Adult Sunday School - Marriage And The New Covenant

Is it on? Okay, cool. Jeremiah 31, 31 to 36.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, where I'll make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant

I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the

Lord, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the

Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their

God and they shall be my people and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, know the

Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the

Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. Thus says the

Lord who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirred up the sea so its waves roar, the

Lord of hosts is his name. If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.

Thanks. Now Hebrews 8 also speaks of the new covenant, quoting

Jeremiah 31 but adding some extra details at the beginning and end. So James, Hebrews 8, 7, all the way down to verse 13.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second, for he finds fault with them when he says, behold, the days are coming, declares the

Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when

I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant and so I showed no concern for them, declares the

Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.

I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people and they shall not teach, and they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, know the

Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

And speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

Thank you. All right, so Hebrews 8 refers to these as a first covenant and a second covenant.

Jeremiah refers to this one coming as the new covenant and so many refer to this as the old covenant and the new covenant and you have that in 2

Corinthians 3 also that they're referred to as the old covenant and the new covenant.

And scripture also labels them based on mountains, so occasionally the old covenant will be called the

Sinatic covenant or the covenant of Sinai and then often it will refer to the new covenant by either

Jerusalem or Zion. You see that in Hebrews 12, 18 through 24, but right now

I'll have Jesse read Galatians 4, 24 through 27, 24 to 27.

Now this may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants. One is for Mount Sinai bearing children for slavery.

She is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to the present

Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free and she is our mother for it is written, rejoice,

O bearing one who does not bear. Break forth and cry out loud, you who are not in labor for the children of the desolate one will be more than those, the one who has a husband.

All right, so very simply, the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the covenant of Sinai, these things are, this is the covenant that was made with the people on Mount Sinai.

And then the new covenant, also known as the covenant of Zion or the second covenant as you see it called in Hebrews 8, is the covenant that Christ makes with his people where his blood covers their sins.

Now there are a number of differences between these covenants.

The first one is that one is addressing earthly things while the other is addressing heavenly things.

A lot of people look at the old covenant as pertaining to an eternal salvation and they imagine that the animal sacrifices are in some way providing some sort of temporary eternal salvation, which is an oxymoron, but that's what gets imagined.

Hebrews 10, four says the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins. So it cannot save permanently, it cannot save in any kind of heavenly sense.

What's going on in the old covenant is an earthly illustration of several things, but you have

God telling the people that they can live long in the land so long as they obey his laws.

And where they mess up in some regards, they have sacrifices that cover these things.

So in some ways it models God's grace. In some ways it models the need for obedience and his perfect standard.

In fact, it's more primarily the latter than it is the former, even though it is very gracious in many ways.

The primary things that it illustrates are God's perfect standard. But then the new covenant is different.

The new covenant does not, it is designed to save eternally.

It is about heavenly things. There's no, well, I guess there's a promise of inheriting all the heavens and the earth alongside of Christ, but it's not about a particular land.

It's not about, when it talks about forgiveness, you know, the blood of bulls and goats, it did forgive sins in the sense that it paid the debt that was necessary to pay in order that the people could continue living in the land, right?

It's not forgiving in the way that we mean it where we're talking about an eternal forgiveness. It's just in a, not temporary, but temporal way, right?

The blood of bulls and goats, making it so that, okay, your sins are covered so that you can live in the land not so that you can be right with God or anything like that.

Okay, hopefully that makes sense. So these two covenants are addressing different things. Any questions about the new covenant and the old covenant before I move on?

Because this is kind of, that is kind of foundational. I did do that really quickly. Okay, all right.

Now let's talk about the covenantal nature of marriage. So note that in that Jeremiah 31 passage, the

Lord speaks of the old covenant as being a marriage covenant. He says, although I was a husband to them, right?

In Jeremiah 31, 32. So he is, God himself is identifying this as a marriage covenant.

So this is not us, once again, finding arbitrary things about salvation and trying to apply them to marriage.

God is really giving us all the signals that this is teaching us about marriage. Or rather that that's one of the applications.

Obviously there's far more important things involved in the new covenant than just teaching us about practical tips about marriage, but it does have implications.

If marriage is supposed to be a model of the union between Christ and the church. All right, so marriage should be covenantal.

You know, there are a lot of people who are pretty satisfied to live as a romantic couple without having the union established through a covenant, through an actual marriage.

You know, maybe they're even fine building a family together without having gone through the actual making vows together.

But this is not what marriage ought to be. And consider how hopeless the church would be if Christ had not made, you know, if the

Lord had not made an oath with his people. Hebrews 6, 17 and 18 talks about how we need that assurance that God is not going to back out of his arrangement with us.

First John 1, 9 says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

If you've ever wondered about that, like why is he just, in what sense does he owe us forgiveness if we confess our sins?

He doesn't owe us forgiveness, but he does in terms of what he has promised, right? He has made an oath that he will forgive.

And so this is the guarantee that we have. And we have no guarantee apart from him committing to it covenantally.

All right, yeah, otherwise the relationship either with God or between a married couple is perpetually precarious.

You know, it can always, it could always break apart. There's nothing binding it together. Now some people see covenants as being, you know, sterile and business -like, right?

So that doesn't seem like it would add to the warm, organic love of a marriage, right?

Just to have this like contract. But if you consider what a covenant is or what a, or what the vow is, what a vow is or an oath is when you make it, when you stand before God and you call him to judge you, basically you're praying a prayer of self -imprecation.

If you've ever heard of the imprecatory psalms, these are the ones where David is praying for judgment on the enemies of God.

When you make a vow, you are praying a prayer of self -imprecation. You are talking to God and you're asking

God to judge you. You're asking God to put your own life at risk, your own well -being at risk for the sake of truth, right?

And you're saying that, you know, if I am found to be false let me bear the consequences of that in extra measure.

And what is the greatest love that someone can have for someone else? John 15, 13 says, greater love has no man than this and a man lay down his life for his friends.

So when you make a vow and you're putting your life in God's hands, not that it isn't already, but even in a greater measure, based on your truthfulness and upholding your oath or your vow.

And when we say truthfulness there, that could be for a promissory oath of something that you're saying that you will do in the future, like marriage, or it could be for an assertatory oath, which is like what you swear in court, where you say, if my words be found false, you know, may

God judge me. Yeah, greater love has no man than this and a man lay down his life for a friend.

So this really is the greatest act of love, is to be willing to lay down your life like that.

And that is what that vow does. It says that, you know, my life is more, or the truth of this covenant, the upholding of this covenant is more important than my own life.

All right. Now, I think it's also worth observing the asymmetry that exists here.

In the covenant that exists between creator and creature, the creature benefits far more, right?

Mankind, the church, is dependent on this oath of God. God is not dependent on the oath.

And so we benefit far more from that. And we've observed a number of times that there are a lot of extremes between Christ and the church that are, that are, when you looked at human marriage, are viewed similarly, but on a narrower scope of the spectrum.

The same thing is here, right? Really is the woman that benefits primarily from the covenant that's being made, the harm of abandonment to women, especially if they end up having children, right?

And they're left in a place where they have to care for the children, but they don't have, and then it's even harder to make income when you've got children to take care of.

Much more harmful to the woman than to the man. So as the new covenant is seen as especially an act of love from Christ to the church, so with human marriage, the covenant should be seen, not as though it's not a mutual act of love, but primarily one from the husband to the wife.

Any questions about anything that we've covered so far? All right, the next thing that we should observe about the new covenant is, and the old covenant also, is faithfulness in marriage.

In this transition, you see the difficulty of maintaining it, right? It said at the beginning of Hebrews 8, for if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second, for finding fault with them.

So he talks about the first covenant having a fault. What is the fault in the first covenant? It's the people.

It's not really the covenant itself. It's the people are not good at upholding it.

And so, yeah, covenants are hard to uphold. And even though, if you look at divorce rates and marriage rates, it looks like things are getting better in some ways, but that's primarily because people are pushing off marriage.

So yes, there are less divorces happening, but the reality is, it is still, the old statistic is still true that nearly 50 % of marriages end not in one party dying, but in divorce.

So yeah, that's been a perpetual statistic for some time in the U .S.

Of course, the U .S., those rates are much higher than in most of the world. But yeah, the prevalence of unfaithfulness requires vigilance in marriage.

So just as the church needs to avoid temptation in committing spiritual adultery by going after idols or things that would tear its heart away from God, so it is that couples need to avoid those things that would tear their hearts away from one another.

A lot of people dabble in pornography thinking that there's no real danger, but the reality is, even moderately sexually inappropriate entertainment is a danger to upholding that marriage.

It's not real vigilance. And then, yeah, many neglect their spouses with giving their affections, not realizing that they may be breeding the discontentment that would lead to unfaithfulness.

Not that if someone commits adultery, that could ever depend on the other person.

You know, their sin is their own, but blood is on your hands if you tempt someone else toward it. So yeah, many people neglect their spouses, not realizing that this is part of upholding faithfulness in a marriage.

And then also, a lot of people think that they can have deep friendships with the opposite sex without that being a pitfall.

It's really just impossible. God has made men and women to be attracted to each other, to have developed special connections with one another.

And if you develop any kind of deep friendship beyond what is appropriate with a sister or brother, yeah, you will end up having your heart pulled away.

You know, just like the Bible says that friendship with the world is enmity with God. You know, if the church makes friends with the world, it can't maintain friendship with God at the same time.

It will necessarily pull its heart away from the world, or sorry, its heart away from God. All right, okay, now the

Lord's answer to Israel's unfaithfulness in the new covenant is that the new covenant changes hearts, right?

It says, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I'll put my laws into their mind, and on their heart

I will also write them. So he's actually transforming us, changing us so that we will be covenant keepers.

And I will be a God to them, and they will be a people to me. And they will not teach every man his fellow citizen, and every man his brother, saying, know the

Lord, for all will know me, from the least to the greatest of them. So God transforms through the new covenant.

This is really what makes him the perfect husband, right? Christ is the perfect husband. It is because he is able to transform the bride to uphold the covenant, and he's able to, by his own power, make sure that the covenant is kept on both ends.

Now, once again, you've got this extreme. We've talked about these extremes before, where, okay,

Christ is perfect and omnipotent, and he's choosing something that has no value. Now, that doesn't necessarily need to be translated into marriage as, oh yeah, a husband should not evaluate potential wives based on any kind of qualities that they might have.

But he should be thinking about how he can give to her, and the potential of the union, and not just thinking about this as, what is she giving me?

He should be thinking about what he should be giving her. The same thing is true here, where, yes, spouses don't have omnipotence to transform the other, but they should realize they do have a limited capacity to turn the hearts of the other toward themselves.

First Peter 3 .1 says, likewise, you wives, be in submission to your own husbands, that even if any do not obey the word, they may, without the word, be gained by the behavior of their wives.

So this is saying that wives can, by their behavior, turn their husbands' hearts toward themselves so that they would obey

God. First Corinthians 7 .16, for how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband?

Or how do you know, O husband, whether you shall save your wife? Now, all of this is divine activity by God, but God has made it so that husbands and wives have a special influence over each other.

To transform the heart of the other, right? To, by the mercy of God, be an instrument in that process.

Both in making them, helping them to be faithful to him, but then as a byproduct, faithful to each other as well, since that is part of God's will.

Ephesians 5 .25 through 26 says, husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of the water with the word, and here you have the application being made directly, that as Christ washed the church, the water of the word, transforming her, husbands are supposed to love similarly.

Obviously, not identically. We don't have the power to, but similarly. And last time we talked about this under the head of Christ's kingship, that in as much as that's reflected in the husband in the marriage, there's a special power in that office to persuade.

God has given people in places of authority, even using the same words as someone might in another position, power to persuade, because people owe it to hear the one who is in authority.

So yeah, husbands have a special ability to do this, but as we see in scripture, we see that in both directions, between husband and wives, not just in one direction as it is with Christ and the church.

Okay, any question about faithfulness in marriage? All right, continuing on to forgiveness.

Yeah, we see the need for forgiveness being important here. God repeatedly, even though the old covenant was a marriage covenant,

God is repeatedly forgiving the spiritual adultery of Israel, even when they go away to other gods.

He still is very forgiving. Now, not perpetually so, because ultimately, that all comes to an end, it becomes obsolete, as it said in Hebrews 8.

But yeah, the Lord did forgive them a number of times. I'd like to get a volunteer to read

Exodus 32, seven through 14. Yeah, Exodus 32, seven through 14.

Emmanuel, go for it. Exodus 32, seven through 14. Yes, yes.

Here you go, Mike. And the Lord said to Moses, go down for your people whom you brought up out to the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.

They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them.

They have bathed for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, these are your gods,

O Israel, who brought you up out to the land of Egypt. And the

Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff -necked people.

Now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them in order that I may make a great nation of you.

But Moses implored the Lord, his God, and said, O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you have brought out to the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

Why should the Egyptians say, with evil intent, did he bring them out to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth?

Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people.

Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you swore by your own self and said to them,

I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that I have promised

I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever.

And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.

So there you have, in the Old Covenant, people immediately, after it's given, or while it's being given,

I suppose, go off and they immediately commit spiritual adultery, going after other gods.

And through the prayers of Moses, God is forgiving. And then in the

New Covenant, you have forgiveness from all transgressions. You saw at the end of Hebrews 8, it said, for I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

And then in Romans 8, 1, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Yeah, because no one is perfect, successful marriages really thrive when there is a lot of forgiveness from the parties to each other.

And I would go further and say that this is, this also has implications for if there is adultery and the covenant is truly broken in more than just a superficial sense.

If the covenant really is to love each other with all your heart, then we're failing at that constantly.

And obviously, there needs to be forgiveness there. But if it's broken in a substantial way, where it would actually authorize divorce, it's still very reasonable, given the kind of forgiveness we see from God for the innocent party to pursue forgiveness if the guilty party repents.

And this is not owed by virtue of the marriage covenant, but that's what makes it truly gracious.

So of course, different situations are gonna require different things if the one party is not repentant.

Obviously, there's no, if someone has abandoned and is sleeping with someone else, is not repentant of that, there's not really a way for you to preserve that marriage.

But if they have repented, right, if they come to you and want forgiveness, it's not necessarily the right

Christian approach just to say, well, no, by the covenant, I'm able to just make a divorce here, cancel this out.

And forgiveness is a good thing, even in marriage, even in those extreme cases. Once again, this is not, if you're a true

Christian, you will forgive by maintaining the marriage and not divorcing, but I'm just saying that it is warranted more often than people might think.

Okay, any questions on that, on forgiveness in marriage? All right, let's go on to perpetuity also.

Perpetuity in marriage. The covenant between the Lord and Israel lasts in the old covenant until it's broken by unfaithfulness.

But otherwise, it's referred to frequently as an everlasting covenant. I think this really confuses people because you have all these things in the

Bible that are spoken of as everlasting covenants, but then you realize, okay, well, that means that there's no term set on it, but that doesn't mean it can't be broken.

The fact that it's everlasting doesn't mean it can't be broken, and once it's broken, it stops functioning, it grows obsolete, et cetera.

Leviticus 24, seven through eight says, and you shall put pure frankincense on each row that it may be to the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire to Jehovah.

Every Sabbath, he will set it in order before Jehovah continually. It is on behalf of the children of Israel, an everlasting covenant.

Okay, so this is an everlasting covenant, and yet we don't put frankincense in rows or bread for memorial anymore.

How do those two match? Well, the old covenant, it's not the fact that these covenants are everlasting, like I said, does not mean that they can't be broken.

Those two are not, yeah, synonyms. Yeah, go ahead. Maybe I'm jumping a little bit ahead.

Do some kind of spiritual benefits from the old covenant come over? So, first I would say, yeah, according to Presbyterian covenant theology, the church is

Israel. In Baptist covenant theology, the church, Israel's a type of the church, right?

And so it's not like these are actually the same identity, because in Presbyterian covenant theology, the old covenant is the new covenant.

It's just a different administration of the same covenant. In typical Baptist covenant theology, these are actually two different covenants, and so the church and Israel are two different entities, even though there is a profound illustration and connection between the two in that way.

But then, yeah, as to your other question, do some of those benefits from the old covenant carry over?

Well, God's blessings on obedience are part of his character, and so that certainly continues.

The fact that it's the first covenant with a promise, so think about what the promise was, that you will live long in the land, right?

That's not guaranteed to children now who obey their parents, that they'll get to live in Israel, right, in the land of Canaan.

So the way that that applies is something different, but yeah. Okay, sure.

I'm not sure. I imagine it's, oh, what's the Hebrew word for earth?

It's like yetz or something. Josh, is it etz? What's the word for earth in, or land, etz?

Eretz, that's it, eretz, yeah. I imagine that's all it is, which typically would be the land.

Yeah, I'm not sure, but the point is, yeah, the old covenant blessings that had to do with this particular people and this particular land and these particular ordinances is no more.

However, those things are illustrations of how God deals with his people in general, and yeah, and yes, there are blessings for obedience even now.

Okay, yes. Right, right, yeah,

Romans 2, Romans 2 and Hebrews 8. Yeah, the law, right, okay.

Yeah, it talks about, yeah, God being on our mind, but it actually talks about the law written on the heart in the next chapter too.

Yeah, so right, that was there even before Exodus 20, right, and so that is, yeah, that continues on.

So traditionally, the Reformed theology has broken down the law of Israel into moral, civil, and ceremonial, right?

And so some laws or some aspects of some of the laws represent eternal moral duties between God and man, and so those continue on, right?

And if the 10 Commandments are that, then yeah, honor your father and mother. The obligation is not because of the old covenant, right?

The obligation is because that's written on the heart. And the blessing, you know, the blessing is because of God's character, not that he owes us blessing, but he does reward his people.

But yeah, the blessing is not the same blessing. But yeah, so the moral law continues forever, but the other ones are, yeah, the ceremonial law is abrogated with the temple, and the civil law is abrogated with the nation.

All right, let's, and that's also why it says growing obsolete.

It doesn't really become obsolete until the temple itself is destroyed. That's when it really becomes obsolete, which was 70

AD, which is, you know, 30 years later than a lot of this stuff is being written, or 10 years later, depending on which books.

Okay. Yes, you also have the covenant of circumcision spoken the same way.

He who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money must be circumcised. And my covenant will be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.

This is Genesis 17, 13. But then Galatians 5, two through three, say that it's not, yeah, it's not something that's a requirement anymore.

Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing. Yes, I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is a debtor to do the whole law.

So that covenant of circumcision is ended, though it is everlasting. How? It is something that is possible to be obsolete, to be broken.

Being everlasting doesn't mean that it can't be obsoleted. The difference with the new covenant is that it cannot be obsoleted.

It is everlasting like these other covenants, but then on top of that, there's no way to break it. There's no way to obsolete it.

That's why Jeremiah 31, 35 through 36 talked about, it said, thus says

Jehovah, who gives the sun for a light by day and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who stirs up the sea so that the waves thereof roar.

Jehovah is his name. If these ordinances depart from me, declares the Lord, then the seed of Israel also will cease from being a nation before me forever.

Okay, so, and establishing a new covenant, he talks about his ability to uphold it forever because he is going to forgive forever.

Right, Hebrews 7, 25. Therefore, he's able to save to the uttermost, you know, meaning forever, those who draw near to God through him, seeing he who ever lives to make intercession for them.

So the other, in the old covenant, the priests are dying all the time. This is a symbol that it's not something that can last forever, right?

But in the new covenant, you have a priest who lives forever. He's able to uphold forever. And so, not only is the covenant everlasting in that there are no term limits set on it, but it's also everlasting in the sense that it can't be obsoleted, it can't be broken.

Yeah, so, similarly, in marriage, I think it's right to think of marriage the same way as an everlasting covenant.

You know, that doesn't mean it can't be broken. That doesn't mean it can't be obsoleted. It becomes obsoleted when one party dies, right?

And, you know, even if there's no moral failing. But then also, it can be broken. And I think this is a problem with the permanence view of marriage, right?

So the permanence view of marriage says that divorce is just never okay. It's never, like even in the cases of adultery, the innocent party should not divorce.

That's not acceptable by God. He wouldn't regard that as being a legitimate divorce.

So I think it makes this mistake. It makes the mistake of thinking that the perpetuity of something means that it can't be obsoleted or broken.

A lot of these things are built into just Genesis 2, right, where it explains it.

If you understand what a covenant is, it all makes sense. You know, if the covenant is to do this, right, if it is to be one flesh, and it is possible to not be one flesh, then that means the covenant can be broken.

It's really that simple. If the covenant can be broken, then that means it can end. Like, it's really that simple.

It, we should not, it's wrong to study marriage by just going through all the proof texts about marriage and try to collect them as a rule book.

You know, and this is what the Pharisees were doing, and that's why Jesus said, from the beginning it was not so, you know, because they had come up with exceptions because they were treating it as some kind of rule book where you're looking just for all the little punctiliar little things that you collect and put into a collection together, whereas really what

God is giving us all those other details for is to help clarify just the one simple truth that really contains it all.

Therefore, the two shall be one flesh, and that contains everything you need if you understand how a covenant works.

If that can be broken, it can be broken, and that's really, like, the definition of what a covenant is. So to say that the covenant could be broken, but then it's still permanent and lasts is, yeah, it's an odd, an odd position.

Okay, yes? Oh, yeah, yeah.

Right, it's because, like I said, a lot of these things where you see these ends of the spectrum where the church has nothing to offer, and Christ is omnipotent, right?

The way we see that worked out is, like, here on the spectrum, right, as opposed to these polar opposites where the church is completely unable, and Christ is completely able.

And so as you bring them in here, yeah, you just don't have the same divine power.

Right, exactly. But the similarity, the analogy still holds, right? It's just not with those extremes.

Okay. Yeah, let's keep going here.

See, I think I lost some of my notes. All right. All right.

Okay, yes. Baptism. Let's see how much time we got.

We don't have that much time. All right, baptism is a mark of new covenant membership symbolizing our union with Christ.

First Corinthians 12, 13 says, for in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we're all made to drink of one spirit.

So yeah, baptism symbolizes this drawing in together and union. Some have taken

Ephesians 5, 25 as speaking particularly about baptism. Ephesians 5 saying that he might sanctify, 26 saying that he might sanctify it having cleansed it by the washing of the water with the word.

I do not think that's what that's talking about. Certainly baptism symbolizes the cleansing of the church, but it's not clear that Paul, when he talks about washing with the water, the word that he's talking particularly about baptism.

So first thing is that, and yeah, and a lot of the reasons, a lot of the things

I'm interacting with because I'm reading a lot of puritans and reformers on marriage, they tend to have

Presbyterian views of things. So they see baptism as primarily a symbol of washing, right?

But as a crudo baptist, we see it primarily, not that it's not also a symbol of washing, but we see it primarily as a symbol of being united with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection.

And so, yeah, that's the first part, is that baptism isn't primarily symbolizing washing. Second, I think there's a reason to see him as primarily evoking

Old Testament imagery rather than New Testament imagery. Ezekiel 16, four says, and as for your nativity, this is talking about the people of God.

In the day you were born, your umbilical cord was not cut, neither were you washed in water to cleanse you.

You were not rubbed with salt at all, nor swaddled at all. I know some of you are just tuning in for this, but we have gone through a bunch of passages.

And Ezekiel 16, you have a picture of God basically adopting this infant that has, you know, that's, what's the right word?

That's wallowing in its blood. And taking care of it, washing it with water. And then later, when that infant is finally at the age for marriage, he makes a covenant with a woman and marries her.

And so, I think this is supposed to be a callback to Ezekiel 16. But, yeah, certainly there's a relation between baptism and the cleansing that we see here, but I don't think that's specifically what

Paul is talking about. All right, but still, the implications for, of baptism, given that it does represent the new covenant, are significant.

You know, it shows the need for sacrifice, right? If we are supposed to identify with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, you know, there's a need for sacrifice.

Also, if it represents the end of a former life at the beginning of a new one. You know, you're supposed to leave your father and mother.

We've talked about that before. And become one flesh, you know, there's a new identity that is had through this.

And baptism represents that as well. So, there's lessons to be learned from baptism, yes. No, I'm saying that I don't think he is particularly talking about baptism when he says this.

At the same time, since we're talking about the new covenant, I'm addressing, I'm addressing baptism because baptism symbolizes our entry into the new covenant.

Right, and it does have implications, right? If it represents our death with Christ, you know, it represents our need for sacrifice.

If it represents a new life, right? It is the case that we leave behind an old life when we enter marriage and start a new life, yeah.

Does that answer the question? Okay, sorry. You're talking about washing with the water of the word?

Oh yeah, I've talked about that. I've mentioned that a lot, and it is very practical. We're not talking about washing with the water of the word.

We're talking about baptism, right? We're talking about the new covenant, talking about baptism, and just as a side note, I'm saying, is this talking about baptism?

I don't think it primarily is, but baptism has some implications. But yeah, washing with the water of the word, obviously, it's in a passage about marriage.

It's got a lot of practical applications, yeah. Yeah, no worries. All right, and then the

Lord's Supper, also related to the new covenant. On the night Jesus was betrayed, he establishes the

Lord's Supper. He memorializes his death, particularly in the cup.

He memorializes the new covenant in his blood. Let's see, do we have time for, okay.

Yeah, let's go ahead and get a couple more volunteer readers. If we could do one in Luke 22 and one in 1

Corinthians 11. Luke 22, yeah, beginning in verse 15.

And then, Brayden, if you wanna do 1 Corinthians 11, beginning in 23. So yeah,

James, verses 15 through 20. Thanks. And he said to them,

I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you

I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, take this and divide it among yourselves.

For I tell you that from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, this is my body which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

Thanks. All right, so the other synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, talk about this too, but maybe even more enlightening is

Paul's reporting of it, which is in 1 Corinthians 11. Brayden, if you could read verses 23 through 26.

All right, this is 1 Corinthians 11, 23 through 26. For I received from the

Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, also, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the

Lord's death until he comes. Thanks. All right, so we're to remember Christ's death until he comes, and this is a new covenant remembrance.

This absence indicates this covenant is one of betrothal. And we've talked about this before.

This isn't marriage like we think of marriage, so much as it is a husband and wife who are preparing for marriage.

2 Corinthians 11, 2. For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy. For I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

We are not yet married to the church in the sense that we think of marriage. It has not been consummated yet.

Rather, we are betrothed. Yeah, and it's by the covenant and the work of the

Spirit. We're still united to him, though we are apart. 1 Corinthians 6 .17

says, but he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. 1 John 4 .13 says, by this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit.

And so at this point, it's worth noting that this is pretty common in marriages in the Bible. You know, Joseph and Mary are betrothed, being regarded as husband and wife, even though they've not been united in marriage conjugally.

Matthew 1 .18 -19 says, now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found with a child of the

Holy Spirit. Matthew 1 .19, and Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not willing to make her a public example, decided to put her away secretly, right?

So they're not, they have not united in marriage and becoming one flesh yet, though they are betrothed to one another and regarded as husband and wife.

And it's reasonable, and many have regarded the marriage in Genesis 2 as being one of betrothal as well, because you don't see them come together in marital union conjugally until after the fall, even though they are joined together before the fall.

Genesis 2 .23 -24 says, and the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She will be called woman because she was taken out of man. Genesis 2 .24, the next verse says, therefore will a man leave his father and his mother and will be joined to his wife, and they will be one flesh.

But it's not until Genesis 4 .1 you see, and the man knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore

Cain, that I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord. So a little more tenuous, but many have read that as describing a betrothal process as well.

So now I regret doing this like all the way at the end when we have less time, because this is going to be the thing that's going to bring up the most questions, but does this have implications for human marriage?

Certainly it seems really counter -cultural to have betrothal when we've got informal engagements as the de facto method of preparing for marriage.

Engagements are not covenantal. They can be broken at any time without special grounds.

They don't establish a husband and wife relationship like men and women don't call each other husband and wife before they're, you know, while they're just engaged.

Yet betrothal's really, it's really valuable for making the kind of commitments that are needed in order to make big life decisions around these future plans.

And it gives a lot of, yeah, it does a lot of accommodating long -term planning. And I am not sure why it has fallen out of favor so much.

Maybe it's because when we get married, it tends to be later into adulthood, so that the, yeah, if there is a long engagement period, it's more because of indecision than it is because of any kind of long -term planning.

So anyway, consider this. William Gouge, a Puritan, he asked the question of whether or not marriage is still valid without betrothal.

And he concludes that he supposes it would be, but it's such a foreign and odd idea to him that marriage would be without betrothal.

So listen to this quote and think about how just like removed our own practices are from many generations that have gone before us.

So this is William Gouge from the 1600s, I guess. Though it has been an ancient custom continued in all ages, betrothal, yet I dare not pronounce it to be absolutely necessary as the want thereof should nullify marriage.

So he acknowledges that marriage could still be legitimate without betrothal. And I make it to be no lawful marriage.

But surely it is so meet, meaning suitable, and requisite as I would advise all

Christians that desire blessing and good success on their marriage to be contracted before they are married if there were no other grounds for it but this, that God has sanctified it and commended it unto us by his word.

It were enough to persuade us such as fear God to use it. So I think this is an area where if you evaluate our culture and you ask, like, don't just assume that our culture does things correctly and you ask, like, are there rooms for improvement?

I really think this is one where the biblical culture was actually a good thing. Not every aspect of biblical culture was, but they had practices that were wrong just like any culture does.

But I think this is one that would be worth recapturing. And I'm actually aware of some churches, or at least one, that does betrothal ceremonies to contract couples together rather than just informal engagements.

Yeah, something worth considering, and that's all I'll leave it at. And at a later time,

I would like to go back and revisit this just in more detail, thinking about engagements and betrothal in general.

Right now, you know, we're trying to just walk through the Historia Saludis. But any questions about that before I go to the last point?

Okay, all right, last point. Remembrance, so this is obvious that Christ and the church, they remember each other while they're apart.

And couples apart must remember each other. You see those couples who don't remember each other, they end up cheating on one another, right?

Why do the soldiers end up cheating on their husbands while they're away if they're not remembering their husbands? Yeah, so there should be not only a remembrance, but a negative anticipation of the union.

It's pretty profound what Christ said in that Luke 22 passage. For I say to you, I will not eat until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of, eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.

And then later, for I say to you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God will come. You know, he swears off wine, he swears off feasting, until we are reunited.

You know, he refuses to make his joy complete, so that, you know, he's giving us confirmation.

You know, I'm not just having a good time up with my Father in heaven, right? I am refusing to make my joy complete until we are together.

And so there's an eager anticipation. And you see him even on the cross when he's offered wine, and he tastes it, right, he refuses it.

There could be other reasons, but I think one of them is the fact that he just said he won't drink of the fruit of the vine again. So yeah, think about husband and wives when they're away.

Should they be, how satisfied should they be apart from each other? I'm not saying you should ever be discontent with the lot that God has given you, but there's a kind of satisfaction that you could grow apart from your spouse that basically says, you know,

I have no need of you, I have no interest in you, I just disregard. But Christ has, by the way that he has, he conducted the

Lord's Supper, demonstrated to us that he has an eager anticipation, and he will not grow completely satisfied in that sense that I'm referring to, apart from us being united together.

And so it's important for couples to remember one another in eager anticipation, whether they be betrothed and not yet united, or whether one be apart from another on a journey.

Yeah, okay, any questions on any of that? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's contractual, right? So if you look in the Old Testament, because, for example, the death penalty was assigned for adultery, that would apply even for the betrothed, right?

So like, you see that they're treated as husband and wife, right, even though it's not appropriate for them to be, as to share the marriage bed together yet, they're really treated as husband and wife, even the penalty of the law coming down on it.

Right, if an engaged couple today wants to break apart, they don't have to go to divorce court or anything, right?

There's no, like, legal implications, there's no contractual binding. Yeah, there's an understanding that your yes should be yes and your no should be no, but there's not much more than that, and God has, in moments of great weight and significance, instructed us to use oaths and vows.

Is this not something that is warranted here? Yeah, and I believe it is.

And I don't know what the cure for this is. I'm not necessarily saying that we should start doing ceremonies here,

I'm open to the idea, but yeah, it's, I do think this is an area where our culture could improve.

Yes, was that a question? All right, okay, let's go ahead and pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the great salvation that we have in Jesus Christ, for the new covenant that you've established. We would have no hope apart from your oath to us, and so we thank you for that, and we pray that we would reflect that commitment in our own marriages, in Jesus' name, amen.