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Phil came to Bethlehem Bible Church for a Spring Conference on Marriage. Phil has been married for 59 years. Enough said.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. Thanks for listening. No, my name is not Pat Abendroth, The Pactam, but I suggest you listen to The Pactam, pactam .org. I just have finished recording some videos for American Gospel Television, AGTV, and that was on Cancer Is Not Your Shepherd, so we're going to have 17 mini episodes.
Hopefully, later this year, they'll play on American Gospel Television. My thanks to Brandon Kimber for that. You can also go there and find lots of stuff, including my series on Law Gospel, Gospel Assurance, and Sanctification called Sanctify.
Five episodes, about a half hour each. Now, these are smaller episodes on cancer that kind of mirror the book Cancer Is Not Your Shepherd. You can get that on Amazon, along with the updated Law Gospel Grace Saturated Sexual Fidelity book.
Today, I have a special message by my friend Pastor Phil Howard, retired pastor from Valley Bible Church in Hercules, California. He was there for 49 years, married for 59. We had him come to the church for a conference, and so we have two messages on marriage, and then a Q &A on marriage, and then he preached here on Sunday morning, and we did a Q &A at Sunday school hour for the adult Sunday school.
So, this is going to be my generic message for all of those. So, you're probably going to hear this exact same...well, I guess I better not do that, because otherwise, you might not listen, but this is the intro to marriage for probably this part one of his marriage message, and then part two will probably do the same one, and you can just listen to Pastor Phil Howard for the next half hour or so as he talks about marriage.
I love Phil. Call him my pastor, as you probably will soon find out. And here we go. Without further ado, Pastor Phil Howard. I wanted Phil to come and talk about marriage because you'll get to know him very quickly, his warm style.
He wants the best for you. He wants to exalt the Lord, and it's just really wonderful to see his style and care, and right away, you'll fall in love with Phil and Carolyn as well. So, Phil's got two sessions and then Q &A, and so Phil, we love you.
Welcome to Bethlehem.
Bible Church. You got to live with them. Wait until the perfume wears off and the hairdo looks like they're blowing in the wind. You've got to live together a while to really know what a person's like, and so we come over here, and we've got a couple that even in paradise, man will find something that God doesn't want them to have, and they will build their life around it.
The eyes of man are never satisfied. I've been reading Thomas Watson's book on contentment. Our biggest problem is we're not content with hardly anything. Think about it. I mean, American culture survives on discontentment.
They're always selling this. You need this. Oh, I never knew I needed it until I saw the commercial. I never knew you had it. Oh, you need this. You need that. And the eye gate, they saw that the fruit was desirable.
We take them in chapter three, familiar to us. Don't eat of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They camp right by the one. I mean, they had a thousand other trees. Why did you camp next to the one you weren't supposed to eat from, and why is it your kids want to do the one thing you told them not to do?
They're just like you, and they're just like our ancestors all the way back. God, it's like God said, if I gave you my best, would you be contented? What would God have to do to make you content? Oh, here's that.
I'll give you my son. You'd never be discontented with him, would you? I'll give you nearly the most perfect person you'll ever meet for you, and you'll be content always, won't you? Uh-uh. I'll battle discontentment for the rest of my life.
If I yield to sin, I'll always, I'll want God to be better, my wife to be better, my kids to be better. Once in a while, I'll want to be better. One guy said the biggest way to have a better marriage is draw a circle around yourself and work on who's in the circle.
It starts with you. It doesn't start with you changing him or her. It's you changing, and how much has marriage changed you? It is quite, quite a journey. I mean, uh, to be married to the same woman 59 years, and I often tell her, and you could interview her later to see if I'm lying.
I often tell her, I would marry you a hundred times over because she's the right woman for me. I don't need more. I don't need more. God gave me everything. The battle we had, we got married when we were 20.
I was going in my junior year of college, but everybody around me was immoral. I mean, there was no moral standard in my neighborhood. Everybody was out there sleeping with their girlfriend. That was the thing.
We decided we wanted to be pure, but that meant poverty, but we said we'd rather be married poor than to be immoral and get a good business career. So our early years of marriage was we were barely making it economically, but we had a ball.
We had a ball just doing it God's way. Teaching, praying, believing, trusting. Wow. Doing it God's way, He will make it up to you. He'll make it up to you. He will supply the contentment that you lack.
So we find in this marriage, Carolyn will get me on the notes because I get to talking and not cover, and you'll go crazy because the blanks aren't filled in. So please let me get to the notes so that you can sleep tonight.
Deception. I want you to see what happened to Adam after the fall. Okay, thank you. First of all, he experienced the taste of evil for himself. He never, never known evil. As you read it, he finally, he says he knew he was naked, and in the text, nakedness carries a loaded connotation of much more than nudity.
It's something's going on in the psychological part of him. I feel nude. I feel, I'm not fit to be in his, I've felt fit to be with her, with God. No shame, no shame, no guilt. It's a loaded concept. So when he says, now I feel shame.
What happened? Sin brought the need to be clothed. Sin brought the sense of, I'm just not fit to show all that I am. It's a loaded phrase. It goes on that he felt his need for a covering, and it's an interesting study that the word for atonement is kaffir, and it meant to cover.
I need a covering. I'm not fit to be in God's presence. Somebody needs to cover me. I mean, it's innate in man. There's something missing about me. I'm not fit for the presence of God without a covering, absolutely, and this is what God provides in atonement, a covering, and of course Christ has, he's clothed us in Christ.
Galatians chapter 3, I'm clothed in Christ. What a, what a magnificent, you know, it is so relieving to me to say that we often in evangelism say, if you were to die and you came before God and he asked you, why should I let you into heaven?
Well, I gave to the church last month. I got back. Oh, all that is so puny. I just simply say, Christ, you're my only righteousness. I claim no other. Don't be trying to trick me evangelist. I know where my right, I'm covered and I hope that you are.
But he began to hide in the garden and he began to blame. I would be a great man had you not given that gift to me. Eve is the source of my problem. Never did say I made a wrong choice. I didn't want to obey.
I didn't. I was passive. I let her call the shot. I did nothing to rescue her. Boom. So now we're on the blame game. Now what happened to Eve? Well, one thing, I don't know if this is right for us to suppose, but where was her husband when she reached out and took the fruit?
I mean, he seemed to be totally passive in that. Uh, go ahead, Eve. But God says, I'm going to hold you accountable, Adam, for sin entered the world through Adam. Romans 5, 12. He still held him. You know, I get this with couples.
Have you ever learned to be givers? Well, no, we've never decided. Now see the husband. Why don't you give to the church or she? Wait, no, no, no, no. I thought you were the head. I thought you were the leader.
Well, I don't, I don't take the lead. Hush. I don't want to hear it. Wimp. You're abdicating. You're abdicating. Families give because the husbands decide to. Maybe at the prompting of a wife. But here Eve, I felt, was abandoned.
And, and then it says something about her. She would bear children with pain. And that was not in the original formula. And that her desire would be for her husband, as you read. And that word is really originally, it was used of sexual passion, but it was also used of domination.
In chapter four, he warned Cain, sin is at the door and its desire is for you. It desires to dominate you like a lion, throw you to the ground. So a rivalry began all the way back when sin entered, instead of complimenting and being for, she's my problem.
She caused me to do it. She says, hey, I'm going to bear your children, but I'm going to seek to dominate you in ways that you never can imagine. And so the war between man, woman, and a rivalry that is as old as mankind, this is, came with the fall.
And I'm amazed. What would you do if you told your kids, don't do this. And the warning says poison, this will kill you. And then they do it. What would you do? What would you do? If you just flat out disobeyed me and I'm God, I make the rules.
I've got the power. What did God do? Three things at least that I see. He made them a promise in Genesis 315. I'm going to send the seed of a woman who will crush the head of the deceiver. So the first gospel is preached right there in the midst of the chaos of the fall.
I am going to give you a child that will rescue you from the consequences of your choice. Two, I'm not going to quit talking to you. If I allow my emotions, I could weep over it. Instead of saying, I'm going to kill you both.
We're going to stop history right here in the garden. I'm going to stop it at the flood. Give me a few chapters and we'll be in Genesis six through nine and I'll wipe the race out. I ought to kill both of you, but you know what?
I'm going to keep talking to you. I'll let physical death visit you 900 years later. But today relationally you cut yourself off and I ought to not even talk, but I will keep talking. My presence is still going to be there to rebellious children and his promise is there, his presence.
And then provision. After a while God is putting on both of them animal skins that somebody died. God obviously killed these animals. He got the skins and put them on. It's the only thing the leaves wouldn't do.
They wouldn't work. That was their invention. So now I'm going to cover you. It's the same thing God does to sinners today. The wages of our sin deserves death. But do you not remember the promise? If you'll come, I'll save you.
My presence will be with you and I'll cover you. I'll cover you. And that's the hope we have in the gospel and in a marriage that even is in the fall that we all say, God, will you keep talking to us?
Are there any promises for us? Will you provide for us? On and on he's doing it. Now let's go to Ephesians five and see what a Christian marriage in a fallen world is to look like. Michael and I were talking last night.
It is so hard to preach things that you struggle to do. I mean, do any of you ever struggle to obey? I'll look at the cross up here. Marriage. Then you come to Ephesians five. How many of you ever read that?
Anybody ever read it? Yeah. Every anniversary. Let's look at it. I would like to pick up, let's pick up from verse 15. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil.
So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine. Ephesus was a drunk city. It was known Bacchus had gods to the wine goddess for that is dissipation, but be filled continually with the spirit.
And the evidence of that filling will be, you'll be speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord. We sang Psalm 118 one last night at the table, always complaining about Biden or Trump or always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the father.
And I've never heard more negativity than I have in the last three years. If you're in California, we were splitting churches over. Do you wear a mask? Do you not? Do you get vaccinations? Do you not?
Where I live, a Republican is an endangered species. I mean, California, the Democratic Party tells us everything we're going to do. It's 70%. There's 42 million Californians and 70 vote Democrat. I haven't got anything through that I've ever voted for in California.
So if you're in that realm, if you got caught up in the COVID thing, and here we could have lost pastor. I nearly lost my brother with COVID. But go see my daughter in South Carolina. They thought Pachi was just bunk.
Don't be talking about hats or masks. Don't be talking about vaccination. I mean, our church was shut down for 10 months. Everybody had become political experts or medical experts and hadn't quoted a verse in 10 months.
Well, I hope you enjoyed Pastor Phil Howard, Part One, Marriage and the Marriage Seminar here at Bethlehem Bible Church. You can write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com.