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

And good morning, and we welcome you to Kootenai Church. Would you please stand.

Call to Worship from Ephesians 1

This morning as we begin our worship service with a call to worship from Ephesians 1. A little early, sorry. In Ephesians 1, verse 3 to 6, it says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him in love by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he graciously bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Let's sing together. Come praise and glorify our God.

Come praise and glorify our God, the Father of our Lord. In Christ he has in heavenly realms his blessings on us poured. For pure and blameless in his sight, he tested us to be, and now we've been adopted through his Son eternally.

To the praise of your glory, to the praise of your mercy and grace, to the praise of your glory, you are the God who saves and forgives his grace in Christ. In him our sins are washed away, redeemed through sacrifice.

In him God has made known to us the mystery of his will, that Christ should be the head of all his people. To the praise of your glory, to the praise of your mercy and grace, to the praise of your glory, you are the God who saves and forgives his grace in Christ.

In him our sins are washed away, redeemed through sacrifice. In him God has made known to us the mystery of his will, that Christ should be the head of all his people. In him God has made known to us the mystery of his will, that Christ should be the head of all his people.

For we believe the word, our faith, we have a seal, the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit is our hope until redemption's done. We join in endless praise to God the Father. My fears, my soul, you're my stronghold and my shield.

Satan's evil plans will fail, in your power I'm secured. You're my solid rock and my salvation. My steadfast hope that won't be shaken. My soul will wake, my soul, my sure foundation. My soul will wake, my soul.

This love I carry. This is mercy unreserved. Through your sacrifice so great, I have peace that's undeserved. For the battle has been won. And I fear no shame or loss. Now the sting of death is gone. You're my solid rock and my salvation.

My steadfast hope that won't be shaken. My soul will wake, my soul will wake for my sure foundation. My soul.

I have for you this morning just two announcements. One, the registration for the spring conference featuring Owen Strand, dealing with gender, human sexuality, transgenderism, the roles of men and women in the home, in the culture, and in the church.

That's the debate between egalitarianism and complementarianism, if you're wanting some fancy words to attach to that. That seminar, that conference, I should say, is coming up in June. It is the first weekend in June, June 7th and 9th.

And Owen is going to be preaching here on June 9th. The conference is 7th and 8th, a Friday and a Saturday. And you will see in your bulletin that there's some discount codes there for you if you are attending Kootenai Community Church.

So take the opportunity in the next month or so to register for that if you want to join us. I think that it will benefit and bless your soul as we're going to be talking about God's design in creation and then answering some specific issues that as a church we're going to be facing in the years to come.

How do you deal with how do you handle it when your HR department sends you an email demanding that you put your preferred pronouns in your bio on your social media or in the email signature or the header for your corporation?

If you own your own business and you get to set the terms, then that's fine. But you may not, and we're going to navigate through some of those issues that the church is going to be facing in a culture that has lost its way, to say the least.

So I would encourage you to attend that conference, and the discount codes are available there in your bulletin. And then second, there is a parents' meeting on February 25th for the parents of anybody who is going to be graduating this year.

This is open to homeschool, private school, and public school kids. If you are here at Kootenai and you're going to be graduating your senior year this year in May or June, we're going to have our normal graduation service here at the church to celebrate you, and we invite you to be part of that.

And if you're a parent of one of those graduates, then please plan to join the other parents after the service on February 25th. That is a Sunday. Will you please turn to Romans 6 for our Scripture reading today?

We're going to read the entire chapter, Romans 6. And three times in these opening verses of chapter 6, the word baptized is used. And I'm not going to translate it or read it as baptized. I'm going to read it as immersed, since that's what the word baptized means.

And in this context, when we read the word baptized, it can communicate or put into our minds the idea of being dunked into water. And that's not what's being described here. It is being immersed or placed into Christ.

So I'm going to read it as immersed. Romans 6.

What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be? How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been immersed into Christ Jesus have been immersed into his death?

Therefore, we have been buried with him through immersion into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin, for he who has died is freed from sin.

Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Death no longer is master over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God.

Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

What then?

Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be. Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness.

But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed. And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

I'm speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.

But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit resulting in sanctification and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Will you stand with me as we pray? Let's bow our heads. Our Father, what a gracious thing it has done to redeem an unworthy people by your grace, to redeem us from our sin, from the marketplace of sin, to purchase us through the death of your Son, and then to give us the spirit by which you have sealed us for the day of redemption.

As we've read at the beginning of our service here today, you have predestined all of that and appointed all of that before the foundation of the world. And you have sent your Son to die for those who are in Him.

You have lavished us with every blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. You have promised us the forgiveness of our sins. You have promised us eternal and unblemished and uncorruptible righteousness to stand before your throne.

You have clothed those who believe with that righteousness even now. And you've given us the Spirit who dwells within us to seal us, to sanctify us, and you've given us your Word which gives us the instructions that we need to live an honoring and God-glorifying life in this world.

We thank you for all of these mercies and for all of these graces. You have done this for your glory. You have done this for the good and the eternal glory of your people. We thank you that you have brought us into Jesus Christ and we thank you that you have redeemed us.

And we thank you for giving us the power over indwelling sin. And we pray today as we worship you and glorify you and put our mind and our hearts upon meditating upon these things that you would encourage and strengthen us in the inner man as we reflect upon these things that we would progress in our sanctification, pursuing holiness without which we cannot see you.

Make us a holy people, Father, not just in being set apart for you. Our God, we pray that you would make us a holy people in our conduct, in our thoughts, in our hearts, in our inner being so that we may honor and glorify you and that you would be pleased with us, that you would receive the full reward for the sacrifice that you have made to redeem us, a sinful and unworthy people.

We ask these things for the glory of Christ our Lord. Amen.

Psalm 100 and the Call to Praise

In Psalm 100, verses 3 to 5, it says, Know that Yahweh, he is God. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him and bless his name. For Yahweh is good. His loving kindness endures forever and his faithfulness generation unto generation. We're going to sing a new psalm this morning, The King of Love, My Shepherd Is.

My shepherd is, whose good night stays on.

Will you please turn now to Hebrews chapter 13. During the course of the message today, we're going to be in two passages, Hebrews 13 to begin with and then Ephesians chapter 4. So if you want to make it easier for you later on, you could find Ephesians 4 and place your finger there.

But we're going to be reading a few verses here out of Hebrews 13 before we pray. Hebrews 13, verses 1 through 6. Let love of the brethren continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.

Remember the prisoners as though in prison with them and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body. Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled.

For fornicators and adulterers 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, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.

So that we may confidently say, The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What will man do to me? Let's pray together. Our gracious Father, we ask Your blessing upon our time of study and reflection in Your Word.

By Your Word, You have given us a clear revelation of Yourself, our salvation, our Savior, Your expectations for us, Your holy demands and what righteousness requires. You have given to us a battle plan for moral purity and for battling sin and the corruption of our own fleshly nature.

We pray that today as we set our hearts and minds upon these truths, that You would do the work through Your Spirit and by Your Word of sanctifying us in the truth. May You be glorified here during this time and may You be honored through the preaching of Your Word.

Specifically, we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.

The Honor of Marriage and the Need to Guard the Marriage Bed

I did not anticipate spending four Sundays on Hebrews chapter 13, verse 4. The marriage bed is to be held in honor among all. Sorry, the marriage is to be held in honor among all. The marriage bed is to be undefiled.

For fornicators and adulterers, God will judge. I had originally planned the first couple of months of this year to spend one Sunday, maybe possibly two, on that verse. But as we jumped into it and kind of worked our way through it, the importance of applying what is written here and understanding the significance of this required, at least in my own heart, that we give more time and attention to this and some substantial consideration to this command and what applying this looks like in our lives.

So we've spent two Sundays now talking about the reasons that we honor marriage, why marriage is honorable, what that looks like, the implications of that for how we relate to our spouse, how we view our spouses, how we approach marriage itself.

And then last week, we turned our attention to the command to keep the marriage bed undefiled and we considered what such a command means for our view of marriage and how we honor marriage by maintaining the purity of the marriage bed.

And the fact that the marriage bed can be pure in the eyes of God and holy tells us something of its nature and its purpose and God's intention for that in marriage. And this purity and holiness is something that we are to guard.

We have to work diligently at it because the corrupting influences of the world in thought and in our hearts and in our minds, those corrupting and polluting influences seep themselves in, find ways into our relationships and into our hearts.

And so maintaining purity is something that must be diligently pursued and aggressively thought about and maintained lest we fall into corruption and the marriage bed be defiled. We looked last week at the things that threaten to defile the marriage bed.

These are easily and subtly creeping into lives and relationships all around us. I gave you four of them. It was not a comprehensive list, but I would just, by way of reminder, remind you of what those were.

Selfishness in the marriage bed, selfishness, abusing it, using it as a weapon against our covenant partner. Third, sexual immorality in both thought and in deed. And then fourth, emotional unfaithfulness.

And today we're going to look a bit closer at an aspect of guarding the marriage bed, specifically how we fight the fight against the inner corruption that we all have to battle. We didn't deal with that last week other than just very briefly at the end of the message, but I don't think that that is sufficient.

So today is kind of the application of what we looked at last week. We're going to deal with how and when we fight these threats because we face threats to our marriage covenant and our marriage bed. We face those threats, and those enemies are foreign and domestic.

I like to refer to it that way because we can understand that. There are things outside of our marriage, people outside, things outside in the world that are not necessarily within the four walls of our home.

They're not necessarily inside of our own heart. Those things threaten our purity and our sanctification. And then there is the domestic threat, the internal threat, the enemy within, the terrorist within the gate, my own heart, my own mind, my own corruption, my own depravity that wars against me constantly that we have to be on guard against.

So how and when do we fight those threats? And then second, we're going to consider the reason that we fight so aggressively, namely because of that last phrase in verse 4, fornicators and adulterers God will judge.

That is a sobering warning. And then third, I want to end by reminding us of the promise of the gospel for fornicators and adulterers because in thought, in word, or in deed, nearly everybody except the little kids who are talking right now, nearly everybody in here is a fornicator and an adulterer in thought, word, or deed.

So I want to end with the gospel hope for fornicators and adulterers. And then, Lord willing, we'll move on to verse 5 next week. So how do we fight this? Now, I realize that some of you are new here today.

Maybe you haven't been here last week or the last two weeks or whatever. I have to assume for the sake of time that you're going to be up to speed on what we mean when we talk about honoring marriage and honoring the marriage bed, what the marriage bed is, how it can be pure, why it is pure, why it needs to be guarded, and all of that.

I'm going to assume that you've been with us for the last three weeks. If you haven't been, then go back and listen to those. But for the sake of time and everybody else who's here who doesn't want to tread that ground again, we're going to move on to how it is and when it is that we fight.

Now, when do we start protecting the marriage bed? When you say, I do? Is that early enough? No, you do it before you say, I do. In fact, you begin protecting your marriage bed from as early in your life as you are aware that a marriage bed exists.

From that point on, you must aggressively protect your marriage bed. You start now, and I'm talking now to young and single people. Don't think that the things that we've said for the last, that I've said for the last three weeks don't apply to you because you're not married and you're not enjoying a marriage bed yet.

You must begin to guard your future relationships now. You begin being committed to your future spouse now. You honor your future spouse now. You may have never met them. You may not know them. You may not know who they are.

You may think that you know who that person is right now, but you may be entirely deceived. You might be entirely deceived about who your future spouse is until you stand there and say, I do. Because that last minute, something could change last minute.

So you may not know who your future spouse is, but even though you don't know that, you begin honoring them and respecting them and guarding what you will have with them long before you ever say, I do.

Long before you ever stand at the altar and pledge your vows to one another. In other words, while you are young, do not give your heart to lusts and immorality. Do not give your time, your attention, your affection, your eyes, your ears, your mind, your thoughts, your dreams, your daydreaming.

Do not turn it over to things that are immoral and impure. Follow the advice of Philippians 4 .8. Whatever is pure and lovely and of good repute, think and meditate on those things. Begin that while you are young.

Don't be naive because the habits that you form now will chase you for the rest of your life. You cannot give five or ten or fifteen years of your thought life to a certain pattern and a certain way of thinking and then expect that when you stand at the altar and say, I do, that those habits are all of a sudden going to change.

They won't. Don't believe the lie that says that you can't resist temptation now, but you will be able to resist temptation once you are married. Don't entertain the images and lavish your affections upon images and other people and thoughts that you are not able to control now or think you're not able to control now.

Do not give your heart to those things. Instead, learn now while you are young to discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. That's 1 Timothy 4 verse 7. Learn now while you are young to discipline your mind and discipline your heart to resist temptation and to say no to fleshly desires which wage war against your soul.

Learn it while you're young. Set those patterns while you're young. Discipline yourself from the first moment, from now, from this day forward. 1 Corinthians 6 .18 says To flee immorality, every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.

There is a difference between lying and sexual sin. They are sins of a different nature. They affect us differently. They have different ramifications for your life. We are created as sexual beings with a sexuality and with a sex drive.

All of that is true. And when you sin in that way, you are sinning against your own body and against your soul in a way that you are not sinning when you get mad at somebody who cuts you off in traffic.

There are different kinds of sin. Different ramifications. Different fruit from those kinds of sin. 2 Timothy 2 .22 says To flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

You run from something, youthful lusts, and you run towards something, purity. You're fleeing something and running towards something. It's not enough to simply flee from something. You have to flee from one thing and have in your focus another goal, another destination, something else you are chasing and pursuing.

Like Joseph. I can hardly read 2 Timothy 2 .22, flee youthful lusts, without thinking of Joseph. He was a man who endured the berating of Potiphar's wife and the enticements of her who probably could have convinced himself with a thousand lies that he could do this against his own soul and get away with it and that Potiphar would never find out and that he would be okay.

But he didn't do that. Instead, he fled. He eventually had to get out of her presence and he fled. Of course, he suffered the results of that. But he fled the youthful lusts and got out of her presence.

And Joseph said, I cannot sin against you, I cannot sin against my master Potiphar, and I cannot sin against my God. That's the mentality you have to have. And don't believe the lies, young person. The lies that said you can indulge this now and it won't affect your marriage later.

It will affect your marriage later. Do not believe the lie that says you can inject poison into your mind and your soul and that it will all go away on your wedding day. It doesn't go away on your wedding day.

I'm 52 years old and I can still call to my mind vividly in glossy color images I saw when I was 10. Do not believe the lie that those things will go away. The images begin to fade and every time you call them back it is engraved again as with an iron stylus on the marble of your heart and even deeper.

And there will come a time when you will wish to God that you had some tool, some device that you could rip those things out of your soul and be rid of them forever. But you will not be able to because your flesh will never be sanctified, your flesh will never be improved, and those things are etched on your flesh.

So don't feed your flesh now thinking that when you get married it will have no effect on you. Because what you end up doing is taking all of the images, the ideas, the notions, the pictures, all of it, and the expectations and you bring them into your marriage bed.

And all you're doing now is harboring the enemy so that you can take it into your marriage bed later on. So don't believe the lie that says you can do this and it won't affect your marriage. Don't believe the lie that you can look at porn now and meditate upon those things without dishonoring your future spouse.

You can't. You dishonor your future spouse now by what you are doing with your mind and your heart now. And don't believe this lie, and this was a predominant one, that once you get married resisting that temptation will be easier.

It won't be easier. The temptation doesn't go away. It just takes new forms. It just comes up in different opportunities at different times, the most inopportune times. So don't think that I can indulge that temptation now and that this desire that I have now, eventually it will go away.

You may be thinking, look, I've seen some of the old guys, they look like they can't get excited over anything, let alone a woman, and so eventually I'll just play footsie with this sin and sooner or later I'll outgrow the temptation.

I'll outgrow the desire. Men particularly, no matter how old you are, those images, those ideas, those desires will be there until the day that you die in one form or another. Don't believe that lie. Don't play games with your lust because it is not playing games with you.

It seeks your ruin and destruction and it seeks to keep you in bondage to your flesh, to your lusts for the rest of your life.

Now you say,.

What if I don't ever plan to get married? This still applies to you because you can live a single life as a slave to your lusts or you can live a single life as a master of your desires. Which one are you going to have?

If you're going to live a single life, you're going to live it either as a slave to your lusts and every woman that you see, every person will not be your sister in the Lord. It will not be a noble, virtuous woman to you.

Once you become enslaved to those lusts, every woman that you see will have one purpose and one purpose only in your mind and you will fight to the death to get those things out of your mind. So discipline yourself now to not give your mind to it at all.

Your passions will seek your ruin until the day you die, whether you are single or married. So if you are single, then this still applies. The fornicators, idolaters, and adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So we still must obey and by faith lay hold of the promise that there will be a reward for holiness and purity on that day and that God will reward the one who is faithful and obedient to Him and learns to master their desires.

Now if we're going to fight this battle, that's when we fight it. We start fighting it now. We start fighting it when we are young. And listen, parents, teach your children to do this when they are young.

I happen to be part of a generation that where porn was not accessible to us when we were kids. You had to find some way to get to that. Now it is everywhere. We live in a culture that is utterly awash in depravity.

And in my generation, we had kids right at the time that cell phones and tablets and the internet had become available. And if I could go back and do it all over again, I wouldn't give my kid a phone until they had a driver's license.

And even then it would be a flip phone. And when they got married, then I would maybe consider letting them have something other than a flip phone. I would do it entirely differently.

Why is that?

Because of the time in which we live. It's different for us who are older than it was, than it is for the kids coming up. So make it your objective to talk about these things with your kids and to shape them and mold them to think about these things in a biblical fashion.

Now, how do we fight this? We fight this by understanding what the source of our problem is. The source of your problem is not a demon of lust, not a spirit of adultery, not a spirit of fornication, not some indwelling foreign spirit that you need to have exercise from.

The problem that you have is the same problem that I have. It is this unredeemed part of our nature, our flesh, which wages war against our soul. Galatians 5, 16 to 21, I'm going to read you three passages and then I'm going to make a couple of observations.

These three passages talk about the battle that we fight. It talks about what we are to mortify, what we are to put to death. First, Galatians 5, verse 16, but I say, walk in the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.

For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you're led by the Spirit, you're not under the law.

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

He does not say those who have committed these things will not inherit the kingdom of God, because that would be all of us and all of us would be exempt. But he says those who practice these things, those who impenitently continue in these sins, demonstrate that they are not the heirs of the kingdom of God.

Second passage, Ephesians 5, verse 1. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us, and offering a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. But there must be no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.

For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on the sons of disobedience.

Therefore do not be partakers with them, for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 1. Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God just as you actually do walk, that you excel still more and more.

For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion like Gentiles who do not know God, and that no man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you.

For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification. So he who rejects this is not rejecting man, but the God who gives his spirit to you. Let me give you three observations from that.

Number one, there is a clear expectation that believers walk in the light, and this is based on the fact of the truth of our salvation. You have been taken from death and put into life. You have been spiritually resurrected from the grave.

You have been purchased out of the marketplace for sin, and you have been made a slave of Jesus Christ and been placed under in his servitude, in his service. You are no longer dead but alive. You are no longer a child of wrath, but you are a child of God.

You are no longer dead inside, but spiritually alive. And not only that, if you're in Christ, the Spirit of God dwells within you. And therefore, there is this expectation that a believer who has been born, has been taken out of darkness and put into light, will live like a child of the light.

That one who has been spiritually resurrected from spiritual death will live like one who is alive. Like one who has been removed from the wrath of God and made a son of righteousness, will live and walk in righteousness.

That is the expectation of the New Testament. Second, the sexual immorality is a work of the flesh. So as I said, you don't have a demon problem. You don't have an indwelling spirit. You don't need an exorcism.

You don't need a deliverance ministry or a power encounter. You need to kill the sin that dwells within. That's what we need to do. Because these deeds, immorality, impurity, even sorcery, these are the works, these are the deeds of the flesh.

And third observation, the power to obey these commands is the possession of every single believer. Get that down. The power to obey these commands is with every single believer. There is no such thing as a person in Jesus Christ who is an unwilling slave to their lusts.

That does not exist. If you are in Christ and you are a slave to your lusts, it is because you have gone back to the taskmaster time and time again and you have put out your hands and you have said, shackle me, put me into service, make me your slave.

You didn't have to do that, but you did that. You did that willingly. Nobody forced you to do that. Nobody forces you to sin ever as a child of God. So what do we do then? We need to go to war with our sin because sin is at war with us.