Summer Session (9) Sunday School July 30

back for our final week of Summer Session 2023, and we are not going to make it through all of the proposed material, but that is for your reference.

We're going to conclude our study by thinking about what it means to live as a family, understand what the family is, in light of Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The fact that he is risen from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father has a big impact on how we view family and how we interpret the scriptures that talk to us about family.

So we're going to think about that in this last week together. Let's begin with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the day that you have given to us. Pray that you would help us as we read your word together.

I pray that you would help us to do so with the light of your son, Jesus Christ, illuminating the text to us, and that your spirit would provide the amen from our own hearts, that we will be in agreement with you and rejoicing in the truth of your son.

It's in his name that we pray, amen. So in thinking about family, we started where Jesus told us to begin.

Start with creation. Have you not read, in the beginning, God made them male and female.

In the beginning, a man left his father and his mother and was joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

That was the word from the beginning. So we started where Jesus told us to. And we saw that even though man fell into sin, man transgressed, there's a curse on the earth and all kinds of problems because of sin, nevertheless, the design that God gave in creation still stands.

It is still our definition. It is still the standard by which all the families that we read about in the

Bible and all the families today are still evaluated by that standard of creation. You see how central the idea of family is to who we are made in God's image, which is why when we look at the covenants that God makes,

Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David, being in the shape of the image of God, family is very important to each one of those.

So we thought about family in those different covenantal periods, recognizing that we are not called to mimic

Jacob's four -wife household or the mess that we see with King David and his household.

But the point of looking at those different time periods in redemptive history is ultimately to see what the father was saying through the spirit about his son so that ultimately we are hurtling towards the

New Testament and the new covenant in Christ. And when we arrive there, we find that Jesus talks about the people of his new covenant in terms of family, brothers, sisters.

He's the elder brother. We have God as our heavenly father because Jesus is our elder brother. And the

Holy Spirit is the one who testifies in us that God is indeed our heavenly father. Family language.

And also the family language of Jesus coming for his bride, the church.

Family language. But we also discover that there's not an eradication of the family.

There is not a setting aside of the family as God defined it in creation. But in fact, in the light of the second

Adam, in the light of the last Adam, family becomes extremely clear.

And we see that in passages like these. That in the new covenant, the family's not done away with.

The family is clarified. In the new covenant, the family is not set aside for something else, but the family is restored and shown to be something glorious, unto the glory of Christ.

Something very good. And I think that's a helpful summary of where we've been, where we are right now.

I think it can be a challenge sometimes when

Bible -believing Christians are encouraged to get their principles for family from the Bible. Because you open up the

Bible and here and there and you see different things, you read different things. But it's only in the clarity of the person and work of Jesus Christ that we have it harmoniously put together.

Early in our marriage, my wife and I befriended a young couple. We befriended a lot of young couples.

The church we went to, there was a bunch. And having children and raising them was kind of the topic that would come up no matter who we were hanging around.

And one couple shocked us with their plans. They said that they were planning to raise their children without ever doing anything to compel them to choose

Christianity. Why?

Because they understood that parents wield enormous influence on their children and that no real commitment to Christ can be coerced by another person.

Therefore, they said that we're just gonna let our children know for themselves without any interference whether they're

Christians or not. Now, this young couple were committed

Calvinists, which might surprise you. Yeah, but their point was, if their children were of the elect, well, then they're gonna be saved.

But they had a problem though. They recognized that sometimes there would be children who didn't know if they were

Christians because their parents really influenced them that way. Was it really their parents' influence in their life or was it really that?

Was it the influence on their early childhood that made them love Jesus or was it really themselves that were following God?

Which one was it? And they were wanting to avoid that confusion in their children's life.

They wanted them to have greater assurance of their salvation without mom and dad muddling the waters.

Really, really poor understanding and application of biblical truth. There was also another heartbreaking situation.

There was a child who was born to a family in our church with a severe genetic disorder.

And the baby, she only lived for a few hours. Now, the family knew that that was going to be the case from earlier on in the pregnancy, but they didn't listen to any of the doctors.

They said, no, we're going to have this baby and we're going to have her as long as we can. At the funeral, a guest pastor who was near and dear to their hearts and a pastor who was in the process of leaving his

Baptist roots preached that the parents and the whole church should be comforted knowing that because the infant was given to believing parents, she died within the covenant, within the new covenant.

And he saw all children born into families with at least one Christian parent as covenant children to be related to and treated as though they were

Christians already, simply confidently awaiting the day of the regeneration. And that was preached at the funeral in a very committed

Baptist church and it caused no shortage of consternation being offered paedo -Baptist comfort in the

Baptist setting. How are we to understand family in light of Jesus Christ?

You know, is it something like that first situation where we have to sever heaven and earth so that, well, Jesus may rule in my heart, but it would be inappropriate for me to try to push

Jesus on my kids. You know, Jesus is fine ruling in my heart, but as far as the family goes, you really can't have

Jesus ruling over a family unless everybody is born again. And I can't force that, so we're gonna leave

Jesus out of it. Or do we have to understand our families as full participants in the new covenant, including our unregenerate children, children yet to be born again?

Is that the only truly righteous and holy way to have a thoroughly Christian family?

Here's a practical question that I received not so long ago. Is it right to teach your little children to pray?

After all, if they're not born again, and if they do not know Jesus, if they're not spiritually alive, what are we doing but teaching

Pharisaism? Hey, it's a legitimate question. Do you want to lead your children into sin?

These are some of the things that we have to unpack in light of who Christ is, right? Well, the short answer to that last question is, yes, teach your children to worship, to submit, to pray and sing and bow the knee.

Why? Because they're all Christians? No, not all of the children in our households are Christians. Teach them to worship, pray and sing, bow the knee because that will make them

Christians? No, that doesn't force anyone to become a Christian. But the focus you see is not upon the children.

The focus is not upon the parents. The focus is not upon some familial arrangement. The focus is upon Christ. Teach them to sing and to pray and to bow the knee because he's king.

He's king over everything. Everywhere we go, every patch of ground we're on is his turf.

He's the king. And don't you want your children to honor the king? You see, that's,

I think, the approach that not only we should take, but I think that's the approach we read about in the New Testament. I think that's the way things are parsed in the

New Testament about why should a husband love his wife and how should a wife love her husband and how do parents raise their children, how do children relate to their parents, and so on.

I think that's all talked about in light of the exalted state of Jesus as the reigning king.

And that's what we need to keep in mind when we think about the family. All right, so let's think about how that works out.

Now, we have communion today, so something to think about. Marriage and family are something that God made from creation, and he affirms it and wants us to affirm it as well.

Marriage and family are protected by God's rainbow. They are marked by God's circumcision, surrounded by God's rest, welcomed into God's house, all through the whole

Old Testament. But now, all this is true through Christ, who is the fulfillment of all those signs.

But we are instructed by God's communion with us, by Christ, by his spirit.

Jesus Christ is where? He's at the right hand of the Father. He is reigning from heaven.

And the pictures that we have is that his spirit flows from his throne in every direction, renewing all creation and bringing us into fellowship with him.

And this morning, he welcomes us to his table. We're having communion today. He welcomes us to his table, but doesn't, in the way that he welcomes us to his table, is he not instructing us how to gather at our own tables?

Right? As he's gathering us to his table, is he not telling us how we ought to gather at our tables, as families?

So, our attention first to Christ. And so, we go to Matthew 5. In Matthew chapter 5, we're gonna be reading verses 27 through 32.

Now, it's interesting when you read Matthew chapters one through four, it's just a series of passages declaring in every single possible way that Jesus Christ is chosen as the true servant, the true son, the true

Israel. That's what Matthew chapters one through four are all about. You can think about it. Starts off with a genealogy.

Here is the true successor to Abraham and David. It's Jesus of Nazareth, who is from the royal lineage of David, who brings an end to the exile.

He shall save his people from their sins. Emmanuel, God with us.

Chapter two, the wise men from the east come to worship the fulfillment of the prophecies that they had handed down to them from Daniel.

And then, there is a flight to Egypt, running away from Herod, the wicked king.

And then, Jesus is brought back up out of Egypt, and this was to fulfill what

God said in Hosea of Israel, but now it is fulfilled in Christ. Out of Egypt I have called my son.

What the New Testament says about Jesus, the Old Testament says about Israel. And then, where did they go when they got out of Egypt?

They went to Nazareth, so that it should be fulfilled what was spoken by the prophets. He shall be called a Nazarene.

Well, good luck finding that in the Old Testament, because you're not gonna find that phrase,

Nazarene, in the Old Testament. What you're gonna find is branch, branch, branch, branch, and Nazarene is branch town.

He's the branch. He's the branch guy, okay? Matthew knows this. He's rejoicing in that.

And then, of course, you have the forerunner, John the Baptist, coming and saying, one mightier than I is coming.

I'm not even worthy to untie his sandal strap. And then, the heavens part, the Holy Spirit comes down in the form of a dove, and God says to everybody listening, this is my beloved son, whom

I'm well pleased. Everybody pay attention to him. And then,

Jesus is led off into the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days. Sound familiar?

Israel was in the wilderness for 40 years, tempted, and they failed. But here is the son, here is the servant, and he is tempted 40 days in the wilderness, but he is faithful.

And then, he goes and he preaches in Galilee, so that it will be fulfilled.

So, Matthew one through four, so this is fulfilled. So, it will be fulfilled. So, it will be fulfilled. See, time and again, through Matthew one through four, it's saying, hey, the answer to all of the prophecies, he has arrived.

Everyone pay attention to this one. He has fulfilled all these promises and prophecies, all these shadows and types.

Here he is, here he is. And he's preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and then we come to the

Sermon on the Mount. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus begins to say how things are gonna be in his kingdom.

Here's how things are gonna be in my kingdom. This is what it means to be blessed. This is how you become a part of it, and this is what we're gonna do, and here's how life's gonna look like.

And here's what you need to remember, and here's what piety looks like. Here's what true religion and true spirituality looks like, and here's how you need to pray.

And here's what you need to believe and trust, and here's how it's all gonna end up. And so, Matthews five, six, and seven,

Jesus is saying, here's how things are gonna work in my kingdom. Because he's just been preaching about the gospel of the kingdom, and then he explains how it's all gonna look.

And so, at a certain point in Matthew five, he begins to say this pattern over and over again.

You have heard it said, but I say to you. You have heard it said, but I say to you. You have heard it said, but I say to you.

And he begins by just quoting the Ten Commandments. And then he starts quoting other laws, and he begins to sum up other laws from Moses.

You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, verse 21. But I say to you, is

Jesus for murder? No. No, you have received the old covenant, right?

Remember the Ten Commandments? It was called the covenant, it was placed in the Ark of the Covenant. You have heard it was said, do not murder, but I say to you, what does he say?

Well, where does murder begin? It begins in the heart, right? Hatred in the heart, and so Jesus goes straight to the heart, and he says, but here's what

I say to you. You can keep the old covenant by not murdering, but in my kingdom, we're not gonna hate each other from the heart.

You see how much superior that is? And the very next thing he says is, verse 27, that's where we are now, verse 27 through 32.

Now listen to the way that Jesus does something greater than what was before, okay?

Verse 27, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Furthermore, it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery.

And whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery. Now this is very interesting because Jesus had just said in some previous verses, verses 17 through 20,

I do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. He did not come to abolish the law and the prophets.

Well, that much is clear from chapters one through four. This was to fulfill, this was to fulfill, this was to fulfill.

So Jesus isn't coming saying, all that stuff that Moses wrote and all that stuff the prophets wrote is bad, forget about it.

No, he's come to fulfill. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. He came to complete in a satisfying way, to tell the satisfying, the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.

To wrap it all up in a really clear, compelling fashion. He came to fulfill, not to destroy.

He says, for assuredly I say to you till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

Well, who came to fulfill it? Jesus did. So we know where to look. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So he's come preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

He's come healing people and delivering people as signs of the kingdom. And now he's declaring about how the kingdom is gonna function and he begins to tell parable after parable after parable, the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of heaven is like.

And what he's doing is showing what all is going to take place after his death and resurrection. What it's like to live under his rule as king when he's ascended to the right hand of the father.

And he says here that if you break one of the least of the commandments and teach others to do so, you will be called least in his kingdom.

But whoever does and teaches them should be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So if there are people in his kingdom who are saying, you know, this whole thing about, do not commit adultery, not a big deal.

It's like, that's not how my kingdom is gonna work. But you need to teach others to do them, but how?

But how? Jesus is the one who came to fulfill them. So, and he's going to show this as he moves forward through the gospels.

He shows the Pharisees how because they reject him, they don't actually do the commandments because he's the one who's the fulfillment of them.

And by teaching others to try to keep the law without reference to Christ, they end up breaking the law.

So what he's saying is, essentially, I didn't come to destroy the law of the prophets,

I came to fulfill them. And if he's the fulfillment of them, then doing and keeping them, doing them and teaching them comes down to following Christ who is the fulfillment of them.

For example, when the Pharisees accused his disciples of breaking the Sabbath, he said, that's impossible, they're hanging out with me, right?

So they were keeping Sabbath because they were abiding with Christ. The Pharisees, who didn't have anything to do with Christ, they're the true breakers of the

Sabbath. So everything depends on the light of Christ. And then he says, verse 24,

I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now that's pretty extreme. I mean, they tithe their mint and their dill and their cumin. They tithe their herbs.

They were such sticklers for keeping the law. And Jesus says, unless your righteousness exceeds that, you're not even gonna get in the kingdom of heaven.

So whose righteousness do we need? The one who fulfills the law and offers to us his own righteousness.

He is the end of the law unto righteousness for all who believe, Romans 10, four. So that's how he sets it up in Matthew five and explains that he's not against the law and the prophets, he's just come to fulfill them.

And he's not saying that they were wrong, he's come to shine the full light upon them to show everybody what it really means.

So when he says, you have heard it said of all, do not commit adultery, but I say to you, he's not saying that adultery is no big deal.

He's saying, here's how it's gonna work in my kingdom. Here's a righteousness that is better than that of the old.

So the law is good. Paul said so, right? The law is good if it's used lawfully. Paul is, the law is great.

Christ is greater. Someone greater than Moses is here. Someone greater than the law has come.

And so the new covenant is superior to the old and that's what he's really getting at. So this is where moving,

I wanted to talk about that first because this is the first passage in the New Testament that we come to where we're having particular instruction about how to do family, right?

Very first time. And it comes in the context of Jesus saying, now, you need to listen to what

I'm saying to you because it's superior to that which you've already received from Moses.

You see how that works? It's not in disagreement with Moses, it's in harmony, but it's better, all right?

So when we come to this passage about adultery, Jesus says that adultery begins in the heart.

Adultery begins in the heart. This is a superior righteousness to that of the old covenant.

Certainly in agreement with it, but superior. For a husband to look upon and sexually objectify a woman other than his wife is adultery in the heart.

And Jesus clearly points out that what begins with the eye will undoubtedly proceed into physical sin and Proverbs reminds us that a man who touches a woman will not be innocent.

And so Jesus uses this hyperbole and it's interesting to me, you can tear out your eyes and cut off both hands and you can still sin sexually.

So we know this is hyperbole. There was a man in Maine who actually cut off his hand and called 911 afterwards because he thought he was obeying.

Extreme disappointment, find out later on that that didn't cure him, you know?

Doesn't cure you. But where in the Old Testament have we heard eye for eye, tooth for tooth?

Right, remember that? So, and look, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.

It's almost like Jesus is recalling some of that language. What would the righteous thing to do, what would the just thing be to do?

That which is causing you to sin. So Jesus, Jesus says this is where adultery begins in the heart and then he says, just in case anyone gets the idea that he can divorce his wife so that he may legally have the other more desirable woman.

That's adultery too. You see what he does? He supports his first statement about what adultery really is by saying, and if you think divorce is the way to pursue someone other than your spouse, just know that's adultery as well.

So you see what happens here. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, what do we find out? That Jesus astonished the crowds he was teaching to because he taught as one who has authority, not like the scribes.

Now, and sometimes when we read that verse, we think, oh yeah, because the rabbis quoted the rabbis, quoted the rabbis.

But when Jesus confronted the scribes and they really wanted to contest what he was saying, who would they cite as their authority?

Would they ever bring up other rabbis? They never brought up another rabbi and quoted another rabbi to Jesus as their authority.

Who would they quote as their authority? Moses. That's right. The scribes always quoted

Moses as their authority, but Jesus is astonishing the crowds because he's not coming quoting Moses. He's coming as the authority that explains

Moses. I mean, it makes sense, right? Because Jesus was there in the first place giving the law to Moses.

Moses met with the Lord as a man does face -to -face with his friend. Who was that? No man can see

God and live, but God condescends in the second person of the Trinity, the one mediator between God and man.

And so Moses met with Christ time and time and time again and got everything from him in the first place.

So when Jesus shows up and says, now you heard it was said of old, but now here's what I say to you.

And it's not unharmonious, it's harmonious, but here's just something more. What's happening here except that what you told your three -year -old, you're now saying something different to your 13 -year -old.

There's something more fundamental that we want to talk about here about obedience. There's something more fundamental here. There's something deeper.

Moving from the child who just simply has to operate by these external standards and just kind of fly by those rules, but now coming into an understanding and an appreciation and agreement.

And that's the metaphor Paul uses in Galatians 4 about moving from the old covenant to the new, moving from a child who has no rights to true sonship and understanding the wisdom of what it's like to live in the light of Christ.

So Jesus says here in Matthew 5 that divorce is not a guard against adultery.

It could be a consequence of adultery or the propagator of it. And he says, you may have heard from Moses that you can do that, but I say to you something different.

That's what he does in Matthew 19. Moses said, you could give your wife a certificate of divorce, but I say to you, that's not the way it was from the beginning.

That's not an option on the table. Okay, so you may have heard from Moses this or that about the family, but the

Shekinah glory shines forth from Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration, and nobody's supposed to make a tent for the law and the prophets up there along with Jesus.

Moses and Elijah don't get their own tabernacles next to Jesus. No, they disappear in the light of his glory, and when the disciples open their eyes, they see no one except Jesus himself alone.

And the Shekinah glory says over them, this is my beloved son, hear him, right, hear him.

So in the supremacy of Christ, he's the one, he's not saying that what Moses said was wrong.

He's saying, this is the fulfillment of, this is the next thing, and it's appropriate.

So we have to listen to Christ, and when we do, then we understand what was said in the

Old Testament. To put it a different way, and I think this is kind of a helpful way of saying it, the

Old and the New Testaments are perfectly harmonious, but the Old and New Covenants are not, right?

You cannot put new wine in old wineskins. But both those statements are in agreement.

The very fact that the Old and New Testaments are completely harmonious and agree with one another is based upon the fact that the new replaces the old.

That's how that all goes together. Well, we're not gonna look at Matthew 19 today. I'll have it in the manuscript.

We've looked at Matthew 19 a lot. It's kind of been our go -to passage so far, so we'll skip that, and let's move on to 1

Corinthians 6 -7, a very long passage. This is a great passage to go to because it deals with who we are in the image of God.

It deals with the nature of marriage. It also talks about what happens when things go wrong, and it also talks about children.

So it's a very robust passage to turn to and think about what does it mean to live as family in the light of who

Christ is as king. So in 1

Corinthians 6, beginning in verse 12, 1

Corinthians 6, beginning in verse 12, all things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful.

All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Just so you know the way that that comes off, this,

Paul is, I think, very likely just quoting a catchphrase that was running around Corinth.

All things are lawful for me. I can go do whatever I want, you know. And so Paul's quoting that and saying, is that sound?

Is that right? Let's think about this carefully in light of who the king is, okay?

So verse 13, foods for the stomach, foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods. Another saying running around town, eat what you want, doesn't matter.

This goes really, really well with the Greek worldview on the body and the spirit.

Body doesn't matter, it's the spirit that matters. And the whole idea is to escape your body so that your spirit can be free to float around in happiness.

So it doesn't matter what you do to your body in the here and now, right? Foods for the stomach, stomach for foods. Just do whatever you want with your body because it doesn't matter.

The spirit is what matters. So, you know, be enlightened and do what you want with your body.

Sound familiar? Sounds like the last 200 years. But God will destroy both it and them.

Oh, okay, God's in charge. And death is on the horizon for all of us, isn't it?

Now the body is not for sexual immorality. You can see how the saying food for the stomach and the stomach for foods can be applied in the sexual situation as well.

Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.

And that's an important facet of what it means to be made in the image of God. We are made by our creator.

I don't belong to me. I don't get to define me, design me. God owns me, he made me.

He gave me breath to breathe. He gave me this body. The body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body, not only in terms of ownership, but in terms of that God is pro body, right?

God is for his creatures made both soul and body as a whole.

God is not against us having bodies. He's so for it, he's gonna raise us up in the last day.

That's how much he's interested in us being completely whole body and soul. And God both raised up the

Lord and also raised us up by his power. And that's very much counter -cultural to talk about the resurrection.

Nobody wanna talk about that. That was foolishness, that was idiocy. How can you possibly believe in something so stupid?

But how important it is to think about how the Lord is for the body and the resurrection from the dead and apply that to how we live in the light of the risen

Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 15 and following, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

When you join a church, you don't join with just your spirit. When you become a

Christian, it's not just your inner man that becomes a Christian, it's your whole person, everything about you.

Shall then I take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her, for the two, he says, shall become one flesh, clarifying that in the marriage act, there is a union which cannot be undone.

Verse, and doing it outside the marriage causes great harm. Verse 17, but he who is joined to the

Lord is one spirit with him. Flee sexual immorality, for every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body, self -destruction.

That is not in agreement with belonging to Christ. You see how people caught up into sexual immorality, given over to sexual immorality, are also given over into self -destruction.

And that's a very sad thing to see, but it's very common. Now, Paul's writing to Christians and members of this new covenant, what does he say, verse 19?

Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?

I thought I was just a living stone in the temple, remember?

Yes, and you are also, your body is also the temple of the

Holy Spirit in you, whom you have from God, and you're not your own. So if you're on your own, the

Holy Spirit indwells you, and you're the temple of the Holy Spirit, if you're with the body, then still so.

It's the same thing as talking about the way that Paul goes back and forth between us being in Christ and Christ being in us, both are true.

So, not being our own, recognizing who we are as a temple of the Holy Spirit, you were bought at a price, therefore glorify

God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. So not only did God make you, but God purchased you by the blood of his own son, another reason to glorify

God and recognize that you do not belong to you. So that's the background to chapter seven, where we begin to talk about marriage, when things go awry in marriage, and then what about children, and so on.

That's the background. So what is that background? That is clarifying who we are made in God's image and redeemed by the image of the invisible

God, who is Christ, made into his likeness. What is true of Christ should be true of us. You see what he's doing there?

So he's rooting what he says about the family in the reality of us being made in God's image.

So that pattern holds true. Okay, so verses one through five of chapter seven.

Now, concerning the things of which you wrote to me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.

Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband.

So you see that one of the reasons for marriage is because it is a measure against sexual immorality.

The less important marriage becomes in a society, you can better believe sexual immorality is rampant.

Verse three, let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does, and likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and then come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self -control.

So there are proper urges given to men and women that are only properly expressed in marriage.

Can't confuse one with the other. So there is a way in which those urges are expressed that is sinful, but the urges themselves are good from a good creator.

Now, Paul says in verse six, I say this as a concession, not as a commandment. So he's not saying everybody has to marry, no matter what.

He's not saying that as a commandment, but he's saying that this is perfectly good and right. Now, he does have a preference.

Verse seven, for I wish all men were even as I myself. He was on his own.

He didn't have a wife, and he was free to do a lot for the kingdom because of that in a different way than families.

But each one has his own gift from God, meaning gift, singleness is a gift from God. It means that it's out of the ordinary.

And if it's a gift from God, then it's good. One in this manner and another than that, but I say to the unmarried and to the widows, it is good for them to remain even as I am, but if they cannot exercise self -control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

This is my main problem, one of my main problems with the Revoice Movement, who are telling young people to live single forever.

Paul says, better to marry than to burn with passion. Verse, 1

Corinthians 7, verse 10, now to the married I command, yet not

I but the Lord, meaning this was the Lord's original commandment. A wife is not to depart from her husband, but even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.

And a husband is not to divorce his wife. So at a previous church where we were members,

I wasn't a pastor or anything, there was a woman there whose husband had left her. And he had just gone off to do his own thing and she remained faithful and she did not divorce him, she did not request a divorce, she prayed for him, she tried for more than a decade to reconcile and so forth.

Now, what's the solution? That's a terrible place to be in. And she was a very godly, kind woman and raising her daughter on her own.

Now, what to do? Okay, verse 12, but to the rest I, not the

Lord, not meaning that this is not of the Holy Spirit, it is, but this is just additional instruction,

Paul says, if any brother has a wife who does not believe and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her and a woman who has a husband who does not believe if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him.

So if you're married to a non -believer, stay married. It's fine, it's good.

God designed marriage from creation. Now, he does say a little bit later on in 1

Corinthians 7, if the unbelieving partner wants to leave, that ultimately you let them go because we're a people of peace.

And that's what happened with this dear sister. She eventually had to let her husband go because he wouldn't come back.

But let's say we have a situation in which there is a Christian and a non -Christian in a marriage.

You are not, therefore, required to get divorced. Right, when you come to realize that you're not required to be divorced.

Let's think about that a little bit more. Verses 14 through 16, the unbelieving husband, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband.

Meaning what? Meaning your marriage is good in the sight of Christ. It is a good thing.

And otherwise, your children would be unclean but now they are holy. Someone might get the idea of here's a wife, let's say, and she's married to an unbelieving husband and he just does un -Christian things all the time and it's a real burden and it's a real challenge to her.

And they've got a few kids and she's looking at the situation thinking, oh, he's polluting my children and leading them astray and this whole thing is just a mess and it's time to give up and move on.

What does the word say? Marriage is good. Marriage and family is good.

Stay with it. And what you're calling unclean, your savior is calling clean.

See how that works? See, in the old covenant, what happened was, if you were hanging out with somebody who was unclean, you know, they had tripped and fallen on a dead animal and then they came around, put their arm around you, what happened to you?

You became unclean. And you had to go ritualistically cleanse yourself, maybe have to spend some time outside the camp and do everything you could to shake all that uncleanness off until you could be clean again.

And as soon as you get home, you walk in and there's mold everywhere.

Ah, here we go again. Stuff keeps touching you and you keep on being unclean, you gotta go take care of it.

But what happened when Jesus came? When Jesus came, he walked up to a leper and he touched a leper.

Did that make Jesus unclean? The leper got clean. You see how it's different in the new covenant, how the holiness is flowing a whole new direction there?

So even in this marriage and family, here is somebody who is in fellowship with Christ himself, temple of the

Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit abiding and dwelling with this Christian. Let's say it's a

Christian wife and a mom who's in this situation. Now, does her unbelieving husband make her unclean?

Nope. Does, what about her children? Her children being helped, being raised by unclean, lost sinful husband, does that make her children unclean?

No, Christ is with her, abiding with her by his spirit and this sanctifies the marriage and the kids.

This is a good thing. See how the cleanliness is going the other way? This is a good thing now. So this is where, this is where thinking about Christ first, what this has to do with us being made in God's image, then moves on to how does this work in marriage and family.

All right, so there's a lot more that we should be talking about and we'll get to it eventually some other time.

We could, if we had more time, we would talk about Ephesians five and how the whole idea of marriage has to be understood in light of Christ and the church.

We could talk about Ephesians six, children's obedience to their parents, having everything to do with, in light of the promises fulfilled by Christ.

We could talk about the requirements of elders and deacons and their families because we're supposed to exemplify

Christ. We could talk about the instructions about how widows are supposed to be taken care of.

And again, all of these things are being talked about in light of who

Jesus is and what he has accomplished. And that's where we've been heading all this time.

Any questions, thoughts, or observations as we close and know that I will be trying to work on the manuscript for this class.

It'll be a little bit till we get it all put together, but I'm also gonna try to have some other people look at it and edit it before we hand it out.

But yes. Did you direct, the

Bible says, raise your children in the way, since it's a commandment of the Bible, you are then obligated, and what did they say?

So the parents who had the children they didn't wanna influence too much towards Christianity, the instructions that they saw in the

Bible, they found workarounds in their mind about not, you know, calling for their children to, you know, you need to believe in Jesus, trust him, love him, so on and so forth.

They found ways, workarounds around that. And it is hyper -Calvinism. Hyper -Calvinism is when you deny that every person has a duty to repent and believe.

Now that was, it's been well -defined in history, great book, Spurgeon versus the

Hyper -Calvinists by Ian Murray, excellent book that kinda details all that out. But everyone has a duty to repent and believe.

Everybody should be called to repent and believe. Jesus Christ is the savior for all without distinction, including our children.

And children need to know that they need to repent and believe, and to trust in Jesus as king, so.

All right, well let's close with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you so much for this day. I thank you for our time in the word. Lord, it is refreshing and a joy to simply read your word in the light of your son, and to know how much you love us, and giving us your son, and that by your spirit we may know you.

I pray that you would help us to rejoice in the gift of marriage and family in the light of Jesus Christ, and that you would bless our families, and bless our love for one another in this church family.