Defense of Biblical Marriage

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Sermon by Pastor Keith Foskey Sovereign Grace Family Church July 26, 2020

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I wanna invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians, and then back to Genesis, because I don't know why I said Ephesians.
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I have no idea.
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That literally was just an error.
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We haven't been in Ephesians at all.
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Please turn to Genesis 2 and forgive me.
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That's not a good sign to start that way.
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In the last month, I have read two different books.
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One of those books was called Dark Agenda.
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The other one was entitled The Gathering Storm.
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And in both of those books, there were entire chapters that were dedicated to the subject of marriage and how marriage has been changing before our very eyes in the last generation, and how people understand the institution of marriage and how people understand the value of marriage and even the very idea of who should be married and why people get married.
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And it just amazed me that two books that came out this year, and both of those books dealing with the culture, both of those books had an entire chapter on the subject of marriage.
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And as most of you know, when I sit down to prepare my sermons, I study the text, I look at the language, I focus on what the text has to say, but then I also reach and I pull out my commentaries because when I read the commentaries, they allow me to look and ensure accuracy and ensure consistency in what I'm saying.
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And so I look at those commentaries and one of the commentaries that I'm using for preaching through Genesis is James Boyce's commentary.
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James Boyce was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, wonderful minister who gave his life to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And as I was looking at his commentary on Genesis 2.24, which is our text for today, something he said in that stood out to me.
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He said, today marriage is under attack.
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Now that may not seem like an overly insightful point, but what's interesting about that is he wrote that 34 years ago.
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James Boyce's commentary on the book of Genesis was published in 1986.
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Boyce had no idea how far the attack would eventually spread, but he knew the attack was underway.
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In his writings, he said there was a four-pronged attack against the institution of marriage.
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Now this, remember, 34 years ago, these were the four things he pointed out that were attacking the institution of marriage.
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The first thing he said was hedonism, celebration of the playboy lifestyle.
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The second thing was widespread acceptance of adultery.
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No longer was adultery carrying the same social stigma that it once did.
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The third thing he said was the ease of divorce.
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The advent of no-fault divorce gave rise to the destruction of the value of marriage.
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And then the fourth thing he said was the legalization of abortion on demand.
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Because the legalization of abortion on demand created a sex without consequences mentality.
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Little did Boyce know that the things that he was saying were somewhat prophetic because not only are all of those four things still true, but the very definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman would eventually come under assault.
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Neither could he likely have foreseen that even the very definition of male and female would become so obscured in our modern culture's ever hastening attempt to throw away all vestiges of Christian truth.
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Marriage certainly was under attack in 1986, but since then, the attacks have only been gaining more and more ground.
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As Christians, we are called to celebrate, to practice, and to defend within the concept of biblical marriage, for it is the foundation of all of the society.
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Years ago, I heard an atheist who was railing against the subject of the biblical definition of marriage, and he said, you can't use the Bible to define marriage because it's filled with marital inconsistencies.
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It supports polygamy and incest in one place, and it calls for singleness and celibacy in another place.
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The Bible doesn't have a standardized position on marriage.
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That was his argument, and arguments like that are not uncommon.
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One of the ways that unbelievers attack the scripture is to seek to find inconsistencies and contradictions in the scripture, and these are the attacks that are most often associated with the subject of marriage.
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The Bible's just inconsistent on the subject of marriage.
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Well, today, I hope to show you that that's not the case.
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The Bible is actually very consistent from the beginning all the way to the end as to what constitutes a biblical marriage, and we're going to look at this passage which actually establishes the institution of marriage and then becomes the standard by which later passages would hearken to say this is what marriage is supposed to be.
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This is the foundational text.
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This is the text that even Jesus would point back to when he was establishing with the Pharisees what is biblical marriage.
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He says, have you not heard from the beginning? And he quoted Genesis chapter two and verse 24.
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This is the foundation for biblical marriage, and today we are going to defend that proposition.
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So let's stand for the reading of God's word.
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We're going to read actually verses 18 to 25, but our focus is going to be on verse 24.
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Then the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone.
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I will make a helper fit for him.
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Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.
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And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
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The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.
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But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
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So the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.
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And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
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And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
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Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
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She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast unto his wife and they shall become one flesh.
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And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
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Amen.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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Now, as I seek to give an exposition of it, I pray first and foremost that you would keep me from error, but also Lord, that you would keep me from cowardice, that I would preach with accuracy and with boldness.
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In Jesus name, amen.
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Genesis chapter two, verse 24 is unique in regard to how it works within the larger passage.
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Because so far in Genesis one and in Genesis two, and we've been studying that for those of you who are new or visiting with us today, we have been studying through Genesis now since September of last year, we've gotten to the end of chapter two.
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So we've been kind of taking it a little slow.
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But what we have noted so far is that what we have is a series of narrative events.
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We have in the beginning, chapter one, God gives an overview of his creation.
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And in chapter two, he focuses in on the creation of man.
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Then he says that wonderful thing that we talked about last week, it's not good that man should be alone, I'll make a helper for him.
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So he focuses on the creation of woman, but then the text changes.
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We move from the indicative to the imperative.
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The indicative tells you what is.
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The imperative tells you what should be or what must be.
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The indicative tells you what is, the imperative tells you what you should do because of what is.
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And oftentimes the word that links the indicative to the imperative is the word therefore.
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The word therefore connects what came before to what comes after.
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And it gives the natural byproduct or the natural result of what was just said to how it relates to what is about to be said.
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In fact, you've probably heard this before.
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You may have even heard me say it.
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Anytime you are studying the Bible and you come to the word therefore, you need to stop and see what it's therefore.
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You need to see why it's there because that is normally taking you from a proposition of truth to how you apply that truth.
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Therefore do this.
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And that's what we have in Genesis 2 and 24.
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Moses is moving from the narrative.
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This is what has happened.
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God has created man.
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God has created woman.
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God has brought a man and woman together in the very first marriage.
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He has created a new family.
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Therefore, a man should marry a woman and the two should become a family.
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By the way, one thing you'll note from this passage, Genesis 2, 24, is this ain't about Adam and Eve.
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How do I know? Because it says, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother.
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Guess what Adam didn't have? Adam didn't have a mom and daddy.
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Adam didn't have a father and mother.
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So therefore a man shall leave his father and mother.
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This isn't about Adam and Eve.
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This is about all of the subsequent generations that would follow Adam and Eve.
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This is about their posterity.
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This is about their children and grandchildren and so on all the way down to today.
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This therefore is not about them, it's about us.
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This is a divinely inspired commentary on what just happened.
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You see what happens is God just performed the first wedding and we have no idea what that wedding was like.
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We don't know if they took vows.
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We don't know if they had to repeat after me.
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We do know this, Eve weren't wearing no dress.
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I mean, we know that.
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That's all we know.
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But it was a wedding and God performed the wedding.
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And then he said through Moses, therefore a man should leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
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This act of God giving Eve to Adam is the basis for Moses's commentary.
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And based on this, we have the first true institution of man, the first institution of God.
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The first true institution of man conceived in the mind of God and exercised in the perfect garden of God was the institution of marriage.
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It preceded sin, therefore it is not a sinful institution.
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See, government is a institution of God as well.
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Romans 13 tells us, but Romans 13 tells us that government is put in place because of the evils of men.
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Therefore, government is an institution that came after the fall.
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But marriage did not come after the fall.
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Marriage was an institution of God from the beginning.
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It preceded the introduction of sin.
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It was not tainted by sin, it is now, but it was not then.
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Therefore, some identify marriage as a creation ordinance.
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Ordinance means law.
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It was a creation law.
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God established this principle before sin, the principle of marriage.
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So today, what I wanna give to you is I wanna give you three imperatives for marriage that come from this text.
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Three imperatives for marriage, which are established on Moses's divine commentary.
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First, we're going to look at the plan of marriage.
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Then we're going to look at the purpose of marriage.
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And then we're going to look at the priority of marriage.
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I don't always give you a literated outline, so you're welcome.
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But we're gonna look at the plan and the purpose and the priority of marriage as we see it in this passage.
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Remember, this passage is the foundation for all the rest of the Bible.
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If anybody ever comes up, well, the Bible talks about polygamy.
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The Bible talks about all of these other things.
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Understand this.
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All of those are aberrations of the plan.
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They're aberrations of what God designed.
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You say, well, David was a polygamist.
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Yeah, David was a polygamist.
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That does not make that the plan for marriage.
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Don't use David as your example.
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Trust me, your wife won't like it.
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Go back to the beginning.
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Go back to the pre-sin beginning.
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And look at that as the foundation.
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Because when Jesus was asked about marriage, He didn't go to David and He didn't go to Solomon.
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He went to Adam and Eve.
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The plan for marriage is simple.
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One, there are only two people involved in the marriage.
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One man and one woman.
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Two complementary figures.
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Not mirror images of one another, but two complementary images of God.
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One man and one woman complement one another and there are no spares.
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Remember that.
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God created Adam and God created Eve and He didn't create Sarah and Lauren and Edith because Eve might not have filled the ticket.
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No, it was one man and he had one woman.
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There was no Lilith.
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You ever heard the myth of Lilith? There is an ancient Jewish fable which says that God created Adam a wife who was unwilling to be submissive and therefore God sent her away and created him a second wife called Eve.
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And the first wife's name was Lilith.
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You ever heard of Lilith Fair? Lilith Fair is an all-woman rock event that started back in the 90s.
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Sarah McLachlan and a bunch of other people started something called Lilith Fair.
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Lilith Fair was based on the idea of the Lilith character from Jewish mythology which was supposed to represent feminist strength because she was not willing to submit to her man.
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And therefore God banished her and created Eve.
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And you know what the Greek word for all that is? Baloney, that's right.
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That's my favorite Greek word.
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It's baloney, it's garbage.
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Because it just ain't so.
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It's an interesting myth, but that's all it is.
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There is no biblical precedent for the existence of any character called Lilith.
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It is absolute fairytale.
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One man, one woman, two complementary figures is the plan for marriage.
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And the marriage has a threefold responsibility.
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I'm gonna use my board because you guys know how much I love my board.
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And I meant to put these on the screen but I always forget so I have my board just in case.
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The threefold responsibility of marriage is this.
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Leave, cleave and weave.
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One, two, three.
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Now I didn't invent that, I heard somebody else say it but I liked it so much I remembered it.
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Leave, cleave and weave.
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Let's look at what that means.
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When he says first, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother.
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Now I wanna let you know parents, that's not an insult to you.
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That has nothing to do with insulting the role of the parents.
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It's not calling your children to leave you behind completely, to abandon their heritage or their responsibilities to you as you age.
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I do believe that it is a responsibility of children that as their parents age to provide for them assistance and love and support.
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In fact, I believe when the Apostle Paul said, a man who doesn't care for his own is worse than an infidel.
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You remember that passage? I think he was actually referring not only to his children but to his parents.
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We have a responsibility to care for the aging.
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So this doesn't mean leave your parents in the dust.
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This doesn't mean leave your parents behind and run away and rob them of love and support as they age.
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That's not what it means.
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But what it does mean is that when you get married there is a change of allegiances.
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Before you get married, your primary relationship in life is with mom and dad.
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But when you get married, your primary relationship in life is now with spouse.
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And I gotta tell you, this is one of the areas having done ministry for many years and having sat through hours and hours and hours of marital counseling, this is one area that I can tell you often is the impetus for so many problems.
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People who allow other people to be more important than their spouse, even mom and dad.
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Men and women who put their family above their spouse for whatever reason often end up in marital turmoil.
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There must be an allegiance to the spouse that comes before everything else, even the children.
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You say, but I love my babies.
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Yes, but you didn't marry your babies and your babies will one day marry someone else.
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And when your babies marry someone else, guess what they're supposed to do? They're supposed to leave you and marry that person.
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Because that's what this text says.
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And therefore, if you teach your children that they're the most important thing in your world and the spouse is the secondary thing in your world, that's the way they're gonna grow up thinking it should be and that's the way they're gonna treat their spouse.
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But if you teach your children that the spouse is the number one, the most important person in your life, when they grow up, they will have that as their example and that will be the foundation upon which they build their lives.
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So the first rule, the first part of the plan is that you have a man and a woman and they leave behind and they cleave.
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That's the next word, cleave to one another.
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Now, I use the word cleave because it's the King James Version.
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The ESV, which I read out of and teach out of uses the word hold fast.
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And the word fast there doesn't mean to go quickly.
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The word fast is the root of the word fasten.
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It means to be connected together.
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It means to cling or to clasp.
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And what it's talking about is loyalty.
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A man should leave his father and mother because that's where his loyalties were before.
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That's where his primary relationship in life was before.
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He's gonna leave that relationship and now he's gonna cling to a new relationship.
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He's gonna cleave unto his wife.
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And what's interesting about that language is that language is used all throughout the Old Testament about how we are to be loyal to God.
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Here are just a few passages.
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Deuteronomy 10, 20.
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You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him and you shall cleave unto him.
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Deuteronomy 13, four.
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You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice.
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You shall serve him and you shall cleave unto him.
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Joshua 22, five.
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Be careful to observe the commandments that the law of Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, to keep his commandments and to cleave unto him.
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So what are those passages commanding us to do? Be loyal to God.
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So what is the commandment to cleave unto your wife commanding you to do, men? To be loyal to her.
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In the traditional vows of marriage, we say to cleave unto his wife and keep himself only for her till death do us part.
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Cleave is a word of loyalty.
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You leave your former allegiance and you establish a new allegiance to your wife.
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And then you weave.
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You weave together a new family unit.
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You know what happens when you take two threads and you spin them together? They become one, one stronger thread.
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In fact, that example is used for us in Ecclesiastes.
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Ecclesiastes 4.12 talks about how when you wind cords together, they become stronger.
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And then it says a threefold cord cannot be broken.
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It's talking about the idea of weaving things together.
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It's talking about the idea of taking things that were separate and making one new, stronger thing.
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When a man and a woman are married, they create a new entity.
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And that entity is a family.
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Both were part of a family, but now they have left that family.
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They have come together and they've created a new family.
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That's the plan.
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Man and woman leave the family, cleave together, weave a new family.
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But what's the purpose? We know what the plan is.
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The plan is very simple.
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What's the purpose? The purpose of marriage is twofold.
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First, the purpose of marriage is to create a new family.
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That's the physical purpose.
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But then there is also the purpose of marriage in that it prefigures the gospel.
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That's the spiritual purpose.
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So marriage doesn't just have one purpose.
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Marriage is a multiple purpose endeavor.
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The first thing you do in a marriage is you create a new family, but you also, you are in your marriage prefiguring and you're giving a form of the gospel itself.
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So let's look at those two things very quickly.
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First is the idea of creating a family.
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When a marriage happens, two complementary units become one whole.
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Two individuals are no longer individuals.
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They are one unit.
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Oftentimes you'll hear people say, this is my other, what? Half.
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Why do they call them the other half? Because I'm not whole anymore.
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The reason why we call them the, in fact, if you were me, you say this is my better half when you're talking about your spouse.
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My much better half, right? But she's still my half.
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Because together we are whole and separate we are broken.
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When we got married, we were still Keith and Jen, but we weren't just Keith and Jen anymore.
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We were Foskies.
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We were united together.
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And I wanna say something in this, if this is offensive, write me a note, put it in your pocket and don't give it to me.
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Because what I'm gonna say is true.
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The idea of remaining individuals once you are married and maintaining your individuality is secular nonsense.
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I'll say it again.
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The idea of maintaining your individuality in a marriage is secular nonsense.
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Because when you get married, the two become one.
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You're a new unit.
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And this desperation that people have to remain independent is one of the things that is destroying the very foundation of marriage.
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Because when you get married, it's not about independence.
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It's about coming together and depending on each other.
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And guess what? You're not your own anymore.
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You belong to that person and that person belongs to you.
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Oh, I don't like that language.
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Well, let me read to you 1 Corinthians 7, 4.
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For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.
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Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
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What does that passage tell us? When I got married, I was no longer an individual, independent man.
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I was her husband.
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And she was my wife.
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I belong to her and she belongs to me.
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What has crept into the concept of marriage is that marriage is a potentially ending endeavor.
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And therefore, we have to maintain our own individuality because one day, I may have to get out of this contract.
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So we look at marriage as temporary.
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We think we should put expiration dates on the marriage certificate.
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You know what makes divorce so rough? Is when two become one and then they break up again, you don't have two more, you have two halves.
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The two become one.
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Somebody objects.
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Does this mean you're telling me I have to give up my identity? Yep.
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Because you used to be single and you ain't no more.
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It used to be all about you and it ain't no more.
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Your marriage creates a new family unit and you are no longer an individual.
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You are part of that unit.
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Marriage creates a family.
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But it also prefigures the Gospel.
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The marriage ceremony is a picture of Christ and His bride.
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God gave Eve to Adam.
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God gives the church to Christ.
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God calls Adam the husband and Eve the bride.
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God calls Christ the husband and the church His bride.
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We see this in Ephesians 5, 25 to 27.
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We see it in 2 Corinthians 11 too.
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We see this all throughout the New Testament, the concept of the bride of Christ.
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In fact, in the Greek, there is a word.
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The word is telos.
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The word telos means goal or end or purpose.
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We talk about teleology.
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Teleology is the study of the purpose of something.
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The teleological argument is the argument that the world was created for a purpose.
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So telos means goal or purpose.
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And we say, well, what is the ultimate purpose, the ultimate goal, the ultimate telos of marriage? I believe the pointing to the Gospel is the ultimate telos of marriage.
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God would take this relationship and He would define this relationship as the relationship between Christ and His bride.
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Why did God make sheep? Somebody might say, well, God made sheep for wool.
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Or God made sheep for food.
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Or somebody might say, well, I don't know why God made sheep any more than I know why God made zebras or giraffes.
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But can I propose to you the idea that the reason God made sheep was to show us how we act and that we need a shepherd? Sheep are used throughout the Bible as an illustration of God's people.
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And that's no accident.
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God made sheep knowing they would be an illustration of believers.
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Likewise, He made marriage knowing it would be an illustration of the Gospel.
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Think about how marriage pictures the Gospel.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother.
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What happens when the believer hears the Gospel and the Lord opens his heart to believe and grants him the gift of regeneration? What does he do? He leaves the world.
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And what does he do? He cleaves unto Christ.
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And he becomes a new creature.
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Therefore, all things have passed away and all things have become new.
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The picture of the change, the picture of the clinging and the cleaving together, the picture of the leaving.
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That's a picture of the Gospel.
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In fact, I would say this, if your salvation experience did not include.
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Leaving the world and cleaving to Christ.
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How in the world were you saved? And if you're not a new creature in Christ.
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If you don't have new affections and new desires.
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How do you know that you're in Christ? I mean, it's like a man who says, I'm married, but I never see my wife and I don't have any affection for.
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Yeah, we might want to talk about that.
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Somebody says I'm in Christ and I don't have any affection for him.
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You might want to talk about that.
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This is a picture.
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Of the Gospel.
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It's a picture of the change, it's a picture of what happens.
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Marriage is a wonderful analogy, but now let's finalize by looking at the priority of marriage.
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The very first thing God does when he creates a woman is he gives her to the man.
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That's the reason she was created.
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It was not good that man should be alone.
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So God made a complementary counterpart.
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And together they formed a union, a unique union, one they should never have with anyone else as long as they both shall live.
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And marriage is supposed to be.
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The most powerful and serious commitment that any person ever enters into.
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It is to I say this when I do weddings.
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I say this commitment should rise above every social obligation.
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It is more precious than any other interpersonal association.
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And there is no contract or nor promise more binding or more secure because marriage is a covenant relationship.
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And this, again, points to how God works with us.
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God works with us through.
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The relationship of covenant, according to Hosea 6-7, Adam was in covenant with God.
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We know that Noah was in covenant with God.
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Abraham and the patriarchs were in covenant with God.
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The nation of Israel was in covenant with God through Moses.
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And we are in covenant with God through Jesus Christ.
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In fact, in just a few minutes, we're going to celebrate the Lord's table.
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And what does the Lord's table? It is a picture of the promise of the new covenant.
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This is the new covenant in my blood, Jesus said when he held up the cup.
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The covenant relationship is how God interacts with man.
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And it is also how God establishes the interaction between man and wife.
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And therefore.
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When Jesus is explaining this to a group of people who wanted to catch Jesus in a trick, by the way, if you read Matthew 19, the Pharisees and the leaders come to Jesus and they want to catch Jesus.
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They say, Jesus, is it is it right to divorce your wife for any cause? And the reason why they were asking him that in that way was because at that particular time.
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There were two different rabbis who had two different philosophies on marriage and divorce.
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And one of them taught that a man could divorce his wife for any reason.
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If she cooked your food and you didn't like it, you could divorce her for that reason.
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Anything.
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And there was another rabbi who said there is no reason whatsoever, ever to ever allow for a divorce.
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And it was a total absolute prohibition.
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I think they were called Shammai and Hillel, if I remember correctly, the two schools, the Shammai school and the Hillelian school on on marriage and divorce.
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And so they come to Jesus and they say, Jesus.
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Is it right to divorce your wife for any cause? And Jesus.
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Takes them back to.
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Genesis two.
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And he says.
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Have you not read, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh.
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And he adds this, and this is the words of Jesus, therefore, what man, what God has brought together, let not man separate.
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And what Jesus is saying in that statement.
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Is that marriage is in such a place of high importance? That it should not be defiled.
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By divorce now.
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Does that mean divorces can't happen? No divorces can and do happen.
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Some are even lawful under God, even from the mouth of Jesus himself.
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But ultimately, we must never forget that was not the plan.
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Malachi 216 says God hates divorce.
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Why? Because divorce is the breaking of a covenant relationship outside of our commitment to Christ.
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There is no other commitment higher.
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Not to parents, not to children, not to friends, no matter who you are.
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I want to tell you this now.
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You've heard me say it before, but I'm going to say it again.
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I don't care who you are.
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I don't care how valuable you are to me.
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Don't ever ask me to choose you over my wife because it'll never happen.
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That relationship is primary.
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Even with my children.
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In fact, we tell them that from a very young age.
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Don't pit mommy against daddy.
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You will always lose.
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We are a team.
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You're on the offense.
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You're you're you're on the other side.
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Mom and daddy are the team.
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In his commentary on this passage, Jim Boyce said this.
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He said, when God brought the first woman to the first man, as we were told in the second chapter of Genesis, he did.
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He did not merely provide Adam with a suitable helper and companion.
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He said he also established marriage as the first and most basic of all human institutions.
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Long before there were governments, long before there were churches or schools or any other social structures, God established a home.
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On the mutual respect and love of a husband and a wife and all other institutions came from it.
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The plan is simple, beloved.
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One man, one woman, no spares.
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One man, one woman.
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For life, a few years ago, our church.
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And by the way, if you're new here, if you don't know what we believe as a church, we have a statement of faith on our website.
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We also have one printed if you'd like to take it with you to look at it.
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But in our statement of faith, we added a line.
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And it's sad that we had to add this line because we added the line to ensure that we were properly identifying how we understand the institution of marriage, because the institution of marriage has for so long been under attack.
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So several years ago, I think it was 2016, so it's been not too many years.
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We added.
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A statement of marriage and our statement of faith, and as I draw to a close, I want to read this to you on the subject of marriage.
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We believe that marriage is always to be between one man and one woman only.
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Homosexual union, same sex marriages, even if sanctioned by civil authorities or aberration of God's law and thus ungodly and not permissible.
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Neither is it biblical or godly or permissible for a man to have more than one wife at the same time or a woman to have more than one husband at the same time.
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Nor for a couple to live together as husband and wife outside of the covenant of marriage.
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Now, why did we include all those things? Because all of those things are what's happening today to address and attack the sanctity of marriage.
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God created marriage with a simple plan.
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One man leaves his parents.
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He takes his wife.
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The two become one flesh for life.
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They create a new family.
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They illustrate the gospel and no other commitment in all of the world, except for their commitment to Christ, can ever supersede their commitment to one another.
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That is biblical marriage.
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And it is a beautiful gift.
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The writer of Hebrews tell us, tells us, let marriage be held in honor among all.
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As a church, we should be the champions of biblical marriage.
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It is literally the first and most important social component God ever created.
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And that is why it will always be under attack.
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We stand for the truth that God created marriage for his glory and for our good.
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And my prayer for you today is that if you are married, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.
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Wives respect your husbands and love them.
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And if you're not married and you want to be.
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I pray that God would give you a godly spouse.
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And if you're not married and you're satisfied in your singleness, as the Apostle Paul said, that is a blessing for now.
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You can serve the Lord unfettered.
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But we will stand for biblical marriage.
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Because it is the foundation of all society, and it's a blessing from God.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for this opportunity to have preached the word.
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And I pray, Lord, that we would, by your mercy as a church, never give up our responsibility to stand for truth.
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Lord, the truth is hard.
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The truth is hard to hear.
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The truth can be hard to preach.
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But the truth should never be something for which we hide, from which we hide our faces.
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But Lord, let us stand for the truth.
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Let us live for the truth.
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Let us defend the truth.
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Let us celebrate the glorious blessings that you give us.
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Through the blessing of marriage.
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Thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to study your word.
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May now, as we begin to look toward the opportunity to respond to your word by participation in the Lord's Supper.
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May you prepare our hearts for that.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.