Marriage Is Not Optional

Good morning, we're gonna be continuing our series on basic truths today, and the basic truth that we're going to be learning from God's Word is the truth that marriage is not optional.

So if you do have a Bible, turn to Genesis 2, 18 through 25, and we're gonna be reading Genesis 2, 18 through 25, and we'll pray.

When you have it, please stand for the reading of God's Word. Genesis 2, 18.

And then the Lord God said, it's not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him.

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.

Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heaven and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

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

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

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

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for the scriptures that you've given to us, which are life to us. We know that you are there and that you have spoken and you have not left us into the dark.

Help us to learn great things from your word today. Help us to learn your purposes for humanity as centered on marriage and how it points to Christ and his relationship with the church.

We thank you for all you do. In your son's name I pray, amen. You may be seated. Now if the person were to open up the

Bible and read the opening chapters of Genesis for the first time, and if they were to conclude that God, the creator of the universe, is saying to them that marriage is not optional, you know, they would be perhaps forgiven for coming to that conclusion.

And I do say forgiven somewhat ironically because that seems to be exactly what the Bible is saying at that point, and so therefore there's nothing that should be forgiven.

You know, I grew up in the kind of church where pastors would talk about these words that we see here, it's not good for a man to be alone.

They would do so without apology, and they would do so without qualification. This is early on in my life and early on in my

Christian experience, and so they would say these things and they would leave them out there hanging without really feeling the need to make all the qualifications that men seem to think that we need to make today.

They would just say these things as if they were perfectly normal, perfectly natural, perfectly good to say.

So they would say that it's not good for a man to be alone. A lot of the concerns that the preachers were preaching against early on in my

Christian experience were the concern of feminism as it was encroaching upon the church. And so I would hear pastors preaching on these topics, the opening chapters of Genesis, as truths that we need to call people to, and they didn't seem, as I said, they didn't seem to make all the qualifications that were made by pastors later on in my life.

They were working out of a Reformation tradition that upheld the goodness and the sanctity of marriage over and against a society who was basically rejecting marriage at every single point.

And so, I mean, as you know, Martin Luther, when he cast off his monk garments, one of the first things that he did was he married a nun,

Katerina von Bora, and they began to have children because they realized that there was a distortion in the

Catholic Church over against the nature of singleness and the relationship between God's teaching on marriage as a general good for humanity and the

Catholic Church's stance of prohibiting marriage among individuals in general, like whole classes of individuals.

You know, as I said, I grew up under the kind of preaching where frequent quips were made about the nature of the formation of orphanages as the natural outcome of taking a bunch of single men and preventing marriage and putting them in close proximity to a bunch of single women who were prohibited from marriage also.

As I said, things begin to change over time. So as you read through the opening chapters of Genesis, one of the things that is almost inescapable to come away from reading through the opening chapters of Genesis with any other thought than the thought that marriage is not optional.

And then if you turn to the end of the Bible and you think about the nature of the ending of the Bible, one of the things you'll realize is that all of human history is pointing towards a marriage, right?

So God in Christ has come to win a bride for himself. That's the whole story of Jesus and his incarnation.

He came to earth to purchase a bride for himself. He's gone in his interadvental period to prepare a place for that bride.

And then when he returns, we will be united with him and there'll be a great marriage supper of the Lamb. So the

Bible starts with marriage. The Bible ends with marriage. If you read the opening chapters of the Genesis, you read through the

Bible in a fairly straightforward way, you're going to come to this conclusion that marriage is not optional.

And as I said, I grew up under a lot of teachers early on in my life who just presented this truth in a pretty natural, normal, straightforward way without apology, and I internalized that.

As a young man growing up, there was some duty that I had, some responsibility that I had to pursue marriage.

It wasn't just something that was about my own personal happiness and my own personal fulfillment.

It wasn't something that I could choose if I want to, but there's many different paths that people could choose.

I mean, I saw myself as a car, right? So you think about natural analogies at this point, like cars are meant to drive, right?

You look at the human design, you see that human beings are meant to marry. It's the obvious, overwhelming, inescapable reality.

I thought of this subject in the same way that you might think of a car that sits eternally in a driveway and never goes out to drive.

You would think, well, that's a waste of a good car, isn't it? That's the way I was trained to think about marriage because that seems to be what

Genesis is saying and that seems to be the storyline of the Bible. But as I said, when you look at the world, you realize that marriage is deeply unpopular.

There was a generation of preachers who preached against this for a while, and then as the situation began to decay in society, it seems like they shifted tactics away from preaching on marriage as a duty, a responsibility in the way that most people thought about it throughout the history of the world.

Even pagan people thought about it as a duty to propagate the species, right?

They thought about that kind of way. But as I said, over time, as feminism encroached upon society, as marriage rates, the ages of first -time marriages began to rise, the tone of pastors began to change, and there's a lot of evidence to point to this fact.

So in the 1950s, the age of first -time marriages, right?

So the age of first -time marriages among people, among men, was 22 .8 years old, and among women, it was 20 .3

years old, okay? So that's in the 50s, average age of first -time marriage. By 1990, what do you think it was?

By 1990s, the average age of first -time marriage for men was 26 years old, right? 26 years old, 26 .1

years old. For women, it was 23 .9 years old. 2022 to 2023, the recent data is the average age of first -time marriages for men is 30 .4

years, and for women, it's 28 .7 years. And obviously, as the world goes, so goes the church.

The tones of pastors have changed on this. If you look around at the broad kind of teaching that's being put out there today, there are endless articles on the idolatry of marriage and family today.

The church seems to have rediscovered Paul's instruction on singleness, almost like as if it's a silver bullet that removes all sense of obligation with respect to marriage, returning to a new variation of the

Roman Catholic era that the reformers cast off. And I do plan on talking about what

Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 7, but we're still in the intro at this point, and so I'm not gonna give you a full discussion of that right now, but you are living in a church environment right now that seems to have totally redefined this sense of obligation towards marriage and seems to present singleness as not a trial that people have to, that the vast majority of people have to endure, but almost a good state, an alternative lifestyle.

The church sounds just like the world at this point, and as I said, I mean, there's endless articles and books that are being written on this topic asking us to totally rethink our basic intuitions at these basic points, totally rethink the basic intuitions that the

God of the universe has produced in us as he's given us these opening chapters of the

Bible on the basis of verses that we always knew were there and knew how to understand, but no longer understand anymore.

So here's some quotes. Here's Matt Hodges from The Gospel Coalition. Without meaningful involvement of single brothers and sisters, our churches will suffer.

So notice with these quotes, there's like good things that are smuggled in there with conclusions that are pretty extreme.

So without meaningful involvement of single brothers and sisters, our churches will suffer. We would do well to teach the dignity of singleness and its unique blessings, and then to structure our ministries in such a way that shows we believe our words.

And so the author is very concerned about the nature of churches being so centered on marriage and making that the foundation that we have to totally reinvent the church, restructure all of our things to accept this new permanent class of single people.

So where do you think these words are coming from? Well, think about the statistics that we just pointed to.

So as the average age of first -time marriages rise, then we need to totally think what we're doing, restructure everything that we're doing, rethink our basic intuitions at this point, teach the dignity of singleness as a good, you know, as a good in of itself, right, as an equal good in contrast to marriage.

Here's some other quotes. This is Elizabeth Woodson from The Gospel Coalition. We need to dethrone our idol of marriage and learn to define our identity the way

God does. He views singleness and marriage as equally blessed gifts to be stewarded for his glory.

So there's, if you think about the nature of that quote, that's obviously, there's a lot in that quote.

There may be some things in there that you might agree with, but then there's a lot that's being smuggled in and a lot of expectations that are being smuggled in, and I would say that the main point of these kind of quotes is to basically overturn the normalcy of marriage.

Chris Nowney wrote a book, A Single Woman, A Challenge to the Church. Instead of Helen Wilcox writing a familias review that's critical of this book, there's a glowing praise of this book that is written in her article.

So here's the summary. She argues from these scriptures that the gift of singleness is not a calling for a select few, but all who are not married.

Need not be permanent, but viewed this way, singleness becomes more than a period of waiting for a marriage partner. This also means the church must repent of any idolatry of marriage and the unthinking encouragement of people into pairs.

That's pretty extreme, isn't it? Repent of any unthinking encouragement of singles into pairs, huh?

Marriage, she argues, was the order of creation, but singleness is the order of the new heavens and the new earth.

I think they missed the book of Revelation at that point. I don't know what to tell them. She suggests that one of the reasons why

God allowed this for a large number of single women is not their rebellion against the created order.

Their rejection of God's purposes has nothing to do with feminism. It has nothing to do with the sin on the part of passive men, nothing like that, right?

One of the reasons why God has allowed this for a large number of single women in the church is to redress a lost balance between the past and the future, right?

In fact, she goes as far as saying, perhaps so many Christian single women exist in order to depict correctly to the world this tension between creation where the pattern is married and childbearing womanhood and recreation where the pattern is single womanhood and neither marriage nor childbearing exists.

So both marriage and singleness must be supported by the church, right? So you look at these quotes and you see that there's a radical change in our intuition about the basic nature of what

God has said in his word. Is the New Testament, has the

New Testament God pit himself against the Old Testament God? What are we to make of Genesis, like the opening chapters of Genesis where God seems to present marriage as a duty, right?

Like in the language of duty, in the language of obligation, in the language of normalcy. Like what do we do with the

Old Testament God who's presented that, has Christ come to fundamentally reorient our basic intuitions and calls us to reread all these things?

I mean, those are some of the things that we're gonna be talking about today and we're gonna look to God's word to see what

God has to say about this subject and it seems that what he has to say about this subject is very clear, is very, very, very clear even though it seems much more complicated today to us than it should be.

As you look at the opening chapters of Genesis, I first want to give you some indication about what

God's perspective on man and his single state is. So what are some ways in the opening chapters of Genesis that God teaches us that marriage is not optional?

So we're gonna look to the scriptures and we're gonna see God's perspective on these things. So the first of these reasons, like what are some of the ways that God teaches us that marriage is not optional in Genesis?

First one is that God describes man's single state as not good. You can't read the opening account of Genesis and not come away thinking that God describes

Adam and his single state as not good. So this not good is a very significant not good, right?

So in Genesis 2 .18, the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for them. You need to read that not good in context.

When you read that not good in context, what you're going to realize is that as you read through the opening chapters of Genesis over and over and over again,

God creates and declares it to be good, right? God saw that it was good.

God saw that it was good. God saw that it was good. Like over and over again, that's repeated in God's created act.

When he gets to man, he says, it's not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him.

God describes man's single state as not good. And by not good, he's not saying it's morally evil.

He's saying it's incomplete. Man is not designed to be alone. That's the point. Now, right now, you live in a society where you can see the dramatic results of this very principle.

So porn use is relatively ubiquitous among young men. For young women today, it's almost impossible to find a man who's never looked at porn before.

That's a problem, isn't it? It's becoming a significant problem among young women too.

This used to be a man problem, like only a man problem. This is now becoming a significant problem among young women too.

Pornication is basically universal at this point. In 2021, there were approximately 6 ,000, or 600, well,

I'm missing a comma here. 6 ,725 ,978 reported abortions.

This translates to approximately 1 5th of pregnancies, excluding miscarriages.

There are temptations that are common to single men. If you wanna understand some of the temptations common to single men, look to the book of Proverbs.

Solomon warns his son about the dangers that he's going to face as a single man. So Proverbs 1, 10 through 19,

Solomon says, my son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, come with us, let us lie weight in blood.

Let us ambush the innocent without reason. Like shale, let us swallow them up alive and whole, like those who go down in the sea.

Like those who go down into the pit. We shall find all precious goods. We shall fill our houses with plunder. Throw in your lot among us.

We will all have one purse. My son, do not walk in the way with them. Hold back your foot from their paths. For their feet run to evil.

They make haste to shed blood. For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird.

But these men lie in wait for their own blood. They set an ambush for their own lives. Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy and in just gain.

It takes away the lives of his possessors. Men typically are, a man in his single state, the temptations he generally faces as a single man are to go and to, he has an excess of strength, he's gonna go and blow things up and destroy people.

Those are the nature of some of the temptations men face. Women face similar temptations. As a man, his temptations are towards external destruction.

Often, a woman's temptations, single woman's temptations are to destroy relationships.

So, 1 Timothy 5, 11 through 15, Paul says, refuse to enroll the younger widows. For when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to be merry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith.

Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies saying what they should not.

So, to have the younger widows marry their children, manage their household, and give the adversary no occasion for slander, for some have already strayed from Satan, you see how those are kind of contrast to each other.

Men's destruction is like outward. Women's destruction is relational in general. The point here is just to say that God describes man's single state as not good.

There's entailments to that. There's ramifications for that. So, part of that is there are temptations that both of them face, but in the language of Genesis, when

God's saying it's not good for man to be alone, he's speaking the language of design. Man is designed for a particular purpose, isn't he?

So, man is designed for a particular purpose. He's been given particular responsibilities. He's not going to be able to fulfill those responsibilities on his own.

And that's true the opposite way, too. This isn't just like man is incomplete without woman as his corresponding helper, but woman is perfectly fine and in no need of a man kind of thing.

This is both of them are incomplete on their own. Woman is made for man. Man's not made for a woman.

Man is incomplete without his corresponding helper, and woman is incomplete in the same way without her corresponding leader, you understand?

God describes man's single state as not good, as incomplete. Men and women can't, as a general rule, like as a general rule, men and women are designed for a particular purpose and particular function that we're gonna talk about at some length, and on their own, they're not gonna be able to fulfill that function.

So first, what are some ways God teaches us that marriage is not optional in Genesis? First, God describes man's single state as not good, i .e.

incomplete. Second, God reveals marriage as his general plan for the human race.

Where do you see that? Genesis 2 .24. So let's read it again, okay?

So Genesis 2 .24 starts after we get to Genesis 2 .18.

Then the Lord God said it's not good that man should be alone. Make a helper fit for him. We talked about this last week, how God paraded all the animals, and there was no helper for man found from among the animals, right?

But, so what does God do? Verse 21, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and while he slept, he took one of the ribs and closed it up in its place with flesh, and the rib that the

Lord God had taken from the man, he made into the woman, and he brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

So Adam names woman, exercising authority over woman just as he exercises authority over the animals.

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

That doesn't sound like the language of suggestion, right? Does it?

Read it again. Therefore, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, they shall become one flesh, and the man and his wife are both naked and not ashamed.

That doesn't sound like a suggestion. I think that the way that we're tempted to read this is therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, assuming he wants to, assuming he doesn't have something better to do, assuming he's able to, right?

I mean, assuming he's able to find a wife. Assuming that maybe that's what

God's called him to. You know, like we don't read this with any hint of normalcy, right? So one of the things that's happened is we're living in a time where generalities have fallen on hard times.

I started out this sermon with the generality, marriage is not optional. When I say that generality, what you're predisposed to do mentally, psychologically, you're predisposed to reject it, right?

So what you're gonna do is you're gonna say, well, I mean, doesn't He call some people to singleness, right? So therefore you can't make a statement like that.

So we're very hostile to generalities. We don't like the notion of generalities at all.

We think that like pointing out a rare exception is sufficient proof to overturn a rule.

But look, if I were to look at you and say, cars are made to be driven, does it do any good to point out the fact that maybe there's a model car out there that exists solely to stay on the lot forever so that people can look at what the car is like?

Well, no, I mean, cars are made to be driven. They're obviously made to be driven. Cars are designed to be driven, right? Hammers are designed to hit nails, aren't they?

So you think about the nature of a hammer. A hammer is designed to hit nails. Now if you were to look at me and say, well,

I mean, I guess you could hit a screw into a wall, too, or something like that. It's like, well, I guess you could, but that isn't what it was made to do.

What is it made to do, right? So you think about the nature of these principles that are found here.

God is very comfortable speaking the language of generalities in the Bible. God says it's not good for man to be alone.

Like, you don't wanna be the kind of person who's looking at God and saying, well, God, you know, Paul talks about the gift of singleness later.

I don't know how you can talk like that. Isn't that kind of pastorally irresponsible, God, to talk like that, to say it's not good for man to be alone because, you know, what about people who were born eunuchs, and what about people who have been made eunuchs by men, and what about people who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom?

You see, so God very naturally talks in the language of generalities, and a generality is good if it's true in a significant portion of the people.

You look around the world, you say, hey, porn use among young men is relatively ubiquitous.

Pornication among young people is relatively ubiquitous. What should that tell you?

What should that tell you? That should tell you that the vast majority of people who are alive today have sexual desires that they need to express in the context of marriage, and if you look around, you see the chaos that's happening because they're not pursuing marriage.

What that's telling you is that people are designed for a particular purpose. When the Bible says a barren womb is never satisfied, that's a generality too, isn't it?

Is God not aware of feminism? Is God not aware of the women's rights movement? Is God not aware of the fact that one simple temptation might be that women come along and totally reject the idea of motherhood, give themselves over to shouting their abortions?

Is God not aware of all those things? No, God is obviously aware of all those things. Sin distorts everything, but God has made man in a general way for a general purpose.

So you look at this verse. It says, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife. This is a general instruction to humanity about God's will for humanity.

This is what you're designed to do. This is what you're designed to do if you're a human being.

In this statement, the form of the Hebrew verb, ya 'azav, is functioning as a declarative statement that describes what typically happens or is expected to happen.

It expresses a general principle or normative behavior. After the creation of woman, this wasn't just one act.

It wasn't just that God said to Adam, like, here's your wife. It's not good for you to be alone, but everyone else, you know, it's up to them.

That's not the way it's presented. That's not the way it reads. The way it's presented, the way it reads is that God presents

Adam. He looks at Adam in a single state. He says, it's not good for you to be alone. You need a corresponding helper.

Therefore, the rest of humanity should follow suit. That's what it's saying. That's what it's saying as a general statement, which obviously there are exceptions, but the exceptions don't disprove the rule in that way.

So God reveals marriage. Here's the point. God reveals marriage as his general plan for the human race. And also, third,

God blesses mankind with the responsibility for procreation. So why is it not good for man to be alone?

Because he's been given a blessing by God and a responsibility by God.

So Genesis 128, God blessed him. God said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

How do you read that? Like, how are we supposed to read that, brothers and sisters? Be fruitful and multiply if you want to, if you don't have anything better to do, if you think that will be fulfilling to you.

We don't do that with the rest of the verse, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the, I mean, if you want. Right?

Like, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven, over every living thing that moves on the earth. Well, I mean, you wouldn't want to say it's a command to have dominion over the birds of the heaven and everything else.

It's just a blessing. You can choose to have a blessing if you want. That's not the way it reads, is it? This is what man is made to do, you understand?

Man is made to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, to have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven, over every living thing that moves on the earth.

This doesn't read like an optional suggestion, and everyone knows it. It does not read like an optional suggestion.

It's formed in the language of a command, right? And the command is given as a blessing, and that tells you a lot about the nature of what

God's commands actually are. They're not curses, they're blessings. They're the way to life, right? I'm not saying that you can pursue the commands as a means of making yourself right before God, but God's commands are blessings.

Satan comes along and tells you that God's commands are curses. Don't listen to them. God's withholding something that is needful for you, but this is a blessing that takes the form of command.

You're meant to look at the opening chapters of Genesis. You're meant to do what I did growing up and just say, well, it's not good for man to be alone, huh?

Therefore, man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, so he shall become one flesh. Oh, okay, all right. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

Maybe I'm made. Maybe I'm a human being that God has made for the purpose of pursuing marriage.

Maybe that's what God wants for me. Maybe this is not just some optional thing that I'm gonna passively wait around until it happens.

Maybe this is actually a duty and a responsibility. And do you not think that when the ages of first -time marriages were more like 22 and 20, do you not think that people looked at marriage and procreation as more of a duty and a responsibility and less of an optional pursuit?

If you looked at it, here's the point, if you looked at it today as a duty and a responsibility, would that give you more urgency to enter into that union and more confidence to pursue that union?

If you thought that there was a real notion of responsibility here, that not only, that this is not just about self -fulfillment and your own personal desires and what you want, but the continued existence of the human race even, right?

We used to think in those terms that not just man was a isolated person pursuing his own self -interest, and he's looking for a wife so that he can be psychologically made whole and no longer be lonely, and that she's gonna be his everything for him, right?

She's gonna meet all of his emotional needs. That's the way we're taught to talk about it now. But the way we used to think about it was through the language of duty, the language of responsibility, and those terms have fallen on hard times at this point, obviously, and we're no longer doing that.

We're no longer allowed to talk that way, but God is presenting these things to the human race as created purposes for humanity.

This is God's general plan, and what you'll realize is that you're living in a world that's rejecting those plans.

The church is trying to soften the blow, reject, the church is trying to soften the blow, okay?

But what you're looking at when you look around the world, you look at the abortions, you look at the porn use, you look at the fornication, what you're seeing is people are made inescapably for a purpose, they're trying the best they can to suppress an unrighteousness, but they can't escape it.

Do you know that even despite all that, 85 % of people, like despite the war that's being declared on marriage, 85 % of the people will get married at one point, like in America will get married at one point in their life.

They can't escape God's plan. Even if they don't call it marriage, they enter all these like serial pretend marriages, like they call dating relationships, over and over and over again, where they're trying to pretend like they're married.

Why are they doing that, right? Well, it's not because they're called to singleness, it's because God has made, he's designed them, right?

It's like you make a car, a car is designed to be driven, right, if you have a bunch of people who refuse to drive on the roads, they're gonna drive around the dirt, right?

And that's what we're doing, do you understand? Like it's inescapable, we know what we're made to do. How does the rest of God's revelation teach us that marriage is not optional?

It's not just here. I want you to think about these verses and think about how strongly they're worded, because they're not worded in the language of suggestion.

1 Corinthians 7, 2, this is in the passage that Paul talks about his discussion of singleness.

But look at, no one ever points this out. It was there the whole time, the Reformers knew it was there. It's there the whole time, 1

Corinthians 7, 2. But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should consider whether or not he wants to have his own wife.

Is that what, I mean, is that what it says? It's not what it says, is it? It says, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband.

1 Timothy 5, 14, so I would have the younger widows consider whether or not they wanna be married, right?

That's what it says, right? Consider whether or not that might be for them, that might help them out, right? No, it says,

I would have the younger widows marry their children, manage their household, give the adversaries no occasion for slander.

That's Paul, like, I don't, Paul, what are you doing? I thought you said something else. 1 Timothy 3, 2, therefore an overseer, look, qualifications for elders and deacons, overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, if he wants.

1 Timothy 3, 12, let deacons each consider getting married, maybe, if they want to.

No, let the deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their households and their children's will. Titus 2, 3, older women likewise are to be reverent to behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine.

They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women who wanna be married and have kids to have it, and then also to train the single women how to be the best single woman possible.

Is that what it says? No, it says, they are to teach what is good, so train the young women to love their husbands.

What if they don't have a husband? What are you talking about? To love their husbands. And children, are you saying that woman is a baby maker?

That's all she is? She's just a baby maker? What do you mean? God calls some women to have children, some women not to have children.

It's all optional, isn't it, right? No, what does it say? So train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self -controlled, pure, working at home, kind, submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may be reviled.

But what about Jesus, right? So right now you're screaming at me. You've probably been screaming at me in your mind the whole time. What about Jesus, right?

What about Jesus? Wasn't he single? What about him? Jesus has a bride, the church, doesn't he?

Ephesians 5 .31, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife. The two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

Ephesians 5 .25, husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Was Jesus a single man?

I thought he was a single man. Husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water of the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.

2 Corinthians 11 .2, I feel divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

Revelation 19 .7, let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory for the marriage of the

Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted to her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God.

Revelation 21 .2, when I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Revelation 21 .9, then came one of the seven elders who had the seven bowls full of the last seven plagues and spoke to me saying, come,

I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. All of human history centers on God's climactic act of redemption where he sends his son to die for a bride.

What is the story of the Bible? Christ kills the dragon, gets the girl, that's what it is.

Why did Jesus leave us in the interadvental period? Because as a husband, he's going to prepare a place for us that where he is, we might also be.

History will culminate in the return of Christ, the husband for his bride, the church, and we will enjoy the marriage supper of the

Lamb and the consummation. Marriage on a human level is meant to prepare us for these great eschatological realities.

It is our training ground for the bliss that will be ours for eternity. Eye has not seen or ear has heard the riches of the glory that Christ has prepared for those who love us.

When we despise marriage, we despise the world that God created, we despise

God's created purpose in creation, we despise God's purposes for redemption that centers on these great themes.

We despise the earthly training ground which is meant to prepare us for all eternity.

But didn't Jesus, you might say, teach that some have the gift of singleness?

So despite all of these great truths that we're mentioning, didn't Jesus teach that some might have the gift of singleness?

Certainly Matthew 19, 12 says there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, meaning that there are some men who are born with the inability to be fruitful and multiply, as the

Bible said, because as we're gonna be talking about over the next few weeks, God has three purposes of marriage.

Okay, one is mutual help, one is procreation, one is protection from immorality.

There are three purposes that God has for marriage. There are some men who are unable, there are some men who are unable to fulfill the obligations of a husband, that second obligation, namely the obligation of procreating.

I mean, if a man were to go to war and his lower half of his body is blown off, he would be the kind of person

Jesus is describing there. There are some eunuchs who have been made so from birth. I mean, that would be the second one.

There are some who have been made eunuchs by men, you understand? There's some people who are born without the ability to be a husband.

There's some who have been made unable to be a husband by men.

And there are also eunuchs in the figurative sense who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom.

Let the one who is able to receive it, receive it. Certainly, Paul is a man who was freed.

Paul was a man who was freed from the temptation towards sexual immorality and spent his life advancing the gospel, right?

So certainly there is a calling that God has for some men to pursue advancing the gospel with all of their energy.

That's very different though than just, hey, yeah, I don't know if I want marriage while I'm burning with marriage,

I'm burning with sexual desire. Can't seem to find anyone else. Would rather pursue something else.

You know, I'd rather do something else with my life. Yeah, certainly God has prepared some men. And it's very rare, you know?

So we use these exceptions as if they just prove the rule. So yeah, and 0 .001 % of men out there probably maybe should consider whether or not they should give their life to the advancement of the gospel into places where the gospel has not been named before.

Yeah, 0 .001 % of men, probably that applies too. But if you're struggling today with sexual temptation, if you have desires for companionship, that isn't you, none of that's you, you understand?

That's not you. So yes, there are situations like that. What about Paul, you say?

What did Paul, didn't Paul say the opposite? For that, you go to 1

Corinthians 7. Main verse that people are thinking about when they're thinking about Paul's instruction at this point is 1

Corinthians 7, 8. Let's read the context a little bit.

So if we were to read 1 Corinthians 7, 8 by itself, then we may come away with a certain conclusion, right?

So to the unmarried and to the widows, I say it's good for them to remain single as I am, but if they can't exercise self -control, they should marry, for it's better to marry than to burn with passion.

So there you go, right? Marriage is optional. You know, in fact, singleness is good.

You should remain single just like Paul is. That's what he's saying, right? Well, look, go back to the beginning.

Go back to the beginning, chapter seven, verse one. It says, now concerning the matters about which he wrote, it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.

This is what they're writing to them and asking them about, you understand? This is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible doesn't teach that it's not good for a man to have sexual relationship with a woman.

This is an error that they're presenting to them and asking him to comment on. At the time, there was this notion that somehow sexual immorality defiled a person.

This is based on gnostic premises, which despise the good of the body, right? So if you're going to be a

Christian, if you're going to be truly spiritual, shouldn't you reject the natural? That's what they're asking him. Wouldn't it be better just to totally devote yourself to spiritual things, not the physical things whatsoever?

How does Paul respond? He says, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

Whatever Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 7, 8, it's not going to contradict what he just said in 1

Corinthians 7, 2, is it? So if in 1 Corinthians 7, 2, he says, because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman should have her own husband, and then he gives us a whole discussion about not depriving one another, that probably tells you what his perspective of marriage actually is, and it doesn't sound very much at all like marriage is completely and totally optional and pursue it if you want, does it?

So what is he saying there in verse eight, to the unmarried and to the widows, I say it's good for them to remain single as I am, but if they can't exercise self -control, they should marry for it's better to marry than to burn with passion.

Why is he saying that there when we already read in 1

Timothy 5, 14, I would have the younger widows marry, bear children, manage their household and give the adversary no vocation for slander.

What do you make of that? Why is he saying in 1 Timothy, he wants the unmarried widows to marry, and then in 1

Corinthians 7, 8, he's saying it would be good for them to remain as they are. That's interesting, isn't it?

Flip over a little bit. First, I mean, or turn, I don't know what you do. Turn or flip.

1 Corinthians 7, 26, what does it say? I think in view of the present distress, it's good for a person to remain as he is.

Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife.

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

You know what, I've seen videos of Jews in concentration camps where they're all emaciated and skeletal thin, and you know that if you're in a concentration camp, you have no impulse whatsoever to get married during that time because you're undergoing a significant period of trial.

You understand that because of the trial that you're facing at that moment, marriage may not be the best plan at that moment.

You can't lawfully carry out the responsibilities of marriage. You may be dead tomorrow, right?

Have you seen the documentaries about what happens after the Jews are liberated from concentration camps?

Have you seen the pictures of the videos of the skeletal thin Jews immediately having the impulse to get married the moment they're delivered?

They don't even wait till they put on weight. They look the same as they looked before, and they have some impulse instantaneously, immediately, just to go ahead and get married because they know that God's plan for the world is marriage.

When you're undergoing a significant trial, it's good to remain as you are because there's distress that Paul would spare you of.

Immediately after that trial is lifted, they knew what to do. Same thing is happening here. Paul is speaking to a specific historical situation in 1

Corinthians 7, and he's saying, in view of that present distress, it might be good to remain as you are because I would have you freed from anxieties.

But at the very beginning of 1 Corinthians 7, he establishes the normalcy of marriage, but because of the temptation to have sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman have her own husband.

And if you understand that basic distinction and you read all the other passages that I've already mentioned where Paul is encouraging marriage as a normalcy, it all makes sense.

There's no contradiction. Paul is not disagreeing with God in Genesis. Paul is not establishing some, asking us to totally reinvent our basic intuition about the nature of marriage as a normal gift

God's given to man. I mean, there's certainly, Jesus and Paul both give a category for a person who is free from sexual desire, who wants to give their life for the advance of the gospel to those who haven't heard it.

Certainly, there's some category for that, but God's obvious normal expectations for humanity is marriage.

And the more that we fight that, the more chaos that you can see. And you can look around the world, you see that we're inescapably made for this.

We're inescapably made for marriage, and we're fighting it with everything that we have within us.

And yet, these are great truths that God has given that correspond to his mighty acts of redemption in Christ that we would do well to pay attention to.

You understand? So what do we do with these things? If you're unwillingly single in this room, don't follow the advice of pastors today.

Don't pretend like singleness is a wonderful blessing when it feels like a curse. The Bible says the barren womb is never satisfied.

The Bible is very realistic about the nature of the trial of unwilling singleness, and we should not paint that as if that is just God's plan for you.

I know a lot of people who are unwillingly single, and they're saying, I'm having a difficult time finding a spouse.

And instead of thinking, are there things about myself that need to change? Are there things I need to do? Or perhaps I'm suffering because I'm living in a fallen world where other people are rejecting responsibility.

Instead of thinking along those lines, they say, well, I just give up, right? And I don't understand the impulse that people have today to just so quickly surrender in the face of impossible odds.

You serve the God who created the heavens and the earth, who spoke the world into existence. If you,

I don't know how you can read the Bible in an honest way and come away from that with a hopeless perspective of your situation.

This is the God who parted the Red Sea, brothers and sisters, and caused the Israelites to walk by on dry ground.

Like you read through the story of the Bible, you see that impossible situations are nothing to God. If you're unwillingly single, you should internalize a sense of obligation to be married.

Like if you're unwillingly single, what I mean by that is you are not, you're burning with desire for marriage.

You don't think you're one of these people that God has designed to be free from sexual temptation in order to pursue the advancement of gospel with everything that you have to people who haven't heard it.

Like here's the thing, if you're unwilling, you should internalize a sense of obligation. The fact that you're in the mess that you're in, or we should describe it as a mess.

You're in that mess because you have, you're living in a world that has no sense of obligation anymore to any of us.

You don't fight that by surrendering the obligation. Internalize a sense of obligation.

Don't make it your last priority on your list that you are passively waiting to just happen.

Pursue marriage like a lion. If you're a man, if you're a woman, pursue putting yourself in an environment where you're able to be found like a lion.

That's the point. Stop being afraid of rejection. If you're a man, don't pursue marriage as a desperate needy man looking for affirmation and validation.

Hebrews 13, six says, we can confidently say the Lord is my helper. I will not fear.

What can man do to me? What can woman do to you? Young men, women are not so scary.

Quit being afraid of them. Seriously, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear.

What can man do to me? Oh my goodness, she rejected you. Who cares that she rejected you?

Who cares? The Lord is your helper. I will not fear.

What can man do to me? If you can pursue marriage with the confidence that the creator of the universe designed you for this purpose, and he will bless your endeavors, you understand?

I'm not saying that it's not possible that a person can experience the trial of singleness the whole scope of their life, because God in his purposes is judging the world due to the nature of their sin.

I'm not saying that can happen. That can't happen, but you never mortify a good desire, brothers and sisters.

Cling to that good desire. Trust the Lord. Confidently say the Lord is my helper.

I will not fear. What can man do to me? If you're a lady, put yourself in Boaz's field. That's not saying ask a guy out on a date or whatever else.

You put yourself in Boaz's field. It's okay to smile. I would smile at every guy you see. I would literally smile at every guy you see, just so that you can get in the habit of being approachable.

I wouldn't just smile at the guy who you think you might have, might wanna, like you have no idea the character of some of these people.

Put yourself in Boaz's field. If you're married, what do you do with this message? Help single people. Say, they don't want my help.

They think they know it all. Well, that's never stopped me. I'm nosy. Encourage masculine virtues in men.

Strength, courage, initiative. Courage, feminine virtues in women. Help them out, help them out. Plenty of people have been mad at me for long periods of time because I insist upon inserting myself into their situation.

And you know what? With a lot of them, because I was persistent in trying to help them over and over and over again, and they got mad at me over and over again,

I just took it like a man. I just said, whatever, I don't care. Get mad at me. They ended up getting married because they followed the advice that I was trying to give them at some point, and then they came later to thank me for all the persistence.

Like, you can help them. I'm just trying to say, if you're a married person, help your single brothers and sisters, even if they don't want help at times.

And finally, if you're a married person, give yourself over to the goal of getting as much as you can out of the training ground that this life is meant to be.

Marriage is a picture of Christ's relationship to the church, brothers and sisters. That's what it is.

That's God's general plan for humanity. If you're married, thank the Lord that he's given you that blessing, because it's rough out there.

I mean, it is. Thank the Lord that you've been given that blessing. Make the most out of that blessing, because this is

God's training ground for the eschaton, you understand? So you look at the Bible, you think about the storyline of the

Bible. Brothers and sisters, look at the storyline of the Bible. Starts with marriage, ends with marriage.

Marriage in this life is meant to be a picture of something greater. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard the riches of the glory that await us.

We await one day as a church, as a corporate bride, being united to Christ.

And what a great day that'll be, amen. Lord, we thank you for the word that you've given to us, which tells us things that we know, but then we want to suppress.

Help our church to be a light in a dark world. Give us confidence, Lord, knowing that you're there and that you've spoken, you have not left us into the dark,

Lord. We know that you have a plan for the world, you know that you have a plan for the church, and it centers on Christ, and we thank you for what you've done.

You've done a mighty act of redemption for us in sending your son to die for us. We are totally and completely unworthy of the mercy and the grace that you've shown to us.