrects. Now, what does it look like? Changing gears as if we had no clutch.
01:11:50: We're just pulling it out of one gear and slamming it into another one. So here's the grinding sound. What does it look like and how do we honor marriage?
01:11:58: We honor marriage by refusing to honor the things that profane it. I mentioned this last week and I need to get a bit of an addendum to something
01:12:06: I said last week. Last week I said it is a profaning and a dishonoring of marriage to attend a same -sex wedding ceremony or a transgender wedding ceremony.
01:12:14: I had no idea when I said those words last Sunday that in the previous week or previous time that it would hit the news this week that Alistair Begg would have given opposite advice to that.
01:12:24: So you probably saw that all over social media and Twitter that Alistair Begg said a Christian could not only attend a same -sex wedding or a transgender wedding but also send a gift just so long as the people who were there and part of that service understood your own
01:12:37: Christian convictions and commitments. I had no idea that he had said that or that that was going to happen this coming week when
01:12:43: I made my comments last week and I want you to know I stand by the comments that I made last week. This is terribly concerning to me.
01:12:50: I have loved and respected Alistair Begg for decades. A faithful ministry, a faithful expository preaching. I really have.
01:12:55: I've met Alistair on a few different occasions. I've had multiple conversations with him. One conversation probably lasted about 30 minutes.
01:13:02: He doesn't know who I am. He wouldn't be able to pick me out of a lineup and if he said Jim Osborne he wouldn't have a clue who I am. He doesn't need to.
01:13:08: That's not the point. But it's just to say that I have tremendous respect for him and I'm praying for his repentance and his reconsideration of that horrible advice.
01:13:16: And I want you to understand that to acknowledge or to congratulate an institution or a ceremony that dishonors
01:13:27: Christ in that way is egregious sin. It is egregious sin. There's no consideration that might alter that assessment.
01:13:36: You and I would get outraged to see a cross of Christ submerged in a jar of urine as art or to see
01:13:45: Christ portrayed in a play as a closet homosexual or to hear a rap song or some other song that dishonored our
01:13:52: Savior. If that outrages us then it should outrage us also that the holy institution of marriage would be brought into any church or any venue and be defiled and profaned by two people of the same gender slash sex.
01:14:07: That should horrify us and outrage us every bit as much as seeing a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine.
01:14:17: Second, and by the way, first century Christians, they used to be fed to the lions rather than burn a simple stick of incense to the emperor.
01:14:25: Be fed to the lions. Today we're wondering, is it okay for Christians to go to a gay wedding? I mean that's then versus now.
01:14:31: These issues are not nuanced, they're not complex, they're not multifaceted, they're not difficult, they're not textured, they're not complicated, there's not shades of meaning to any of this, there's no considerations to it.
01:14:43: The fact that we even consider or ask ourselves would it be allowable for us to do this is a testimony itself to the sad state of the church and the teaching that most
01:14:51: Christians get on this subject. If you're offended about, or if you're worried about offending somebody by not attending a ceremony, your priorities are all messed up, entirely in the wrong place because I promise you, you will offend
01:15:03: Christ by attending. So you're going to offend somebody one way or the other and I promise you, you're not going to stand before that homosexual couple on judgment day and give an account.
01:15:12: You will stand before Christ and give an account. Therefore do not contribute to or participate in the defamation of that holy institution.
01:15:19: Second, we honor marriage by how we think about it. How do we think about it? This is a question you have to answer.
01:15:25: Do you think of marriage, and particularly your marriage, with a kind of reverence and awe and gratitude?
01:15:33: Do you see it as God's precious gift to you, something that you can pursue and should pursue and work at and enjoy and delight in?
01:15:41: Do you think that marriage is worth your efforts and your time and your treasure? Do you think of it as a transcendent blessing or just the lesser of two evils?
01:15:50: Ah, I guess it's better than being single. Ah, I guess if you want the milk, you better buy the cow. Look, I didn't make that up.
01:15:59: Don't groan at me as if... I'm just expressing the sentiment that I have heard men express.
01:16:07: That is a way of dishonoring the holy institution. How do you think of marriage?
01:16:14: Sometimes it is possible for us to dishonor marriage in our heart and in our mind just by how we let our mind think about our marriage, about marriage, about our spouse.
01:16:26: Second, we honor marriage by how we talk about it. You see, our speech reveals our heart.
01:16:33: It is out of the heart that the mouth speaks. So how do you speak about marriage? I'm not talking about just marriage in general, but about your marriage.
01:16:41: It doesn't mean that we don't... that we ignore the issues in our relationship and we say, oh, you know, honey, we can't address anything that's going on between us because Jim said we shouldn't say anything bad about our marriage.
01:16:50: That's not where I'm going with this. You need to address those issues, but is the negative in your relationship all you see?
01:16:58: Is that all you see? What you go without? What he doesn't do? What she doesn't do?
01:17:05: This need that's not met? This expectation that's been crushed? This disappointment that consumes you? Is that all you think about in your marriage?
01:17:13: Is that all you can speak about are the negatives? Certainly there's some silver lining there.
01:17:21: There has to be something upon which we can build. We should never say that marriage is a burden or marriage is nothing but troubles and disappointments.
01:17:31: Back when I was single, man, I was free. I had money. I had time. Do whatever I want on a Saturday. Then I got married and now
01:17:38: I'm told what I get to do on a Saturday and somebody else sets my calendar and takes all my money and spends it on things
01:17:44: I would never spend it on. Of course, when you're single, you'd never buy makeup or anything like that, but now you have to.
01:17:51: Is that how you speak about marriage and to your wife? Better go home to the old ball and chain.
01:17:58: Said that, haven't we? How do you speak about marriage to your children? And I cannot tell you how important this is.
01:18:08: Are you training your children to think that a career and college and prestige and a reputation are important and that they shouldn't worry about marriage and kids?
01:18:16: Go out, get a good job. Get established. See the world. Establish yourself. Live your life on your own terms.
01:18:22: Get settled. That's horrible advice. Why would you do that? Get married young.
01:18:30: Get married young. Make it your goal. If you're going to marry, make it your goal to pursue marriage and marry young. Marry well because you should marry once, but if you can, marry young.
01:18:40: If God gives you that opportunity, don't set that blessing aside so that you can go out and be selfish for 10 years.
01:18:47: How do you speak about marriage to your spouse? And how do you speak about your spouse? This will tell how it is that you feel about your marriage.
01:18:54: Let's not pretend that we can hold marriage in honor and honor this verse and the intention of this verse while we run our spouse down with our mouth or in our heart.
01:19:03: We can't do it. That is a sin that must be mortified and killed. We have to mortify that.
01:19:10: Let us not pretend that we can speak evil of our spouse and dishonor our spouse while we are honoring our marriage covenant.
01:19:16: Christ does not do that to you. Do not do that to your spouse. Men, our role is to build up our wife to use the authority, the resources that God has given to us for her edification and for her good.
01:19:33: Our role is to use our time, our talents, our treasure, our skills and to spend ourselves for the good of our wife and for her flourishing spiritually.
01:19:44: Fourth, we honor our marriage by keeping and cherishing our vows to have and to hold, to love and to cherish in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for vision and want, in good times and in bad, till death separates us.
01:20:03: Do you pledge that before a triune God, in the presence of witnesses? If you pledged it, if you stepped into it, then you need to step up to it.
01:20:14: No excuses, no looking for escape hatches, no desire to bail, no blaming the other for your failures or for their failures, no excusing of our own shortcomings, but through repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation, we honor marriage and our spouse and we live out the gospel.
01:20:34: Now the truth is that probably anybody who has been married and who hasn't been married, and that's everybody, has failed in this regard to some degree or another at some point in their marriage or in their life.
01:20:46: That is true. And I tell you, I said this last week to somebody privately, the easiest thing in the world for a preacher to do is to stand up behind a pulpit and pistol whip the congregation and make them feel guilty for having failed to do everything that the
01:20:58: Scriptures require them to do. And I was reminded by this person that I spoke with that the gospel wounds and the gospel heals.
01:21:06: So yes, the expectation of the text wounds us, it makes us realize how far short we have come, but the gospel offers us the salve for our soul and it heals us by reminding us that our acceptance in the
01:21:18: Beloved and before the Father is not determined by our ability to keep all of the commands.
01:21:24: That doesn't mean we excuse it, but it does mean that we remind ourselves that another has lived in our place and died in our stead so that we may have eternal life and that we may have righteousness.
01:21:36: And so the answer is not to deny our sin. The answer is not to excuse our sin. The answer is not to pretend that it doesn't exist and say
01:21:43: I'll do better from this point forward. The answer instead is to confess to our God and to our spouse and to repent of those sins and those ways which we have dishonored our marriage or our marriage bed or our spouse, and then to receive that forgiveness from Christ and to walk in holiness and to mortify that sin.
01:22:05: That is the answer. We have salve for our souls in the Gospel, but that can only be enjoyed and applied by repentance and confession and self -denial as we mortify the sins that dishonor our marriage.
01:22:21: Seek forgiveness and restoration and work to honor the good gift that God has given to you. A fifth way that we honor marriage is by guarding the marriage bed from all enemies.
01:22:33: And we'll take the entire Sunday, next Sunday, to talk about that. That is complex.
01:22:39: Let's pray. Our Father, we do find solace for our soul in the
01:22:44: Gospel and in Christ. We thank you that that perfect example of sacrifice and selflessness, of considering others as more important than himself, of laying down his life for his bride, that perfect example of righteousness and purity and holiness, that perfect example of manliness is revealed to us in Scripture.
01:23:06: And I pray for all of us as men here that you would strengthen us to honor our marriage, our marriage vows, and our marriage bed by maintaining hearts and minds of purity and selfless devotion to our spouses and even to our future spouses, some here who are single and looking to be married.
01:23:26: Pray that you would strengthen their resolve and their minds and their hearts in purity and in holiness to pursue
01:23:32: Christ. I pray that you would strengthen the women who are here to be encouraged in their resolve to love and respect their husbands, to honor their marriage covenant and what they have promised to do.
01:23:44: Pray, Father, that you would strengthen the marriages in this church, that we would be examples of selfless devotion and sacrificial love, of giving ourselves one for the other, of honoring and glorifying you, of living in obedience to your commands, pursuing holiness, denying ourselves.
01:24:01: Pray that you would work this work in us by the power of your Spirit and through your Word. Sanctify us to that end that you may be honored and glorified through a holy and obedient people.
01:24:11: We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Would you please stand and sing with us
01:24:19: I'd Rather Have Jesus. I'd rather have
01:25:25: Jesus I'd rather have
01:25:31: Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have
01:26:26: Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have Jesus I'd rather have
01:26:31: Jesus I'd rather have
01:26:38: Jesus I'd rather have
01:26:46: Jesus I'd rather have
01:27:18: Jesus I'd rather have
01:27:25: Jesus I'd rather have
01:27:38: Jesus May the God of Perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus so that with one accord we may with one voice glorify the