Bonus: What Makes a Biblical Marriage

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We specialize in cancer and you. Here's a message that I delivered at the

EquipJersey conference. Now, it is a shorter message, but I hope that it is a helpful message.

I basically was challenged with the topic of should you preach?

In other words, the question at stake is that there's some people who make an idol out of evangelism.

And so the question is should preaching on the streets be the job of everyone?

There's some people who think the answer to that is yes, but I would challenge that.

And this is my challenge to people that on the topic of marriage, marriage may be more important than your evangelism.

Now, we're sorry about the audio quality. This was done in a church. I hope that you will listen and enjoy, but we had little control over audio quality.

So here comes a challenge to you on should you preach? Welcome to the

Rap Report with Andrew Rapaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

With a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we're grateful that we can have your word, something to look to, something that we can see as an absolute authority in our life, something that even though many don't want to look at your word as being something that's authoritative in their life.

We know that your word is an authority. Your word is something that is sufficient and all that we need for life and practice.

So we thank you for it in Christ's name. Amen. If you have your Bibles, please open to Ephesians chapter 5.

Now, the reason we ended up saying that if we needed to cut some time, we would cut it out of mind is because unlike Anthony, I can be very concise and pack a lot more into a shorter period of time.

He needs a lot more time to explain what could be explained simply.

See, the nice thing when it's a smaller group, we get to have a lot more fun. You get to see us as speakers kind of joke with each other a little bit more.

When there's a larger audience, you have to act more professional. But yes, so in Ephesians chapter 5, a passage familiar to many of us, especially when it comes to Father's Day or Mother's Day, you hear these preached.

But I want to look at verses 21. Yeah, I know, we're talking husbands and wives and most people start at 22.

But 21 actually kind of becomes important and many people forget it. So we're going to start in 21 and we're going to look all the way down to 33.

And 33 is going to be important. So let me read what God says. He says in Ephesians 5, 21,

Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the

Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior.

But as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

That he might sanctify her by cleansing her by the washing of water of the word.

So that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

That she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife, loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.

Just as Christ does the church. Because we are members of his body, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother.

And hold fast to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh.

This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself.

And let the wife see that she respects her husband. Very popular, very well known passage that we know.

Why did I start in verse 21? Because so many people say that it's the wife's job to submit to the husband.

And they forget just one verse before that. It is our role in church to submit to each other.

You don't often hear that one preached, do we? We are to be submitting to one another.

So in whatever fashion the wife is to submit to the husband, so we are to submit to one another.

That is the immediate context there. So, when we look at husbands' and wives' roles, there are differences.

The wife, the way God has structured it, now this doesn't matter whether you and I like this at all.

Quite frankly, God doesn't care what we think about this. It matters what he said about it.

And so our job is to follow what he says is his role, his standard for the roles we have, not what we want them to be.

You just heard Anthony explaining that there's people that don't like their roles. Some women like Beth Moore who don't like the role of not being pastor and want to start taking it and do that slowly.

But the reality is it doesn't matter whether you and I like it. It's a matter of whether we're going to submit to God on it.

That's all that matters. And so here we have God and he says that we are to submit to one another, but in the same way we're to submit to one another, wives are to submit to their husbands as to the

Lord. You see, you're not submitting to your husband because he's right. I mean, not all of you could be like me,

I understand. Okay, good, you guys got the joke. So, you're not submitting to your husband because he's right, you're submitting to your husband as to the

Lord. The Lord put this man as your husband. How do you know that? Because you're married to him.

I mean, do you really believe in God's sovereignty? But Lord, you don't know, I mean, I married this guy,

I wasn't saved, it was a sinful time in my life, but are you married to him? Yeah, okay. God knew that you'd do that.

He also knew Joseph's brothers would sell him as a slave and God planned that so that he would save lots of lives.

God knew what he was doing. I mean, do you actually believe God is sovereign? If you do, then you can trust the husband that God has given you and submit to him as to the

Lord. Doesn't mean he's always right and it doesn't mean it won't be hard. Some of us can be knuckleheads.

I realize Anthony thinks he's not, it's the Italian in him. But the thing is that we end up recognizing that there is this role.

He gives the reason in verse 23, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church.

Christ is the head of the church is the model of how the husband should be the head of the family, the head of the wife.

And so we end up seeing that there is, so many people are like, oh well, this just isn't fair that we have to submit, that wives have to submit to their husbands.

Somehow that's just not right because that's hard. Really? Which one do you think is harder?

Think about this. Do you think it's easier to submit to another human being or do you think it's easier to love another human being the way

Christ does? I hate to disappoint you, you ladies actually have it a little easier.

Submitting to another human being, even as failed as they may be, is a much easier job than trying to love someone the way

Christ loves. And to act as a head the way Christ is the head of the church.

That's a harder task. We often focus on the submission, but I think that the harder thing is the love that husbands are to do.

It says that the husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Now Paul's going to say, this is a mystery.

He's speaking actually of the church. But he's using the marriage relationships as the model.

In other words, the way that the wives are to submit to their husbands is the way the church is to submit to Christ.

There's some churches that don't quite know that lesson. Actually there's a lot of churches that don't know that lesson.

That feel that, well, you know, it's okay if we put a woman as a pastor. It's not a big deal because we think it's good for the culture.

Yeah, that's really not submitting to Christ, is it? Because what are you doing?

You're saying that you should have the right to define how the church should be structured, how the church should work. And no offense, but you and I don't have that right.

It doesn't matter what you and I believe about the way the church should be run. It matters about what

God says and how He says the church should be run. So what

I want to show is that there are relationships that God has within a marriage, that the wives are to submit to the husbands.

The husbands are to love their wife. And by the way, if you have a husband who says, well, my wife just doesn't submit to me.

Well, this is where verse 33 comes in. And I'm glad that Moses agrees with me.

See, he's being raised in a good biblical family. He knows exactly when to say amen.

So here's, I want you to look at verse 33 because guys, if your wife doesn't submit to you, it's on you.

Verse 33 in the Greek should be better said this way. However, let each one of you so love his wife as himself so that she will respect her husband.

When we look at it in the Greek, what we end up seeing is that the respect that she has is based on the husband's love.

So if your wife is not submitting to you, how much are you loving her? My wife had an interesting thing.

She was at a lady's Bible study and they were talking and it's one of the things that some of the ladies in the church when

I was pastoring learned. You never ask my wife certain things that you don't ask her to agree with culture basically.

And they were like saying, well, don't you think that it's like, you know, it's hard to submit to a man and like even for you to submit to your husband.

I mean, don't you find that hard? And my wife just turned and says no. She says it's not within my nature because my nature is sinful.

I don't want to. But he loves me so much. How could I not trust that he has my best interest in mind?

Now that's the thing. That is the burden on us as husbands to so love our wives that they respect us.

Submission would come easy if we're loving her. If your wife knows that everything you do is putting her first and foremost, not in everything obviously because Christ comes first, but if you're putting her interest before your own is it going to be hard for her to submit?

No, it wouldn't be. So what we see in Ephesians 5 very quickly in this overview is we end up seeing here a very quick roles and responsibilities for a church or for the marriage which is pictured by the church.

The wives are to submit to the husbands. Husbands are to love the wives. So how does this play into evangelism?

I'm going to end up turning to 1 Corinthians 7, but before I get there let me give you a scenario I see often.

You get someone on the street. It tends to be more men that are in this position. But you have someone who is married.

Maybe they just watched Hell's Best Kept Secret on CD or they saw a

Ray Comfort movie or video and they got excited to go out and evangelize. They get excited.

They get up with a bunch of others. They start evangelizing and they just love getting out there and evangelizing. This is what

I see often. You all see these guys. They have a family. They have a wife and kids and they're sitting there and what ends up happening is as they're sitting there and they're going out maybe they go out first thing in the morning on a

Saturday morning to the abortion clinic and they do some evangelism there and then after that they rush over to wherever there's a lot of people and they sit and just start evangelizing all day into the evening.

I used to have this here not far from here where we're going to go this evening to do evangelism at the boardwalk and I used to have friends, well some of them were single so they really didn't have a family to go home to and they'd get frustrated because I actually would have a time limit on when

I would go evangelizing. I would leave at 11 o 'clock at night after starting at like 6 or 7 and they'd be like, oh but the bars are letting out, we've got to go there next.

Literally they would start at the abortion clinic first thing in the morning and we'd go and we'd be here at the boardwalk all afternoon and evening until the bars let out.

Now some of them were single but you know what, a lot of those guys weren't. And meanwhile their family's sitting at home all day as they're out evangelizing and they're telling their wives, well you have to submit, this is what

I'm doing is a good thing. This is evangelism. I mean there's lost and dying souls out there and we need to tell them.

It sounds like a good thing doesn't it? This is kind of strange isn't it? I sound like I'm preaching against evangelism.

Oh I am. At a conference where we're supposed to train you to evangelize. That's right.

Because not everyone should always be evangelizing. But you should be. In everything we do we're evangelizing but we shouldn't be neglecting our families in that process is the point.

And there's a lot of people that what you see is they are so concerned about the evangelism at the neglect of their family.

Take a look at Paul's instruction in 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

Now I want to give a little context so I'm going to start in 25 but the main section we want to focus on is going to be a little bit lower down around 33.

But this is what he says in 25 to just get the context. I have no comment from the

Lord but I give my judgment as to one who by the

Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is.

And he's speaking about married or unmarried. Verse 27.

Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife?

Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry you have not sinned.

If a betrothed woman marries she has not sinned. And yet those who marry will have worldly troubles.

And I would spare you that. This is what I mean. Brothers, the appointed time has grown very short.

By the way, let's stop there for a second. Isn't that encouraging? Paul in his day thought the time was short. You hear these guys who sit there go, well

I've got to go evangelize because time is short and there's people lost. Yeah, Paul thought time was short 2 ,000 years ago.

Okay? So just to put it in context when you think there's lost and dying people, again it's

God's sovereign to know that because Paul thought the time was short in his day. It's still short in ours as well.

But let's pick up again in verse 29. For now on let those who have a wife live as those who have none.

Sorry, I got distracted. My daughter is calling me. Okay. And those who mourn in verse 30 and those who mourn as those who were not mourning and those who rejoice as those who were not rejoicing and those who buy as those who had no goods.

Those who deal with the world as though there are no dealings for it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

Now let's look in verse 32. I want you to be free from anxieties.

The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord. How to please the

Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things. How to please his wife.

And his interests are divided. The unmarried or the betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the

Lord. How to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about the worldly things.

How to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit. Not to lay any restraints upon you, but to promote good order and to secure the undivided devotion of the

Lord. So what you end up seeing here is that Paul is giving us some instruction and the instruction is basically this.

That when you're not married you are free as far as your time commitments and what you do to serve

God. There is an ability of being single that you don't have he calls it being anxiety or the worries of the world.

But there is something that you end up recognizing when you have chosen to marry you have chosen to put another person's interests as more important than your own.

Like it or not that's what comes with marriage. If you entered into marriage without that mindset well it's time to get over that.

And if you're not married and you're thinking about marriage well then realize when you get married there are things that you're going to just live with.

Like it or not you have someone else whose interests you must put before you.

And so Paul's argument is that there's things that as an unmarried person that we would like to be able to do and we have the freedom to do because we really don't have the commitment of saying hey husband or wife can we do this?

When you're not married you don't have another person's calendar. You don't have another person's schedule or interest to worry about.

You just go and do it. When you're married you have what Paul is saying here is anxiety or worldly things to worry about.

In other words you have something else that has to be considered. It's not just well gee

I'm free all day. Yeah I can go out to the abortion clinic at 9 and start evangelism and be at the bars at 2 when they close.

You can do that. But if you're married you can't do that. Not without making sure your wife is like really submitting to that.

It's typically guys with this but because what you see is I see this with a bunch of guys

I've watched a bunch of guys who have their marriages destroyed because of their evangelism when they shouldn't be.

They're out there all day at the neglect of their family. They're out there all day doing what they really want to do without any concern for what their spouse may be thinking.

Oh no you have to submit. Well when you have to force the person to submit that's not really submitting by the way.

But here's the thing. What you end up seeing is when you have someone that's doing that and they're trying to make it sound like it's spiritual what you often have is

I've seen some people who will try to put it on their wives to be like well if you don't let me go and evangelize which is a spiritual thing then there must be something wrong with you.

The reality is Paul says that if you're married you have another person to consider. You don't have the same freedom to pick up and go and do what you like.

You don't have that freedom anymore. And therefore you must consider the other person that you're in a relationship with because as Paul is saying here you have someone who's not married they're free to do what they do unto the

Lord. Once you're married you don't have that same freedom anymore. And that's why he's saying to them if you're not married stay that way.

Now he thought the time was going to be short like he actually seems to think the Lord was coming in his day and age. So I think

Paul's thinking was hey you do this because the Lord could come tomorrow and I mean why waste time being married?

This might be more of some of Paul's thinking. I just picture Paul just being like time is short why waste it?

It's kind of like my phrase that Jennifer always seems to like is you could sleep when you're dead so I would be like going nonstop and my theory is time is short why waste it?

But the reality is that hey even in that I have to consider my wife says you need more sleep.

I don't want you dying early and leaving me alone so I have to respect that. So even though I have a lot of things

I'd like to do other than sleeping which I think is a waste of time. It's the anxiety

I have to deal with. I'm trying. I'm up to almost four hours a night sometimes five.

I'm trying. But the reality is that when we are married we have another person to consider.

In other words as we talk about evangelism, as we encourage you to do evangelism there is a limit in who should be doing evangelism and how much.

In other words if you are if you have a family you have to consider that family.

In other words you have to ask the question am I so loving my wife by ignoring her and doing my evangelism?

Well that doesn't sound like love. I mean does she appreciate that kind of love? You know just ask her.

You may not get the same reaction you think when you ask it that way right? And so this is the thing that we end up seeing is that when we look at the way

God has structured things and this is the reality folks there is a difference between those who say they believe that God is sovereign and those that actually believe it.

You know you just listen to Anthony's message and his talk about intersexuality and everything else.

You know what the problem is with all this social justice stuff? It's really simple.

They don't believe God is sovereign. They don't believe God can actually figure out how to provide justice.

Like God can't seem to handle it we have to jump in. No the only justice we do is that which

God has stated. That which he has put forth. And what God has said in Ephesians 5 is that wives are to submit to their husbands, husbands are to love their wives, and guys if your wife isn't submitting to you, verse 33, it's your fault.

Because you are to so love her that she respects you. And then you look at that and pair that with what we're seeing in 1

Corinthians 7 and what do we see? We see that if you're single, yes, you have the right to decide what you're going to do that day and you can spend the whole day evangelizing.

You can go out all day and all night if you want to. Because you don't have another person to consider.

But if you are married, then no, you don't have the same freedom.

You need to consider another. And again, it sounds like a strange thing to be saying at a conference where we try to encourage you to evangelize.

To be telling you, no, you shouldn't be. But no, you shouldn't be. Your family is not more important than that lost soul out there.

I have news for you. You know what? God can save that person apart from you. You know, there's these little things called gospel tracts and they're like everywhere.

I mean, trust me, we're going to go to the boardwalk tonight, even if you don't go. And even after we leave, we're going to leave these little things in people's hands that they just kind of toss in the air and it finds its way on the ground and someone else will pick it up.

I knew a guy, he saw a gospel tract on the ground and he had a real issue with littering. He was in New Orleans and he picked it up in a drunken stupor because he didn't like littering.

Threw it in his pocket and next morning when he was sober as he emptied his pockets and threw all his stuff on the dresser and as he emptied his pockets he saw that the next morning as he sobered up and he read the gospel tract and went,

I need to get right with God. So God, no offense, doesn't need you and doesn't need me.

Therefore, if you think that risking the marriage relationship is more important or less important,

I should say so that you can be out there evangelizing, no it's not. Your marriage is not less important, the lost are not more important.

What Paul leaves us here in 1 Corinthians 7 is that we have a responsibility within our marriage to put that as a priority.

Now, should we be saying, oh well, because we have the flip side, we have the people that try to avoid evangelism altogether because well, you know,

I've got to stay at home with the family. Saturday is a family day because most evangelism seems to happen on Saturdays, that's when a lot of people are free.

But you can go out plenty of other times of the week. You don't have to do a whole lot to evangelize.

It doesn't take very long. You could go to your local Wawa and just walk in there, buy a cup of coffee, hand a gospel tract to the person behind the counter.

You really want to have some fun, you can do it like I do and just turn to the lady at the counter and say I'm going to buy the coffee for the person behind me just give him one of these gospel tracts when

I leave him, just tell him a Christian wanted to bless him and buy his coffee. It's really funny to just watch their reaction as you walk out and the person now realizes their coffee was just bought.

I used to watch them each morning because I used to go to Wawa before going to work and I'd do this and I'd see these people like, they'd be looking for me like, who bought my coffee?

They can't believe someone did. Every once in a while I'll get an email from someone. You can evangelize very quickly. The reality is this, you don't ignore evangelism for the sake of the family and you don't avoid the family for the sake of evangelism.

There's a balance. There's all these people that what you end up seeing is they try to figure out what's the priority?

Is it God, church, family, work or is it

God, family, church, work? I always find it interesting that work seems to be on the bottom but you look at most guys lives and it's really like work and then nothing else underneath it.

You know what the priority is? It's really simple. God. That's it.

Sometimes God's going to put work first. Sometimes he's going to put family first. Sometimes he's going to put church first. Sometimes he's going to mix that up on you.

How are you going to know? Well, you get into the Word of God, you start studying the Word of God, you start praying often and you look at every circumstance and say, what will the

Lord have me to do here? Sometimes, even though you plan to go out and evangelize and you have a team of people you're going to meet up with and something happens at home that's more important, then don't go because there are people that make one of two idols in this area.

There are those people that make an idol of their evangelism. I mean, they're going to go out there and evangelize because that becomes their

God. It's not really about leading people to Christ. For many of them, it's about the fact that they know something someone else doesn't.

They feel good about their apologetics and they like slamming someone. It's really what it is for a lot of folks.

But what you see is some people that make an idol out of their evangelizing. Some make an idol out of their family.

Both are wrong. So am I telling you that you shouldn't be evangelizing? Well, yes and no.

If you have a family, then there has to be a balance there. And you need to know what that balance is.

Now, sometimes that balance is going to change. When I had kids in the home, it was different than now that I don't have my children at home with me.

Now that it's my wife and I, we have a different structure during the day. We have a different way that we can do things.

And so we have more time we can spend together because we're not having to run around to basketball games and things like that.

And so what you end up seeing is that there's going to be different seasons in life. So you need to know your spouse.

You need to know the family dynamic to know whether...and there needs to be agreement there on whether we should be evangelizing as much as we might like to.

So you say, well, you aren't giving some real clear guidelines here. I mean, is it a yes or a no? Don't we want everything black and white?

Yes, we do. We want everything black and white. It would just be easy like, do, don't. Legalism and liberality are very easy.

Legalism is a list of no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. And liberality says yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, you can do everything because you're in Christ.

And the reality is, it's neither. It's in the middle where you have to decide with every circumstance. And that's what you have to do.

And that's what Paul says here in 1 Corinthians 7. If you're married, he calls it anxiety.

Hey, look, blame Paul. You know, you figure out why Paul used that word. By the way, for the record,

I think Paul was married at one point because he says he was a Pharisee and the

Pharisees would have been married men. So where is his wife? Well, since Pastor Mollison and I agree on this, in our sanctified imagination, we tend to think that his wife walked out on him because he became a believer.

And if you think about it, you know, this is one of the things we were talking about last night and Frank said something that sparked an idea in my mind.

Marrying someone like Paul would have been, remember this is arranged marriages. The wife's father would have been the one to arrange it.

And to marry a guy like Paul, who was an up and coming kind of guy in the temple, probably meant that he would have married someone whose father had some clout.

I could picture him becoming a Christian and the father going, oh no, no, no, no, this is bad for the family.

You're not going to stay with this guy. I can tell you from personal experience that when it comes to leaving

Judaism, it has an effect on the family. My parents had actually planned to rather have me dead than admit that I was a

Christian. That's why they were going to bury an empty casket. Dr. Silvestro and I were just in California where we actually had someone that we got to meet who his family found out that he converted from Judaism to Christianity and his father had a big family reunion to announce that his son was cut off and dead to him.

With him there, invited the son so his son could hear. That's an interesting one. So what do you have here?

You end up seeing though that Paul may have been married. He may have understood it, but he ends up saying that there's a certain freedom that he has in being single.

So if you're here and you're single, you're not married, Paul would say, hey, you have an advantage. And it may not seem that way.

It doesn't feel that way because our society puts all this pressure on being married and Paul says in this verse as we saw, he gives an instruction not to go and do that.

Don't go get married. Why? Because you have a freedom that others won't have to go out and do evangelism and do the things of the

Lord. But if you're married, you have a responsibility to your family. You don't have the freedom to go off and do the evangelism you may want to do.

You have to decide what's best for the family as well. So as we talk about family, we talk about evangelism.

There is a balance that must be there. You cannot, if you're married, you don't have that same freedom.

So my charge to you, my challenge to you is that if you are single,

Paul would say, stay that way and do as much evangelism as you can. If you're married, then you consider your spouse.

You consider what's best for the family and balance the time so that you're not forsaking one for the other.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the fact that we can look to your word. Paul gives us some wisdom in an area that for some is a struggle, for some it's hard because we just don't want to think about the fact that God has that you have gives us restrictions on what we can or cannot do,

Lord. And we ask that you would be, you'd help to guide us and direct us in this area that we would be mindful in how much time we spend out there evangelizing compared to how much time we spend with our families.

We ask that you give guidance and direction. And we ask, Lord, that also as we are about to enjoy lunch, that you'd give the food that we have, use it to give our bodies the energy and nutrition so we could serve you today.

We ask that you'd be over the fellowship that we share, that it would be something that you can use to just to edify one another.

We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. So real quick... This podcast is part of the

Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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