Biblical Masculinity and Femininity

Sovereign Grace Family Church

2 views

May 12, 2022

00:02: I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to Proverbs chapter 5 again.
00:09: We are going to be looking at only one verse this evening.
00:15: We're going to be looking at Proverbs chapter 5 verse 18.
00:21: Now for the last two weeks we have examined Proverbs 5.
00:28: We've looked at the danger of lust and its potential effects on the marriage relationship.
00:36: But tonight I want to expound on just one verse and branch out into the more broad topic of roles between men and women.
00:49: Women, we live in a culture that is becoming ever increasingly confused about the concept of gender and sexuality and the roles between the two.
01:05: If you would have ever told me when I was in high school that I would one day watch a women's sporting event and see an obvious man dressed as a woman participating, I would say the only way that would have happened would be on some kind of a skit television program like Saturday Night Live or some fake news organization like The Onion or The Babylon Bee.
01:37: Certainly I would not have thought it was anything that would have been a reality, yet we see it all the time.
01:44: It's happening all around us to the point that even I believe our governor of our state has had to come out and say we're not going to allow it.
01:54: We're not going to allow this to continue.
01:56: And this hits really close to home for me because my wife was a collegiate athlete.
02:02: She was a scholarship winner.
02:04: She went to school to pitch softball.
02:08: And I can't imagine her having to stand and pitch to a man or rather having to hit off of a man.
02:17: And the ideas that we have just continued to allow this confusion to metastasize and grow as a cancer throughout our society is amazing to me.
02:29: So I felt like tonight would be a good time to just address the subject of men and women, masculinity and femininity from a biblical perspective.
02:41: So let us read the text.
02:43: It'll just be the one verse and then I'm going to pray.
02:47: It says in verse 18, let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth.
02:58: Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
03:01: I thank you for the truth and I thank you for the opportunity to preach your word tonight.
03:06: Lord, as we look at the subject of men and women, husband and wife, man and wife, Lord, I pray that you would keep me from error as I preach, as I always preach.
03:17: Lord, you would keep me tied to the post of your word.
03:20: And Lord, though we're going to expand out from this proverb tonight, Lord, that the heart of this passage would reach into all of our hearts and remind us, Lord, that there are only two, man and woman, and that the man is called to rejoice in his wife.
03:36: And there is a way to do that that glorifies you.
03:39: And Lord, let us understand that tonight as we come together to study your word.
03:45: Pray for every man and woman here that they would hear your word tonight.
03:49: Lord, let us hear your word.
03:51: In Jesus name.
03:53: Amen.
03:55: So last week I spent quite a bit of time talking about rejoicing in your wife.
04:01: But within the context of Proverbs 18, I was talking a lot about the physical rejoicing or the physical enjoyment that a man and woman get to have within the marriage relationship, particularly the marriage bed.
04:17: Because the context of Proverbs 5 is that of a forbidden woman who is trying to infiltrate the relationship, someone who's trying to take the man away with her wiles and trying to encourage him to look to her rather than his wife for satisfaction.
04:37: And I don't want to abandon the context of the passage, but I do, as I said, I want to expand out.
04:43: And as much as when I talk about preaching, I always warn against springboarding.
04:48: I don't know if you've ever heard that term where you read a passage and then you spring into a different topic.
04:52: I don't want to do that.
04:53: But at the same time, what I do want to do tonight is I want to talk about rejoicing in your wife as a larger concept than just enjoying the benefits of the physical and emotional blessings of marriage, because there's more to it than just that.
05:12: Rejoicing in your wife is the heart of a biblical God honoring marriage.
05:24: And when I say a biblical God honoring marriage, I don't even know if people understand what that is anymore in the grand scheme of things, because the idea of marriage and the entire concept of marriage has been so perverted in our society.
05:40: It has been so misunderstood and so maligned that when you talk about a God honoring marriage, I watched a video this week.
05:48: In fact, this week's podcast is about this video.
05:50: There was a video where progressive Christians and conservative Christians had an interaction.
05:56: And my question on the on the podcast was, how liberal can you be and still be a Christian? Because I think what you reach a final point, you're not a Christian anymore.
06:03: And the the the progressive Christians were saying, well, here's a gay man.
06:09: He's married to a man and they have a God honoring marriage.
06:12: And I'm like, no, they don't.
06:14: They don't even have a marriage.
06:15: They have a pseudo marriage, a fake marriage, because a marriage is defined by a man and a woman joining together and becoming one flesh.
06:26: And when we say a man is going to engage with his mirror image rather than the the counterpart that God has created for him.
06:35: By the way, this is an interesting thought, but the act of homosexuality is is one of the most self loving or what we might say the most narcissistic thing someone can do, because what they're doing is they're loving a mirror image of themselves rather than the counterpart that God has produced, which is everything he's not.
06:54: Your wife is not supposed to be everything you are, everything you're not.
06:58: But you find somebody who's everything you are and you love him.
07:00: It's it's it's it's just a gross form of narcissism.
07:03: It's it's it's it really is.
07:05: There's so much that can be expanded from that.
07:08: And so can a God honoring marriage be between two men? No, but yet that's what our culture says.
07:14: And our culture has abandoned any semblance of what biblical marriage is supposed to look like.
07:21: Now, I want to say this and I wrote this in my notes as a preface, as a warning, I guess.
07:29: I'm going to be talking about biblical marriage tonight, but I don't want anyone to ever leave a sermon like this.
07:35: And I know there's only a few of us here tonight, but it doesn't matter whether they're six or six hundred or sixty.
07:40: It's I don't ever want any of you to leave or anybody who's listening to this online and think that I'm going to somehow exalt my marriage as the perfect marriage.
07:50: It is not.
07:52: And my wife is not here tonight, but she would have said amen right then if she was.
07:57: We had a little incident.
07:58: We lost one of our cats today.
08:00: We're sad.
08:01: And my wife is at home with the children because they are very, very sad.
08:04: And so that's why she's because she was going to come.
08:06: But she called me a little while ago and said that they're just not up to being here tonight.
08:10: But anyway, if she would have been here, she'd heard me say that that we don't have a perfect marriage and she would have said amen.
08:18: But if it required perfection.
08:22: Attained to be able to speak on any issue, I'd have to stop preaching at all because I can't preach on anything from a perfect perspective.
08:29: All I can give you is what the word of God says.
08:31: And I can say that as a as a husband and wife, this is what we should want.
08:35: But we haven't got there yet.
08:36: None of us have attained perfection, but this is what we should go for.
08:42: So just so you understand, I'm not holding myself and my wife or anybody and anybody's wife, even Jack and Shirley, who've been together, you know, for more than half a century.
08:52: And I can't even hold them up and say they have a perfect marriage because I'm sure that they would be honest and say that even in half a century of love, it's not perfect.
09:00: So we just keep that in mind.
09:03: I want to give you two parts of tonight's message.
09:04: I don't know if anybody's taking notes, but this is just help me keep my mind and maybe help you keep your mind wrapped around it as well.
09:09: Part one, we're going to look at culture shifts and worldly expectations, culture shifts and worldly expectations.
09:16: Part two, we're going to look at biblical norms and possible exceptions.
09:22: So that's the that's the outline for tonight's lesson.
09:24: Number one, culture shifts and worldly expectations.
09:27: Number two is biblical norms and potential exceptions.
09:31: So let's look first at culture shifts and worldly expectations.
09:36: As I mentioned over the last few weeks, I've discussed the subject of marriage and I've discussed some of the radical shifts that we have seen in our culture.
09:44: How many of you remember last week what I said about the difference between 1960 and now? In 1960, 70 percent of adults were married.
09:54: And today it's less than half because the institution of marriage has fallen into disrepute.
10:03: And people just say, why do I need to get married? I can be fulfilled.
10:07: I can I can still have sex because they don't think that's sinful.
10:11: I can still have children because that's going to happen when sex happens.
10:14: And I can still live with the person because there's no more scarlet letter that gets wrapped around me or put on my shirt.
10:20: So because the culture has genuinely and generally accepted cohabitation and premarital sex, then there's no reason for many people to get married.
10:31: They say, well, we're just going to live together.
10:33: And that what's the difference? The only difference? And they'll say the only difference is a piece of paper.
10:36: I say, no, the only difference is a covenant made before God, before witnesses, where you promise to be with this person till death do you part.
10:42: That's the difference.
10:43: It's not just a piece of paper.
10:45: It's a covenant before God.
10:47: But the culture has shifted and the culture has said covenants don't matter.
10:52: Covenant's what you get when you enter a HOA, you know, a homeowner's association.
10:56: You get into a covenant.
10:57: That's what that's all that is.
10:58: It doesn't matter.
11:00: And as I said last week, eight times as many children are now born out of wedlock as compared to the 1960s, eight times, not eight more, but eight times as many children are born out of wedlock now than in the 60s.
11:16: So what are some of the causes? What can we say have been some major cultural shifts? I'm going to say some things tonight that you might find offensive.
11:25: The few of you that are here, maybe not, maybe so.
11:29: You can always feel free to disagree with me, but understand that if I say it from here, I'm saying it because I believe that it's true and we'll always try to defend what I'm saying.
11:42: But if I can be proven wrong, I'd be happy to.
11:45: But one of the things that I think has attacked marriage in particularly within the last few generations is the structure of the distinctions between men and women and particularly the roles of the masculine and the feminine having been blurred and even removed.
12:06: When we talk about the feminist movement, the feminist movement in general claims that the Bible itself is somewhat anti-woman.
12:19: In fact, that's another thing that was in the video that I talked about on my show.
12:22: One of the ladies clearly said, well, Paul is anti-woman.
12:25: Paul is anti-feminist because he tells women to submit to their husbands and therefore he's a part of that dastardly patriarchy and he's dangerous.
12:41: Yet at the same time, they would say their purpose, the feminist movement, is to empower women to expand their rights when at the same time it actually does the opposite because it causes women to not understand for what God created them.
13:00: I'll give you a quote from John MacArthur.
13:03: John MacArthur said this.
13:04: He said, one of the most devastating and debilitating and destructive movements in our day is the feminist movement.
13:10: It is changing not only the world but sadly it is changing the church.
13:15: As a result, the word of God is being dishonored.
13:17: Opponents are having plenty bad to say about us, God, our Savior.
13:24: Excuse me, let me say that again.
13:26: The word of God is being dishonored.
13:28: Opponents are having plenty bad to say about us and God, our Savior, is being dishonored and shamed.
13:33: Radical feminism has brainwashed our culture.
13:36: You say, I don't believe that.
13:37: That's an exaggeration from a wild-eyed pastor, John MacArthur.
13:40: No.
13:41: I'll give you three thoughts on how feminism has radicalized our culture.
13:45: Number one, feminism claims that a woman who seeks a prosperous career outside the home is to be exalted and a woman who finds herself as a keeper of the home is to be degraded.
13:56: I'll say it again.
13:57: Feminism teaches that a woman who finds her prosperity outside of the home is to be exalted and a woman who finds her place in the home is to be degraded.
14:08: You say, that's an exaggeration.
14:10: No, that's not an exaggeration because I happen to be married to a professional domestic engineer and I can tell you from her own experience how many people have tried and tried and tried to convince her that she's not living her best life because she doesn't have a job outside of the home, because our children are not put into daycare, because she doesn't earn money off of a 40-hour-a-week job where she leaves our house and puts our children in the care of other people and goes somewhere else, that she is somehow less.
14:44: I'm telling you, I grew up in a culture where everybody in the school was told, if you don't go to college and you don't get a job and you don't make 40, 50, 60,000 a year, you're nothing.
14:55: And that wasn't just told to the boys.
14:57: That was told to the boys and the girls.
14:59: And I remember distinctly going around the room.
15:02: What do you want to be, Johnny? I want to be a firefighter.
15:04: What do you want to be, Billy? I want to be a police officer.
15:06: What do you want to be, Jenny? I want to be a mom.
15:09: No, no, no, you can be a mom, but you need to be something else.
15:12: A mom is not enough.
15:15: Being a mom at home is not good enough because that's the culture.
15:24: What's that? Oh, okay, I thought you had a question.
15:28: Okay.
15:29: So feminism claims that a woman who seeks a prosperous career outside the home is to be exalted and a woman who finds her place as a keeper of the home is to be degraded.
15:36: That's number one.
15:36: Number two, feminism sees any language of submission in marriage to be tantamount to indentured servitude and it seeks to demonstrate that men are too foolish and too immature to be the heads of the home.
15:48: All you have to do for that is just watch any television show.
15:51: You watch any television show on Disney, you know who the smartest person in the house is? Nope, kids.
15:57: Dad's an idiot and mom's busy with work and the kids are the smartest people in the house because they're always outsmarting stupid dad and busy mom.
16:10: That's the culture.
16:11: Mom's too busy, dad's too stupid, the kids are the most brilliant people in the house.
16:17: And that's not just one show.
16:18: I'm saying the gambit of the shows.
16:22: Dad's an idiot and mom is a workaholic.
16:27: That's the culture we feed into or we're being fed into us.
16:34: So we have number one, a woman who doesn't have a career outside the home is not worth anything.
16:39: Number two, if she submits in marriage, she's a servant, she's a slave to an idiot.
16:47: Because men are idiots.
16:50: And number three, feminism claims that abortion should be legal because of the reproductive right of a woman to her own body and what does her body need to do? It needs to get out and get a job.
17:02: And that baby's going to get in the way of your career.
17:04: What does every woman who say, I had an abortion because I didn't want to lose the opportunity to go to work.
17:11: I didn't want to lose.
17:12: There's a lady just this week, filmed herself screaming.
17:17: I tell you what, I never saw Legion, you know the one man who was filled with demons.
17:21: Name yourself, Legion.
17:22: I never saw him, but this lady was probably at close proximity to him because she was screaming out.
17:29: Her face was blood red and she was saying, I'm so happy that I had my abortion because if I didn't have the abortion when I was 15, I wouldn't have the success that I have today.
17:43: And by her standard of success, it was the job that she had and the work that she does.
17:50: I have no idea what she does.
17:52: But whatever it is, she murdered a child to have it.
17:56: To her, the murder of a child was more valuable, or rather was less valuable than having that job.
18:07: In fact, just a few years ago, the sitting president of the United States, Barack Obama, made the statement that if my daughters make a mistake, I don't want them to be punished with a baby.
18:27: Now, I'm not exaggerating his quote.
18:29: He was speaking to Planned Parenthood, so we know the context of his conversation.
18:35: And his statement was this, if my daughters make a mistake, it's not sin to have premarital sex, it's a mistake.
18:42: And if my daughters make a mistake, they shouldn't get punished with a baby.
18:48: So how does our culture view children? Punishment.
18:52: How does our culture view premarital sex? It's a mistake.
18:56: You see how words matter because words form thoughts and thoughts form ideas and ideas create world views.
19:06: So when I say feminism is dangerous, this is not part of feminism, this is the heart of it.
19:13: It ain't just about giving you the right to vote.
19:17: It's about fundamentally changing the responsibility that God has given to men and to women.
19:24: And this video will not be long on YouTube.
19:28: By the way, we stream out live, but I get hit every once in a while because we say things here that you're not allowed to say.
19:43: I'm going to read to you a few quotes.
19:45: Now, I will grant these are some of the more radical quotes, but radical quotes are still quotes.
19:55: Robin Morgan, who is a key radical feminist member of the American women's movement, wrote this.
20:02: She wrote, quote, We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage, end quote.
20:09: So what's the heart? Got to get rid of marriage because marriage is a slavery institution.
20:12: Got to get rid of it.
20:14: Can't destroy the inequality until you destroy the system.
20:17: The system of marriage is what's under fire.
20:21: Sheila Cronin, who is the leader of the feminist organization NOW, which has nothing to do with the NOW podcast, which streams every week from this church.
20:30: Sorry.
20:33: Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, stop right there.
20:37: That's assumed.
20:38: It's not even argued.
20:39: It's just assumed.
20:39: Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it's clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking this institution.
20:46: Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.
20:54: The attempt is not to change marriage.
20:57: It's to get rid of it.
20:59: We already see it.
20:59: From the 60s to now, it's down.
21:03: And it's just continually going down.
21:05: They're winning the culture war.
21:10: I've got a bunch of them.
21:11: I'm not going to read every one of them.
21:13: Praise God.
21:14: But I want you to hear this.
21:15: This is Margaret Sanger.
21:18: If you don't know who that is, she's the founder of Planned Parenthood.
21:20: Planned Parenthood is not an organization that provides health care to women.
21:24: They murder babies, just so you understand that.
21:27: And they've murdered babies from the beginning because this is one of her quotes.
21:32: She said, The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it.
21:39: One of the most merciful things that a large family can do to its infant is to kill it.
21:47: Now, I'm looking at families with large...
21:49: I'm looking at Mike, who's got 10 children.
21:51: I'm looking at Steven, who's from a family of 8.
21:55: I've got number 6 on the way.
21:58: And I'm looking around and I'm thinking, you know, which one are we going to give up? You know, which one gets...
22:04: You know, if people look at me, they say, I can't believe you're 42 years old and you're having a kid.
22:09: I'm not having a kid.
22:10: God's giving me a child.
22:11: And the Bible says that child is a blessing from God.
22:18: And who am I to say to God, I've got enough blessings, thank you.
22:32: According to Time Magazine, they ran an article in 2014 that said 25% of millennials will never get married.
22:40: Never.
22:41: They have no desire, no intention to get married.
22:44: Huffington Post ran an article entitled 10 Reasons Why It's Totally Fine If You Never Get Married.
22:51: Now, I understand Time Magazine and the Huffington Post are far left.
22:54: But you understand, far left drives the culture.
22:57: We have two coasts.
22:59: We have the West Coast and we have the East Coast.
23:02: Both of them, which are filled with liberals, and that just pushes to the center.
23:12: The California West, New York, Boston, Massachusetts, East, just pushes to the middle.
23:22: By the way, of those 10 reasons why it's totally fine you never get married, here's a couple of them.
23:27: Number six, getting married can put your friendships at risk.
23:30: Don't get married, you'll lose your friends.
23:33: Number seven, marriage can lead to a highly risky habit of relying on one individual for every emotional need.
23:39: Oh, it'd be terrible if you actually had to trust another individual and be married and live with them forever until death do you part.
23:50: Number 10, this is in the list from the Huffington Post.
23:53: Number 10, there's a good alternative to marriage.
23:56: It's called a civil union or domestic partnership.
24:00: Again, what is the goal? The abolition of marriage.
24:08: Now, for those who might think I'm being unfair because I'm only talking about feminism, I also want to turn my attention now to men.
24:16: There's not such a thing called masculinism, but if there was the opposite of feminism, it would be masculinism.
24:25: But as I said, I want to look at cultural shifts and worldly expectations.
24:29: We've seen in the feminist movement, the women's movement, these dangerous things.
24:33: What do we see in the side of the masculine? Well, we see equally dangerous problems among men.
24:40: Where feminism has damaged the idea of womanhood, pseudo-masculinity has damaged manhood.
24:50: What do I mean by pseudo-masculinity? Instead of men seeing themselves as the protector, provider, and pastor of their home, which is what the Bible says we're supposed to be, they instead spend the vast majority of their productive years wasting their lives with friends and games.
25:18: And it's just what the culture wants.
25:20: It wants us to create a generation of wimpy men who are enamored to dress like women.
25:30: You've seen these guys with the pants so tight? You can see their muscles in their legs because the pants hug them so tightly? And they wear makeup.
25:45: Men who adorn themselves with mascara, and you say, that's a gay man.
25:50: No, they're called metrosexual.
25:54: A metrosexual is a heterosexual, but he adorns himself in feminist-looking garb.
26:07: Not a transsexual.
26:09: A transsexual tries to look like a woman.
26:11: I hate to say it, and I'll get dinged for this, I'm sure.
26:15: A girly man.
26:18: A guy who just wants to be feminine.
26:22: And his mannerisms are feminine.
26:25: His speech is feminine.
26:27: You know what gets me when I hear a man talk with a lisp? Because I ain't never met a woman who talked that way.
26:34: But men will talk like this.
26:36: I ain't never heard a woman talk like that in my life.
26:40: But men will do it because they're exaggerating the feminine quality.
26:45: For what reason? Because they've accepted the culture that masculine is bad, and therefore we need to run after the feminine, even if we're not willing to be homosexual, we still need to present as less than masculine.
27:03: And then you have the other side, and now I might step on some toes, then you have the other side, probably not anybody in this room, but maybe some people are listening, you have the grunt-style guys, who are all about the masculine, but the way that they feed that masculine is not through biblical masculinity, but through, I'm going to go out and hunt and shoot and kill and do all these things, and drink until I can't stand upright, and smoke until I can't see straight, and consume and destroy, but not build and create.
27:35: Men are called to be builders and creators, protectors and providers, not perverts, who sleep with every woman around, have children in four different counties.
27:46: That's not biblical masculinity.
27:49: That's the attitude of the fool.
27:53: You see the difference? I've had sex with 20 women.
28:01: That's not masculine.
28:02: That's stupid.
28:04: It's unbiblical.
28:05: It's ungodly.
28:07: Like Samson.
28:13: You know? There's a biblical structure for the masculine, and there's a biblical structure for the feminine, and it is not what the culture says.
28:31: And the world hates the biblical model.
28:35: The world hates the father who stands up and leads his family to church, who sits with his children with an open Bible, and sings the songs of Christ, and calls his children to faith and repentance.
28:47: The world hates that.
28:49: They make fun of that.
28:49: They make posters mocking that.
28:56: The problem is the church does too.
29:00: See, I'm here talking about the world.
29:02: The problem is this problem isn't just in the church.
29:07: Biblical masculinity and biblical femininity are not appreciated even within the bounds of the church.
29:15: Because the church has become so much like the world that it doesn't recognize that its expectations are the same.
29:25: The people who tell my wife she needs to go get a job are not her family outside.
29:30: It's people in here.
29:38: The people who talk to us about having too many children are not people out in the street.
29:43: It's people in the church.
29:47: You think I'm a little emotional? I may be.
29:51: But you understand, this is a problem because we've accepted what the world says.
30:00: We've said, that's right.
30:09: And if you're not operating from a biblical worldview, you will hate everything I've said.
30:14: Or you'll dismiss it as, oh, he's just crazy.
30:17: It's all them kids.
30:18: You're making them nuts.
30:25: I'm telling you, I get just as much pushback from church folks.
30:28: Not necessarily in our church.
30:29: I mean, God bless our church.
30:31: We have a wonderful church.
30:32: And most everybody here is very encouraging.
30:35: So I don't want anybody to think I'm sitting here, you know, just beating up on our people.
30:39: I'm saying within the church in general, within the church at large.
30:46: So we've seen, just in the last few minutes, we've seen culture shifts and worldly expectations.
30:53: Now for our last bit of time, let's look at biblical norms and potential exceptions.
30:59: Now when I talk about exceptions, we're not going to have time to really dig into those.
31:04: But let's just at least talk about the biblical norms.
31:07: Turn in your Bibles to Proverbs 19.
31:15: In Proverbs 19, Jesus is asked about the subject of divorce.
31:23: And the reason why he is asked, I believe, is they are trying to trap him in his words.
31:29: Because there were two schools of thought during the time of Christ.
31:33: There was Rabbi Shammai and Rabbi Hillel.
31:37: And that was two different rabbis who were popular and both taught a different perspective on marriage and divorce.
31:42: One taught that essentially divorce could be sought for any reason.
31:47: You know, if your wife cooks a bad meal, she's gone.
31:49: You know, you can basically divorce for any reason.
31:51: And there was another, and I don't remember which is which.
31:53: I'd have to look up in my notes.
31:54: But the other basically taught that there was never a reason for divorce.
32:00: That there was never an exception at all.
32:02: And therefore, Jesus is confronted.
32:04: And the reason why Jesus is confronted is because the Pharisees were always attempting to drive a wedge.
32:10: The Pharisees and the Sadducees were always trying to drive a wedge among his followers.
32:15: Again, divide and conquer.
32:17: So they asked him the question about marriage and divorce.
32:21: And just look with me at verse 4.
32:22: Matthew 19, verse 4.
32:25: It says, He answered.
32:28: This is Jesus speaking.
32:30: Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.
32:48: So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
32:51: What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.
32:58: I'm going to give you three Ps in succession.
33:01: We see in this short set of verses, we see three things about marriage.
33:05: Number one, we see the plan for marriage.
33:07: Number two, we see the purpose of marriage.
33:09: And number three, we see the priority of marriage.
33:12: Just hear me out.
33:13: Number one, the plan for marriage.
33:14: What's the plan? He says it right here.
33:16: He's quoting Genesis by the way.
33:18: And the plan for marriage is this.
33:19: A man will leave his father and mother.
33:21: He will cleave unto his wife.
33:23: And the two will become a new family.
33:24: They will become one flesh.
33:28: That's the plan for marriage.
33:30: When somebody comes to me for marriage counseling, I always do premarital counseling.
33:33: By the way, if any of you young men ever choose to get married, and I pray to God that you do, and that God gives you a wife, and you come to me for counseling, don't come to me the day before the service and ask.
33:45: Because I will tell you no.
33:47: I have had people ask.
33:48: We won't do the service in two weeks.
33:50: No, I require at least a month with you.
33:53: And even then I want more.
33:55: But at least four weeks of counseling.
33:59: Because we're going to go over the plan for marriage.
34:02: And your plan for marriage.
34:04: Does your plan meet God's plan? Are you really leaving father and mother, cleaving unto your wife? Are the two of you really ready to become one flesh? Because that's the plan.
34:14: You know? And that's a big issue.
34:17: Because a lot of times one of the biggest issues within marriage is the unwillingness to create the new family.
34:26: But rather to bring in the old family into the new family and try to let mom and dad have say over the new family.
34:32: That's not how it works.
34:34: I tell you this.
34:35: My wife and I love our parents.
34:39: But they don't run our home.
34:41: And that is a dangerous way to live.
34:45: And a lot of times when I'm doing counseling with married folks, there are other people at play.
34:53: And often it's mom and dad.
34:56: Man must be willing to leave his father and mother.
34:58: Be his own man.
35:01: Cleave unto his wife.
35:03: That's the plan.
35:04: And become one flesh.
35:06: Now that doesn't mean again that you never have relationships with mom and dad.
35:09: Certainly you do.
35:09: And certainly you respect their time in the trenches.
35:15: You respect their experience.
35:21: But you're the one that's going to stand before God.
35:23: If you're a man, you're the one that's going to stand before God and give an account.
35:26: So the plan for marriage is simple.
35:29: And then the purpose of marriage is the outgrowth of this.
35:31: That two will become one flesh.
35:33: Two parts become one whole.
35:35: Two units become a family.
35:37: Marriage is supposed to be the most powerful and most serious union that you can enter into.
35:42: It is to rise above every other social commitment.
35:46: It is to take precedence over every other relationship other than God.
35:56: And that leads to the third P.
35:57: And that's the priority of marriage.
35:59: The priority of marriage, Jesus said this, What God has joined together, let not man separate.
36:04: We live in a world that is filled with people who have separated in their marriage.
36:13: And the command not to separate is mocked and trampled on.
36:17: Now, I do want to say this because there are varying views on this depending on what church you go to.
36:26: And I think that there's room for discussion on this subject.
36:31: However, I do think it's important anytime I teach on this to express the position we hold as a church.
36:37: Because some churches hold a view that says divorce is never allowed for any reason whatsoever.
36:42: And that's called the permanence view.
36:45: We would hold to the view as elders.
36:48: We've discussed this.
36:49: We've come to a conclusion on this based upon our understanding of scripture.
36:53: We would hold to the view that there are rare but possible exceptions where someone can seek a divorce and it not be sinful.
37:01: And I'm going to read to you tonight from the Westminster Confession.
37:06: We're not Presbyterians.
37:07: That's okay.
37:08: We can still look to these confessions because this helps us to see that it's not just us three and we're the ones who came up with this idea.
37:17: No, this is what we see the scripture teaching.
37:20: And this is affirmed and at least confirmed in some of the confessions.
37:24: The Westminster Confession of Faith in chapter 24, verse 5, says this.
37:31: Adultery or fornication committed after a contract being detected before marriage giveth just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract.
37:42: And in the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce and after the divorce to marry another as if the offending party were dead.
37:53: That is what the Westminster Confession says.
37:55: So it allows for adultery as a reason for divorce.
38:00: It goes on in verse 6 of that same chapter to say this.
38:05: Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage.
38:13: That's a mouthful.
38:15: Nothing but adultery or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate is cause sufficient for dissolving the bond of marriage.
38:26: Wherein a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed and the person's concern in it not left to their own wills and discretion in their own case.
38:37: Okay, so what's that saying? That's looking to Paul's words where he gives what they would consider and we would consider as well a secondary form of exception and that would be for abandonment.
38:49: So the way that it's understood is that there are two exceptions.
38:54: One is for adultery.
38:54: If a person commits adultery, the innocent party can divorce.
39:03: Or if they are abandoned, then the person who has been abandoned can divorce.
39:12: Now as I said, this is not universally understood by all the same.
39:16: And I'm willing to say there's churches where I'm good friends with the pastors that we have chopped it up and chewed it up and spit it out.
39:25: We're discussing this particular issue and I understand that there are some differences here.
39:29: But I always like to make this point when I'm teaching in our church that if we were here in the church and there were a married couple and one of the people in that married couple abandoned the other or committed adultery on the other and the person who was the innocent person chose to divorce, we would not put them under discipline.
39:48: That's where we stand as a church.
39:51: We would not.
39:52: But the person who does commit adultery would be called to repentance and the counsel that would come from all of our elders would be reconciliation if possible.
40:04: That's always the goal.
40:06: So even if a person has committed adultery, that can be forgiven.
40:11: Abandonment is a little harder because they're gone.
40:14: But you understand.
40:16: Now there's a third one.
40:17: And again, I didn't mean to make this a sermon on divorce.
40:20: But since it's out here, I'm just going to throw it out here.
40:22: There is a conversation to be had about abuse.
40:26: Because the Bible does not really address abuse as a physical abuse or anything like that.
40:36: It's not really something where we see a specific text that I can take and say, here's the text.
40:42: However, many have understood abuse as a form of abandonment.
40:50: So that is a conversation for a longer message that I don't have time for right now.
40:54: But I wanted to bring it up.
40:56: If there are definitely two A's, it's abuse.
41:00: I'm sorry.
41:00: It's adultery and abandonment.
41:02: And if there were a third A, it would possibly be abuse.
41:05: So again, as I said, if you have questions or you want to argue with me or send me an e-mail, feel free.
41:10: It is andymontoro at namaskar.
41:15: Just kidding.
41:17: Now I'd love to have that conversation if you happen to disagree.
41:19: There are differing views on this.
41:24: I know particularly one pastor, John Piper, who is a very famous pastor, holds a view that would differ from my own on that.
41:35: So if you wanted to see the other side, you could look up what he's written on the subject.
41:38: And there are many others, but I just know particularly he holds to that view.
41:42: Votie Baucham as well would hold a different view than we would.
41:47: But that don't make him right.
41:49: Just be clear.
41:50: That don't make him right.
41:51: But he does hold a different view.
41:52: If you want to know what the other view is, I ain't going to preach the other view because I ain't going to hold it.
41:55: But you're free to go check it out.
41:59: I want to draw to a close because I know I've finished our time, even though we did start ten minutes late.
42:05: I do want to get to prayer.
42:07: I want to just draw to a close by reading one last passage.
42:11: If we could go to Ephesians chapter 5.
42:14: I'm not going to give much comments.
42:16: I'll make a few comments as we go.
42:18: But Ephesians 5, 22 to 33.
42:23: When I'm doing premarital counseling and even marital counseling with folks who are having difficulties, often it is this passage that is either overlooked or is treated as if it doesn't exist or it's interpreted in such a way that it doesn't possibly mean what they think it does.
42:44: So let us hear the words of the Apostle Paul, which are the words of God in regard to the marriage relationship.
42:52: It says, Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.
42:58: For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.
43:03: His body and is himself its Savior.
43:05: Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
43:13: Stop right there.
43:13: I just want to say this.
43:14: When I do premarital counseling, one of the questions I ask the potential wife, are you ready to submit to this man in every area? Because if you're not, you're not ready to be his wife.
43:28: If you don't trust him enough to submit to him in every area, you're not ready to be his wife.
43:36: Moving on, 25.
43:37: Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with 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.
44:03: He who loves his wife loves himself.
44:05: For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
44:14: And he goes on to quote Genesis.
44:16: Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
44:21: This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
44:26: However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
44:35: So in premarital counseling, I ask the wife, the potential wife, are you ready to submit to this man? If you're not, you're not ready to be married.
44:44: But then I ask the man, are you ready to love this woman as Christ loved the church? Because if you're not, you're not ready to be married either.
44:55: How does Christ love the church? He gives himself for her.
45:02: He lives a life of sacrificial service.
45:08: He points her to the word.
45:11: He prays for her and with her.
45:16: He leads her in the truth.
45:23: And I can genuinely say this.
45:27: Having an imperfect marriage, but I can say this.
45:31: If a man leads his wife to the Lord, I have found more often than not, she is more apt to submit to his leadership.
45:45: So both sides have responsibility.
45:48: Men love and lead.
45:50: Wives submit and trust.
45:54: And that is a biblical example of marriage.
45:59: Let's pray.
46:01: Father, I thank you for your word.
46:03: Lord, I know we've covered a range of subjects tonight, and some of them heartbreaking and yet some of them encouraging.
46:11: I pray, oh God, that you would encourage us with the word.
46:14: Help us to love our partners if we are married.
46:18: Help the men in this room to love their wives as Christ loved the church.
46:21: And help the women in this room to submit to their husbands and to respect them.
46:27: And Lord, I pray for the young men in this room who are not married.
46:32: God, that you would bring them wives that love you more than they love them.
46:38: For, Lord, a wife who loves the Lord is a precious thing and will be a wonderful wife.
46:46: Lord, for all these things and in all these things, I praise you and thank you in Jesus' name.