1 Corinthians 7:25-40 Living NOW for THEN

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsick preaches from his sermon series titled

First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. Well, good morning.

Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsick, I'm the lead pastor here, and it is a joy and a privilege to gather together in the name of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, together with those who love Him, want to see Him honored and lifted high, and I hope that that's the reality of our gathering, that because you have come here to gather together, that you leave with a better vision, a better view of Christ and what

He desires for your life. We're a church that began gathering together 14 years ago in the basement of a neighborhood on the north side of Matawan.

How many of you know where Trestle Creek is? You know the Trestle Creek neighborhood? A handful of you know where Trestle Creek is? We met there.

I think I said the wrong number in the first service, so you guys get the, again, bonus material, 11 o 'clock. I said 14, and I think there were about 20 adults that met that first week in that basement.

And it has been a privilege and an honor to see God continue to grow us here, growing deeper in our understanding of who

He is, growing wider in terms of the people that are here and loving one another. And we began there with the core values of replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.

And the truth comes last just because it's the T in it, it makes the word recast, but it's last but certainly, certainly, certainly not least.

As a matter of fact, it's the fundamental thing that holds everything that we do together, and that is that the truth is the thing that ties us all together.

We sit under the revelation of God through His written word that He has revealed to us.

And that has led me over the years to preach through books of the Bible. That's been really, it's probably only a couple of times that I have preached a sermon that wasn't just the next text of the

Scripture going through verse by verse, book by book. And that has led us down a fun trail through 1

Corinthians here, especially 1 Corinthians chapter 7, a stretch of text that probably has stretched us to some degree and has certainly been helpful to me, but stretching my understanding of a text that I haven't studied in depth until these, this past couple of months.

And so this morning we encounter a section of 1 Corinthians chapter 7, wrapping it up at the end of that chapter, and it's going to feel a lot like reading someone else's mail.

I'm just going to be honest. It's like, oh, that's somebody else's letter, and it doesn't seem like at face value it might apply to most of us because most of us in the room are not engaged.

Okay? How many of you, go ahead and raise your hand if you are not engaged to be married? Really? I mean, some of the hands that didn't go up are concerning.

I didn't know you were engaged. But most of us are not engaged in the room, and that's just a reality of where we are at in the text.

It's talking about engagement. It's talking about a kind of archaic word that we would use in ancient times of betrothal.

The passage addresses directly engaged people. And so not being engaged, we would probably in our, you know, annual reading of the text, if you go through the

Bible in a year, or you're just reading through and you encounter this passage, you'd be like, okay, 1 Corinthians 7.

It's got some stuff to say about engaged people. I'm not engaged. Check. Move on to chapter 8 pretty quickly. And then the second thing is that most of us don't live in the

Roman Empire, despite thinking about it constantly. We don't live in the Roman Empire, and then we dig into some of the things here in the text that we also don't do.

And that's where it starts to get more personal. That's where it starts to reach into our lives. Most of us don't take our social climate into account when we make major life decisions.

We tend to focus on things that are much more personal, much more direct to us. Most of us don't allow the fact that this present world is passing away.

We don't let our eschatology, our end times view, impact or get in the way of major life decisions here and now.

The reality is most of us are pulled towards focusing our lives and our decision -making on things that are not highlighted in Scripture, primarily on the things that we want.

Paul is absolutely addressing betrothal or engagement, but the principles he spells out to the Corinthians give us a pretty solid framework of considering other major life decisions.

We can take the pattern that's applied here to engagement and marriage, and when we begin to open up to see that God desires to communicate to us something about the way that we make decisions in all different areas of our lives, that it starts to become more personal to us.

Once we get past some of the cultural hurdles, we see that this passage answers a major question that we quite often ask.

What factors should go into our decision -making for the future? Nothing is more forward -looking than engagement.

A bride -to -be will spend all of her days making plans and getting ready for the big day that's coming.

And the idea that something would come in and knock a bride off of that game is a pretty big deal.

So for Scripture to give that as an example should grab our attention. What in the world could be strong enough to knock a bride -to -be off the plans to say,

I'm going to put a pause on this? That's a pretty significant thing. So that helps to highlight for us what kind of decision is going on here.

In context, the Corinthians have been asking Paul questions that started back at the beginning of chapter 7. So that all of chapter 7, everything that we've been talking about for the last few weeks in chapter 7, has started with them asking him questions.

And when Paul told us he was now going to address the things that they wrote to him about, everything has suddenly started to swirl around marriage and sexuality and singleness, showing us what was on the hearts and minds of the

Corinthians during this time. What were the real questions that they had about Paul's theology? What were the real questions about the day -in and day -out grind of everyday life?

And this passage wraps that up by answering a very niche question in Corinth.

I think the logic in the question kind of summarizes like this. If it is good for a man to not fool around with women,

Paul, like you said at the beginning of chapter 7, and if the sexual standards are so high that really began all the way back in chapter 5 and have been carried forward through the end of chapter 7, if the sexual standards are so high for Christians, Paul, should men and women who are engaged even get married?

Should they even get married? That's the question that the Corinthians are asking. And in one way, this is still answering a fundamental question that was kind of a theme throughout, and that is, is celibacy the best, most blessed state of a

Christian? That's the question. Now, to our ears, that might sound strange because we live in a culture, especially evangelicalism in America in the 2000s here, where it sounds like a dumb question.

Of course marriage is acceptable. Of course it's good. Of course it's to be celebrated, right? But don't forget that this is the early church trying to wrestle through decisions, the early church trying to figure out what they were and were not supposed to do, and they're contacting the apostle

Paul to say, like, what's the scoop on marriage? What's the scoop on sexuality? What's the scoop on these things?

What do we do with all of this? And don't forget that Jesus Christ, our

Lord and Savior, who spent 33 years here on this planet, remained single.

Is their question logical? Kind of, yeah. It's not a dumb question. And then the apostle

Paul, who wrote a majority, the Holy Spirit used to write a majority of the New Testament, was single.

So it's a good question. It's a good question for the early church to be saying, is that better? Is that the best thing for a

Christian? To be like Jesus. If I'm going to be like Jesus in all aspects and all areas of his life, then my goodness,

I probably shouldn't have got married, right? That's the idea that's going around in their minds. So Paul, in biblical fashion, much like Jesus, much like the other biblical authors, refuses to give a yes or no answer to this question.

Should we go on with marriage? Well, that depends. How many of you love that answer? Love the answer?

Well, it depends. You've got some things to think through. You've got some things to work through. And it's in that nuanced answer that we're going to find some things for our lives to grab ahold of.

How do we make decisions? Not a yes or no. How many of you just would love it if God wrote you emails and said yes or no to things in your life?

Okay? How many of you know he doesn't do that? He gives you nuanced answers to work through in the day in and day out of everyday life.

He gives you principles to apply in real life situations. And so rather than yes or no, we get a detailed description of five considerations for our decision making throughout this text.

You might not see them all. You might see a couple of them when we read it here in a second, but all five are there. Five considerations for decision making is the structure of this message.

And I'll give those to you in my outline after our time of worship, but let's go ahead and read the text first without making you look for those things, just to hear how the text hits you.

1 Corinthians 7, verses 25 through 40. Open your Bibles, your scripture journals, or your apps to that passage.

Again, 1 Corinthians 7, 25 through 40. A holy word from God.

The most important thing that we do in our gathering is to hear from God's word. And so if everything else just goes in one ear and out the other this morning, let this lodge in you.

Like right now is the time to pay attention. Everything else is just trying to explain this. But let's hear

God's word. God, 1 Corinthians 7, 25 through the end of the chapter. Now concerning the betrothed,

I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy.

I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife?

Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned.

And if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that.

This is what I mean, brothers. The appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it.

For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties.

The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.

And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit.

But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the

Lord. If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes, let them marry, it is no sin.

But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well.

So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.

A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the

Lord. Yet, in my judgment, she is happier if she remains as she is.

And I think that I too have the Spirit of God. Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for your concern, and your revelation that deals with our real day in and day out lives.

That you don't leave us without principles and guidance and direction about these things that crop up around and surround our lives with decisions.

We all have a swirl of decisions that we have to make, day in and day out.

Some very big, some very small, some seeming to be small that turn out to be very big, and vice versa.

Father, thank you for your grace. I thank you that we even have this discussion about making decisions because we are yours.

Without you, we would just go do whatever we wanted and just think that okay, and live according to a law unto ourselves, but Father, we care for what you think.

We care for what you desire. We want to do things your way, from hearts that love you because you have first loved us, because you have sent your son to die for us, because you have purchased us with your love, his broken body and his blood.

Father, I pray that you would help us to see the importance of this text in light of the decisions that you desire to communicate to us, the things that you desire to do in us and through us as your people.

Father, we have the privilege. We know what comes next. We're going to sing some songs here. I pray that this would be so much more than an exercise of our vocal cords, so much more than an exercise of just kind of the next thing that the church does.

It's right there in the agenda and the plan, and we're going to sing now. I pray that you would be lifted high.

You would be exalted, that we would have time in these next few moments to think and contemplate about your glory, your majesty, you being worthy, us being unworthy, and you reaching down in love to rescue us.

I pray that from that place of rescue, everything set against us, the brokenness of the world, the brokenness of our minds and our flesh set against us to drag us to a person to hell.

The last moment, Christ on the cross redeeming us.

May that light our hearts on fire with enthusiasm and gladness and exuberance this morning in praise and worship to you as your redeemed people in this gathering this morning.

In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. All right. And a big thanks to Elijah for filling in and Dave Bunce absence.

Really glad for gifted musicians who can kind of just take over. You would not want to see what would happen if Elijah wasn't there, and I had to do that, so that would not be pleasant.

Make yourself comfortable, though. Over the remainder of our time, we're going to be focusing our attention on 1 Corinthians 7, 25 -40.

If at any time during the message you need to get up and tank up on coffee or juice or donut holes, take advantage of that back there.

I know we just took a break, but you might need that before the end. And then the restrooms are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side if you need those at all.

But again, reopen your devices to 1 Corinthians 7, 25 -40. As I said in my introduction, this passage is an answer to a question that the

Corinthians were asking. They were asking if the betrothed and engaged in Corinth should follow through with their relationships to Mary.

A question that would be very easy for us to skip over in our routine reading of the

Scriptures. This question comes out of what was likely some misunderstanding among the Corinthian believers.

Paul has spoken quite directly against sexual immorality, and now some in Corinth have taken his teaching a step further, assuming then that it is best for men and women to remain celibate.

It may even be that some in Corinth thought it a sin to get married, or even a sin for sexual expression within marriage by some of the things that he answered, especially in those first five verses of chapter 7.

Now, remembering that Jesus never married, Paul wasn't married, maybe celibacy is God's plan, which would be kind of a death knell to the church.

But anyways, maybe that was the plan. So they're asking these kinds of questions, and rather than a yes or a no about the engaged, particularly in Corinth, Paul launches out into five ways to think about major life decisions like marriage.

And before you tune out, I want you to consider the way that God desires to speak through the passage of Scripture, and really through the pages of Scripture to each one of us who make decisions every single day.

How many of you would raise your hand and say, I made a decision this past week? Any of you? Okay, yeah. Quite a few of us have made decisions within the last week, and so if you have had to make any decisions, then this passage is for you.

Paul uses the topic of marriage and engagement to highlight five considerations that we ought to apply to every decision that we make as well.

There is no such thing as a wasted topic in the pages of Scripture. There's no such thing as a passage that doesn't apply to you.

You might have to think more deeply in order to understand what it's saying to you. But he wants to grant us some tools here in this text for considering our real day in and day out decisions.

So our outline this morning is five considerations for us before we make decisions. Five things we ought to consider before we make life decisions.

The first is consider the local contemporary circumstances, verses 25 through 28.

Consider eternity, verses 29 through 31. Consider anxiety and focus and the way that those two things go together.

That which you are anxious about is that which has your focus, verses 32 through 35. And then consider yourself, 36 through 37.

And then consider freedom to choose with care, wrapping it up the last couple of verses there.

In answering what to do about engagement in the very messed up church of Corinth, Paul starts out in verse 25 and 26, letting us know two things.

First, he wants to make sure that we know that Jesus did not directly teach about the subject of engagement and going ahead and getting married versus calling it off.

There's nothing in the Gospels about that. So he's saying, I can't go back to the very teachings of Jesus on this and say, thus saith

Jesus about it. So Paul says, I'm offering my judgments on the subject, but I'm not merely offering my opinion.

Paul is pretty clear that this, far from removing authority from these words, he's actually saying,

I am one who has been used by God to reveal truth. Paul says, I'm trustworthy only because the

Lord has been merciful to use him. But he says, I am trustworthy. And starting in verse 26, he begins his answer about how

Christians in Corinth should process the decisions about continuing their engagements, the process that is helpful to us in various areas.

And a word about engagement for just a moment, just thinking about the context and the culture and what do we think about betrothal or engagement?

ESV uses that ancient archaic word betrothal, but engagement is the word that we would use today. And I want to discourage you from getting too sentimental about the subject because there can be a lot of sentimentality that surrounds some of these nuances and things like, okay, they're engaged and now they're going to break it off and oh, there's going to be tears and it's going to be really bad and you're going to have a jilted bride and it's going to be all terrible.

But what you need to understand is you need to put this in its cultural context. This was a Roman culture of all arranged marriages.

To get married was to have it arranged by your parents. This is a culture of political marriages, marrying just for clout, marrying off your daughter for authority or whatever it might be or to get in with this family or things like that.

And there were massive exchanges of money surrounding dowries during this time. This is just the culture in which they breathed and lived.

They didn't know other than this. So that's the way it was. So again, not a real sentimental view of marriage like we have, but much more of a practical thing that you did back then.

And so not quite as romantic as your engagement story with the photographer hiding in the woods to get all the perfect angles in the pictures and just the sunlight just right as it's setting and all that.

Not like that at all. And further, this was a predominantly Gentile church where some people have studied and misunderstood and misread into this a

Jewish understanding of betrothal and said, well, they can't break it off because in Judaism there's an oath that's associated with the engagement itself between the father, the two fathers, and there was an oath that was struck and it's your son's going to marry my daughter and that's done.

And it was an oath before God that was not easily broken. To break up a betrothal was a significant, substantial thing in Judaism, not so for the

Roman Empire. This is a Gentile church. The Roman law, the Roman thoughts about marriage are what need to be applied in this passage.

Primarily these are people who are coming from a Roman, non -Jewish perspective and breaking a betrothal there was very, very easy compared to in Judaism.

Often there was not an oath that was struck. There was nothing that was binding on the two families to carry this through.

So their question about ending their engagements was a seriously possible proposition in the cultural understanding.

So as usual, Paul doesn't just tell them go ahead and get married or go ahead and separate. No, he's not going to give them a yes or no answer, but he's going to give a nuanced answer that ultimately results in a benefit to all of us.

We can read this as a nuanced answer to a question we might ask quite often. Okay, I've got a big decision in front of me.

How do I work through this? What do I need to take into account when I'm making major life decisions?

For example, getting married. So the example is marriage, but just about sky's the limit when it comes to decision making that you can run through the framework.

So his nuanced answer to this question gives us a pretty robust framework to make decisions for our lives as well.

And I encourage you to write these things down. If you didn't get the points down when they were on the screen, I encourage you to write them down because those points form your application.

Those points form the grid through which you should process decisions moving forward.

The first here, local contemporary circumstances. Considering local contemporary circumstances, verses 25 through 28.

Now, according to verse 26, right out of the gate, Corinth is enduring a present distress of some kind.

He says in verse 26, I think that in view of this present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is.

Now, in that context, this is a letter written to real people. They're reading it in a social context.

He doesn't even have to give them the details. He's like, you know what's going on. You know the struggles that you're going through.

You know your present distress, church. And in light of that, I think it's probably better for you to remain as you are, remain single, people remain single, married people remain married, and go that way.

We're not aware of what the present distress is. And it doesn't really matter a ton, but unfortunately, when there's something that's this nebulous hanging out there,

I get to read pages and pages and pages of scholars speculating about what it was when nobody knows.

So was it famine? Well, there's no record of a famine. Actually, the Romans kept pretty good records of famines and things like that.

No famine in this area during this time. Earthquakes were fairly common in this place, and so people have speculated about it being an earthquake.

But again, there's just not that much that matters to what the actual problem is. But we do know there are problems in Corinth, and we know that from elsewhere in this letter.

You might not have thought it this way, and you might actually be aware of a very direct speech about a problem later on in this same letter.

Remember that they got this as a letter, so chapter 11 and chapter 7 were received by them at once in one letter.

1 Corinthians 11 .30 says this, That is why, Paul writing to them, that is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died.

How many of you think that if that's written to a church in any meaningful way where he is aware that some of them are weak and ill and have died, that there might be some problems in the church?

There's a pretty strong indication that something's not going well in Corinth. If we get a letter from Ohio and it says,

I hear that up in Michigan people are dying and are ill and weak and everything's going downhill for your church, like, okay, all right.

This is in the context of dishonoring. It's a weird context, and we're going to get there. I'm going to preach on chapter 11 in several weeks.

This is in the context of dishonoring one another at the Lord's table. Those of you that are aware of the passage, it's kind of a passing comment that can kind of jar us a little bit, and because of the context, we miss the context.

A passing comment about weakness, illness, and death at least gives us an indication that Corinth was not experiencing health and prosperity and great success during this time.

But whatever the cause of the present distress, Paul tells them to take that into account when it comes to considering life decisions, like whether or not you go ahead and follow through on your engagement.

He tells them in no uncertain terms that there is a time to consider the context, to look around at the culture around you, to lift your eyes up, not just certainly looking at Scripture to understand what

God desires of you, but lifting your eyes up to the cultural distresses going on around you when you're making major life decisions.

And his recommendation to Corinth is that those who are engaged shouldn't be making rash decisions to get out of their engagements, but neither should they be really quick to jump into marriage.

It's clear from the context that the circumstances of verse 27 are driving this advice into that local context of Corinth.

And I say that because Paul speaks very differently of marriage to the Ephesian church, for example. So to the church in Ephesus, he is very, very, very encouraging towards marriage, but here with what's going on on the ground in Corinth, he's like, this is probably not the best time.

This is not a context in which I picture new marriages flourishing. This highlights that our local contemporary context ought to be considered in life decisions.

At face value, we might think that we don't need this advice. We ascribe to ourselves being smarter than that, right?

Like we just think, okay, I got this. Of course I'm taking into account all the situations. You're smart, right?

Are you smart? Yeah, all of us are smarter than average, at least. The economy is down, so we don't buy the yacht, right?

Like it's like, duh, okay, make some decisions based on the economy, based on what's going on around us.

But I think we're notorious for being thoughtless about many of our decisions. Do you know what

I'm talking about? We can tend to just be rash a little bit. It depends on how you're put together.

Some of you have spreadsheets upon spreadsheets and spreadsheets embedded within the spreadsheets about your decision -making processes, right?

But let me just suggest to you that if you've got one of those, put this in there. Put these five things in there.

Often it's a financial spreadsheet, right? Or it's just the details, but how much of it is focused on what

God has to say about decision -making? And what I want to point out is that especially when it comes to decisions of the heart, that's where rash decisions come in.

And I think that the phrase a decision of the heart is a euphemism.

It's actually a gentle way of saying a decision of irrational want and desire.

We say a decision of the heart. But no, it's an enticement to be rash or irrational regarding our wants and to fulfill our own desires.

And so we would ascribe to that decision of the heart. We are here being given permission to consider our local and contemporary circumstances and decision -making as followers of Christ.

Paul is offering here, I think in this text, a very soft but honest assessment of the circumstances in Corinth.

Circumstances don't look like a good context for the flourishing of brand new families. I don't imagine husbands being able to lead well.

I don't imagine wives being able to follow well in this context. So he's literally saying, in Corinth, I encourage a rain check on that.

But, verse 28, if you choose to go forward with marriage, you have not sinned.

Do you see how soft he's being on this answer? He's not coming in guns blazing saying, marriage, no, don't get married in Corinth.

But he warns that what he is offering here is of pastoral concern, not theological concern.

Not an issue of sin, not an issue of black and white, right or wrong, not an issue of marriage is always bad and singleness is good, or singleness is always good.

I mean, that marriage is always good and singleness is bad. He's not weighing in on that level. But rather, pastorally, he's concerned for them.

He says, you in Corinth right now, you're gonna multiply your worldly troubles in your immediate context if you marry in a time of local and societal upheaval.

And let me give you a particular context for where we're at today. I am confident that people within the last year have gotten married in the country of Ukraine.

How many of you think there have been wedding bells in Ukraine in the last year? How many of you would agree, and keep your hand up, if you would agree that those are particularly challenged marriages during this time?

Do you think that what the apostle Paul is speaking here would come to bear in a context where there's war in your country, bombs are dropping, missiles are flying, guns are blazing, right?

And this is happening on the streets. How many of you would think that would be a particular challenge to a marriage? There's a lot going on there, right?

And that's what he's getting at here. His pastor's heart is going, what you're going through right now, I wanna warn you in advance.

This is gonna be a particular challenge to you if you tie the knot in this context, Corinth. He is warning that it is going to multiply hardships for a couple in Corinth if they go forward with their engagements to marriage.

And I think we do well to consider our immediate local circumstances. Obviously, we're not in war right now, but it's still important for us to consider and contemplate our local immediate circumstances in making major life decisions.

The second thing in the text that we ought to consider, the second consideration when making major life decisions is consider eternity, verses 29, 30, and 31.

Well, I think most of us do fairly well at considering our contemporary circumstances. We might do better at that, but I think we have a lot of room to grow in the next consideration as we make decisions.

Paul reminds the Corinthians that our time is short. That is a wordplay, that time is short.

It doesn't mean that there were 22 hours on the clock each day for the

Corinthians. Not at all. It's a euphemism that might cause us to think, though, that Paul wrongly had the idea that Jesus was coming back so quick that they should stop going to school, stop going to work, stop going to the grocery store, don't worry about it, just hunker down.

Jesus is returning. That's not what he was saying at all. The shortening of time is a metaphor for the eschatology, the end times drawing near to us in Christ.

For the believer in Christ, we now live in all of our moments, all of our days, all of our seconds, in light of the end that we know has drawn near to us in Jesus.

We live in a way that draws the end closer to the beginning, draws the end closer to the decisions and the way that we live in the here and now.

Do you know what I'm talking about? We are those who live with the knowledge that Christ is returning. We don't know when, and Paul's not telling us he knows when.

Paul is just saying you are those who live in light of the return of Christ.

We are not living our best life now. We are living into eternal life now, an eternal life that began when

Christ redeemed us, and now we have the hope of that eternity forever and ever and ever.

Paul is holding this end times reality up as a second consideration in making life decisions.

He uses throughout this section hyperbole or exaggeration in the text. We ought to live in light of this truth stated in verse 31, a pretty radical statement.

The present form of this world is passing away. We just got done singing not too long ago.

This world has nothing for me, but do we believe it? Do we live like that?

Do we believe that? Or do we sing this world has nothing for me while clinging desperately to the many things that we want from this world that it has for us?

Paul lists things that can get in the way of living for eternity, living with eternity in mind first, and it's a shocking list, especially with what's first.

He's ruffling feathers. The first thing he says that can get in the way of you living for eternity is a spouse.

A spouse can get in the way of you living for eternity. A commitment to a life of sorrow and dourness can get in the way of living for eternity.

A life of joy, hedonism and pleasure, and living only for joy can get in the way of living for eternity.

Material possessions. Oh, we live in a culture of that getting in the way of eternity, right? Or clout or fame or the way that we live and move and can manipulate the world's systems around us to our ends, to our favor.

Paul is not saying, hear me carefully, Paul's not saying ignore your wife, ignore your husband. He's not saying never mourn.

He's not saying never be joyful. As a matter of fact, the construction of verses 29 and 30, which is where we find this stuff, these juxtapositions of living as if you don't have, as if you're not mourning, living as if you're not joyful, living as if you don't have a spouse, that's the hyperbole, that's the exaggeration.

But he's doing it for shock value. But the construction is the acknowledgement that we still do all of these things without ever letting them be the central thing that we do.

Augustine said, we cannot love what is eternal unless we cease to love what is temporal.

We cannot love what is eternal unless we cease to love and value highest what is temporal.

Jesus told us emphatically in his own way, store up your treasure in heaven where moth and rust do not corrupt and thieves do not break in and steal.

Where is your treasure? Certainly love your spouse, but not at the expense of loving

God. Mourn, but not like the cynics or stoics who elevate sorrow and dark brooding temperaments.

The cynics were like the first emo movement. It's like they're the patron saint of the emo movement. Rejoice, but not like the hedonists who make elevated mood and pleasure everything, by but without any hope placed in the decaying stuff of this world.

Deal with this world in a way that doesn't place your hope in successes in this corrupt and broken world.

How many of you know that it's broken? You know it's corrupt? Because you know you buy a new car and it starts to break down and it gets a ding right away in the

Walmart parking lot? I mean, you get the stuff and then the stuff breaks down. What's Apple doing every year?

Giving you the new best phone, right? They got to keep that system running because this one's not good enough anymore.

We know that that's the way that the world deals with us. The world system and all that it entails is departing stage left, but Christians, do we have eyes to see it?

Do we make decisions based on it? Or do we make our decisions based on the thought that man, this is the next big thing.

This is gonna solve it for me. Now, the one who plans to marry ought to at least give this reality a consideration as they plan for the future.

For many Americans, thoughts about God and what he wants play little to no part in deciding whether or not to get married and it shows in the number of vows broken before God, right?

Heavy stuff. We do well to consider eternity in all decisions, whether it's moving jobs, buying a car, or getting married.

Any decision made with the anticipation that this will be it, this relationship is the one, this is the car, this is the upgrade, this is the marriage.

Beware, because I sense that in stating it that way, you might be seeking to fill a longing in your heart that was meant only to be filled by eternity.

That new sweet whip is not gonna do it for you. The third consideration is this, anxiety and focus.

That which produces anxiety within us is that which has captured our focus. Do you see how those two things go together? If you have anxiety about something, it is what you're thinking about in between things.

If you get in between things, if you're not filling your life with junk, then you have time to be anxious about something, right?

And again, Paul refuses to tell them what to do, but in giving them and us a framework of decision making, he lets us know in verse 32 that part of his motivation and part of the decision making process is a desire to be free from anxiety.

So that's a given. The given is that you would be free from anxiety over the worldly things. And the interplay of anxiety and focus is clear in this passage.

The unmarried Christian man is busy in his mind about the things of the Lord, or at least can be. He has more time to focus on pleasing

God, while the married man has more mental energy and focus taken up with worldly pursuits, i .e.

how to please his wife. And so the married man has a divided attention.

The scripture says that. It says that's true. And absent from this discussion is the reality that we can indeed worship

God in the way we attend to our spouse. The way we love each other, it can be rendered as worship, amen? That's the goal in marriage, is that the very way that you respond to your spouse is done so in a worshipful way.

But to the Corinthians and their circumstances, Paul doesn't even go there in this text. I can surmise that from other parts of scripture, and I can bring those in, but that's not what he's talking about here.

He's not making a concession towards marriage. He says that both Christian husband and Christian wife are divided in their attentiveness to the

Lord. That might make some of us uncomfortable, but I would tell you that even as uncomfortable as it makes me as a married man to hear that,

I believe it's true. Why? Because scripture says it. So I take it by faith because you see,

I've been living a married life for 28 years trying to follow God as a married man.

And so I would contend to you that I lack any objectivity to be able to determine whether I would be better in my relationship with God without marriage or better with marriage, right?

Do you know what I'm talking about? You completely cannot be objective in the answer to that question. So you must have somebody else tell you what is true.

And here Paul is saying, oh, a radical truth. So take it on faith that what

Paul says here is true, and that is simply this. I'll personalize it. I am less attentive to God than I could be if I was single.

Are you uncomfortable with that? Because it's what God says. And Linda is less attentive to God than she could be if she wasn't married to me.

And yet this truth is not an issue of sin, and it's not saying don't lean into your marriages, forsake each other or anything like that, but a real fact of divided loyalties is being expressed here in this text.

At the bare minimum, I can relate to depending on Linda more than I ought. I can place allegiance to her above God, and I know what that looks like in various ways in my life, and this is not healthy for her, nor is it healthy for me in my relationship with God.

And what I would suggest to you is that what I think this is getting at is that there are two ways to fall off the table of honoring

God through marriage. On the one side is the one who would say

I'm happily married. Now I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. Please don't raise your hand on this one, but I know that some of you here are happily married.

Hopefully the spouses would answer the same. But if you're here and you would say

I'm happily married, then I'm going to suggest to you that there's a potential fault in that, and the fault is then in the happiness of marriage, in the joy that you experience, in the things that you gather from your spouse falling off the table of too much dependence on them.

Do you know what I'm saying? Leaning too much in terms of your personal, emotional, and spiritual health being tied up and wrapped up in your spouse, right?

So do you see how there's one way to fall off on the good side of marriage? Everything that's good can get too much, right?

And on the flip side of that is the person who would say I'm unhappily married, and oh my goodness, does that come with a host of anxieties?

There's a whole host of anxieties that come with that as well. My goodness, church, there are so many ways for us to fall off the table of love and devotion and commitment to God, right?

It comes in good places, too much of a good thing, and it can come in frustration over a bad thing.

Paul softens what appears to be, whoa, a pretty dark view of marriage here with a caveat.

He is cautioning this way for the church's benefit, but he says in verse 35, I'm not trying to lasso you. That's actually kind of the word, trying to rope you in to my corral of my own preference.

I'm not demanding that thou shalt not get married because you're gonna be divided. In verse 35, he's seeking to encourage them toward an undivided devotion to the

Lord, but not requiring it. He wants the church to be intentional about these kinds of major life decisions, to be really thoughtful about it, to be really measuring it and weighing it.

I wanna just say to you, like, I mean, as my personal journey, I had nobody encourage me to think deeply about these things before I got married.

Lynn and I did not do premarital counseling. We did a Myers -Briggs test with a counselor at Calvin College, and he said, yep, you guys are gonna struggle with a couple of things, but go ahead and get married.

That was the decision -making process. Like, that's not healthy, and part of it is that our experience of not having marital counseling leads me the other way, so when

I officiate a wedding here, we usually go through five or six sessions of premarital counseling covering a whole host of things.

Let's talk about where the issues are gonna lie. Let's actually work through it, because I want people to be making an informed decision, a biblically informed decision.

Now, I'm happily married, but it's only by the grace of God, not because we had great counseling, and I suggest that this is despite the fact that we didn't go through any of these thoughts before Linda walked that aisle to me.

But this call to consider anxiety and focus is something that we ought to apply to all decisions. It's good to ask the question, will buying that boat, will moving for a new job, will going back to school, will buying a lake house, will any of that increase my anxiety for the things of this world?

It's a legitimate question. Will this decision interfere with my devotion to God? It's an important question.

And let me caution against an oversimplification of this. An oversimplification of this is gonna cause some of you to go insane, because some of you are sitting here, and you're already like, you were struggling about whether to go to the nine o 'clock service or the 11 o 'clock service.

Every decision has kind of set you on your heels. You're just not a decisive individual, and you'd rather somebody order at the restaurant for you, because you don't wanna make that decision.

You're already kind of wrestling through later this week is it gonna be a Big Mac, or is it gonna be a Quarter Pounder, right? And it's like,

I gotta give this over to God. I gotta go through the grid. I gotta figure it out, because I mean, what does he want of me? And some of us are put together that way, and it's not to be critical of it.

It's just a reality of the way that many of us process this. And so oversimplifying this could be a problem.

Every second, here's the reality. You decide to go to school. You go through the grid, and you go, that's the decision that God has for me.

But every second spent studying for an exam is a second that I could be devoted to God.

I'm divided. Every second spent working that new position, every moment spent putting in the dock at the new lake house, or waxing the new car, or whatever it is, could be thought of as a moment taken away from devotion to God, right?

And if you think like this, you will go insane with guilt and pressure. But hear me carefully.

Those of you that maybe struggle and tend towards that direction of immobilization or being paralyzed by decision making here, pay extra attention to what

I'm about to say. This is about the attention of your heart.

It's not about the things. It's not about the stuff. It's not about waxing the car. It's not about the time spent in areas.

Some can take on more classes and remain focused on God because they love Him more.

Some will do well with marriage and find that they're able to manage a deep relationship without much division at all because they started by loving

God. Some will spend the entire time they wax the new car praising God for His kindness to them, and it will be worship to them.

The question here is where your priorities lie, church. Seriously consider if the new lake house is going to interfere with your relationship with God.

Seriously consider how strong your relationship is with God prior to tying the knot.

Do you love Him? Is He your everything? Consider that.

My point is that everything we take on will add stress, but the consideration runs deeper than the stress.

Ask instead, will this added stress, which will come with added responsibility, added things, will this added stress, with this added responsibility, will it create a rift between me and my

Lord? Seek an honest answer to that question. Your fourth consideration is consider yourself, verses 36 and 37.

This comes later. It's not the first thing. I love it that it's not the first thing, but it is in here. Regarding marriage is a pretty straightforward assessment of considering yourself.

Are you already, you know, the question comes to engaged couples. Are you already going further physically than you know that God desires?

Are your passions strong and running away with you? Are you lacking self -control? Take an assessment of yourself, says

Paul, and if you find passion raging within, then this would be a strong sign that moving forward and maybe even moving up that wedding date is a good idea.

There's a tiny little phrase in verse 36 that makes me chuckle a little bit. If his passions are strong, speaking of the one who is engaged, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, if his passion is strong, and it has to be, that cute little phrase speaks volumes about an engaged couple and really what a man is meant to be in marriage.

His passion has to be strong. I don't take this merely to mean sexual passion, but it at least encapsulates that as well.

There's a desire. I've met with some couples over premarital counseling, and it was like there was just no fire.

You're going, this is unhealthy. Are you sure you want to get married? Do you really care about each other?

Do you really have the fire that it takes to lead a woman, dude? Are you kidding me? How many of you have ever met a couple like that?

No one? A couple of you? Nobody wants to admit it? It's a little creepy when you see it, right?

But Paul is identifying that a man that is rightly desiring marriage, like right in God's eyes desiring marriage, is a man of strong desire and strong conviction.

This is the way it must be for a man who plans to marry and lead a woman. He must be a man of strong desire, must be a man who is going to go to the fence for her, knows what it means to sacrifice for someone.

The Corinthians obviously were confused enough to think that maybe Paul viewed marriage for them to be a sin, and so he's correcting them just directly.

No, it's not a sin to get married. Don't hear me at all disparaging marriage as a sin. But some who are engaged, who take on this teaching in verse 37, will be firmly established in their heart, not externally compelled by any kind of binding oath.

I think when he says not externally compelled or bound, it's actually to an oath.

I have no doubt that Paul would say, if your engagement involves an oath, you must get married.

I think he would say that definitively. But if your engagement does not have any oath, anything that's binding in a sense before God, and you have a good dose of self -control, and you've determined in your heart that this isn't the right time based on circumstances,

Paul offers a curious option here in verse 36. Keep her as your betrothed, presumably until circumstances shift in the local setting.

Not getting wet feet, not getting cold feet, but actually just putting a pause in it.

He's recommending a pause here, but not a wholesale ending of the marriage plans. Take a pause to consider and see if things in your circumstances change.

Of course, this would need to be worked through the family in this context. Her parents, in particular her father, be it Roman or Jewish, would need to be brought in at this level of pausing.

But these two verses emphasize a knowing of yourself in decision making. Assess your own heart and your own motivations.

Of course, many of these considerations surround an internal assessment of your motivations, what's going on in your heart, but this one also includes an assessment of strength and heart and passion and desire.

What do you really want? What are you made for? In decision making, it's a good thing to know thyself, but hear me carefully, church, being true to yourself is certainly not the gold standard of decision making, but it is part of the process that Paul holds up in this passage, knowing how you're put together.

And lastly, we land on this one final consideration, the fifth one in verses 38, 39, and 40 is the freedom to choose with care.

Paul sets up the freedom, even in the dark, local circumstances of Corinth, surrounding marriage in verse 38, and he leaves freedom there.

He who follows through in his engagement does well, and he who puts a pin in it will do even better.

A bit of a nod, a nuanced nod to Paul's preference here in Corinth. There's no question that Paul thinks it best for the

Corinthians in their context of just heinous sexual immorality, and then whatever crisis is happening on the street in Corinth, he says hold off on marriages until the local crisis is over.

But there is also no question that Paul refuses to prohibit marriage in Corinth. He could say

God says no, but he doesn't. He's not heavy -handed, but he is very honest in his concerns throughout this passage.

And our God is gracious to use Paul to grant us a framework of decision making here in this text. We are free to make decisions in so many areas of our lives, and yet God is interested in all that we face.

Amen? How many find comfort in that? God is concerned for your day in and day out. He's concerned for the decisions that you make.

He's not standing over you ready to get you if you chose the chocolate Frosty instead of the vanilla one.

The center of God's will was the vanilla Frosty, and you went with the chocolate. Oh no. Not that kind of decision making, but obviously he has tons of freedom for us tons of things that he allows for us in the process of deciding through things.

Am I right? Is there a pumpkin spice Frosty now? I got distracted there for just a second. I think there probably is.

I think my daughter said something about it. Okay, that was not in my notes, and I distract myself sometimes. God does not approach us in a heavy -handed way about our decisions.

We are free to make decisions, and yet God is concerned for all the areas. Paul ends with two further statements of consideration, particularly regarding marriage, to wrap this section up, really to put a bow on chapter seven.

In verses 39 and 40, he says something that seems out of context. He says a wife is bound to her husband for life, but her vows are considered fulfilled at death, and really,

I mean, scholars believe that that goes both directions, that a man whose wife dies, he's free to remarry too.

He's fulfilled his vows. It might seem like a strange place for this, but it isn't, and here's why. Paul is warning about the permanence of marriage to a group of people that are considering marriage.

Pretty significant instruction. Be concerned, because there's a permanent till -death -do -us -part thing to marriage.

And further, he adds another caveat. Paul believes, particularly in Corinth, that the widows in Corinth will be happier if she remains single.

Remember that in the context of the Ephesians, he encouraged widows to remarry. Not a double standard, not a different truth for Ephesus and a different truth for Corinth.

No, the truth for both is that marriage is really God -honoring, and singleness is really

God -honoring. And we have a choice in front of us about which one God is calling us to in a specific context.

In Ephesus, he says marriage is a good choice. In Corinth, he says maybe you oughta just put a pin in it for a minute. So as we consider

Paul's words to the engaged in Corinth, we find this framework for thinking through life decisions, considering these.

Local contemporary circumstances, eternity, anxiety and focus, yourself, and freedom to choose with care.

None of these categories make sense unless we recognize that we have a Lord and a King over us. Why in the world are we even talking about decision -making?

Why don't we just do whatever we want? But Jesus Christ has bought us to be reconciled with his heavenly

Father. We have been bought back from the lives of sin and lives of separation from him. We are brought into love and life with him.

And that eternal life he grants to us is applied to our lives from the cross on.

As we come to the tables of communion once again this week, we come to remember the center of our faith.

He died for our sins. His blood was shed, and so we take the cup of juice. His body was broken, so we take that cracker.

And if Jesus Christ is your Savior and King, and you are at peace with others here in this church, then

I encourage you to come to the tables to remember why it is that your daily decisions matter. Why go through the work of a grid like this, of processing things?

Why not do whatever feels good? Why not do whatever we want? And it is because we have been bought by a loving

Savior. So as we leave here to go about our week, let's be sure to acknowledge him more and more in our routine decisions.

Let's pray. Father, I do thank you that you're concerned for all areas and aspects of our lives.

From just the day in and day out, you are with us. You walk with us. You care for us.

You empower us. And you give us your word that guides us into principles of making decisions in our lives.

Father, this message is just scraped up against the edge of marriage, and I recognize that that can be abrasive to some in the room just because marriages are struggling, just because there's difficulty.

And there may be even those in the room who say, man, I wish I had heard this message before I got married, to actually recognize how permanent it is and how difficult it can be and how it can add and multiply worldly sorrow and it can multiply anxiety and it can multiply focus in so many ways that I could be trying to work my job and thinking about what to say to my wife that night and all different kinds of things that swirl around us.

Father, I pray that you would be improving marriages by your grace here. You'd be strengthening husbands to lead well in godliness, that you would help wives to respect their husbands.

Father, that you would make safe places for the next generation to be raised up with mom and dad in the home who love you.

Father, I thank you for the cross of Christ. There are some in this room who just feel failure from the things that I've already said, and Father, I pray that by your grace, you would cover the multitude of sins that we have committed.

Thank you that as we have an opportunity to line up and remember our unworthiness, we also equally recognize the great worth that we have been given through the blood of Jesus Christ, him shedding his blood and being broken for us.

Father, let that ownership of us motivate us to go out throughout this week to honor you with our decisions in Jesus' name.