Biblical Families

Providence Baptist Church

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Amen. Thank you, Gunnar, for leading us this morning in worship. I want to start out this sermon by, besides just untangling my cord here,

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I want to start out this sermon by stating something that's quite obvious to you, but it's something that needs to be said, and that is the home today is under attack.

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This is not something new. This is something that has been a reality since Genesis chapter 3, but you need to pay attention in our world today and see that the biblical family, the idea of a biblical home is under attack.

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It's an onslaught that we face today. Pornography, abortion, feminism, squishy masculinity, transgenderism, homosexuality, the hookup culture, adultery, divorce.

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These are all attacks on the home. Now, praise God, there is redemption in Christ.

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If you have been involved in any of those things that I just referenced, you need to be reminded this morning there is hope, there is forgiveness in Christ for those who repent, who turn from their sins and believe

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His gospel. Trust Christ. But this does not take away from the fact that we live today in a real war.

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There is a war for the home. And so today, turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 2.

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Now, just a reminder for those who are visiting or for those who've had to miss for various providential reasons, on January 8th, we pressed the pause button on our

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Ephesians series. We had stopped at week 100. And then we started looking at, on January 8th,

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Christ's vision for the church. Ten biblical distinctives of Perryville Second Baptist.

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And so today, actually, we cover distinctive nine and ten. Biblical homes, biblical fellowship.

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As I told you earlier, we're incorporating these into our Constitution. This is who we are. Actually, the distinctives are out there in the foyer if you'd like to pick them up.

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Or you can listen on our website or you can listen on our YouTube channel. We've covered this and we've sought to seek

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Christ's vision for this church because it's not my church, it's not your church, it's not

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Perryville's church, it's Christ's church. So my plan next week is to do this.

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Next week, I'm going to preach. So read this this week. I'm going to preach from 1 Timothy 3, 15 and why it matters so much that we get the church right.

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And then the next week, Dr. Tom Haskell will be with us. So I'm excited about that. He'll be preaching. And then the week after that, we'll jump back into Ephesians.

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We'll also look at these distinctives again next Sunday night. And so what we're trying to do here is to just be obedient to what

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Christ has called us to. This week, I guess it's been two weeks now and the things going on and Asbury and all that.

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And it's not my desire to get into any sort of debate. I think on one hand, we've got to guard against cynicism.

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On the other hand, we've got to guard against a lack of discernment. But I will say this, some things that come out every now and then remind me that so many professing evangelicals have no biblical understanding of the church.

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And that's what we're trying to do. We want to understand the church as Christ would have us.

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We're a Baptist church. We're committed to Baptist principles, which we equate with biblical.

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That's not to be rude to anyone else, but that's what we believe. And that's where we stand. So let me read our preamble.

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And then we're going to preach this morning from Genesis chapter two, verses 18 through 24. This is preamble to our distinctives.

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You've heard it every sermon. We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man, risen from the dead and now seated at the right hand of God, the father almighty as king of all is worthy of a healthy church in Perryville, Arkansas.

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We believe taking these 10 distinctives together sets us apart as a local church in the location where God has planted us.

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These distinctives do not exhaust all of our beliefs as a body, but they are a non -negotiable part of who we are as a local church.

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We hold these truths according to the Bible for the purpose of the good of one another and our community and ultimately for Christ's honor and glory.

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Would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's word? Genesis chapter two, beginning in verse 18.

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Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone.

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I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground, the Lord had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

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And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.

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But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So the

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Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

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And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

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Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

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She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

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Therefore, man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

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And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word.

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We thank you for the gift of marriage. We thank you that you have created two genders in your image.

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We thank you that you have blessed male and female and that you have in your sovereign wisdom ordered men and women in the home and in society in a particular and beautiful way for the glory of your name.

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Help us to understand these truths today as we talk about biblical homes and biblical fellowship.

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We pray that Christ would be exalted. Holy Spirit, we pray that you would be here in this place in these ordinary things that we're doing, just preaching, singing, praying.

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We pray that you'd be pleased to conform us evermore into the image of Christ. Thank you, our triune

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God, for your greatness and for what you're doing and have done. And we pray for your continued work in this place.

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We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Friends, Christ is worthy of a healthy church in Perryville, Arkansas, whether that church is 400 people or four people.

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And we cannot control, nor actually should we desire to control, any other church.

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That's not what this is about. But we can and we must control what we do. And so it's our desire here to have a healthy church for the good of our community, for the good of one another, for the glory of Christ, according to what the

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Bible says. So I have two main points today. Biblical families and biblical fellowship. So number one, biblical families.

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Biblical families. We believe here in biblical homes. Verse 18 says this of chapter two.

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Then the Lord, God said, it is not good that the man should be alone.

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It is not good, not good that the man should be alone. Let's be reminded of something here.

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When God says something is good, it is good. And when God says something is not good, it is not good.

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Humanity, believe it or not, is not the final say on what is good and what is not good.

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God is. I see this a lot actually. This is all over our culture, isn't it? People try to tell you what is good and what is right and what is wholesome in our world today.

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And I'm telling you, God has the final say on what is good and what is not good. The family is

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God's idea. And it is good. Herman Bavinck writes, not the man alone nor the man and woman together, but only the whole of humanity is the fully developed image of God, His children,

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His offspring. The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human being might be.

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It can only be somewhat unfolded in its depth and riches in a humanity counting billions of members.

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And so God's design from the beginning was for the first family,

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Adam and Eve, to be fruitful and multiply and spread the fame of God over all the earth.

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And so what we have at the end of Genesis 2, it almost brings, wells up emotion.

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As you think about the beauty here, you have the first marriage, as it were. Let's read that again.

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Verse 19. Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

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And whatever the man called every living creature, there was its name. And you think about the man and however the man saw, it's like there's a bull, there's a cow, there's a buck, there's a doe, right?

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And seeing these things Adam begins to realize, but wait a second. Verse 20.

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The man gave names to all livestock and the birds of the heavens and every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.

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God was allowing Adam authority over these animals, but also I think showing

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Adam something. So here's what God does. Verse 21. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.

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And while he slept, divine surgery here, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

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And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

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Now, husbands, you can remember on your wedding day, right? And you see the bride coming down the aisle and it just takes your breath away.

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Okay, imagine Adam never seen a woman before and he sees her and here's the bride that God has.

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And so this is what he says. I always think about that song at last, right? Because this is what he says. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

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She shall be called a woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

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How beautiful, how glorious. And look at this marriage, verse 25. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

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Friends, God's design for marriage is under attack today, but what a beautiful reality this is.

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One man and one woman. There is no definition. There is no definition of marriage that can survive outside of this.

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A Southern Baptist pastor was asked a few weeks ago, and he gave a deplorable answer, but he was asked a few weeks ago, what would you do in a situation where two women were married?

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And they had adopted kids, but then they were converted. Should they divorce? Now, let me give my thought.

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First of all, we recognize this is a sad situation with, it doesn't matter.

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A circle is a circle, a square is a square. A marriage is a marriage and marriage cannot exist without one man and one woman.

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Furthermore, it's important to state here that God's design for marriage is one man and one woman for life.

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Now, I'm gonna read from Matthew 19. If you wanna turn there, you can. But Jesus quotes this passage in Matthew 19.

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And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

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He answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

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And said, therefore, he's quoting from Genesis 2 .24. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

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So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

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Let me say a few things, just some side notes here that I wanna note. First of all, Jesus believed in a literal

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Adam and Eve because he quotes from Genesis 2. He's quoting the, who made them in the beginning, male and female.

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He's quoting from Genesis 2 and he's quoting specifically from Genesis 2 .24.

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Secondly, Jesus believes we ought to read Genesis 2 and to derive from Genesis 2

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God's purpose of marriage. Jesus says, have you not read?

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And then let me make this note. Any person who says to you, Jesus never spoke about homosexual marriage, they are lying to you because Jesus is refuting any kind of marriage that's outside Genesis 2 when he quotes from Genesis 2 in Matthew 19.

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Now I understand the technicality. He didn't say homosexual marriage or whatever, but he does quote directly from Genesis 2 in order to erase from our minds any view of marriage that is outside of what

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Genesis 2 teaches us. Jesus is showing us here that the scriptures are sufficient to teach us

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God's understanding of marriage and that he expects us to not just have the Bible on our shelves, but to read it and to study it and to know it.

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And if we want to understand marriage rightly, we must be Bible people. As I said, that was just a side note.

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What I want us to see here is that marriage is designed by God to be lifelong. What God has joined together, let not man separate.

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So let me say this. How do you know? Like, how do you really know? How do you know if you're married to the right person?

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Well, here's a little, you can use this this afternoon even. You and your spouse can sit down.

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You can use this little technique. I don't think I'm the original to it, but you can use this technique to see if you're married to the right person.

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Okay, what you do is you get home this afternoon. You find your marriage certificate. You pull it out and you check the names on it.

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And you make sure that the names on your marriage certificate match your name, right? And if the names on the marriage certificate match your name, you're married to the right person, right?

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Because it's intended for life. Now, I understand divorce is a reality in our world today. And I get a lot of questions about divorce and people ask me different things about divorce.

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And well, what if I've been divorced and remarried? If you've been divorced and remarried and there's been no repentance in your life, well, you need to seek the

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Lord for repentance in any areas that you need to repent. But you don't need to leave the spouse that you're with now.

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Okay, because that would be a problem. And so if you've been divorced and remarried, you should stay married and you should seek to honor

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God in your marriage. It makes sense. And we live in a messy and a fallen and a sinful world. And so we have to deal with these things.

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But we understand and uphold and affirm God's design. Now, look at verse 24, because here's the reality.

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It says that, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh.

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So when a man and woman come together, in marriage, it forms a new household. This is leaving and cleaving.

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A man leaves his parents, not that he stops honoring them or whatever, but now there's a new family.

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And by the way, that's when the family begins. You're like, well, we're gonna start a family. Well, if you're married, a family's already been started because now two couples have left their household and now they formed a new household even before children.

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And then the text says they become one flesh. This is a mind -blowing but beautiful mystery.

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They become one flesh in the sense that there's a sacred bond between a husband and wife whereby they're united, not just physically, but emotionally, even spiritually in a sense.

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This bond between a husband and a wife is unlike any other bond in human existence.

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And it's one reason why this bond being attempted to be made outside of marriage is so detrimental to a person and a society.

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This bond is meant for a husband and a wife in the context of marriage.

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And then in this context, in the sacred union, two people become one, united in a way that cannot be undone, connected and committed and in covenant with one another.

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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh. I must emphasize this again in this context in which we live, right?

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This, any perversion of this sacred bond is detrimental to all parties involved and to society.

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And it is one of the reasons that our nation today is in the shape that is, interestingly enough, look at the fall of some of the great empires, like look at the fall of like the

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Roman Empire and stuff. You can see some similar things happening, right? But the idea is when someone says, hey, we're going to redefine what

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God says and you need to leave us alone. It's not hurting you. You're just being a bigot.

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You're just being mean. You're just being judgmental. What me and this person do over here in the corner, that's between me and him or me and her.

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It doesn't matter what you say because it's not hurting anyone else. Or Obergefell, 2015, that was the

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Supreme Court decision. You're going to tell me that the Supreme Court decision from 2015 to 2023, that our nation has not gone further and further and further away from the

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Lord. Friends, when we try to redefine what God has shown us in his word, it is a detriment, not just individually, but even in society.

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To redefine marriage is to undermine the very fabric of society.

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Now we're going to press even further here because not only do we care about God's definition of marriage, but we care about the roles of marriage.

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So now we get to our statement. Here's our distinctive. This is in the bulletin or it's in the handout in the bulletin.

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We believe that God's design for marriage is between one man and one woman for life. We believe that the home ought to be a place where Christ's reign is recognized and rejoiced in and where family worship or family devotions happen frequently.

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We live in a society that hates biblical masculinity. We believe men must be the leaders of our homes.

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We reject today's idea that gender is fluid and that men and women's roles are interchangeable. God's design for the home consists in godly husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the church, in submissive wives seeking to follow their husband's godly leadership, in children submissive to their parents.

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We desire to order the home the way Christ would have us. We disciple men to prize the scriptures, to prize learning theology, to prize growing in the faith, to prize humbly and graciously leading their families to do the same, to learn from and disciple other men.

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We disciple women to prize the scriptures and learning theology, to tangibly prioritize children in the home, to love and respect their husbands, to learn from and disciple other women.

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We disciple families to have regular times of family worship in the home. This is who we are. Not because like, hey, hey, you know how to really grow a church?

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Let's just talk about the homes. No, that's not what we're doing. We believe in this because this is what the Bible says.

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And so let's look at this for a moment. Male and female are equal under God, but according to the scriptures, they carry out different roles.

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So let me lay out these roles for a moment and encourage us as husbands and wives to carry out these roles.

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So let's talk about number one, the husband's role, roles I should say maybe. The husband, unsurprisingly, must take on a masculine role.

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Biblical masculinity is good. I'll say this later too.

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Biblical femininity is, it's hard to say, but it's good. Biblical masculinity is good.

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Biblical femininity is good. It's God's design. So the husband is number one, a provider.

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The husband is a provider. Go back to verse 15 of our text, Genesis 2. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

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Now, this does not mean that the woman is not gonna come alongside and be a helper here, but the woman doesn't exist yet, right?

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She doesn't exist. God puts the man in the garden to work it and keep it. And so Adam was to work it and be the primary provider for his family.

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Now, we live in a fallen world. There's all sorts of things that can happen, but listen, as a general principle, as a general rule, a husband is to be the primary provider for his family.

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Number two, protector. There's language here in verse 15.

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The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. There's language here with the idea of defending the garden and some of the

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Hebrew connotations and even later, some of the same words here used in the language of the temple. So the idea here is not only is the husband a provider, he's a protector.

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Adam was to guard, as it were, to protect, to guard the garden, to guard his family.

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That's why when there's a bump in the middle of the night, you don't have feminism today, you don't have feminism saying, well, the lady should go check, right?

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Like, no, there's an innate sense when there's a bump in the middle of the night, the husband should go check.

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That's biblical, that's good. That's not putting down women. That's not overemphasizing men. It's just saying this is the natural thing.

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This is the way God has created. The man is not only the provider of the home, but also the protector.

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Might even say this, men, we need to be more involved in protecting the things that we allow into our homes, not through the front door.

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If I told you today, hey, listen, there is a man coming to rob all that you have in your home.

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We would leave right now. We'd go, we'd guard, we'd do it together. But what if I said to you, there are things that are coming in to your children's screens and to their television.

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There are things that are happening. There are thieves coming in to rob your family, to destroy it.

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We need to be aware of these things, men. And we need to be protectors, providers, protectors.

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Thirdly, pursuers. Hey, these all start with the same letter. Provider, protector, pursuer.

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Verse 24. Therefore, I think this is important. I just want to instill some chivalry, if I can, some biblical chivalry into our congregation, to our sons.

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Therefore, a man shall leave. A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

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In other words, I just want to mention that the husband is the pursuer. The husband ought to be the one that's taking the initiative.

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He is the one here, the text says, who leaves and cleaves. So here's a practical thing, dads and granddads.

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When our sons, we need to teach them when they get older and they are ready for a relationship with a woman, the woman should not have to wonder what his intentions are with her.

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They should be open. They should not like just trying out these different ladies and just sin, no, no,

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I'm pursuing you because I would like to marry you and I would like to see where this relationship goes.

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They should be open and honest and be the pursuer. And then even in marriage, now we got to talk to us who are married already.

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We still have to be the pursuer, don't we? Because it's kind of a joke, right? Well, we've already, you know, like, well,

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I used to be fit and I used to try to work out and all those things and now I've got married. It's all, you know, I don't have to worry about pursuing my wife anymore.

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No, it's okay. Date your wife. That's a good thing. Pursuer. Pursue our wives as the

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Bible commands us to understand them. Live with your wife, the Bible says, in an understanding way.

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Sometimes maybe men, you know, like you see the way one wife may act and you say, well, my wife doesn't act that way, whether that's good or bad.

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That's right, because your wife is not that person. She's different. And so the Bible says that we're to live with our wife in an understanding way.

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We understand who they are and to love them and to love them sacrificially as Christ loved the church.

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Provider, protector, pursuer. It's not a game, right? Fourthly, pastor. The husband role is, as it were, a pastor in the home.

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Obviously, you're not a pastor in the church. Not every man, not every husband's a pastor in church, but in a real sense, every man is to be, every

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Christian man is to be a pastor in their home. Go back to verse 16. In verse 16, the Lord God commanded the man.

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The Lord God commanded the man. The woman doesn't exist yet. God gave

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His command to who? To Adam, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

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In other words, Adam's responsibility was to teach his wife what? God's command.

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So in a sense, every husband is the pastor of his home. He should teach the truth of God to his wife and children.

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He should take the primary role in this. God considers these roles, friends, extremely important.

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And He will, husbands, listen, you will be held accountable, right? We will be held accountable.

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The buck stops with us. We must take these God -ordained responsibilities seriously.

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And we are charged by God to love our wives well with compassion and sacrifice and understanding.

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If you hear this message today and you go home and you say, all right, tyranny now, right? I get to boss my, no, you're misunderstanding.

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That's not how Christ treats His church. When we abuse or neglect our role as husbands, we commit great wickedness against our holy

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God. And perhaps husbands today, there's a moment this afternoon that you need to just tell your wife, you know what?

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I've grown slack. I haven't taken my role seriously as husband. And will you forgive me?

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And I'm going to start doing that better now. Husbands, we must be initiators of worship in our homes.

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We're pastors in a sense. This is true in family worship. Wives, sometimes you do, you need to give your husband a gentle nudge about reading the

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Bible with you and or maybe with you and your children. But husbands, you need to take the initiative on this.

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We teach our children so many things and I've been wrapped up in this too. All right, listen, listen, son, right here, this is how you stand in order to hit a baseball.

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I guess I got to turn this way. You got to stand, you got to have your feet shoulder width apart. You want to put your hands, you want your weight right.

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You got to put your weight back and we review it and we review it and we review it. And we spent hours, we spent hours at the armory.

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This is how you do it. They say, no, not that way, son, this way. This is how you swing the bat. And then you see in the game, and so there's two apps, your son comes up to the plate and there you go.

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You're ready, you're ready, ready. Boom, home run. And you're excited as a dad. Praise God, all that we've worked on.

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There it is. Yes, but if we do that and our children don't know the

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Bible, we've failed. They know how to change a tire.

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They know how to work technology. They know how to hit a baseball, but they don't know how to read the

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Bible because dads, we've got caught up in the culture.

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And so I'm saying, friends, take this seriously. Let me encourage you one practical way. Let me encourage you.

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I encourage you in our memory verse. In one sense, it's a big thing, I know, to memorize four verses.

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And now in this week, we're going to add a fifth verse. But in another sense, we'd be put to shame by some of the passages that churches have memorized over the years.

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And we're just trying for four verses right now. Maybe you've neglected this. Maybe you haven't done it.

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Maybe you said, it doesn't matter. It does matter. And I encourage you in it. Use this week even to catch up.

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If you haven't memorized the first four verses, use this week. I encourage you in that. And help your wife, help your children, and maybe wives, maybe you've been doing it, just waiting on your husband to come along.

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We'll encourage him and help him. I got to move off that. It's not my desire to beat up husbands, but I'm just saying, you're the pastor of your home.

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Make sure your family on Saturday night, make sure everybody's ready. Make sure they're going to bed on time. Say, hey, listen, we're going to church.

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On Sunday, be the first one up. Be encouraged. Be excited. Sometimes I've just noticed, sometimes wives want to go to church.

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They seem to want to go to church. And then they read the body language of their husband. And so they end up maybe staying home.

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Husband, don't let that happen in your home. Lead out. OK, secondly, the wife's roles.

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Now, as countercultural as this is, we need to see what God says in verse 18. Then the

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Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper. I will make him a helper.

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I will make a helper for the man, a helper. Now, helper is not an inferior term.

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There are times in the Old Testament where the Hebrew word is used of God. God is called a helper. So husbands and wives remember this.

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We are co -heirs of grace. There is no inferiority between male and female.

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But there is a difference in roles and biblical femininity, biblical femininity is good and it's beautiful.

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And it's like, what does your church teach about women? What does your church teach about women? Well, here's a profound thing our church teaches about women.

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We believe that women reach their height of glory, as it were, when they are taught to be.

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Women, right. We want to teach our men to be men, our ladies to be ladies.

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So let me try to flesh out this word helper with a few words. Number one, teammate.

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Sports analogies aren't the best, I get it. But perhaps we can think of reverently

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Christ as the coach, the husband as the captain of the team and the wife as the teammate.

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She's not inferior. She comes alongside the husband and assist him as he seeks to lead the game plan that Christ has called for for life and marriage.

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Second word. I didn't alliterate these, I'm sorry. Follower. I don't mean, please hear me, ladies, please, and men, you need to hear this very clearly.

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This doesn't mean that women in general must follow men in general. That's not what we're talking about.

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I mean, in the context of marriage, a man is to take the lead in love and a wife should follow in love.

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This is a good and harmonious design. It actually, by the way, brings tremendous freedom in marriage.

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Sometimes there's so much conflict and friction in marriage because we just don't understand God's design here.

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There's not two competing visions or whatever. There are not two heads of the family in competition.

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Rather, the man and the wife work together as the husband leads in love and the wife submits in joy.

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This is even before the fall. Now, again, this is touchy. I know I've talked to people about this but look at what verse 23 says.

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Then the man said, this is at last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

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In other words, Adam names the wife. There's a demonstration, as it were, of authority in the man's leadership here.

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But I'm telling you, this is a good design by God. It doesn't mean that wives don't make decisions.

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That would be foolish. It means at the end of the day, the man is charged by God to shepherd and lead his home and a wife, she follows her husband in submission to him as her head.

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Furthermore, all husbands, listen to me now, must be thankful that our wives offer needed and valuable insight and perspective that we might not always see.

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You know if you've been married for more than three minutes, you know that God has wired husbands and wives differently.

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Wives, you also, likewise, ought to be thankful that your husband looks at a situation and he sees it differently than you.

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That's good. And husbands, you ought to be grateful that your wife, she brings her perspective and she sees the situation differently than you.

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And so then you can come together and you can work through these things together. And a good husband will listen to his wife.

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Frankly, a husband who won't listen to his wife is two things, both foolish and in sin.

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You're foolish. If you're a husband and God has given you this wife as a helper to you and you don't listen to her, you just dismiss her.

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You say, you listen to me. I'm in authority over you. I'm not going to listen. Number one, you're foolish because she's going to help you stay out of situations that you would have got yourself into if you just listened to her.

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And also you're being sinful by domineering over your wife. Wives, let me say this.

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A wife sometimes has to follow her husband even if she's not totally sure it's the best decision.

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Sometimes in marriage, here's how it works. And in conservative circles, this is how it works. Ladies come up and they're like, yes, submission.

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Yes, he's the leader of my family. As long as I agree with him, right?

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As long as I agree with what he says, I'm going to follow him. Do you understand that's not submission?

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That's just agreement, right? So if you only want to submit to your husband's leadership, whenever you agree with his leadership or in the hard things, that's agreement.

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That's not submission. So sometimes things are discussed. Options are weighed. Prayer has been made. And sometimes an unsure decision has to be made.

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And the husband is the one that needs to make that decision. And the wife is the one that needs to follow along in compassion and biblical joy and submission.

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And the husband, I should have used compassion for the husband. The husband is the one that needs to love his wife compassionately and sacrificially.

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By the way, husband, it's true for you, too. If like this, this happens in both cases. Sorry, going a little bit tangent.

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But let me just say this. Husbands, you're tempted to say this. If my wife would just submit more, I'd love her more like Christ loves the church.

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And then wives, you're like, if my husband would just love me like Christ loves the church, I would just submit more.

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You understand what you've done there? You put the focus on who? The other person.

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Start with you. Husbands, don't think about your wife's submission. First and foremost, start with yourself.

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Is my responsibility to love this woman that God has given me as Christ loved the church?

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Now, if you want to stand up in front of the whole church and say you're doing that perfectly, you can do that. We may need to bring church discipline because you're lying, right?

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There's not a husband in here who's perfectly doing it. And all of us can grow in that. And then wives, you don't need to look at your husband.

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Man, if he was just Jesus, I'd submit to him. No, instead, work on your heart.

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Lord, give me a submissive heart. Help me to follow my husband. All right. Thirdly, support her. A wife supports her husband.

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She's a teammate, a follower, a supporter. A wife supports her husband while he is the provider and protector and pursuer and pastor.

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She supports that and she prioritizes. Now, this is really offensive today. I'm like checking all, you know, they're going to kick us off YouTube.

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But she is, this is offensive, but she has to prioritize her children and her home. That's not, that shouldn't be a controversial thing.

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It's a beautiful thing. It's a high calling, right? And it is something that we ought to value greatly.

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For some reason today, we've taken children and the home and we put them way down, like way down here on biblical categories.

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And then we've lifted up really, really high careers and accomplishment and achievements.

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And I'm not trying to knock careers or accomplishments and achievement, but I am trying to say this. The Bible values babies.

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The Bible values children. The Bible values a well -ordered and biblical home.

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So church, if we want Christ's vision for the church, we need to put our priorities the way that the Bible has the priorities.

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Who cares what the culture says? We're going to do what Christ has. Now we'll move along. Biblical families to secondly, biblical fellowship.

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If you're familiar with your Bible, then you know the text that I read from verse 24 is not just quoted in Matthew 19, but somewhere else to listen to this.

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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. That's not only quoted in Matthew.

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Where else is it quoted? It's quoted in Ephesians 5 32. And and or sorry, it's quoted in Ephesians 5 and in Ephesians 5 32.

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This is what Paul says about this verse and his whole argument. So he quotes from Genesis 2 and he says this mystery is profound.

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Now listen to this. As beautiful as Genesis 2 is, this is what Paul says to the spirit of God.

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This mystery is profound. And I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

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What a beautiful thing the marriage is. But Paul says that marriage is a picture of Christ and the church.

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Think about this great thing. You don't think about all the fairy tales that you know, right? Right. The the the king leaves and he goes and he rescues the princess from the dragon and he brings her home and and and they marry, right?

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And like this, like the plot line of so many fairy tales. And yet it's actually the plot line of the

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Bible. And it is Christ. Now, we don't press this too far, OK? Because we have the

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Trinity and we can't separate the persons of the Trinity, but a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

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Don't overextend this, but the idea is Christ has left the glories of heaven to pursue a bride.

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And God put Adam to sleep and out of Adam's side came a bride.

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And Christ was nailed to Calvary and they pierced his side and out of his side flowed water and blood and Christ.

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Adam gained a bride through his side. Christ, in one sense, gained a bride through his side by laying down his life for the church, pursuing her, coming after her, redeeming her.

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This is glorious. Every marriage, every marriage, every marriage is a picture of something about Christ in the church.

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But the problem is a lot of marriages in our world today are preaching false things.

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But a biblical home is commending Christ in his church, Christ and his sacrificial work and his righteous life and his obedience to the law and his substitutionary death for our sins and his resurrection.

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Where am I going with this? I thought we're talking about biblical fellowship. Where are we going? Yes, in all of this, in the work of Christ, he wasn't just redeeming individuals, but what?

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A family. His church, the church of our Lord Jesus is his bride and his bride is made up of individuals and families that make up a new family in him.

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So it's important as we talk about as important as a biblical household is, it's we must not think of households as isolated units anymore.

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But now what? We're a family. We're a family together where you're not. If you're born again, you're united to Christ.

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And by extension, you're united to one another. And this reality is now lived out in the local church.

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So this is what we mean by biblical fellowship. A local church is not merely something one goes to, like going to the movies.

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A local church is a family with bonds more lasting than those of our blood relatives.

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We believe local church members must intentionally and joyfully cultivate time together outside of our regular

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Sunday meetings as providence allows. We believe prioritizing time with one another will result in giving up other things at times, but that such fellowship is for the good of the church and the glory of Christ.

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This time together with other church members is not only for the enjoyment of one another's company in the

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Lord, but also for the spurring of one another on in holiness. Okay, so let me read our verse again.

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Therefore, man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh. And I'm saying that Paul tells us in the

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New Testament that this refers to Christ in the church. And so what we understand is in Christ's redemption, he's building a family.

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And the local church is not just something that you go to. It's not like, hey, I went to church today. Oh, yeah. And then I went and saw

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Ant -Man. So that's my movie family over there. And that's my church family over there. No, no, no. It's something much deeper and more beautiful than that.

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Christ is building a family. And friends, the local church is a family. So men, you need relationships with other men in this church that go beyond Sundays.

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You need the accountability. You need the encouragement. You need the bond of brotherhood. Ladies, you need relationships with other ladies in the church.

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And I know this can be hard, especially I think about my life right now. This can be hard for ladies with children in the home because functionally it's just easier, right?

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Functionally, it's easier for men to meet than women in these scenarios. But two things to mention here.

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Number one, men, husbands. If your wife has children at the home, you and your wife have children, sorry, at the home.

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What I'm trying to say is if your wife is at home with the children, we need to do a better job at making sure that our wives have the availability to fellowship with other women in the church.

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Our wives need that time. They need that Titus 2 time as it were. Then secondly, ladies, I'm not trying to add another thing to your crazy schedule, but please listen to me here.

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I want to just gently encourage you to make, notice the word

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I use there, not find, right? Make.

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Make time for cultivating outside regular meetings to encourage and strengthen and hold accountable one another in the faith.

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I know this is hard. And let me say that, ladies, I'm going to say this too. I know that there are 1 ,586

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Bible studies out there. I counted them off. I'm just joking. I know that there are thousands of Bible studies out there that are something like this.

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15 reasons you're so beautiful. And I get that self -esteem is a real battle for women.

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And I know that studying 15 reasons why you're so beautiful feels encouraging.

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But let me say this to our ladies. The Bible holds you in much higher esteem than that.

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You were made, ladies, not to gaze upon your own beauty, but upon God's beauty, upon the holy radiance of our

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Triune God. So theology, ladies, it's not just a man's game. It's not a game at all, right?

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Both men and women ought to prize sound theology in studying it. And for both parties, we can make good use of technology here, right?

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We have technology. Let's make good use of it. We can encourage and sharpen one another via text message.

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We can send an encouraging verse or an encouraging quote or an encouraging YouTube clip or a sermon or whatever.

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That's not a replacement for face -to -face interaction, but it's a helpful supplement that we can use when we're away from one another because you may go from one

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Sunday to another Sunday without seeing anybody else in your church family. Why don't you use technology to supplement that some?

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And then let me mention this. It's a good thing to get whole families together, eat together, play together, work together, share resources.

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For many in our area, their lives are lived just segregated out. They have their work life over here and then their hobby life over here and then their kids life over here and then they have their church life finally over here.

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But Christ's vision for the church is actually something different. We don't have all these categories separated that we live in.

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Rather, our jobs and our hobbies and our activities, they're all lived within this reality that Christ is king and we're now in union with Christ and Christ as He sits on the throne of our hearts, our hearts beat what

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His beats for and His heart beats for the good of the church and the glory of His name.

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And so we live our lives and we seek to cultivate time together to be involved in each other's lives, to watch over one another in love, to help one another, to speak grace and truth into each other's lives, to be patient with one another, to be hospitable to one another, to carry, tangibly carry one another's burdens.

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You say, listen, Quatro, I hear you and it's not even that I disagree, but you just don't understand how busy my life is.

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A gentle reminder, I have five children, so I do understand busyness. However, you're right,

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I don't understand your life particularly. So let me say this, your life may be the busiest life in the history of the world.

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However, as you think about this and as you're confronted with this, here's my pastoral counsel to you.

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There may actually be things, there probably, if you're that busy, there probably are things in your life that need to be cut out of your life.

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It might mean that you need to consider the job you have, it might mean you need to reprioritize your week, but hear me here, this is

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Christ's vision for the church. This is what Jesus says in John 13, by this, 35, by this, all people will know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another.

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And biblical love, friends, is not just what does this person do for me, but rather biblical love is how can

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I give of myself for this person's good and God's glory. Is this how you see the church?

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Now think about this for just a moment. What kind of testimony would a church like that give in a community like this in the area of the state that we're in and even maybe our nominal

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Christian family outside the church? What kind of testimony would this give as they watch us give our lives to Christ and then to one another in the local church for his glory?

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All you're doing it seems like you're just always having this, you're always going to that church member's house or your church is always getting together like don't you see them enough on Sunday and you're like actually no, right?

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Because we want to be together, we want to cultivate these things together. The lives of New Testament believers revolve around the local church.

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It doesn't mean that we don't have jobs and hobbies and such away from church. Of course we do, of course these are away from church members at times, but it does mean that we love the local church.

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We love each other and we seek and we value time together.

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Christ is king and we love being around those who love our king.

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Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Christ has come and he's redeemed the church in this way and now he has redeemed a family and this is who we are.

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So, conclusion. Some of you are here and you have never experienced the love of Christ like the songs that we've sang.

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Christ loves the church, but you don't really love the church because you don't love Christ and you don't love the things that Christ loves.

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So, you need to respond to this message this way. You need to see yourself as the hopeless sinner that you are and you need to believe on Christ in faith.

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You need to repent of your sins. You need to bow the knee to Christ. You need to see the bloodshed of Christ for sinners as applicable to you and you need to not walk, you need to not dawdle, you need to not crawl, you need to run to Christ.

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Even now, some of you, Christian dads, Christian mom, children, by the way, listen children, real quick.

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God has blessed you tremendously with parents and grandparents. I know that, why?

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They brought you to church. Children, some of you might need to repent to your parents this afternoon.

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I haven't been the child, I need to, the Bible commands me to honor my mother and my father and I haven't done that.

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I need to repent. Some of you need to bow the knee and come to Christ. You need to repent of your sins and believe the gospel.

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Wives, some of you this afternoon need to tell your husbands, I need to grow in this, will you help me? Husbands, some of you need to tell your wives this afternoon,

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I need to grow in this, will you help me? But remember what the gospel calls us to. The gospel, like I already know you're not a perfect husband.

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Why? Because Jesus died on the cross. I already know you're not a perfect wife. Why? Because Jesus died on the cross.

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And so the gospel frees us and beckons us now as Christians to be reminded once again of its mercy and its grace and then we bring that again to God and we say,

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I repent of that. That's silly for me to hold on to that. I turn from that and help me to follow

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Christ. Others today, you may need to repent of a paltry view of the church and you need to align yourself even this day with Christ's vision of the church.

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I don't know how the spirit of God is working today but I am confident of this.

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I'm not always calm. I'm sometimes shaky in my confidence. But today I'm confident.

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I'm confident that as I preach this message that the spirit of God is working not just the hardened hearts that happens sometimes when we preach the spirit hardens hearts.

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That's what the Bible says. But sometimes when we preach the spirit's working in a beautiful and I can see

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I just look I see your body language. I see your faces. I believe that the spirit of God is working upon this church as we hear this truth preached.

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So I encourage you friends respond in humble faith.

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Christ is glorious. Let's trust him together. Father, thank you for your work.

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Thank you for your word. And we pray that Christ would be exalted.

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Help us now to respond in faith. We're not asking for people to come forward or anything like that.

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But we are asking that we would be submissive to your will. And if someone wants to come forward for prayer, that's certainly permissible.

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But what we're trying to do here is to be a humble and obedient people for the glory of Christ.