Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, as we gather this morning, we have come as an assembly of individuals to worship God and with one heart and one voice. And in a little while, we're going to consider the Apostle James teaching on the wrong use of our voices. But for now, we get to use our voices to acknowledge him as our sovereign Lord. And as we do that, we remember that our help is in the name of the Lord. Amen. Amen. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.

In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom, leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heaven and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. And Lord, we add our voices to the tumult of voices throughout the creation that are declaring Your glory this morning. It would be utter foolishness on our part not to do so. Jesus told the Pharisees that even the rocks would cry out in praise if they tried to stop the people from praising Him. Your glory and the praise that results from it simply cannot be suppressed no matter how hard some may try.

Help us this morning to set aside all earthly distractions and devote our whole hearts into genuine praise and worship of you. We pray along with the psalmness that the words of our mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be pleasing to you, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen. It has never been said that someone unsaid. Some things can be left unsaid, but once you say it, you can't unsay it. You can try and take back what you said. You can say, I didn't mean it, or you can try the politician's escape, I misspoke defense, but you can't unring the bell once it's been run. Even how many times we regret what we say, it's surprising how often we keep saying things we regret.

We never seem to learn from the proverb that says, when words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise. Wars start with words. Proverbs tells us, the beginning of a strife is like letting out water.

quit before the quarrel breaks out. Getting ready for church this morning, our words helped make or break our readiness to worship. And I know that sentence is probably a little bit too personal. Our tongue is like a two edged sword. Again, Proverbs tells us death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruits. It would be nice if we could make excuses for our tongue as if it were some rogue member of our body that speaks without asking permission first, but we can't. The Bible tells us it's out of the heart the mouth speaks. A tongue problem is really a heart problem and only a heart that is repentant can lead to a tongue that is tame. Only a tongue controlled by the Holy Spirit can consistently speak words that bring life rather than death. So if you've been guilty of sinning with your tongue this week or if there's any other sins that come to mind now is the time to confess those sins as is our custom you're invited if you're willing and able to go ahead and kneel at this time

and to spend a moment in quietness preparing your hearts as we proceed into worship let's go ahead and do that now father we confess that we sin with our tongue far too often from the same mouth comes forth blessing and cursing your word rebukes us through the Apostle James when he wrote these things ought not be so. We forget how much we've been forgiven and we hold others to a standard even we can't meet and when they inevitably fail we slash them with our tongues. We know this isn't right but we are powerless without your spirit's help to bridle our tongue. We want to be a people who use our words to bring life to others because we're created in your image and you are the source of life.

Thank you that your spirit is ever-present, convicting us of sin and and righteousness and judgment to come. We confess our sins of the ton and all other sins and thank you for your forgiveness. May we not take that forgiveness for granted by not truly repenting. Continue to teach and correct us as needed so that we might better reflect in all areas of our lives the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in whom's name we now pray, amen. You're invited to stand.

Our assurance of forgiveness this morning found in Ephesians 1 5 through 8, in love he predestined us for adoption to himself his sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved in him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight. Today's scripture reading is Psalm 34 verses 8 through 13. Psalm 34 8 through 13. O taste and see the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. O fear the Lord you his saints for those who fear him have no lack. The young lions suffer want and hunger but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Come, old children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good?

Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Let's pray.

Father, we come to you this week after Easter, after remembering what your son did for us and what you did for us by giving us your son. And we are back into the grind again and help us understand that every day is your day. Help us to understand that you are Lord overall. We think of the leaders of our country and those over us. We ask that you would convict them and bring those that know you to positions of leadership and influence to influence our society and turn us around. We thank you for that. We pray for those men that serve us in our military Ben Hackbarth and Dan Wibemeyer. We think of them and others that know you that are around the world today in very difficult situations. Give them wisdom and strength through you. We pray for our families. We pray for those fathers, those mothers, the children in those families that they learn from a good example and that we model your love in our families. We think of our church leaders, the elders, the deacons, the other people that are constantly serving our

body help us to be that unity and show the world in our community of the power, the supernatural power you give us through our congregation. We think of those people in our congregation that are sick and having physical problems. We think of the Durden's this morning as Ralph's ongoing treatment and chemo for his cancer and then Steve Snyder, their nephew, who does have an operation date on April the 11th for his back surgery down at UW. That will help him with his pain but due to the diagnosis of ALS he probably will not be able to walk again. So we would ask that you would give strength to Lisa and Steve as they go through now a long time of struggle with ALS. And we thank you that Mary Kay is up and hacking at it and help her to be strong through these situations.

We thank you for Debbie Wold's progress and we pray that you would continue to shrink those tumors and cure her of her cancer.

We think of Christina Barnes' mom as hospice care and all the things involved in her care with her cancer battle would be smooth and be able to be worked out as the family would have it. We think of Brandon and Esther Ballester's nephew Ethan Asheim and that at 15 he's had this problem where he couldn't breathe and all these complications. We ask that through prayer and so forth it seems like he's getting better and the last news was he didn't have to have the tracheotomy. He was able to breathe on his own but he's going to have a long time of recovering from this situation. So we'd ask that they, you give that family strength and give him strength and we thank you for the testimony that his family has been through this. We pray for Gordy and Janine Saul. Gordy has an appointment on 4-12 about the problem with the water on his brain and we ask that they would be able to cure that and put him right in that situation.

And we do think of this brother of theirs that has a strained relation that that would be able to be cured also and that he would come to know you. We thank you for Bill Slice and his operation on his gallbladder and that he seems to be recovering fine from that and that he would get back to full health, and he's anxious to do that, but help him not to jump too soon and to take care of himself, so that when he gets back at it, he'll be back full of force. We also pray for Hunter Martin, the Gail and Jim's grandson, and that the seizures that he's had, that they would be able to correctly diagnose them and stop that.

He seems to be doing all right, but we do pray that they would find the cure and get everything balanced out with him. And we thank you that there was no damage. And lastly, but not least, this cold and kind of flu bug that just keeps going around our church and our school. It just keeps decimating us every week. One member gets well, and then the next member gets sick. And we just keep trading it around. So we'd ask that you'd finally give us strength to get through that and back on track. We thank you for the outreach that you've given us through our school, through the Children's Law Center, and through the Good Shepherd's Home.

And help us to remember that each one of us are that outreach to the community that we live in, the workers that we work with, and the people that we come in contact with. We may be the only light they see, so help us to understand that and reflect that properly this week. We do pray for all the churches that are preaching your gospel around the world today. It's amazing how you have grown your family from those few 2,000 years ago and now the influence that we have worldwide in all kinds of places that we don't even know about. So I ask for special strength for those people as they worship you, help them to understand that you live inside of them with your spirit.

Help us to understand that also. We thank you most of all, of course, for your son, for without him we couldn't even pray to you. And it's in his name, Jesus Christ, we pray, amen. Father, how true that refrain is that better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.

And even as we went through our prayer requests this morning, it just reminds us again that this life is filled with frailty and trouble tribulation and trials. Lots of reasons to at times be discouraged and yet the hope that someday we will stand in your presence and you'll wipe away all the tears and all the sorrows that we turn to joy and all of those problems the weakness of the flesh will be done away with. Help us to keep our hope fixed on that future filled with glory and to not let the nasty now and now be what drives and determines what goes on with our souls. Help us even now as we again study your word to apply ourselves to listen and that I may speak it truthfully and that would have its intended effect upon our hearts. We ask this now in your Son Jesus name. Amen. This morning we're continuing in a series from the Book of James that I have been teaching on Sunday evenings. I was supposed to actually preach this particular message back in February, but if you remember, Snowmageddon 2018 forced us to cancel church on that particular Sunday. Nobody

showed up except for Philip and his family. Yay Philip, good job. So you really need to join Facebook, brother. For those who missed the first two messages, I've titled this series on James a Manifesto for Gospel Living. In In previous messages in the epistle of James, we've seen that its primary purpose is not to teach core doctrines of the Christian faith. In fact, there were some back during the days of canonizing of the scripture who argued that there really is nothing of doctrinal significance in James, and therefore, it shouldn't be in the canon. But it actually made it into the collection, and so we'll see for good reason.

So its primary purpose, as I said, is not to teach core doctrines of the Christian faith, but rather to give practical examples of Christian living or a type of manifesto, if you will, for living out the true gospel. For those who preach a works-based salvation, the Catholics would be an example, this is their go-to book. But wrongly so. I mean, they quickly jump to the verse, no faith without works is dead. And that seems like a killer verse to support the idea that works are necessary for salvation. but I believe they misinterpret that passage. Previously, I said that this epistle can be likened to taking a lab course in Christianity 101 as opposed to a lecture course.

And if you've done college and you went to your basic science class, you typically had a lecture class and you had a lab class, right? Well, just think of all the other epistles. That's the lecture. That's the doctrine. And then James is the lab for Christian living where he tells us, OK, we've been giving you all the doctrinal theory in the lectures. Now it's lab time. We're going to tell you what it looks like. In no way does this epistle contradict the doctrine of salvation by grace alone apart from works. However, it does support the teaching that we are saved by grace alone, but grace that saves is never alone, i.e.

without good works. This letter is best viewed as a series of examples of what a Christian out in the wild looks like. Each of us can hold up our own life to these examples then to see if it matches up. So if you want to know, how am I doing, give yourself a self-test as a Christian, read through James, and it's a series of examples or tests, and you can say, does my life look like this? So far, we've looked at four examples of Christian living, of what a true Christian looks like. Chapter 1 gave us the first two. It said, those were, a true Christian has joy in trials and is a doer of the word. And then in chapter 2, we saw a true Christian is impartial towards others and lives a faith that has feet.

Joy in trials, we saw, has to do with how we respond when we inevitably encounter difficulties and hardship in life. We saw the proper response to trials is joy because they grow our faith. You can say the trials helps makes us anti-fragile, if you're familiar with the book by that title. We aren't just resilient when trials come. They actually make us better. James says that they make us perfect and complete. We also saw the trials bring with them inherently a temptation to sin. But that does not mean that God is the one who tempts us. James clearly says that God does not tempt anyone. Trials carry with them a temptation to sin because of our flesh.

In our flesh, we really don't like the trials when they come. And so instead of embracing them as God-given opportunities for growth, we yield to the temptation to be angry, anxious, complaining, or any other number of sinful responses we might have from them. A mature Christian then resists the urge to sin when trials come. Doers of the Word speaks to the point that Christians don't just get their sentences right in Bible studies. They live out what the Word tells them to do. They continually look into the mirror of the words so they can see who they are and then adjust their life accordingly so. As they do so, they'll be transformed in a way that works itself out through their fingers and their toes.

James gave visiting orphans and widows in their distress and keeping oneself on stain by the world as some examples of what a doer of the word would look like. The third example we got out of chapter two was the example of gospel living, the example he gave was called impartiality towards others. Now, this does not mean loving and treating everyone equally. There are some more liberal leaning theologians who would jump on James admonition there did not be impartial and argue for some kind of inequality in all regards but that is not what James is asking for. For example, I buy my kids gifts for Christmas, not yours.

I love my wife in a way that is not the same as I love others. The impartiality that James is speaking against still allows for distinctions to be made. Some, such as members who identify with the LGBTQ community and also call themselves Christians, they'll say that Paul abolished all such distinctions in Galatians 3, where he wrote, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. I mean, I heard that again referred to, again, that verse pulled out of context in that community to make the point. This is a faulty interpretation that there's no longer any distinction.

In context, Paul is saying that everyone is justified the same way, regardless of gender, ethnicity, or social status. He was not denying those distinctions, along with different roles, rights, benefits, and limitations that those distinctions bring. He was arguing that they no longer exist. Partiality is wrong when it uses human-based merit systems to determine a person's value as one of God's image bearers. James had given the example of the rich man that came into the church, and they gave fussed over him and gave him special attention. And the poor man, they were less kind to. Those would be examples of the wrong kind of partiality.

Wrong partiality holds others to a standard of acceptability that God himself does not use. And then the fourth example we saw out of chapter 2 was faith that has feet. This example is similar to the doers of the word. When I was a younger believer, I would sometimes hear this saying, and you may have heard it too. It typically was made when a pastor was really pounding the pulpit and preaching about, you all need to go do this or that. You need to get out of your pews and go do something. And the message seemed very strongly emphasized on doing works. And some self-called, the anti-legalist brigade, I call them, they would come up and they'd say, well, you got to remember, being precedes doing and emphasizing the importance of the heart, being in the right place.

And they would want to use that as sort of a cop-out and an excuse to say, well, I really don't have to focus so much on doing because it's really important to be right with God to have the right heart. And obviously, there is some truth to that. But again, they miss James Point. His fourth example puts a twist on the being, proceeds doing, and he adds to it. And he says, yes, but doing always proceeds from being. Simply put, faith is never alone. Real faith demands good works. But note, you can't say good works proves real faith, which again, the people who love salvation by works would say, hey, my works are my proof.

And that doesn't necessarily follow. All right, so that's my way of review where we've been with the Book of James so far. This morning, then, we're going to look at James chapter 3, where I will see two more examples, then, of what Christianity looks like when it's lived out. And those two examples are first, a tamed tonne, and second, unworldly wisdom, a Christian will exhibit unworldly wisdom. So let's start off with the example of a tamed tonne. Let me direct you to the text, James chapter 3, verse 1. I'm going to read through that section there, and then we'll discuss it. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with stricters, with greater strictness.

For we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he's a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. But if we put bits into the horses, miles of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also. Though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire. And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

For every kind of beast and bird of reptile and sea creature creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father and with it we curse the people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, where olives or a grapevine produce figs, neither can a salt pond yield fresh water." He almost like here James has to like suck in a lot of air after that.

He just blurted that out. In this next example, James draws our attention to the difficulty of controlling the tongue. He refers to it as a restless evil. You probably have memories from your youth. If you can remember back, you're on the schoolyard and the bully or somebody's picking on you and they're saying really mean words to you and it really hurts your feelings and perhaps you come home crying or come home complaining to your parents about the person saying those unkind words. And if your parents were like mine, they probably pulled out that sage old proverb and they said something like this, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never harm me.

Now there may be some truth to that saying and it is good for us to help our kids develop thicker skins, But is it true that words can never harm me? James, from what we just read, seems to challenge that notion. The ton, in fact, is so clever it can be used to harm others even when the words themselves are harmless. There's an article that appeared in the 1970 edition of Mad Magazine, long before you guys were born, written by a man named Bill Garvin. The article was titled Guaranteed, Effective, All occasion, non slanderous political smear speech. In his article, Garvin showed how you could give a speech that smears your political opponent without actually slandering him.

Here's some excerpts. My fellow citizen, it is an honor and a pleasure to be here today. My opponent has openly admitted he feels an affinity toward your city, but I happen to like this area. It might be a salubrious, health salubrious place to him, but to me it is one of the nation's most delightful garden spots. If you're wondering what salubrious meant, it meant favorable and healthful. He starts then by attacking his opponent's family. His female relatives put on a constant pose of purity and innocence and claim they are inscrutable. Yet every one of them has taken part in hortatory activities, encouraging words.

His uncle was a flagrant heterosexual. His sister, who has always been obsessed by sex, once worked as a proselyte outside a church. And that's S-E-C-T-S, in case you're wondering what I said there. She worked as an evangelist. His nephew subscribes to a phonographic magazine. His wife was a thespian before their marriage and even performed the act in front of paying customers. She was an actress. And his mother, his own mother, had to resign from a woman's organization in her later years because she was an admitted sexagenarian. She hit 60. Garvin then turns the attack to his opponent. He perambulated his infant son on the street.

Took him for a walk in a carriage. He attempted to interest a 13-year-old girl in philately stamp collecting. He has advocated social intercourse in mixed company and has taken part in such gatherings himself. Polite conversation. And last summer, he committed a piscatorial act on a boat that was flying the American flag. He caught a fish. Now, this humorous example reinforces the point James is making. The ton is a powerful and often vicious weapon. James begins this example then with a surprising statement. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

The reason this statement is surprising is because many of us have heard, stated, or implied that teaching the word of God is the highest and most noble calling that a Christian could ever have. This faulty thinking that elevates being a Bible teacher to the most noble of callings stems from dualistic thinking, which suggests that spiritual stuff matters more in life than temporal stuff. The temporal stuff is just a necessary evil. You have to ask if teaching really is the highest calling in life, then why would James say not many of us should be teachers? He gives two reasons for not encouraging everyone to be a teacher.

First, teachers will incur a stricter judgment. Now, he doesn't elaborate on exactly what that means. Perhaps he's thinking of when Jesus said, judge not that you not be judged, for with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, in the Matthew 7. Bible teachers are invariably telling their listeners what they should or should not do. And if the teacher does not do what he says, then he's guilty of being a hypocrite, and thus he will incur a stricter judgment from God. So standing up here teaching this morning, I put myself in a position of possibly incurring God's greater judgment.

The second reason James gives for not many teachers is in verse 2. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he's a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. James reminds us that we all stumble or sin in lots of different ways. That should be pretty obvious to us. and Apostle John confirms that when he says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Sin is inevitable, and apparently sinning with our tongue is near the top of that list. James warns against many teachers because the more words there are, the greater the odds are that sin is going to occur.

According to James, as goes the battle with our tongue, so goes the battle with the rest of our body. It's like the ton is almost the leading indicator if there's a sin issue in our life. He states that if we have mastered control over our ton, then we are perfect and are able to control all the other sinful impulses that come with our flesh. The word perfect, as used by James here now, does not imply that sinless perfection is obtainable. In this instance, perfect just means that we'll be mature. The highest test of our spiritual maturity is what we do with our tongues. It's the barometer of our spiritual condition.

If the eyes are the window to the soul, you've heard the saying, then I say that the mouth is the doorway to the heart. In Matthew chapter 15, the Pharisees were fussing at Jesus and his disciples because they did not follow the proper ceremonial cleansing of their hands before eating. They were concerned about defilement from external sources, But Jesus corrects their faulty understanding and explains that it's what proceeds out of the mouth of man that defiles him. He said, but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. The reason James goes after the tongue so hard is because it is a direct revelation of our heart, of the heart of a man. The ton, if you will, is the dipstick that measures the maturity of our heart. James continues his discourse showing by way of example then how an out of control ton does harm. First, it ignites all manner of evil. Look at verse 3 through 6 again. If we put bits into the mouths of the horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also. They are so large and are driven by strong winds, but are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.

So also the ton is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a force is set ablaze with such a small fire. And the ton is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The ton is set among our members, standing the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and is set on fire by hell. James uses some really strong hyperbole. The tongue is a world of unrighteousness. It is staining the whole body. He emphasizes the tongue's power to influence relative to its size. It's like a bit in a horse's mouth, a rudder on a ship, and finally a tiny flame that starts a forest fire. You can really see that he's trying to drive home an important point of just how powerful and dangerous the tongue is, what it can do.

Pick your favorite analogy. The point's the same. The ton is a mighty tool for evil when it's not under control. Whole economies shudder when opposing leaders engage in warmongering rhetoric. Children cringe and fear when parents engage in heated verbal arguments. Lawn-held friendships are destroyed because of a few ill-advised words. On and on we can go with examples of how words have set the whole world ablaze. Now out of curiosity, I really wanted to think about these illustrations that James gave. So I contemplated the one he gave about the rudder, the rudder analogy. So I looked into the rudder system on the aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

I thought, well, what would be a big ship today? And I think an aircraft carrier, you know, Grammy, is a pretty big boat. Can you call it an aircraft carrier boat? Is that wrong? No, it's a ship. Okay, ship, all right. I've been told that before. The ship itself is enormous. This flight deck covers four and a half acres, and at its longest point, it's 1,092 feet long, so more than three football fields long. At its highest point, it rises 20 stories above the waterline. 94 million pounds of structural steel went into its construction, along with about another million pounds of aluminum. And it takes two rudders to steer this behemoth.

Each rudder measures just 29 feet by 22 feet in dimension. So think of that. Over a thousand feet in length, 20 stories tall, weighing tens of thousands of tons, all steered by two rudders that are about 30 feet by 30 feet. Now granted those rudders are pretty stout themselves, a lot of steel in those as well, but you get the idea of a very small device steering such a large ship. Consider again James' analogy of the forest fire. Last year, you may recall, there was a teenager just playing with some fireworks in the Eagle Creek area of Columbia River Gorge, and he set off a fire. That fire ultimately burned 49,000 acres.

That's three and a half times the area of Marysville. Can you imagine? Just one kid, fireworks, and three Marysvilles went up in flame, that area. It caused the closure of hundreds of trails and campsites that won't reopen until later this year and the hillsides having been denuded of all their vegetation are now are susceptible to a lot of mudslide activity. One small fire, one gigantic forest fire. Words cause splits in nations, splits in churches, and splits in families. We typically aren't as sensitive as we should be to the power our town has to cause trouble.

These real life examples should make us stop and consider more carefully how and when we use our tongue. The second way that James says the tongue does harm is it poisons relationships. Take a look at verses 7 through 12. For every kind of beast and bird of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water."

Again, James uses some strong rhetoric to emphasize the power of the tongue. He likens it to an untameable beast and says it's full of deadly poison. Anybody here starting to think about cutting your tongue out. It means James doesn't do it much justice. One way the tongue damages relationships is through its unpredictability. One minute, we're blessing with it, and the next, we're cursing. In many cases, those blessings and cursings are directed at the same person. More than one husband has foolishly wondered why his wife is not receptive to his sweet nothings when he's also regularly lashed out at her with his tongue.

It's really like wondering why she doesn't want to pet the pretty snake. Is it going to bite me this time? The tongue reveals the hypocrisy in our heart, and it becomes hard for others to know who the real us is. Are you the person who gives blessing? Are you the person who gives cursing? What is it today? James emphasizes the problematic nature of a tongue that blesses and curses by pointing to four impossibilities, a sprain that alternates between fresh and saltwater, a fig tree that produces olives, a grapevine that produces figs and a salt pond that yields fresh water. Sadly, because of sin, it is not impossible for our tongue to bless and curse.

But it should be so foreign to the Christian as to be practically impossible. If we find ourselves frequently alternating between blessing and cursing, then that should serve then as a warning to re-examine our profession of faith. A mature Christian does not do that. have learned to control the tongue. Let's switch gears now to the second example that James gives us there. And this is the example of a true Christian demonstrates unworldly wisdom. So starting in verse 13, we find the text there. Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not boast and be false to the truth.

This is not the wisdom that comes from down from above, but it's earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there will be disorder in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. In the second example, James contrasts the wisdom of this world with the wisdom that's from above, he starts with a simple question. Who is wise and understanding among you? And then he goes on to give us some definitions.

The wisdom, of course, he's referring to when he says who is wise is the wisdom that's from above. And it's something that only a Christian can actually possess. By examining the kind of wisdom a person characteristically exhibits, we can get a pretty good then indicator of where that person's spiritual condition is. Are they even saved or are they a very mature person? So as we go through these characteristics of worldly versus wisdom from above, you again can use that sort of as a test, say, okay, where am I at on the wisdom meter? The first thing we notice is that wisdom from above is demonstrable. This isn't a spiritual guru sitting around thinking wise things, waiting to answer questions.

James says that the wise person demonstrates wisdom by good conduct and a gentle spirit. The Bible teaches that every believer is to be busy doing good deeds. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are the household of faith, Galatians 6. For we are as workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2, you can't escape the fact that Christians, wise Christians, are busy doing things, good things. Wisdom that is from above is busy, and that busyness is for the sake of others.

Contrast this then with earthly wisdom. Its focus is on self. It's characterized by jealousy and selfish ambition. Such motivation is wrong, and according to James, it is false to the truth. That's a funny way to say it's a lie to say that you're practicing heavenly wisdom when your motivations are self-centered. In verse 15, James identifies then three levels to wisdom, not from above. And in these names that he gives, these levels, it implies an increasing level of evilness to each one. First, he describes the wisdom that is earthly, or earthly wisdom. This is a wisdom that is devoid of any spiritual consideration.

That person is just simply not even thinking spiritual things. They're just simply doing life on their own, trying to figure it out. It's limited to what man, apart from God, can deduce for himself. As such, it's easily shaped by the most popular ideas surrounding it. It's tuned into Fox News or CNN and picking up its wisdom accordingly. It is tossed around by every philosophical wind that blows through. It often follows the herd.

Again, it's not particularly even having thoughts about is there something outside of myself that I should consider. It's just what do I see and what do I, what's my wise interpretation of the data. But the next James gives another description. He says wisdom that is unspiritual. This is a a step further away from the wisdom that's from above. Some translations use the word natural instead of unspiritual there. This is the wisdom that one would expect of one who denies the existence of God. The person who practices this wisdom is described in 1 Corinthians 2.14 where it says, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. So whereas in the first case that's the person who is indifferent to spiritual considerations.

This person may be aware that there's a wisdom from above. There's a different way of approaching the situation. But it's folly to them. They disregard it. They don't want to follow it. So they do what they want to do. And then finally, there is a wisdom that is demonic. We see much of this kind of so-called wisdom today. Examples would be abortion being made acceptable and often being called the right thing to do in some cases. Homosexuality, of course, being viewed is natural and beautiful, people being called brave for refusing to identify with the traits that they were born with. Those would be examples of the demonic wisdom that we've reached.

First Timothy 2.4 warns of this kind of wisdom. Now, the Spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teaching of demons. Can you imagine that? A culture gets to the place where people are devoting themselves to the teaching of demons? Wow. When a culture starts calling good evil and evil good, you know it's as far from heavenly wisdom as it can get. In verse 16, James gives us some more detailed ways to tell when earthly wisdom is in play. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there will be disorder in every vile practice.

Interesting verse. You don't have to look hard to find lots of disorder and vile behavior in our culture today. It's everywhere. Our political system is in disorder and seriously fractured along partisan lines. Countless hashtag movements keep our society constantly agitated and at odds with each other. Our streaming devices are full of all sorts of indecent and vulgar content. The more we see earthly wisdom prevail, the more this type of, the more of this kind of cultural behavior we're going to see, we can expect it to only increase. Listen to these interesting words from Daniel Webster. Daniel Webster was one of our earliest senators.

He wrote, If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden the catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all of our glory in profound obscurity. Talk about a prophet, huh? Clearly, the wisdom we see on display regularly in our nation is not from above. As you would expect, the wisdom that is from above is quite the opposite. James gives us a good description of it in verse 17. He says, but the wisdom from above is first pure, impeasible, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.

And so in that remaining time we have, I'm just going to go through each of those attributes so we can get a good handle on what wisdom from above looks like. That helps us actually then to have a definition, something that we can work with. In his commentary on James, John MacArthur notes that most of these attributes that James just listed actually parallel the attributes that Jesus gave in the Beatitudes in his Sermon on the Mount. I don't know if James had that in mind when he wrote it. It is interesting how much it parallels it, but perhaps he was thinking about those when he came up with his list. So as I go through these attributes, I'll also make reference to those particular beatitudes and see how they parallel. The first attribute, he says, wisdom from above is pure. It's free of contamination. The word for pure is related here to the word holy. It is the direct opposite of vile. Wisdom that's from above expresses thoughts and uses words that are pure. It never degrades itself to the level of earthly wisdom. Blessed

are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Purity is a term that has lost any real meaning in our culture. We've lowered the bar so low concerning decent speech, for example, that you can rarely agree anymore on what constitute vulgar and impure talk. You ask people now, what's unacceptable speech? And we're so enamored with free speech that we've lowered the bar to where there is nothing unacceptable. It used to be that even when people would say, you know, use a bad word and they didn't really care, but they use a bad word, they still would have sensitivity to the people around them. They say, well, pardon my French.

They showed some indication that they were aware that this actually had some vulgarity to it and it was not socially acceptable, but they don't even make those kind of excuses anymore. People just use all sorts of words without any consideration if it's appropriate. Earthly wisdom keeps widening the circle of what is acceptable, leaving the sphere of what is not acceptable almost negligible. Secondly, this wisdom is peaceable. Does the wisdom being practiced stir up or settle down? Does it throw gas on the fire or put it out? Does it cause a conflict to escalate? It does not cause nor increase disorder like earthly wisdom does.

does. Earthly wisdom leads towards division and anarchy even as it claims to be seeking justice. And again, I want you to be thinking about the contrast between worldly and earthly wisdom and wisdom that's not from above. Again, take the hashtag movements and what's going on out there. And while they claim to be fighting for social justice causes, What is the fruit of their effort? Is it peace? Is it reconciliation? Is it harmony? Is it unity? It seems to only stir up more anger and frustrations and breaking Starbucks windows and just not wisdom that's from above, even if the cause may have some merit. These recent protests in our nation are just an exhibit of this false wisdom tendency.

The beatitude, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Third, wisdom that's from above is gentle. Synonyms for this are moderate, forbearing, courteous, and considerate. It doesn't get riled up. It has a calming effect on the situation. It turns away wrath with gentle answers. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Fourth, it's open to reason. It is humble and not stubborn. It is not resistant to other godly input. It does not compromise the truth, but it considers that it may not have all the necessary information. It is approachable even when the topic is unpleasant or it does not agree with the other person.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Fifth, it's full of mercy. It is compassionate as it considers a matter. It is not punitive or retributive. It's quick to forgive. It does not hold on to grudges. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Sixth, wisdom that's from above manifests good fruits or deeds. The deeds it does are beneficial and never harmful. It does not do things to get even with wrongdoers. It's characterized as being helpful and charitable to others. How are you guys doing with the test so far? You passing? Seventh, it is impartial, which is one of the examples that James discussed earlier in the epistle.

It does not use human-based marriage system to decide who is of value and who isn't. Eighth, it is sincere or without hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is routinely condemned in the Bible. Jesus warned his disciples, beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. It does not say one thing and then do another. And then finally, to cap off his discussion on wisdom, that is from above, James tells us what the results will be when godly wisdom is exercised. Verse 18, and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. When godly wisdom is in action, you will harvest righteousness. The best indicator we have that godly wisdom is being exercised is that righteousness will increase.

Where division and rancor exist, you know that godly wisdom is not being followed somewhere in the process. This is what's so sad and tragic, that even among believers in churches, while they both are trying to pursue a righteous answer, the amount of rancor and anger and whatnot that can occur, even as they supposedly are trying to pursue righteousness, but they've gotten off the trail. They're no longer on using godly wisdom, wisdom that's from above. Notice that the harvest of righteousness comes from sowing the seeds of peace. You cannot use fleshly weapons of war to battle your way to righteousness. There are many examples of well-meaning Christians who let their emotions get in the way and end up resorting to earthly wisdom instead of godly wisdom to resolve the conflict.

The result is typically not in keeping with righteousness. Proverbs 3033 says, pressing milk produces curds, pressing the nose produces blood, and pressing anger produces strife. It can be difficult then to keep emotions in check when we see someone wrong, some wrong being perpetrated. All of us have that initial reaction we see in wrong and it just kind of provokes us and we feel sort of a righteous indignation rise up within us. But usually that righteous indignation translates into another word for anger. Responding to a wrong in this mode will not help increase righteousness even if it does help, even if it's trying to make the wrong stop.

So there's a wrong way to try to make a bad situation right. Well, you don't have to read very many tweets or Facebook posts to verify that wisdom from above is not the wisdom of our age and that the ton is a restless evil. The disparity between godly wisdom and the wisdom of this age is growing larger by the day. It's getting easier and easier to see the difference between the two. We who follow Christ need to guard ourselves from being deceived and conforming to the world in order to fit in. It's tempting to fight fire with fire when we engage the world, but it only leads to more sin all around. We can initially expect hostility when we try to bring godly wisdom into the conversation, but we can take courage in the knowledge that to those being saved, our words will eventually be received with gladness.

It isn't our job to win the battle. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. We just need to be faithful to exercise wisdom that's from above in what we do and what we say. I like the quote that Sean has referred to several times from a book. I can't remember which book it was. But the quote was, the fire does not fear the smoke. We have a wisdom from above that crushes the wisdom of the sage and the power of the Holy Spirit that tames our tongue and uses it for his glory and honor. We don't want to mess that up by using the wrong kind of wisdom. We are in a war, but the weapons we use are not like the weapons used by those who trust in earthly wisdom.

Paul wrote, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, for though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. We don't have a choice but to engage in a world full of sin, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can do it with tons that are under control and with wisdom that's from above. And Father, as we've considered these two more traits of what a godly, mature Christian looks like, we must confess that perhaps of all the traits we've discussed so far, these rank up near the top two that we probably get the lowest letter grade on.

We would ask that your spirit would continue to quicken our hearts to make us sensitive to how we use our tongue, that we wouldn't be hypocrites, both blessing and cursing with it, that we would be aware that when our fleshly wisdom is kicking into gear and then we would put that aside and we would use the wisdom that's from above. We pray for that harvest of righteousness that comes when those who sow those seeds in peace love you and trust you. Father, we live in very, very weird times in our culture and we need your wisdom to help us navigate through it.

And so keep us from being conformed, but rather being transformed by the renewing of our mind through the teaching of your word. And as we now continue on in our worship time, may you be pleased with again the quality of how we worship you. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. I didn't really think about the song selections that Jonathan had made for this morning, but that's interesting with just saying that song because I'm actually gonna, in my communion, words going to take you again to Revelation chapter 5 where John is sharing a vision of the Lord seated on his throne. In chapter 5, John shares his vision. He wrote, Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals? Now at first in his vision there's no one that appears to be qualified to open the scroll which causes John to start weeping. But then And then one of the elders in his vision comes over to him

and says, weep no more, behold the lion, the tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals. And then continuing on, if you allow me, reading that vision, we read, and between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who is seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

And they sang a new song saying, wordly are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain. And by your blood, you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nations. You have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on earth. Then I looked and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders, the voice of many angels numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who is slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. And I heard every creature in heaven on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.

And the four living creatures said, Amen. And the elders fell down and worshipped." What a vision. Can you just, I don't know about you, I almost give you goosebumps to imagine what that would be like. Today, with all of the division and the rancor and even in a body of people like this, the currents of disunity that can occur and we're not always on the same page, to imagine a day when we, along with the marriage and marriage of angels everybody else altogether, one voice all pointing in the same direction, saying the same thing, praising God. And then the challenge for us is to reflect on that and reflect again on what Jesus did to bring about our unity as brothers and sisters in Christ. And can we do a better job of training our tongues to speak with one voice that is with a wisdom from what's above, that does use our tongues to bring glory and honor, that gives life and to stop using it in the ways that we so often do inappropriately.

In one of his hymns, Charles Wesley wishes for 1,000 tons to sing our great redeemer's praise. Given what we've just learned about the ton today, 1,000 tons might be problematic. That doesn't mean, though, that we can't work to tame the one ton that we have to be a source of blessing rather than a cursing. Many of you are going to actually have a chance this afternoon to practice that as you go out to guess who's coming to dinner. So I encourage you to enjoy that time and to use those tongues to let your speech bring life to all who hear it. And for our benediction, I've chosen Psalms 34. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul makes its post in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. You're dismissed.

“Death is the most obvious fact we try to hide from our kids.” So writes Ben Sasse, a Senator from Nebraska, in his book, The Vanishing American Adult. Even if we attempt to protect our kids from seeing it as long as possible, we cannot avoid death. Death is always around. All living creatures die at some point though it’s only human beings who anticipate their own death and the death of those whom they love. Even in our advanced medical culture, death is as likely as mediocre hospital food. We cannot avoid it any more than the ocean can avoid getting wet.

It's been said that there are only two things that are certain: death and taxes. It's simple, it’s at least a little cynical, and I believe that it is short by one.

What would you answer if you got to add a third thing to the list of certain things in this world? You only get one; no cheating. There are things that certainly exist, but that's different than death and taxes which are more certain events. What is a third, just as sure, event that everyone can expect will come?

Is it giving away too much to be asking the question on Easter Sunday morning? Are you ready to guess at my answer having read, or reread, the title and subtitle for the sermon? That does reveal my hand, though I'm prepared to make a defense for my hope. As certain as death and taxes is resurrection.

My desire this morning is to feed your soul with eternal comfort that Jesus Christ the Lord is risen from the dead. We confess that He is Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead (Romans 10:9), and that all who believe in Him will be raised. I want to encourage you that this reality has never been in question. The word of resurrection is an emphatic word, an old word, and a living word.

In John 11 Jesus heard that His friend Lazarus was sick (verse 4) and then waited two days to make sure that Lazarus died before He went to see him (verse 6). When Jesus arrived, Mary and Martha were upset, and both of them believed that had Jesus come earlier, Jesus could have kept Lazarus from dying (verses 21, 32). Similar murmurs came from the crowd (verse 37). Jesus had another way of showing His glory in mind (verses 4, 40).

The conversation between Jesus and Martha turned to the topic of resurrection as Jesus told Martha that Lazarus would rise again (verse 23). I know that a number of things would be different had this event happened after Jesus’ own resurrection, but imagine what Martha might have said had she known what we know now.

Post-Easter resurrection is like living mortar and brick to the house of truth. In the New Testament resurrection is an emphatic theme, a thundering word. The apostles can't stop preaching about it as the church spreads throughout the book of Acts. When he defended himself before Felix the governor in Caesarea Paul said,

But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets, having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept, that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust. (Acts 24:14-15)

He referenced the resurrection because it is one of the things of “first importance” in the gospel, “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). God has “caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Jesus was “raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25) and our sanctification (Romans 6:4-5). We expect that “he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus…to the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 4:14-15).

Paul's life was given to the pursuit of knowing Christ and resurrection.

that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:10)

So the crux of the gospel, the start and the walk and the hope of our salvation, is the word of resurrection. It is an emphatic word, one that pumps the heart of New Testament truth. And Martha didn’t know any of that.

Note the interchange between Jesus and Martha starting in John 11:20. She went to meet Him and expressed her disappointment that He hadn’t come earlier. Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." What stands out is Martha's response. She said, "What are you talking about? We Jews don't believe in any kind of resurrection." But, of course, that's not what she said at all. "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." How did she know anything about resurrection? We have Jesus' response and the rest of John’s Gospel and the letters of the apostles. All Mary had was the Old Testament.

Another conversation Jesus had also raises this question. The Sadducees, "who say that there is no resurrection" (Matthew 22:23), approached Him with the scenario about a man with seven brothers who all married the same woman one after the other (verses 24-28). They asked whose wife she would be in the resurrection. Jesus answered them, "There is no resurrection, as you already know." No, Jesus answered them, "You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God" (Matthew 22:29).

But, what Scriptures?

A common thing to read in books about the Old Testament is that the Old Testament did not teach a resurrection. There are some passages that make it sound as if once a man is in the grave, or in Sheol, that was it. But if that’s really it, where did Mary get her info? Why didn't she act surprised when Jesus so matter of factly said that Lazarus would rise? How could Jesus reasonably confront the Sadducees for their culpable ignorance? Why were the Pharisees so committed in their debate with the Sadducees (see one example in Acts 23:6, 8)?

It's because resurrection is an old word.

Perhaps the oldest word comes from Job. I've attempted to preach Job's words about resurrection on Easter at least twice with varying success. But his words stand on their own.

For I know that my Redeemer lives,

Job may have lived around the time of Abram, just generations after the flood, between Genesis 11 and 12. He expected a bodily resurrection purchased for him by a living Redeemer. Did Job say better than he knew? Of course. Did he does that mean he didn't know what he said? Not at all. He expected his personal, bodily resurrection after death.

Likewise in Psalm 16, David looks forward to a certain physical reality.

For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,

David also wrote better than he knew. Who is the “holy one”? It’s himself; the psalm is written from the first-person singular perspective the whole way through. And it also looks forward to the "holy one," whom the apostles recognized as Jesus (Acts 13:35).

The prophet Isaiah wrote about a song to be "sung in the land of Judah" that included these lines:

Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.

And one additional word from the prophet Daniel.

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Daniel 12:2)

This passage points to a resurrection of the just and the unjust, one to everlasting life and one to everlasting punishment (see also John 5:28-29; Acts 24:15; Revelation 20:12-13). The Sadducees, while only reading the Law, missed out on the clear teaching of the Scriptures, and as such they did not appreciate the power of God.

While it may not be as emphasized as in the New, the resurrection is clear in the Old Testament. That’s why he was “raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). That’s why Paul was “believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the prophets” (Acts 24:14-15). Mary also knew, and she knew because resurrection is an old word full of promise.

Resurrection is more than a promise made by God, and it is more than a fact accomplished by God in Jesus. The reason why resurrection is as certain as death and taxes, the reason why the resurrection is a doctrine that is impossible to keep buried, is because the Son of God is resurrection.

This was Jesus' response to Martha. He didn’t contradict the Old Testament, He concentrated it on Himself. It is one of Jesus' numerous "I am" statements recorded in the John's Gospel. When we think about Jesus in His terms, we know that:

And He says, "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25). Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and He is the life on the other side of death.

Resurrection has personality. Resurrection is incarnated. Wherever Jesus goes, so goes resurrection. Jesus embodies resurrection and life. Death couldn't win from the beginning because the Word (the Logos, John 1:1), who is resurrection, was in the beginning first. We believe that it's impossible for death to win because of who Jesus is. Resurrection isn't merely something that He experienced, resurrection is who He is!

Resurrection is one of His attributes. Take away resurrection and the Second Person of the Trinity would be someone else. If you take away one of the three sides of a triangle, it isn't a triangle. Words may form phrases without a verb, but they can't make a sentence. A Jesus who would not rise from the dead is another Jesus, and therefore another god. He had to rise from the dead because resurrection is essential, not just for our life, but as part of His own.

If we shield our kids from death, we shield them from how gross and destructive sin is. If we shield our kids from death, we shield them from how costly and gracious Christ's death for sinners on the cross is. If we shield our kids from death, we shield them from the certainty of resurrection in Christ. If we shield our kids from death, we shield them from glory.

Jesus waited to visit Lazarus in order to show glory. Jesus told Martha that she would see glory (verse 40). Jesus died and rose again because of glory.

Then Jesus asked Martha, Do you believe this? He's asking her if she believes in Him. How about you? Take Jesus' question for yourself: Do you believe this? Do you believe in Him?

And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die (John 11:26). That is, our fellowship with God will never cease.

Know the Scriptures and the power of God. Are you battered by guilt and shameful memories? Are you unsettled by anxiety or fear about what might happen? Are you brokenhearted over loss, or lonely, or weary? Do you feel as if you can’t endure the affliction, as if you can’t possibly figure out the next step? Do you feel utterly burdened beyond your own strength so that you despair of life itself?

The apostle Paul wrote similarly to the Corinthians. “We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).

This is how He can be the God of comfort. Beloved, God has put you in this spot in order for you to rely on Him, and He wants you to know that He is the resurrection and life. He gets glory at our breaking points. He gets glory not by keeping Lazarus from the grave, but by calling him out of it.

It was impossible to keep Jesus buried. Resurrection is a certain event in the world because of the Word that made the world. This is very good news. No cemetery is safe with Jesus around, no heart so cold that it is beyond His ability to bring it back into beating.

Resurrection is an emphatic, established, and embodied word, a word impossible to keep buried because it is part of God’s own nature.

The first question and answer to the Westminster Shorter Catechism is huge if true (and it is). “What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” That's monumental.

Even better, though not as short, is the first Q&A in the Heidelberg Catechism, affectionately referred to as Heidelberg 1.

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

"I am not my own." This is not the greatest let down to self-esteem, the greatest pride-balloon pop, or the greatest discouraging word, though our humanistic culture might disagree. It is the greatest comfort. This is not merely Calvinism in the classroom, this is Calvinism as a soul-fortress. I am not my own because I have been created, and my Creator is God. I am not my own because I have been purchased, and my Savior is Lord. My body and breath are not my own, they are a gift from the will of God. And as one who has sinned and deserves death and the brutal accusations of Satan, my sins are forgiven and I have been freed from guilt and eternal punishment because of His definite atonement.

This is comfort for soul and body. Not a hair can fall from my head apart from the Father’s will. This is also motivation for righteousness for soul and body. Every hair on my head can be combed for the Father’s will.

The Heidelberg answer, "I am not my own," is 1 Corinthians 6:19 first-personalized. While Paul has given warnings along the way, he has been driving to this all along. He has been asking the Corinthians to remember their doctrine and the implications of those truths for sake of their sexual morality.

The final part of verses 12-20 ask three "Do you not know?" questions. In verse 15, don't they know that they are members of Christ's body? In verses 16-18, don't they know that they are one-d with Christ. And in verses 19-20, don't they know that they are owned by Christ?

We finished near the end of Paul's thoughts on being one-d with Christ last Lord's Day. He told them that they should flee sexual immorality, which is an urgent and serious exhortation that applies to more than intercourse outside of the one man-one woman one-fleshedness in marriage. We saw an illustration (Joseph with Potiphar’s wife) and similar instruction (Solomon to his sons in Proverbs) from the Old Testament that sex sins are not sins to fight but to flee.

There is a reason given in the last part of verse 18. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body; but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Someone might ask how suicide is not a sin against one's own body. Gluttony and drunkenness also appear to cause self-fleshly inflicted wounds. But there is something in our image-bearing nature, something in our relation-reflecting being, that causes sexual immorality to hurt us in a way that other sins don't. Sexual sins are selfish sins, but they aren't solitary sins; it takes two to make a thing go wrong. The physical union could result in a new life, so a third person is permanently involved.

There are sexually transmitted diseases, yes (MacArthur concludes that the verse is referring to a prevalent “venereal disease” in Paul’s day). But Paul is referring to a deeper stain here. There are some consequences of sexual immorality that cannot be undone, even if they can be forgiven. These consequences are sometimes tangible, sometimes emotional, often both. So Solomon said,

He who commits adultery lacks sense;

So don't even get near. Flee sexual immorality because it ruins unlike other sins.

The final "do you not know?" question starts in verse 19.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? Paul already used the temple analogy with the Corinthians. In chapter 3 he was pointing out that some preachers not only do bad work, some of them do destructive work. The church is God's temple, the place where God through the Holy Spirit dwells, so those who attack the collective structure are attacking the temple.

In chapter 6, though, Paul presses the temple analogy not to the whole but to each member. Just as each believer is united to Christ, so each believer has the Holy Spirit within him. God Himself resides in each Christian. The Spirit is a gift from God, the one who seals our inheritance in the kingdom of God. And shall we then do unholy things with the Holy Spirit with us?

In the final part of verse 19 through verse 20 Paul advances into another reason for our sexual purity. We are united with Christ, one-d with Him. We are also purchased by Him.

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. This is slavery language. But it is not freedom from slavery, it is freedom from a wicked master.

Our status is upgraded by this slavery. The alternative to being owned is not to be self-determined. If we can be purchased, it means that we already had an owner. Though Paul doesn't say that Jesus paid Satan, we were slaves of sin. Christ’s purchase delivered us into a better kingdom.

“Redemption is from a state of jeopardy by a costly act to a new state.” (Thiselton)

The price was Christ's blood. Paul already referred to the word of the cross (1:18), to Christ who is our redemption (1:30), to "Jesus Christ and him crucified" (2:2). As we approach Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, we have our reason for holiness in our relationships. It is true that He paid the penalty for our sin, and in doing so He paid to make us His own.

The doctrine of the atonement means that your heart and your parts are designated for service. Because of Christ's death and resurrection, if you believe, then all your sin, sexual and otherwise, is covered. Jesus absorbed God's wrath in your place. And also, because of Christ's death and resurrection, you are under new management. The atonement is an economic transaction. You used to go every day into the Darkness District and work for Seed of the Serpent Incorporated. Then you were bought out. But you weren't bought out to work for yourself. You are under contract to serve a new Lord, the King of Righeousness.

The conclusion is: So glorify God in your body. We tend to think about glorifying God in our thoughts; we think that He's great. We also think about glorifying God with our songs; we sing that He's great. But we can bring glory to God by where we keep our feet from going, where we keep our eyes from looking, where we keep our hands from touching, and where we keep our hearts from lusting.

We serve God, or ourselves or others, by what we do in the body. As Paul said the body is meant for the Lord and the Lord for the body (verse 13). It certainly applies to whatever we do, even what's for dinner, as a similar exhortation says later in the letter: "whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). How we work, how we play, how we date, how we dress, all of those count.

“To glorify God in our body means so to use our earthly body that men may actually see that also these our bodies belong to God.” (Lenski)

The particular context is being righteous in our relationships with the opposite sex, and same sex, too.

There will be more about sex and marriage and divorce and remarriage and virgins and betrothal in chapter 7. We'll get there a month from now, with Easter next Sunday, Jim preaching the Sunday after that, and Jonathan preaching the Sunday after that. But before we finish here, the issues in chapter 6 are entirely about the heart, and the parts.

I've gotten feedback, all of it revelatory, about my comments on various external parts, such as the example of haircuts. “Isn't it about the heart?” Yes. And what we want will become visible, sooner or later, in one way or another. How a man thinks is why a man chooses his “look.” And how he wants to look tells something about how he wants to interact with others and be seen by them. His choices show his heart; “the tree is known by its fruit” (Matthew 12:33). How a woman seeks identity and security is visible in who she hangs out with and how she lets herself be treated. Motives get displayed.

You are not your own. You don’t get to have whatever motives you want, and you certainly don’t get to claim your motives are pure while decorating yourself with symbols of impurity, or while following the trendy mold of the world. Our emotions are not the Lord, our thoughts are not the Lord, Jesus is Lord.

I think two things relate to Paul's connection that we are not our own with sexual purity. First, we ought to love image-bearing masculinity, femininity, and marriage a lot more than we do. In 1 Corinthians 6, the intimacy that comes with sex is precious. Let us be a people who love marriage more, get into covenant sooner, who are more serious about purity and fruitfulness. And second, we ought to have a much clearer line between married and not married than we do.

Our culture has been blurring the line of marital commitment between one man and one woman (and now between male and female), if not trying to demolish the line, for at least 50 years. But free love has not been free, and making it easier to divorce has not made anything easier. Movies and television have made sex look fun for all, and made teenage and twenty-something romance seem emotional, but mostly harmless. So many parents say about their kids, “Everyone has to experience it." No they don't.

When does it become the case that you are not your own? When does being the temple of the Holy Spirit kick in? Both of these happen at conversion. If you are a Christian, then you get to not be a slave to your emotions and the "passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God" (1 Thessalonians 4:5). Look right there: it’s a heart issue. Those who don't know God don't know how to control their hearts, and it becomes visible on their outsides. Those who aren't owned by Jesus are owned by their lusts.

So it's not "cute." What is the reason to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a significant other? What is the reason to date, to go out? What benefit is there in focusing your attention and affections on one person without any promise from you or to you of faithfulness? Being married is great. It can be messy, but it is a mess worth making. But "playing" married couple, emotionally and physically, is playing with fire. We can work to get young people ready for marriage responsibilities sooner, but that’s different than letting them flirt with sexual immorality.

You are not your own. As 1 Corinthians 7 states, and as 1 Thessalonians 4 implies, you are actually your spouse's, and if you don't know your spouse yet, then you should wait to share your parts and your heart.

It is precisely in how a person reveals themselves as what they are in the bodily and everyday life that what it means to be “in Christ” emerges. (Thiselton)

As the point of this paragraph has been, you are not your own, you are the Lord's. That has consequences. It is a great comfort, and it is a great catalyst to purity. So glorify God in your body.

Self-indulgent pride knows no boundaries. Self-indulgent Christian pride knows some boundaries, but those boundaries are usually hand-selected. We know better than to say, "If it feels good, do it." We prefer to try, "If if feels good, and there isn't a verse against it, don't let the legalists judge you for it.”

Once we see what Paul is really saying to the Corinthians in chapter 6 we may be surprised. And once we see what Paul is really saying we may say, "Ow." Our situation is so different from that in the first-century Roman Empire, yet among us sin is still ruining our righteousness like a rusty nail through a flip-flop into the arch of your foot.

The Corinthian Christians were tolerating a man in such gross sin that even the pagans of that day couldn’t stomach (chapter 5). The Corinthian Christians were seeking a version of social justice from unjust judges against their fellow believers (first part of chapter 6). The Corinthian Christians were justifying their self-indulgence with a gospel mantra (middle of chapter 6): “all things are lawful.”

That's where we finished last Lord's Day. Paul clarified some limits to Christian liberties, namely, that just because you could do it doesn't mean you should do it, either because it isn't helpful to a fellow believer or because it makes one helpless as a slave to the "thing," whatever the thing may be. Liberty is great! And liberty in Christ is freedom from the burden of the law as well as freedom from sin, not freedom to sin.

Then Paul clarified categories about the Christian's relationship with bodily appetites, and in doing so moved toward his target in the paragraph. It seems that at least some of the Corinthians Christians were saying that sex is like food: all good, all the time, and of no consequence in the future kingdom. But Paul says the body is "for the Lord and the Lord for the body." Food may be digested and expelled, but the body has everlasting purposes. It's not a perishable commodity.

In verses 15-20 Paul asks three more times, "Do you not know?" He's already used this rhetorical device multiple times in the letter, each time expecting that they are not living in light of the truth they've been taught. The church had an application problem.

Application problems, of course, get touchy. Some will complain against certain doctrines, but many more will complain when you step on their toes. It’s one thing to say, “Be like Jesus.” It’s another thing to say, “Be like Jesus, and do you think Jesus would get His hair cut like that?” Or, “Do you think Jesus would watch that TV show?” Paul is stomping around in rhetorical snow-shoes. The Christians in Corinth really should have acted better, and we really will find application, too.

Paul asks two questions in verse 15 that he knows the answer to before he asks.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Here is one of the great gospel truths: the believer's union with Christ. When a man believes, he is supernaturally put "in Christ" and also Christ is "in him." The union is a spiritual union, and yet it affects the physical life as well.

Christians are members of Christ. The word refers to body parts, to “limbs and organs” (Revised English Bible), and sometimes specifically to reproductive parts. Our bodies are members, meaning that it is not just my thoughts or my will or my heart. There is a lot more that Paul will say about Christians being members of Christ's body in chapter 12 related to our responsibilities to serve the rest of the body. Here it is about our responsibilities to purity. Keep your hand out of the cookie jar, and the garbage disposal. That’s not where it belongs.

Since it's true that our bodies are members of Christ, Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Whoa. What?

We do not know if use of prostitution was a regular occurrence in the church or not. I've read different arguments that claim it was and that it wasn't. There was a “famous account of 1,000 prostitutes in the temple of Aphrodite” but it “refers to the Corinth destroyed in 146 B.C.” (Ciampa), which would be similar to us assuming what was typical in 1818 is typical today. The man in chapter 5 had a name. The "one of you" at the start of chapter 6 seems like a common enough problem. But in verse 12 through the end of the chapter there isn't any identification of persons, but emphasis on the principle.

The principle is: since your body is a member of Christ, then any sexual sin involves Christ. That is like hooking up Jesus with a ho.

That Paul goes to this extreme probably means that he didn't have to imagine the arguments. It also means it doesn't matter what arguments were being made, either that it was okay based on their "culture" or that it was okay based on dualism or that it was okay based on liberty. It wasn't okay, no way. Never! or "God forbid!" (KJV). It is unclean, unrighteous.

Paul hammers the principle deeper with the next question.

Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? It is the seventh time he’s used the “do you not know” formula in the letter, and the fifth time in this chapter alone, perhaps a sign of approaching exasperation. This question takes the realities of membership and connection and intensifies them with the implications of intimacy and oneness. Sex is one plus one equals one, (which only works with male and female parts) and it works that way because God created it that way. There is a “joining,” a bonding together. It’s nothing to be flippant about; it’s not just for “fun”; there is no “casual” sex.

For, as it is written, "The two will become one flesh." Paul quotes the Greek translation of Genesis 2:24. In the story in Genesis 2, verse 24 is a principle not a plot point. God made Eve from Adam and for Adam, Adam composed poetry for Eve when he met her, and Moses summarizes their condition at the end of the chapter. But again, verse 24 is an everlasting principle that applies beyond Adam and Eve. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." Adam and Eve didn't have parents, but their relationship became the pattern for all the generations getting married afterward.

There are two parts to marriage: a covenant and then consummation. There are verbal vows made before God and witnesses in public, then there is physical union in private. With both of these in place a new family unit is created.

In 1 Corinthians 6 Paul acknowledges that there is a perversion with permanent consequences that happens without the promises between a husband and wife. Though they didn’t make vows, they do still share a oneness of flesh that can't be undone, even though it can be forgiven. Intercourse is a union meant to be permanent.

But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. This is not a sexual or sensual joining, but it is a real joining. It reminds us that we are members of Christ, so whoever we are being one with we are making one with Christ. If it is anyone other than our spouse, we are joining Christ with unrighteousness. If it is our spouse, we are with Christ in righteousness. This oneness with Christ doesn't prohibit sex, it requires us to be righteous with our hearts and parts. That can't happen by definition with a prostitute, or your girlfriend/boyfriend with whom you're sexually active.

The command is well known: Flee sexual immorality. There are some sins that we must fight. Every type of porneia we must flee, which in the immediate context includes incest, adultery, homosexuality, and prostitution. By application it includes fornication and pornography. There are some sins that we abstain from, there are other sins that we avoid. I can abstain from smoking outside a bar, but I avoid a pit of rattlesnakes. Don't even go near it. Keep away from there.

I don't think that Moses wrote Genesis 39 for the sake of providing a story about purity. In context in Genesis, the illustration might be more about how doing the right thing might get you thrown in prison unjustly. But there's also no doubt that we can see Joseph's example of running away from sexual immorality.

Joseph kept refusing the advances of Potiphar's wife. He told her directly that it would be a great wickedness, a sin not only against his master/her husband but a sin against God. She kept speaking to Joseph "day after day," but "he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her" (Genesis 39:10). Even if he could have, he wouldn't have kept texting her, or studying together, or trying to be nice to her since it might hurt her feelings if he didn't.

She kept coming on to him, and one day she arranged for the house to be empty. He had work to do so he was there, but when she grabbed him, he "fled and got out of the house" (verse 12). The Greek word for "fled" (a form of φεύγω) in the LXX is the same as the command in 1 Corinthians 6:18, “Flee!"

Solomon warned his son about the “forbidden woman,” "Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house" (Proverbs 5:8). The "simple" and the "young man lacking sense" is the one "passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house" (Proverbs 7:6-8). So he urges wisdom, "Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths" (7:25). You can’t just say it’s “bad,” you have to escape.

Solomon is urging wisdom, and in this case, wisdom follows commandments. He says, "keep my words, and treasure up my commandments with you, keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye; bind them on your fingers; write then on the tablet of your heart" (7:1-3). He says again, "and now, O sons, listen to me, and be attentive to the words of my mouth" (7:24).

Where does this application end? Flee sexual immorality.

What about the movies you watch? What about the television shows you watch? What about the music videos you watch? What about the apps you have on your phone? What about the websites you visit, either for their content or their ads? What about the games you play? What about the conversations you have with your friends? What about your imagination?

One of the biggest questions that young people throw at their parents and pastors is, "how can I know the will of God?" Paul answers that in his first letter to the Thessalonians.

This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter; because the Lord is [the] avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. (1 Thessalonians 4:3-7)

While Paul is concerned about righteous purity between one another, and while we ought to take pains not to use someone or defraud, the “primary concern is how [sexual immorality] violates one’s relation to Christ” (Thiselton).

Parents, how are you encouraging your kids to holy dating? How are you urging them to sanctification in their relationships with the opposite sex? What expectations have you embraced from those who don't know God, who let their passions run wild, who aren't concerned at all with impurity? Where have you gotten your standards from? Just not doing it like you did? Not having your kids feel awkward or left out? Shouldn’t it be more than that?

This is an issue of apps, this is an issue of what you wear and the attention you’re trying to attract, this is an issue of what events you attend, this is an issue of who your friends are and what you talk about when you're having a sleep-over. It is an issue of your heart and your parts.

The church is not full of Christians defending use of prostitution itself, but any sexual immorality is like joining Christ to a prostitute. We’ll see next Lord’s day in the rest of verse 18 why sexual immorality is such a devastating sin, and then see what we are supposed to think about our bodies in verses 19-20, we are owned by Christ.

A believer is not supposed to just “be himself,” he is supposed to be “in Christ.” We do not know what is best “for ourselves,” not on our own. We are told what is best for us in union with Christ.

In our culture there are Snares. Every. Step. The world is sexually charged, and the church is too often prostituting herself, driven by the passions of the flesh.

Do you desire God’s blessing? Then you must desire sexual morality, which is, sex in the covenant of marriage.

One of the most frustrating things about learning to preach is that you usually don't get to preach consecutively, that is, your opportunities only come every so often rather than the very next week. That’s frustrating if you have the calling to preach and actually have something to say from your study. It's also frustrating if you just bombed a sermon and don't get a chance to try again any time soon.

Preaching regularly doesn't always mean that you do better. Every-Sunday preachers can still get into a slump. But it's a great joy to take a good whack at the roots of sin and then get to do it again seven days later. And here we are.

Remember that this time of our service is the consecration part. This is the time when the Word goes to work on us, to lay open our thoughts and intentions, to pull back our necks and go for the throat (Hebrews 4:12-13). We are being dedicated to divine purposes, as individual members and together as members of Christ's body. The pastor's work is to pay close attention to himself and to the flock that Christ died for in order to see every man made more and more complete in Christ (Acts 20:28; Colossians 1:28). Is it possible to be made more complete in Christ and never have to give up something you love? Is it possible to be made more complete in Christ and never need to change your mind? Is it possible to be made more complete in Christ without someone saying something to you that a part of you doesn't want to hear?

The apostle Paul wrote to the saints in Corinth about a garbage truck full of their rotten compromises with unrighteousness. And don't forget who he started with. The worst offenders were the preachers. It wasn't Paul and Apollos and Peter, but there were preachers using worldly rhetoric to win a bigger crowd for sake of their own name. One of those tactics might have been going a little soft on sin. Preaching the word of the cross is harsh (on pride). The behaviors that Paul starts to confront in chapter 5 grew in the soil of self-seeking leaders.

I spent a lot of time giving grief to my own kind in the first four chapters of this letter. I do think that pastors and preachers bear a great responsibility for their failures. Some of them will be saved, but just barely, and their work will are burned up (1 Corinthians 3:14-15). And when they are doing their job, it doesn't tickle the ears.

At the start of chapter 6 Paul addressed how some of the believers were taking other brothers before unrighteous judges. Then he described some of the unrighteous in verses 9-11, the kind of worldly people that shouldn't be relied on to arbitrate disputes between Christians and the kind of worldly people that shouldn't be imitated by the Christians. Why pay so much attention to those who have no future? As for us, we will inherit the kingdom of heaven.

In that list are men who sin with money, men who sin with their mouths, men who sin by their failure to be masculine, men who sin with other men, men who sin with women. Four of the ten are sins related to sex, considered either as gender or as practice. The man in chapter 5 was guilty of sexual immorality, the unrighteous are regularly guilty of sexual immorality, and even in the church there is ongoing sexual immorality defended in a multitude of ways. Starting in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and going through the end of chapter 7 the apostle has a lot to say about sex sins.

There is no such thing as safe sin when it comes to sex.

That's part of the reason why pastors must talk about it. Is this not one of the battle lines in our culture? Are we not being catechized by our entertainers and educators? They used to push toleration, then it was approval, now it is applause that they insist on. There have always been edges of deviant behavior, but there used to be more agreement on what was deviant. Now we're expected to agree that deviance is the norm.

This is also why reference to particular haircuts and piercings and clothing and mannerisms is in the bull’s-eye of sanctification questions. Are we loving the ways of the unrighteous, inside or out? Are we conscious of the ways we're behaving like the unrighteous? Are we wearing Team Seed of the Serpent’s uniform because it looks so cool?

They know what they're doing, and typically better than Team Seed of the Woman. They have a strategy. Google what unbelievers say about their styles. See what kinds of identifying symbols they claim.

We who are "safe" from the battle, either because we're not near the front lines or because we don't want to be near the front lines, start fretting about legalism. What about our Christian freedom? What about our liberty in Christ?

I am against legalism. I am preaching through Galatians for my Sunday evening epistle, and if Galatians is anything it is a glorious blast against the monster of legalism. Legalism tends toward the ugliest self-righteous pride. The pretentious meter is off the scale with legalism.

But, the wrong use of liberty tends toward the ugliest self-indulgent pride. The foolishness meter is off the scale with liberty abused.

So we have a ways to go to avoid both gutters. There is a lot about sexual purity, or not, in the upcoming parts of 1 Corinthians. If talking about haircuts as related to effeminacy made you mad, wait until we talk about dating as related to sexual immorality. And if you're good with both of those, wait until we talk about food offered to the GMO gods.

In the last part of chapter 6 Paul confronts immorality under the cover of liberty and/or dualism. We're going to be in this final paragraph of the chapter for today and the next couple Sundays leading up to Easter.

There are no such things as quotation marks in the original text. There are ways to identify quotes, and they are usually introduced with some sort of formula: “each one of you says” (1:12) or “when one says” (3:4). No such phrasing is found in verses 12 and 13, though the ESV marks off a couple comments as if Paul is quoting what he's hearing coming out of Corinth in order to reply to it.

These quotes or slogans may or may not have come from Paul himself and his previous teaching. He includes himself in the statement, “to me,” and he doesn't confront or criticize the statements. He does clarify them.

In verse 12 the same motto is mentioned twice and there are two related clarifications. The catchphrase is about Christian liberty. "All things are lawful for me." To be “lawful” doesn’t mean that the law says you can or must, but rather that the law doesn’t say you can’t. So the HCSB, “Everything is permissible for me.” Paul will quote this twice again in 10:23 related to what food they eat.

In Greek the apostle really did say "all." And, in English as well as Greek, he doesn't really mean "all," he means "all in a particular context.” For example, jealousy and strife are not lawful (3:3), destroying God's temple is not lawful (3:17), incest is not lawful (5:1), petty disputes and going before unrighteous judges is not lawful (6:1), and none of the sins listed in 6:9-10 are lawful.

All things are lawful is in reference to things not explicitly banned by a Bible verse. But, while this is true, not all things are helpful. We want to ask, "helpful for what?" And "helpful to whom?" Paul doesn't answer those explicitly, but helpful for righteous living and helpful for righteous community seem appropriate. There is a way to behave under the cover of freedom that hurts, even damages, character and relationships. It stunts growth, personally and interpersonally. Ask: “If everyone did what you’re doing, what would happen?”

This is not the only problem with liberty. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything. The original has a play on words, “I have the power to do all things, but I will not be overpowered by anything.” Not only are certain attitudes and actions not helpful, they may make one helpless.

Which comes first, the decision or the slavery? Is it that I decide certain things because I am a slave, or that I am a slave because I decide certain things? It is circular, and Paul is saying that Christians better be careful about the decisions they make. By the end of this section he'll say that we are not our own, we are under new management, and that is real and it ought to be orienting.

But how many believers become slaves to their foolishness?! "You can't show me a verse, so therefore, there is nothing wrong with my dressing like the unrighteous or watching along with the unrighteous or talking or dressing like the unrighteous. I am saved by faith alone. Back off Mr. Mt. Sinai.” It is possible to become a slave to contrarianism, or a slave to the expression of liberty rather than enjoy liberty to express righteousness.

I really do understand the reaction, and I really do understand the danger. All sorts of unrighteous attitudes and accoutrements have been adopted by professing Christians because they don't want the burden of being connected to other Christians. They are enslaved to individualism, to being different (like a bunch of other people). They are enslaved to not looking like a dork, to being “cool.” They are enslaved to a sinful attitude toward others while technically not sinning in the "thing" itself.

Beloved, don't use Christian liberty as a cover for unrighteousness or as a cover to double-down on foolishness. As I said earlier, self-righteous pride is ugly, so is self-indulgent pride. The former is artificial and inflated, the latter is boneheaded and immature. Paul is beginning his case against the Corinthians who apparently were using Christian liberty as a justification for using prostitutes. If Christians can go that far, which seems extreme, how many other foolish things can Christians attempt to justify on their walk out to the edge?

Verse 13 begins with another possible slogan among the Corinthians, though this one is more difficult to determine the quote’s closing. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food." As in, God gave us physical appetites, He gave means to satisfy those appetites, and He gave a digestive system to process it. I believe the quotation ends after the next phrase: And God will destroy both one and the other, emphasizing not only that we have biological desires but that this is a temporary system because of God. If God gave us appetites that are natural, they must be good, right? If God is going to destroy that part of the system, then it must not be that important, right?

But this is the second worst kind of dualism. (The worst kind of dualism is self-righteous, the person who says “I only do spiritual things, see how important I am?”) The kind of dualism here is the self-indulgent.

It is true to say that God made and gave the stomach, and God made and gave food, but it is not true to say that all physical appetites have the same consequences. God made and gave all of the trees of the garden to Adam and Eve to take for food, but he did not make an orchard of women for Adam to take as wives for sex. For sake of filling the earth, that would have made things faster, but God gave Adam one woman in the covenant of marriage.

Likewise it is true to say that food is consumed and no more, and that in another sense we won't be as dependent on our bellies when in our glorified bodies, but we will still be in bodies. And when it comes to bodies, The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. The sun is not meant for darkness, but for light, and light for the sun.

“In the bodily obedience of the Christian…the lordship of Christ finds visible expression, and only when this visible expression takes personal shape in us does the whole thing become credible as Gospel message.” (Käsemann, quoted by Thiselton)

You’ve heard it said that theology comes out your fingertips, when you are texting, when you are typing a web address into your browser, when you are styling your hair and pulling clothes off the rack at the store, when you are prepping food and passing it around the table, when you are holding hands with that boy (or girl) or whatever other parts you may be touching.

Not only that, but God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. This is resurrection sanctification, and Paul will return to it in chapter 15. What we do now in our bodies will not be completely undone in the resurrection.

Three questions finish the rest of the chapter and we'll pick up with those next week. Three times Paul asks, "Do you not know?" (verses 15, 16, and 19).

These are wheels down issues. We are not going to successfully engage, let alone properly enrage, the culture if we leave all these discussions to them. Is there such a thing as worldliness? Is it possible to be conformed to the world? What does it mean to be countercultural?

Is it possible to be a self-righteous, judgmental fathead? Absolutely. Is it possible to be a self-indulgent, offended fool? Absolutely. Are spiritually immature Christians still Christians? Yes, by definition. Are spiritually immature Christians going to grow by justifying their immaturity? No, be definition. Does the Lord care about what we do in our bodies?

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)

May He help us to discern His will, what is good and acceptable and perfect in what we wear, in what we eat, in how we find a spouse and treat those of the opposite sex. May we use our freedom as those who seek to please God in our bodies. When we have a whole church of believers committed to being living sacrifices like this, watch out. More people will be mad outside the church than inside. That will be our opportunity to testify that we are not our own, we were bought with a price.

There is something that draws human beings to rules. There is something divine about it, and something damning about it. The part that's divine is that we are made in the image of a holy God. He is not just righteous, He is perfect. That's who He is, so He created us bent to be straight. His first recorded words to Adam and Eve were a commission and a prohibition because His righteous character will express itself necessarily in definable ways. As creatures created to mirror Him we innately want to identify and prioritize standards.

The part that is damning is when our bent is bent, and in particular when we want to go beyond receiving His rules to determining the rules. We are built to run according to certain laws, so we are laws-loving machines, but then sin causes us to tweak the laws, or the purpose of the laws, to our own benefit. This sort of law-altering is, ironically, breaking the actual law of God, and it also causes us to overestimate what the law can do. This approach persuades us to give the law creative power when actually the law only has reflective power. It can show what righteousness is like, but it is powerless to produce righteousness.

Because we are sinners we are both benefited by the God’s law and threatened by it. Because we are sinners the law can help us but only by pointing away from itself to the Savior. Those who treat the law as a savior find that it’s actually a curse.

In order to be righteous we need God's blessing. Justification, as in being declared righteous in the sight of God, only occurs by God's promise, not by our productivity. We receive His work by faith, we cannot work to make Him receive us. The two approaches are contradictory schemes, as John Calvin referred to them, and the contrast between them rumbles back and forth in Galatians 3.

The churches in Galatia had been "deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel" (1:6). But Paul was eager "that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you" (2:5), that the death of Christ and the grace of God not be nullified (2:21).

In Galatians 3 Paul presents these contradictory schemes of justification, one of which does not actually enable justification, and shows that the schemes are not similar elements such as unleaded or leaded gas, but are opposed to each other, like fire and water.

The Galatians had experienced salvation and witnessed miracles and endured suffering, and they knew that none of that happened because of their works. As Paul gave his own testimony of God's direct and immediate grace at the start of the letter, now he reminds them of their testimony.

They were foolish for attributing power to the law, and Paul implies that they were bewitched, as in, dark forces must have cast a spell and gained control over their thinking. They had heard the message about Christ so vividly that it was as if they had seen Him publicly portrayed as crucified, but now were acting enchanted by something else.

They had also received the Spirit. Let me ask you only this, as if he said, “there’s only one thing you need to tell me. You had one job, to remember your faith.” How did it happen, by works of the law or by hearing with faith? To ask was to answer; it was as basic as asking how did you get full, by fasting or by eating? And really, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? That's not how it happens.

Their suffering, and their witnessing of miracles among you didn't come about because by works of the law. That's never how it's happened, actually. Righteousness, both in conversion and in consecration, comes by hearing with faith. Need proof? Such a pattern goes all the way back to God's call of Abraham in Genesis 15. Paul introduces Abraham into his argument as the archetype of those justified by faith alone. Abraham heard God's promise, and Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. The Galatians' own testimony corroborated that faith and law are contradictory schemes.

Abraham is at the headwaters of the argument because he is at the headwaters of blessing by faith.

All those who believe are sons of Abraham. The false teachers in Galatia were trying to convince people that only sons of Abraham were blessed, and that the only way to become one of the sons of Abraham was to fulfill the law, moral and ceremonial. But while the Jews came from Abraham, from the beginning God intended to bless more than the Jews through Abraham.

Verse 8 is the key verse in the entire chapter as far as I'm concerned. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, "In you shall all the nations be blessed." Multiple things are important here.

Paul referenced Genesis 15:6 in verse 6, in verse 8 he goes back to God’s initial call to Abram in Genesis 12, and quotes from verse 3. From the initial call when Abram was a pagan in Ur, God's promise was bigger than one nation, it was to "all the nations,” plural. That means that God's promise was not to eliminate nations, to erase their distinctions as nations, and make one “super nation” of Christians. And nothing about this promise limits God from choosing a particular nation to bless in more ways. If I promised to give all the families here $100 in the future, that wouldn’t prohibit me from making additional promises to one of the families if I so chose.

The blessing that will be to all the nations is defined in the verse. The promise is about justification by faith. This applies to Jews who had God's law, and even more so to Gentiles who didn't. Did they now have to keep all of God's law in order to be accepted by God? They did not.

[W]e have no evidence that the agitators were disputing the fact that Gentiles could be included in Abraham’s family. The issue, rather, was the means by which they could be included. (Moo)

There are two ways to be a son of Abraham: by flesh and by faith. Paul doesn't say that being a descendent of Abraham by flesh doesn't matter, he says its not enough to be justified. Keep in mind that the discussion about offspring in verse 16 is only about the flesh, because Jesus as the seed didn't have faith. Paul is not flattening all of the promises, he is focusing on the promise of justification and comparing contradictory schemes. Justification has always been about God's promise, and promises are received by faith. So then, those who are of faith are #blessed along with Abraham.

There are four more OT quotes in this paragraph.

Relying on the law to earn our justification with God means that we are not reading the law, at least not carefully or correctly. The law tells us the terms and conditions and conclusion: "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the Book of the Law, and do them." This is why all who rely on works of the law are under a curse. Deuteronomy 27:36, part of the law, requires that all of the law be kept perfectly, and it does not offer any encouragement. The law lifts up a man’s righteousness like a steamroller lifts up asphalt: it doesn’t. Actually, it crushes and lays it low.

Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law. Instead, as the prophet Habakkuk wrote, "The righteous shall live by faith" (Habakkuk 2:4). Again, the two schemes are contradictory. The law declares us unrighteous, it does not enable us to live as righteous. Why do we imagine that it has so much power?

The law itself says that one must choose between living by faith, as Habbakuk said, or living by rules, as Leviticus 18:5 states, ”The one who does them shall live by them.”

This is why we needed someone to take our punishment. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree." Again from the law, in Deuteronomy 21:23, we need a deliverer from the condemnation of the law. We can't expect to squeeze justification from the law any more than we can expect to squeeze a glass out of an orange.

That is why in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles. The blessing is justification, the blessing is release from the demands of the law for sake of our acceptance with God, the blessing is receiving the promised Holy Spirit and it all happens through faith.

The timing of the giving of the law also demonstrates the primary place of faith.

God promised Abraham an inheritance, but when did God make that promise? He did so before He gave the law. Paul gives an example, even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.

This part in verse 16 about not many offsprings, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ, means that the promise was going to be fulfilled through Christ, who came later.

In fact, the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. This accounts for the time between God's call of Abraham and delivering of the Jews out of Egypt (as given in Exodus 12:40). But the agreement was already made, and when God walked between the animals alone in Genesis 15 He signified that He alone was responsible to fulfill His word of promise.

It’s one or the other. If the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise. The two schemes are contradictory. The blessing was coming because God gave it to Abraham by a promise.

If it can’t justify us, what good then is the law? Why did God even give it?It was added because of transgressions. The point will be made a few more times before the chapter is finished, the law points out sin and points out our need for a savior. An alarm clock can’t make you get out of bed, but it is a warning to sleepers/sluggards.

The law was given by angels, it was established as coming from God through angels, and Moses, too. The promise, however, was direct. An intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.

While the schemes of justification by faith and justification by works of the law are contradictory, that doesn't make the law itself contradictory to promise. The law couldn't generate righteousness, But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. The law says, "That's sin. That's sin. That's sin." The law says our hearts are full of sin. The law says we are guilty. The law negates righteousness, it does not validate. A mirror shows your bed head, but it can’t comb your cowlick. The law makes us more thankful for the promise.

Again, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming of faith would be revealed. This makes the law a help, but certainly not an end.

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. The word for guardian is paidagōgós, “a slave employed by wealthy Greeks or Romans to have responsibility for one of the children of the family” (Boice). “The law was the grammar of theology,” and faith is the only way to the rhetoric of righteousness.

These final verses must be cut straight, not cut out of context. The entire chapter is about two contradictory schemes of receiving the blessing of justification. We are concerned about how men are justified, about how men receive the Spirit, about how about how blessing comes to all the nations. The how of salvation does not flatten every other identifying mark of those who are saved. Faith does not flatten identity, faith applies across distinctions.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Clearly, it does not mean that differences of nationality, status, and sex cease to exist. A Jew remains a Jew; a Gentile, a Gentile. One does not lose his identity by becoming a Christian. Paul simply means that having become one with God as his sons, Christians now belong to each other in such a way that distinctions that formerly divided them lose significance. (Boice)

Again, this is about how to be accepted by God. It doesn't matter what national passport you carry, or what your social standing is, or even your gender. All are saved the same way: faith. The promise of justification has always been about faith, and faith alone, not about works or about tribe, language, economic status, or sex.

I am emphasizing this because Galatians 3 is not an argument for multiculturalism, social equality, or feminism or homosexuality. Galatians 3:28 does not provide grounds for open borders or class warfare or women’s liberation. It is also not about eschatology but about evangelism. It is about the blessing that comes to Jews and Gentiles because it is a blessing that was promised before there were Jews and Gentiles. We can study other passages to see the unique roles and responsibilities of men and women. We can study other passages to see God's unique promises of blessing to the Jews, as well as His sovereign plan to use the blessing to Gentiles to cause Jews who are offspring of Abraham "by flesh" to become offspring of Abraham "by faith."

The blessing of Abraham to all the nations is 1) justification and 2) receiving the Spirit. Both of these happen only by faith, not by our rule keeping. The fact that God gave the law points out our disobedience, our curse, and our need for a Savior.

How to begin and how to continue, as verse 3 states, is by faith. Living by faith is only in vain if we stop living by faith. Of course we should obey God’s law, but we cannot expect to earn our righteous standing by it. Fruit doesn’t ever make the tree healthy. Fruit doesn’t add growing “adequacy” to the tree. So let us not subject trees to following the rules, let us pray for living trees. The field manual tells us what to look for, it has never made anything grow. Only the promise of grace, received by faith, make us sons of God.

One big reason that many professing Christians treat other professing Christians so poorly is that they aren’t committed to their future. They may answer yes if asked, but they do not care that they are set to inherit the kingdom of God, so they must make sure to get what they can today. On his way to the bank to cash a gargantuan inheritance check, one brother is filing an e-lawsuit against another brother for taking a piece of gum without asking, or something like that.

Believers may not have confidence in their future because they do not appreciate what has happened to them in the past, that is, what Christ and the Spirit of God have done to/accomplished for them. Or they may have doubts because they are living in the present no different from the unrighteous culture surrounding them. There are a lot of ways to mess it up, and the Corinthians had tried many of them.

In the first part of chapter 6 Paul questions their practice of taking one another to court before unbelieving judges over petty disputes. They had no good justification for their grievances, for having grievances with their brothers, or seeking resolution from unbelievers. Paul writes that it is not right to go before the unrighteous. That's a loss for Christians and an inconsistent testimony about our spiritual family. He reminded the Corinthians about their future: in Christ they will judge the world and angels, so they should be competent to figure out lesser matters.

In verses 9-11 he adds to his concern about how they were treating one another. Not only is it not right to go before the unrighteous, they must make sure that they are not behaving like the unrighteous. To do so is a lie about what it means to be a Christian and an inconsistent testimony about our spiritual reality. In this paragraph he reminds the Corinthians of their future: in Christ we will inherit the kingdom of God, so we don't need to worry about lesser matters. We also shouldn’t act like “men of the world whose portion is in this life” (Psalm 17:14).

While I am partial to taking one paragraph at a time, this is obviously a short one. Not only that, it belongs with the first eight verses as fleshing out the nature of the unrighteous as a reason not to trust them to resolve our disputes. And, it really is short. Why leave it to consider by itself?

1 Corinthians addresses problems propagating in our culture, 20+ centuries after Paul wrote. There are problems in our unbelieving zeitgeist, and there are problems in the defining mood of the church. As one local body of believers living in a 21st century Western culture, we don't spend a lot of time taking one another to court, though we do find a lot of grasping in our hearts. When it comes to the issues in these verses, we should park, get our of the car, and take a closer look. What I mean is that some of us will need to repent from wrong thinking, wrong sympathies, even wrong imitations.

Why do these verses matter? How does this paragraph belong with the instruction about brothers and small claims court in the first part of the chapter?

It matters because the unrighteous are living in a different world than we are, present and future. The unrighteous march to a different drum beat. Their lifestyle standards are not the same and so believing brothers should not lust after their system. We should not be courting their approval or accommodating their conduct. Why do Christians want to be liked, or to be like, the world?

Christians should know better. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is the dominion of Christ's rule and Christ's blessing. His kingdom is a place where His will is done as it is in heaven. It is a place of provision and joy and public honor to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ (see verse 11). This is the kingdom that the Lord taught His disciples to pray for (Matthew 6:10). It is the kingdom the Lord qualified us to inherit (Colossians 1:13).

It is not for the unrighteous. They are enemies of the Lord, setting themselves up as rivals to His throne, setting up competing standards of what is acceptable, determining who gets awarded for what. They are not rightful heirs of Christ, they are not promised any share in His kingdom.

After stating the fact of it, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to see clearly and to see specifically.

Do not be deceived, the unrighteous, as represented by this list of ten, will not inherit the kingdom of God, which is stated again at the end of verse 10. Does it need to be repeated so quickly? Apparently yes. And what is it about this reality that is so deceptive, so easy to mistake? Let's come back to that question after considering the unrighteous characters.

First in this representative list are the sexually immoral. The word covers a range of genital sins. The man in incest in chapter 5 was one of these. The men using prostitutes in the last half of chapter 6 are included. Those whose lusts are uncontrolled, who pursue or play around with behavior meant for married persons but without being covenanted in marriage, these are the unrighteous. A man can say that he cannot control his animal desires, and we can then say that he is not part of the kingdom of God.

Likewise with idolators. Worship of a false god goes with failure to live as faithful image-bearers of the true God. Those who make idols become like them, unable to distinguish male from female because that is of the Lord. They seek multiple partners because they do not know that the Lord is one.

They are not committed in covenant, they are adulterers. This is a specific form of sexual immorality carried out by a man or woman who is already married but who covets his neighbor's wife. We will see in chapter 7 that remarrying after a wrongful divorce puts a man or woman in an ongoing state of adultery. Those who commit affairs will not inherit the kingdom.

The final part of verse 9 is disputed. Those with an ESV read, nor men who practice homosexuality. That is quite enough to get us in trouble in our current culture, and in a moment we will have the opportunity to jump in with both feet.

The footnote in the ESV states, "The two Greek terms translated by this phrase refer to the passive and active partners in consensual homosexual acts." The NASB (and KJV), on the other hand, translate both words, "nor effeminate, nor homosexuals." There are two separate Greek words, and they refer to more than what the ESV notes. There are homosexual acts, and there are homosexual attitudes and _ accoutrements_.

It is a problem when men suppress the truth about God that He gives them up to "dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged the natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with woman and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men" (Romans 1:26-27).

These are Sodomites, these are gays and lesbians, the homosexuals referred to at the end of verse 9. Their “pride” will keep them from the kingdom. Their unnatural lusts for defining for themselves is damning.

There are also the effeminate. This word is used a few times in the New Testament, including by Jesus Himself. It is a word used frequently in extra-biblical writings as well, for example, by Herodotus. It is used enough times in enough contexts to demonstrate that it should not be limited to the passive partner in homosexual acts. It is those who look and talk like the soft.

The original word is malakos (μαλακός). Jesus said those in king's palaces are soft and wear “soft clothing” (Matthew 11:8; Luke 7:25), effeminate. It refers to the unmanly, to those “who consciously imitated feminine styles and ways” (quoted by Thiselton).

I am spending more time on this not only because the ESV is unhelpful here, but also because current Christian culture is unhelpful here. Many in the church have adopted effeminate and homosexual mannerisms, speech, dress, styling, hair cuts. Many others who have not adopted the look or talk are nevertheless accommodated to it, or entertained by it. The transgender confusion is down the tracks coming from the train station of being soft.

I read an article from the end of 2016 by a snarky lesbian titled, “Hipsters Broke My Gaydar.” She said she used to be able to tell who here people were, but now it so difficult. Skinny jeans, extra piercings and nose piercings, long hair on boys and boy cuts on girls (more about hair in a later chapter of 1 Corinthians), and other cultural identifiers have been taken up by hipsters, and many of that kind can be found in the church.

Consider case of haircuts from another article on the history of the “undercut”:

The "Undercut", a fundamental staple in lesbian coif (hairstyle). We all know it and love it, not only for it’s edginess but for it’s ability to help us identify queer ladies out in the wild. One of my favourite jokes is: “What do you call a straight girl with an undercut?…A liar”.

The undercut is the haircut among young boys. Man buns have the same Johnny Weir effect. The openly effeminate and homosexual laugh at us for wanting to look like them. We blend. We are wearing the other team’s uniform, but claiming we don’t know. Worse, it’s like finding a purple helmet with a dog on it, putting it on and walking into your WSU class and being like, “What? I just like how it looks.”

It is not cool. It’s not natural. The Stoic philosopher “Epictetus that for a man to play the role of a woman, or to wish to act as a woman, is for him to complain against his nature” (ἐγκαλέσαι σου τῇ φύσει, Dissertations 3.1.30) (Thiselton). “Philo (Dreams 2.2 §9) associates it with the softer way of life found in the woman’s quarters, which reveals its association with effeminacy” (Garland). It’s passive. It is not righteous.

Read The Grace of Shame for more about this particular problem in Christian sympathies.

So also thieves and the greedy are stuck in the world's system, to go along with swindlers, the last in the list. These are cheaters and deceivers, some who do their work at night when it's dark no one is watching and others who do their work during the day shaking your hand on a deal calculated to steal. Those who covet, consumed with consuming, whether they have a little or don't, are likewise not kingdom citizens. Of course these sorts would not rather be defrauded (verse 7).

There are the drunkards, the pot heads, the addicted to much buzz who want to feel better now, or at least try to forget about things. The revilers are the constant bad-mouthers. They have their own channel of scoff on YouTube, or at least a set of social media followers who drink the daily bile.

So we have sins against God, against nature, and against one another. We have heart sins, tongue sins, sexual sins, property and money sins.

I asked earlier, why does Paul introduce this list with, Do not be deceived? Is it because we in the church don't want to see this? We don't want it to be that clear, either because we don't want to stand out from the crowd or because we believe the lie that these unrighteous are somehow more happy? Are we trying to avoid the blessing of being reviled by the unrighteous (see Matthew 5:10-12)? But they will not inherit the kingdom of God.

While Christians should be clear, we have no place to be patronizing. We shouldn't empathize, but we should be humble.

And such were some of you. Jesus didn't come to save the righteous, but the unrighteous. Those who are well don't need a physician (Matthew 9:12). God rescues filthy, rotten, selfish, rebels. That's who we were. Not all of those in the Corinthian church were necessarily of the categories of sinners in the previous verses, but enough of them were, and the rest all had their own sins.

Paul describes three things that happened to change their identity, all three are finished. First, you used to be unrighteous but you were washed. Sin soils. It makes men unclean. Second, you were sanctified, not in the sense we usually think as maturing in our Christian walk, but sanctified as in set apart for Him. And third, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. They were unrighteous, but by the work of the Son and the Spirit and the Father they were declared righteous. This is the good news, the word of the cross that transfers us into the kingdom of the Son of God's love.

In all of these, but for the grace of God, we would still be having no hope and without God in the world.

What all the unrighteous have in common is trying to satisfy themselves in the now. What the Christians have in common is a measured life now in light of their kingdom status.

If we aren’t straightforward about the unrighteous, those who are currently so and what we once were, then we won’t acknowledge the amazing grace in our salvation. The field of pride requires a heavy plow of guilt over our unrighteousness. The fruit of gratitude grows as it is nourished by understanding what we are saved from. All of this weeds out grumbling and grasping and disputing, and it reminds us that our inheritance makes up for it all.

May our testimony be consistent in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

As I was preparing my notes, and I was even reviewing them this afternoon, I thought, boy, I'm in trouble because I have in front of me the quantity of notes that I would usually use for about one and a third messages, and I've got time for one. So I'm going to have to talk fast. I'll have a few slides for you to follow on, so hopefully it'll help you at least know where I think I'm at in my conversation. Then also, my topic is on roles and goals, but that's a really big topic. doesn't lend itself to cramming everything you can say on that topic in 50 minutes. So my topic will be largely a surface pass over it. I'll hit plenty of meaty enough things that if you do well on everything I'm talking about today, you can feel pretty good that your marriage is nice and solid.

But I admit right up front that you're going to say, well, what about this? What about that? There's going to be a lot of points I probably could have spoken to, but didn't. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into it as the rest of the crowds pouring in. According to a recent Pew Research paper, they say that 42% of all American adults in 2017 lived without a spouse or a cohabitating partner. 42% of the adult population was living alone. The number actually goes up to 61% for adults under the age of 35. Think about that. Four out of 10 adults you pass on the street live without a partner, whether married or just living together.

Four out of 10 adults you pass live without a partner, or in the case of those under age 35, 6 and 10. Those are the statistics in 2017. Now of those 42% that were living without a partner, 58% of those people had never ever married, 21% were divorced and the rest were then either widowed or living separated from their partner. So we can extrapolate from that data that 24% of the adult population in America in 2017 had never ever married.

One quarter of the population as of last year had never married. Since the In the 1960s, we have seen a steady rise in the age at which men and women marry for the first time. In 2015, just a couple years ago, the average age for the first time marriage for men was 29 years and for women, 27. If you go back to the pre-1960s, the average man, the average age for a man was 22 when he got married and it was 20 for women. We've gone from 22 and 20 all the way up to 29 and 27 now. Now our concern is with what these trends may or may not indicate. For what it's worth, they all seem to show a significant shift, these trend lines, starting in about 1960.

And if any of you have been alive that long, that's when the so-called sexual revolution was just taking off. And ever since then, we've seen this graph start to rise higher and higher with people delaying marriage. Several key social and political changes have created this skid away, this shift away from traditional marriage. The rise of third wave feminism, abandonment of faith-based morals, no-fault divorce laws, abortion on demand. These are all contributing factors that have led to this trend that we see going on. There isn't time to dive into these factors and see how they have contributed to the current state of affairs.

But suffice it to say that the more we liberate ourselves from biblical standards, the more unhinged our culture becomes from anything that has a sustainable future. And I'm not just using a hyperbole, but it's actually a historical fact. Wherever you go and see these trends, it's not long before that culture is going to pretty much shrivel up and go away and morph into something else we don't recognize. Note that in all this cultural shift going on, The call to celibacy hasn't grown. Sexual sin has increased and manifests itself in increasingly perverse ways. What has been lost in all this upheaval is a care for, let alone an understanding of what marriage was created for.

If God said it is not good for man to be alone, then it seems like a problem when so many choose to be alone, except to indulge their sexual desires. The goal of this message then is to explore the roles and goals that God has given to men and women from the beginning and see how marriage is intended to be the primary avenue for which these carry out. That'll be one of my propositions is that God designed marriage specifically for these purposes that our culture seems to be casting off. I titled this message, Dancing to the Beat of Your Purpose. I was trying to think of a metaphor that scratched at what I was hoping to communicate.

Now, when I say dancing, I am not thinking of the typical dancing that you see at concerts or weddings today, where everybody is just be bopping around, bouncing and waving their arms and doing their own thing. Yes, to all you young people rolling your eyes right now, I am old. I want you instead to be thinking about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and young people, you can look them up on YouTube later. When you watch a couple like that dance, you quickly become entranced by the beauty and the grace. You don't focus on them as individuals, as much as you look at them as a team. It works because Fred does such a good job of leading, and Ginger does such a good job of following.

Neither is preeminent, neither is more important to equal partners, performing their individual roles to perfection. and when they come together, it's just a beautiful thing to watch. What makes their dance routine extra special is how well they move with the music. You can say the music gives order or purpose to their dance moves. This is the core idea that I want you to keep in mind in this session. Marriage fulfills its intended design when a husband and a wife live their lives as one unit with a common purpose and are fulfilling their unique role in it.

Meryl chaos is likely when there is no clear purpose or the roles in the partnership become confused So as we dig into the roles and goals of marriage you can keep in mind then the image of Fred and ginger Floating across the floor complementing each other's moves as they dance to the rhythm of the music So you got Fred and ginger in your mind you want to keep it there right there up there in the corner in case you forget Okay Before we can begin to look at the roles and goals of marriage though, we need to take a step back and ask a few basic questions. What is marriage? Where did the idea come from? Is the definition of marriage open to interpretation?

Is it just a social construct that we can change whenever we want? These questions are important to answer because if marriage is simply a social construct, then it becomes pointless to discuss marital topics like roles and goals. Why would anything you or I say rise above opinion or suggestion if marriage is just a fluid idea created by man? Marriages are not called to be cookie cutter cutouts of each other, but at the same time, there are specific non-negotiable ingredients that should go into every marital cookie, if it's to be a biblical one. Clearly, our culture today wants to argue that marriage is a human-made institution, and thus it can be molded, shaped, and evolved into whatever we want it to be.

Egalitarians who swear off any differences between the sexes except for biology see, quote, traditional husband-wife roles as artifacts of past sometimes abusive patriarchal societies. The rise of feminism has caused many women to feel somehow cheated or less than fulfilled if they don't have careers outside the home. The widespread approval of all manners of sexual expression makes traditional marriage just one of many acceptable in our culture acceptable options today. The church has recognized less and less as a moral authority by the culture. Any Elvis impersonator can perform marriage ceremonies today. An example of the church's diminishing influence can be seen by comparing Webster's dictionary definition of marriage in in 1828 with Merriam-Webster's definition today.

So here's what the Merriam-Webster's dictionary said in 1828, marriage was. The legal union of a man and a woman for life, marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the parties engaged live together in mutual affection and fidelity till death shall separate them. Marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity or happiness, and for securing the maintenance and education of children. Can you imagine that definition being in the dictionary today? They would be out burning all dictionaries. Here's the current definition.

The state of being united as spouses in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by the law. Note how the definition went from God to being the one who instituted marriage to the law. Notice the lack of clarity on who can marry and for what purpose. As an aside, did you notice in the 1828 definition that one of the purposes for marriage was for securing the maintenance and education of children? Just another example of how we have allowed government to subsume more authority into its sphere than it should. When marriage becomes a human construct it is only a matter of time before any type of pairing Becomes a legitimate marriage in the eyes of the law you can go around the world there are cases today of people Marrying animals it is and and just because you know not not necessarily in a perverse way But they just somehow have a relationship that they think deems a marriage Our church stance is that civil courts can recognize marriage but only the church can define what marriage is.

Any civil court recognized pairing that does not conform to the biblical definition of marriage is not a marriage and will not be recognized by us as such. Now, in case you haven't surmised by now, we believe that marriage is not a social construct. It was instituted by God for his reasons and therefore any man and woman wishing to have a marriage blessed by God must endeavor to discern and follow his instructions for marriage. It's real simple. God made it. God designed it. He had a purpose. You want to be married. You want a successful marriage. You better figure out what the owner's manual says and follow it.

All that's left, all that is left up for us to do is the simple task of discerning what God expects from our marriages. Now the starting point for our claim that God instituted marriage is found in Genesis 2 18. Up to the point, I'm not going to go through the whole creation story, but up to the point in this story, we read over and over God saying, it is good as he goes about creating. But then following the creation of man, we run into a problem. God says, it's not good. Ladies, he wasn't referring to the man, but he said, it is not good. But what was not good? It's not good that the man should be alone. You know the rest of the story, God creates woman and presents her to man and then declares that his creation is very good.

In a few moments, we'll take a closer look at the instructions that God gave the man and the woman when we talk about roles and goals. For now, the point is that God created a man and a woman and put them together in a special relationship we call marriage. Now, if this was the only verse that we could point to, one could argue that the claim that God is the creator of marriage is weak. If that's all I could throw at you, Some of you might say, eh, that's not enough arguments. However, Jesus makes this claim much stronger while answering the Pharisees' questions on divorce. Over in Matthew 19.3, starting there, we read, and the Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

And he answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall be made one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." There are a couple of important things that we can glean from that passage. First, God did not put just Adam and Eve together in a union. What Jesus is saying is when any man and woman are joined in marriage, they become one. It's an act of God, whether they recognize it or not, they are following a biblical pattern, God ordained, and let no man separate them.

And then second thing we can observe, He created them male and female and intentionally put them together. This implies that He has a reason or a purpose behind it. And that purpose, as we'll see, goes beyond just solving man's aloneness problem. There's more that we could look at to support the claim that God instituted marriage, but that should suffice for now. So then, if God instituted marriage, It is not some social construct we can alter at will. In addition, we need to figure out what his purpose is for marriage and what, if any, roles he has specifically assigned to the man and the woman in fulfilling that purpose.

So now that we've established that marriage is instituted by God, it follows that we are under compulsion to follow his design for it. And so we need to understand what his goals for marriage are. As I see it, and for sake of discussion today, there perhaps could be more goals, but I've identified four basic goals for marriage. Companionship, procreation, modeling the love relationship between Christ and the church, and taking dominion of the earth and subduing it. When you're done with those things, come back and report, and I'll give you some more. But that should keep you busy for a while. Now, most of these are fairly straightforward and don't need a lot of explanation.

So I'm just going to go through each one and then offer some things to think about regarding each one as you consider your own marriage. First, marriage is for the sake of companionship. We've already seen the text that directly states this in Genesis 2.18. Then the Lord said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. This part of the creationist story could have read something like, God saw that man was alone and made a helper for him a Verse like that could leave room for a man to view a helper as something optional Something not vital but okay to include if he was so inclined The fact that God declared it was not good for man to be up alone adds a lot of force to the verse and the point That man should not be alone Although we are not told why it wasn't good for man to be alone. We can surmise a few likely reasons First, it wasn't good for man to be alone because of God's yet to be given command to procreate.

That would be problematic without the woman. Second, perhaps God knew that man, being a finite being, could use someone like him for the sake of consulting with and sharing the workload as he began his dominion taking responsibilities. Third, and very significant, was that if man was going to reflect the image of the triune God, he had to have someone like him to have a relationship with. He was created for fellowship. It was against his design specs to be alone. Every married person here today needs to consider the importance of not letting your relationship with your spouse fade into two alone people sharing the same house.

There's a tendency to let familiarity and or unresolved conflict to kill this important goal of marriage. Now Sean's going to talk about conflict resolution later in the seminar, but suffice it to say that it takes work to keep a marital relationship alive and growing. It is not good for man or woman to be alone, even if they are married, but they're living essentially separated. The second goal of marriage is procreation. We get this from Genesis 1.28, and God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. You would think this goal of marriage would be a duh point, but unfortunately, many couples today are reluctant to have children, even in the Christian community.

Nowhere in the verse are we told how many children we are to have, but we are told to be fruitful and multiply. The sense of the verse is that having multiple children is a good thing. Now the point I'm stressing is not how many children a couple has, but what their mindset is when they're deciding whether or not to have children. I've heard numerous young marrieds worry about bringing a child into a world as crazy as ours.

You hear people today, when Gail and I were newly married, people were worried about those issues. Well, boy, I just can't imagine bringing a child into this world. Look how bad it is. That's not a new concern. And guess what? They'll be talking about that for generations to come. So have kids. Some wonder if they can afford the cost of raising a child with some estimates now around $250,000 per child. I'll give you a hint. I've raised four. I put four through college. They're all now in their 30s and having babies. You cannot afford children. But you will. Trust me. It somehow works. All sorts of thoughts about having children can flood one's mind.

How will a child affect my budget, my lifestyle, my body, my mind? They all crowd into our thinking. We can easily begin to think of having children in the same way we think about getting a new car, a house, or a boat. It's just another commodity to add to my life. Perhaps some of these things are appropriate to consider when deciding to have children, but they must not take precedence over the simple truth of what God has said. Children are a gift from him. Psalm 127.3 reads, Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Psalm 127, 4 through 5, like arrows in the hands of a warrior, so are the children of the ones youth.

How blessed is a man whose quiver is full of them. They shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gates. We here at the church regularly seeing Psalm 128 that speaks of a man who is blessed by God. Part of that blessing is found in verse 3. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Did you kind of hear the word blessing? blessed in there a lot. Passages like these make you wonder if our cultural attitudes about children aren't just a bit askew. Now, of course, having children entails much more than just bringing them up in the world.

Raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, caring for their personal needs, overseeing their education, and generally equipping them to be responsible adults, requires lots of attention and work. So many parents have neglected these basic duties for their various reasons that sadly many children today are for all practical purposes wards of the state during their waking hours. Out of curiosity I went and Googled daycare centers near me. I came up with about 40 daycare centers in the Marysville area alone. Then I went out, I said, okay, how many in the state? So I went out to the Washington State website for the Department of Early Learning, is what the department's called.

They say that they have issued over 6,000 daycare licenses in this state alone. This doesn't include all of the before and after school programs that are available to our kids. Make of that data what you will, but it doesn't seem to suggest that everyone is as engaged in the rearing of their children, as this marital goal would suggest. The third goal of marriage is to be a picture or model of the love between Christ and the church. This goal is found in the latter half of Ephesians 5, where Paul is giving instructions to the husbands and wives. Near the end of that section, Paul writes something odd about a mystery.

He slips out a strange sentence in there. But starting in verse 31, we read, For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." And then all of a sudden he says, it's like he switches gear. He says, this mystery is great, but I am speaking of the reference to Christ and the church. And then back to the husband and wife, he says in 33, nevertheless, let each individual among you also love his own wife, even as himself, and let the wife see to it that she respects her husband. In verse 31, Paul quotes from Genesis 2.24 about the two becoming one flesh.

In verse 33, he reiterates his instructions that a man should love his wife, and a wife should respect her husband. But oddly then, he inserts this thing about a mystery in verse 32. And he says the mystery has to do with the relationship between Christ and the church. The implication is that there is a parallel between the husband-wife relationship and the relationship between Christ and the church. What I conclude from this is that in some way, a Christian marriage models to the world what their love relationship between Christ and the church looks like. Now, you don't have to ponder that very long to realize what an incredibly high bar that sets for our marital relationship.

How many of us would be OK with saying, examine my marital relationship if you want to understand the relationship between Christ and the church? Ouch. That's a high bar. The fourth goal of marriage to consider is also found in Genesis 1.28. Fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Anybody finished doing that yet? Not only is marriage to have an inward focus on relationship and child rearing, it is to have an outward focus as well. There are three basic spheres of responsibility that God ordained, the church, the family, and the government.

Included in the list of family responsibilities is the advancement of culture as it takes dominion. Imagine for a moment a society made up of numerous nuclear families, each living on their own 10-acre spread and having nothing to do with each other. You can quickly see that such a culture is basically unworkable. For a culture to thrive and grow, It requires nuclear families to come together in a cooperative way to better the lives of all. This doesn't mean that all families will take dominion in the same way. The whole earth is a big place and there are lots of things that need to have dominion taken over. As an aside though, note how Satan tries to thwart this goal today.

We are obsessed with talks of climate change and dwindling resources and there's even some whacked out groups like the Hemlock Society suggesting that humans should start killing themselves off so as to let Mother Earth restore herself to her once pristine condition. I always chuckle when I listen to those guys because they never lead by example, but they just suggest what we should do. The false notion in this thinking is that the Earth, post-fall, ever had a pristine condition. Apparently, God had something in mind when He says we're to take dominion and subdue the Earth. Implied in that call is the idea that the world is not in its ideal state.

There is lots of work to do to make this world reflect that it is under the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is irrefutable that much of the advances that we've seen in Western culture are as a result of Christian influence. We haven't arrived yet, and thus we need to keep on working to that end. Godly families are the building blocks for this kind of change, and those families must start then with godly marriages. No one marriage or family is going to change the whole world nor are they supposed to. But they should be thinking about how they make a difference. Perhaps it is working to build a better sense of community in your own neighborhood.

Maybe helping address the needs of the poor. Perhaps some will raise up gifted children to be our future leaders in church and government. And if you don't know where else to start, all of us can start taking dominion by just pulling the weeds in our front yard.

The point is there is something each family can do in regards to taking dominion and it doesn't start with binge-watching on Netflix. Well now that we've considered the goals of marriage we can turn our attention to the topic of the roles that the husband and the wife play in a marriage. This is a hotly disputed topic even within Christian circles today and the vast number of books you can read or podcasts you can listen to usually just add to the confusion. Except for some really extreme views out there, there is widespread agreement that men and women are fully equal in essence or value or worth in God's eyes. One sex is not more valuable or important than the other in a marriage relationship. Neither is a lesser class than the other. Where all the attention swirls is whether or not there should be any distinction in the roles men and women play in marriage. Should there be a leader follower pattern or should there be a co-leader pattern in the marriage? And then from that basic question flows other important matters such as who's the primary wage earner,

who stays home with the kids, who's responsible for necessary decisions when agreements can't be reached, etc. etc. Advocates of the leader follower pattern are referred to as complementarians. They see the relationship between a husband and a wife as complementary to each other. Think Fred and Ginger. There they are, up in the corner. Those that believe in the co-leader pattern for marriage are called egalitarians. They define equality as being equal in essence and roles. The only distinction they recognize is biological differences. So in discussing roles in a marriage, it's important that we figure out which view is more in keeping with Scripture because each view will lead to different conclusions about the marital roles.

Now you would think of the egalitarian view as the most correct view biblically, then there would be lots of examples in Scripture of men and women exercising various functions interchangeably, but there isn't. There are some occasions of that, but the normal pattern we see demonstrates very distinct roles in the culture as a whole. Now, some will argue and push back, well, yeah, but that just shows the chauvinistic nature of these ancient paternalistic cultures. You'll hear that said. Now, to which I say, really? Wouldn't that somehow imply that God himself is chauvinistic, since all of the scriptures is his written word and is meant to teach us everything pertaining to life?

2 Timothy 3, 16, 17 tells us. There are numerous places and scriptures that are problematic to the egalitarian point of view. Just let me read quickly read through a few of them and see how they line up with a notion of equality in all regards. We've already seen Genesis 2.18. Then the Lord God said, it's not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. In Isaiah chapter 3, a very interesting section. It's a time in Israel's history when the wheels are coming off. They're in total chaos. Everything's in disarray. And God speaking says, oh, my people, there oppressors are children, and women rule over them.

And I don't think God was a god.

I don't think I was a woman hater when he said that but he was saying something when he said that Let a woman learn quietly and with all submissiveness I do not permit a woman to teach her to exercise authority over a man rather She's to remain quiet for Adam was formed first then Eve and Adam was not deceived But the woman was deceived and became a transgressor first Timothy to 11 through 14 writing to women in first Peter Peter wrote but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty and and of a gentle and a quiet spirit which in God's sight is very precious for this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to Adorn themselves by submitting to their own husbands as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him Lord. I don't know I should duck right now Or not, you know, but I had a bunch of egalitarian side to duck And I'm not advocating that late ladies don't go home and just start calling your husband Lord, but you glean the sense of the text here, okay Continuing on, husbands, live with your wives in an

understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. 1 Peter 3-7. And then lastly, wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and his himself its Savior. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit and everything to their husbands. Ephesians 5, 22 through 24. Now some will push back on these examples and they'll say, well yeah, well you skipped over examples like Dinah, the prophet is Dinah, or when Priscilla along with her husband Aquila instructed Apollos regarding the gospel, or hey, what about when Paul says there's no longer male nor female?

What about those? I would say cases like Dinah and Priscilla were exceptions to the normal pattern we see in scripture. God admittedly used these godly women in unique situations to advance his purpose, no doubt. When God said there were neither male nor female, he was not ending the earthly distinction that exists between them any more than he was saying Jews and Greeks or slaves and freemen don't exist anymore. Paul's point was that we are all equal in essence in Christ. He was not abolishing race, gender, or social status. To those who feel that so-called inequality, this inequality they perceive is contrary to the character of God.

John Piper wrote the following in recovering biblical manhood and womanhood. Quote, this point is often missed by evangelical feminists. They conclude that a difference in function necessarily involves a difference in essence, i.e. if men are an authority over women, then women must be inferior. The relationship between Christ and the Father shows us that this reasoning is flawed. One can possess a different function and still be equal in essence and worth.

Women are equal to men in essence and in being there is no ontological Distinction and yet they may have a different function or role in church and home Such differences do not logically imply inequality or in the inferiority Just as Christ's subjection to the father does not imply his Inferiority and a quote if Jesus himself took a functional role different than the father even though he was equal with God, then there really shouldn't be any problem when God asks men and women to do the same. So then, how should we think about the marital roles of the husband and wife? I think they can broadly be summed up this way. Let's see if I got a slide on that. Yep. Husbands are to take leadership responsibility and wiser to work cooperatively in support of that leadership. If I just had to kind of put it into a little elevator pitch, that's That's what I would say.

Now we need to drill down on exactly what that means and doesn't mean for each of the two roles. But keep in mind that neither role is superior to the other role in making a marriage work. Both are critical. For husbands, taking leadership responsibly involves the following. First, loving your wife as Christ loved the church. Ephesians 5, 25 through 28. Husbands, love your wives 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 with a word, so 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.

In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. There is a benchmark a husband has to use in judging if he truly loves his wife. that benchmark is giving himself up for the sake of his wife, just as Christ gave himself up. A husband who is domineering or seeks his own interests above that of his wife is not following Christ's example. We are told in Philippians 2.7 that Christ emptied himself of all of his rights as God and took on the form of a servant. Now, husbands, I'm going to clue you in on some. We don't even come close to being gods. So how much more should we follow Jesus' example?

Second, a husband needs to own or take responsibility for everyone in his household and everything that goes on. This means that under the concept of federal headship that a husband can't pass the buck when someone or something under his responsibility messes up. He can't grumble about the wife and the kids that God gave him and then wash his hands of any responsibility. And I've known husbands to do that. I've tried, there's nothing I can do. I just got stuck with the lemons. I'm not responsible. That does not fly. Adam tried that in the garden when God asked him if he had eaten the forbidden fruit. Adam tried to shift responsibility by saying, the woman whom you gave to me to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and what could I do?

Implied in Adam's response is that the faults somehow belong to God and or Eve.

The ECS school board just recently finished reading book titled Extreme Leadership. One of the first principles of leadership in there suggests that a leader takes the blame whenever the team messes up. As we discussed this we decided that we didn't agree with the idea that the leader would take the blame necessarily but we did agree that the leader has to take the responsibility. We see this modeled by Christ himself when he took responsibility for our sins and died in our place on the cross. He wasn't blameable for our sin in any way, but he took the consequences for our sin upon himself. Our problem became his problem. Now in reality, husbands often are blameable, to some degree, for problems in their homes, usually because of inattentiveness or, for example. Husbands don't take responsibility for their wives' sins in a salvific way like Christ did, but taking responsibility means they own whatever is not going right and under their headship and they work to lovingly step in and help fix it. They don't just say you deal with it

and walk away. If a husband is supposed to take full responsibility then he better be leading the charge and discussing and planning how his family, marriage and family, is going to fulfill God's purpose for it. Now this is actually where most husbands fall down. Husbands, we like it when everything is an autopilot at home and we don't have to think about it. The wife's happy, the The kids are happy, the dogs alive, the houses are on fire, the TV is working. We can relax. And I, wonderful. Of course, this almost never is the case. Even in those moments when everything is great, husbands still need to be leading in terms of helping the family grow in godliness and dominion taking opportunities.

We need to be constantly thinking about how we can press on and do more, take on more responsibility, more work. culture is how can I figure out how to get out of work. Husbands we got to be thinking about okay I've got that one under control where's the next opportunity and lead the family in that. Third a husband is primarily responsible for meeting the family's financial needs. First Timothy 5-8 reads but if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for the members of his own household he is denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Now some Some will argue that the anyone and the he in that verse should be understood as gender neutral.

But when you combine this verse with Titus 2.5 where Paul calls for younger wives to be workers at home, it's hard to escape the biblical pattern for husband-wife roles regarding work. It would be difficult now to argue that the Bible forbids anything but that pattern I just mentioned, suggested. Nonetheless, the tenor of the scripture is clear that the husband should be working hard to provide income for his home, and the wife should work hard to manage the daily affairs of the home. Now we could parse these roles for men into finer points, but for sake of time we're going to leave it there. But before I move on to the wife, let me make a few comments about what these roles of the husband do not imply.

They do not imply that God called the husband to lead because he is somehow superior to the wife. God didn't sit there and say, well, clearly the man's got more going for him, so I'll pick him. for whatever reasons that only he knows, he just said, you're the man, you're the dude, you're the head of the home. God simply assigned these roles. Therefore, they should be done with an attitude of humility. They do not imply that the husband should think and act like a boss. The example we see in Christ is that of the lead servant, shepherd. A husband should have that mindset. I am just the lead servant in this home. Some husbands foolishly, mistakenly think headship means making all the decisions in isolation, handing out the assignments, and then micromanaging every little detail.

That is wrong thinking. The husband may not be the smartest or the most gifted person between the two. He should wisely utilize the gifts and talents God has given his wife and show her the respect that a fellow believer in Christ demands. Always remember that she has the same Holy Spirit residing in her that's in you. If the husband and wife are not in agreement, then somebody is not listening to the Holy Spirit, and it's time to take a time out and try to figure it out. When a husband forces a decision upon his wife, he is not exhibiting the right kind of responsible leadership. There may be occasions when the husband feels a decision needs to be made that's not popular with his wife, but in those rare cases, he should proceed slowly, patiently, and if possible, with input from other godly counsel.

I would recommend, guys, if you're at loggerheads with your wife, then it's better to go talk to a couple other people and say, hey, here's the dispute, can you help me think it through just in case maybe you're off in the weeds and you're thinking. Now, we turn our attention to the wife's roles. But before I do, let me point out a strategic advantage the wife has in a marital relationship. Ladies, I really want you to get this point because I think it's really a powerful point.

You have a strategic advantage in the marriage that the guy doesn't have Because a wife is called to take on the role of follower in a marriage She does not bear the same responsibility the husband does if the leadership is bad What I mean is that it is possible for husband to get a d-minus in his leading While the wife gets an a plus in her following of course She must never follow her husband if it would cause her to enter into personal sin that that should be obvious Now this ought to bring some level of peace to the wife knowing that she can please Christ in every regard Even if her husband is leading them in foolish ways This assumes then of course that she's not nagging or trying to take over the leadership This does not mean it will be easy to follow a foolish man But if her highest desire is to please God she does not own her husband's foolishness in the same way he owns hers.

In extreme cases it might be necessary for a wife to step in when her husband is failing to lead, but those should be pretty rare and it's again always wise to seek counsel if you feel like you need to do that. The story of Abigail and David is one example of a wife taking the lead because of her husband's extreme foolishness. In that situation she knew that her household was about to be attacked and destroyed by David's men because of her husband's insult to David. For wives then, working cooperatively with a husband's leadership involves the following, making sure her own household is well cared for. Now, as I wrote that sentence, I cringed at the blowback that I imagined I might receive from all of the egalitarian's.

To them, it sounds like the typical barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen mindset that they think most men have. To those critics, I would push back and argue that a life oriented around the well-being of one's home is actually one of the most powerful levers for culture shaping there ever was. Before I expand on that thought, let me rattle off a few Bible passages that support the idea that a wife's calling orients itself around the home. Paul gave these instructions to older women. He told the older women to train the younger women to love their husbands and children to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands.

Proverbs 31, of which numerous women's books has been written, asks a simple question, an excellent wife who can find. He goes on to give a description of that person. And here's a real quick summary. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. She's industrious and contributes where where she can to the benefit of the household. Her home is a place of hospitality, and she looks for opportunity to assist the poor. Her children rise up and call her blessed, which implies she invested in their lives in ways that deeply impacted them for good.

She makes it possible for her husband to increase his responsibilities to the broader community. Her husband is known in the gates when he sits down among the elders of the land. A moment ago, I said a life oriented around the well-being of one's home is actually one of the most powerful levers for culture shaping there ever was. Recall those three basic spheres of responsibility that God ordained, church, family, government. Of those three, church and family are the most indispensable ones. As goes the church and the family, so goes the entire culture. Ladies, devoting one's life work to the nuclear family is not missing the boat of bigger and better opportunity.

It is sailing the biggest ship of opportunity there ever was. Our culture has lost sight of that, and we are paying for it dearly. The old saying at the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world has a lot of truth to it. When Proverbs 31 said, her husband is known in the gates when he sits on the elders of the land, that implies that the wife had a major role in helping her husband achieve the status necessary to sit among the elders. Without her prayers and counsel and work, he would likely not be able to serve in this way. She shares in the honor of her husband's position in the community, and in a vicarious way, she is helping influence the community for good through him.

If my wife had not been the helpmate she's been for all these years, there's no way that I could have served as an elder for the last 34 years. To wrap up my comments on the role of the wife, let me address those whose life situation may not have allowed them to follow this pattern on describing to a T. I in no way wish to lay a guilt trip on you. There are situations where it may not be possible to follow this biblical pattern. All I hope for any sister listening today is that you not be sucked into the wisdom of our age, which is often expressed in feminist or egalitarian words. Do not let anyone tell you that just being a wife, a mom, and a homemaker is somehow less than your potential.

We all need to recognize the role of a wife is exhausting to be sure, but it's also extremely noble, worthy of praise, and deeply fulfilling when received as a calling from God. So some final thoughts. The assault against biblical marriage is not an extension of the attack, is just an extension of the attack against the church that's been going on since its inception. currently increasing in our place and time in history right now. Kelly Holloway, a freelance writer, wrote an article titled, The Conservative Definition of Family Values as BS. In her article, she summed up the progressive view on marriage this way.

Conservatives constantly bemoan changes in the American family structure as proof of moral failing, and they have long vilified families with working mothers, single parents, LGBT parents, and non-parental caregivers. But these type of families defy conservative stereotypes and outdated stigmas. What Ms. Holoway doesn't get is that we do not oppose her views on family and marriage because we defy quote conservative stereotypes. We oppose her views because they defy what God has revealed in His word. To think that we can morph marriage into something according to our will is to invite serious harm into our personal homes as well as into our culture as a whole.

The reality is that all this tinkering with marriage will in the end fail miserably because it is of the devil and the gates of hell cannot prevail against the church. Therefore it is important that we who follow Christ make sure our homes are in order according to biblical precepts, so that when the world's way collapses, we can make the culture jealous and hopefully be used by God to bring about their repentance and their salvation. And let's pray. Father, we give you thanks for your word, which again truly is sufficient for all matters pertaining to life and godliness. We do live in a day and an age where our culture is kicking and screaming specifically against these ideas, this complementarian idea for the home.

And Father, I've seen it creep into the church at large. That thinking seems to be very predominant. I just ask that you would give us hearts that are open to receive what your word says. Wherever I've messed up the word, may you forgive me and strain it out in people's Father, where people are feeling conviction of the Spirit, would they yield to that and not fight it? But Father, we would just make sure that our homes are in alignment and accorded with what You have said, and that we might receive the maximum blessing that You've promised for those who do so. We just pray this now in Jesus' name, amen.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Thank you Jim for kicking us off well and helping to orient us with regard to Goals and roles and a lot of what Jim said will intentionally bleed over into this message and You'll find that there will be a lot of overlap really among all four. I trust Why don't I go ahead and pray and we will begin our next session father? Thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather and to turn to your word and seek instruction as to how we are To live and how we are to? Even as he said, Jim said in the last session, try to enflesh this picture of Christ's relationship with the church. We really ought to be able to point to our own marriages, to give others a sense as to what Christ's relationship with his bride looks like.

We know that there is great joy that awaits us when we can be on the same pages with our spouses as relates to money matters. So today, with the few minutes that remain, I ask that you help me to bring some helpful and clear information, and that we all find clear application in it as well. We thank you, and we pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. So this session is entitled, Remembering is Not Your Money. So not too surprisingly, it is about money and finance. And many people believe that money matters are the single greatest source of conflict in marriages today. While, of course, every marriage is, in fact, different, it's certainly the case for many of us.

Jim Martin is fond of reminding us that budgets represent our lists of loves with dollar signs beside them. Others have suggested that if you really want to know where a man's heart is, and he'd look no further than his checkbook registry. And of course, just the mere fact that Jesus talks so much about money makes it important, but he also talked about it because it's already important and so near and dear to man's hearts. With money, we buy many of the necessities of life. With money, we bless others. With money, we bless ourselves. With money, we pay for essentials, and we pay with money for the non-essentials of life.

Money even makes an appearance in many wedding vows. And so here we are talking again about this source of either fantastic conflict or fantastic joy, as it is a tool that is wielded in like-minded harmony with our spouses. With this, of course, being a marriage seminar, it's my intent for this talk to provide some helps for married couples to enjoy the blessing of God as they exercise excellent financial stewardship together. These principles, of course, apply to singles as well, but the more a couple can be like-minded in these money matters, the greater their blessing will be. So it seems fitting to begin with a few disclaimers.

First, I realized that there are a lot of ways to be a blessing to people, that there are lots of ways to bless others that don't involve dollars at all. My aim here is to help us think about the money-related ones. So how God would have us exercise financial stewardship. So I don't mean to say that this is the only way to be a blessing to yourself or to others, but we're just talking about money as it were here. So I'd urge you to consider then all these comments in their appropriate context. Second, I don't come before you this afternoon as somebody who is an authority, or who has arrived, or who has all the money matters that there are to dial in.

There's a lot that I don't know. There's a lot that I really want to know, a ton in fact. But there is no mistaking this, Sonia has blessed the socks off of Sonia and me in a whole bunch of different ways, and I want that blessing for all of you. No doubt many of you are already enjoying such blessings. You could deliver this message far better than I could. That's awesome. Others of us still need to be reminded of what we already know, and that's good because I don't actually plan to say anything new or novel this afternoon. I won't be bringing any new information that you probably haven't heard before. Third, as a disclaimer, this is the last one, loving money is bad. I get that. For the faithful Christian, it also doesn't make much sense anyway. I do not wish to communicate that gaining money for the sake of your own independence or your own security is a good aim in itself.

Consider the the parable of the rich fool in Luke chapter 12 verse 16. Jesus told him a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I'll do this. I'll tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and goods. And I'll say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you. and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?

So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. Now this guy's problem was not that he had a lot of produce from his fields. God had given that increase, that's good. He was a fool because he found solace in his own security and his own independence rather than depending on God. And he was also a fool because he had no apparent interest in doing good for others with the wealth God had given. So the rich fool here could have been a great means of blessing to other people and he could have enjoyed tremendous blessing himself instead but he loved money. So don't love money, there's a disclaimer.

So I get that. So disclaimer is aside now I would like to put forth two presuppositions from which I will speak and which we must establish if we would rightly understand money matters. First, your money is actually God's money. See how novel this is? You're like, yeah, well, I get it. Right, we get it, but we don't act like we get it. You are a steward, you are a middleman. You've been entrusted with this money to bless, to trade, to make a return. When you're stumped about what decision to make, spend your money as though God actually cares about your expenditure, because he does. How will you give account for that expense, joyfully or sheepishly?

I think of the wife who gets a great deal on a pair of jeans and can't wait to rush home and tell her husband about it, that sort of thing. Like, all of our expenditures really ought to be like that. Look, Lord, look what happened. With what you gave me, look what happened. So even if you want to push back right now and say, wait a minute, but who earned the money? I earned that money. Isn't it mine to do with what I please? Well, I would simply remind you with another series of questions about who gave you the job, who gave you the time, talents, abilities to earn that money. Of course, God cares deeply about our work as we, in our various callings, bless the world.

So God makes us for work, He gives us work to do. For some of our professional work, we even get paid. But even if you don't get paid, you're still born to work. The father who owns the cattle on a thousand hills has entrusted us with a few bucks. Like the master of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, God most reasonably expects us to handle our money well and to be prepared to give him an account for what we have done. So it's God's money and we are stewards. The operating presupposition of the selfish is that it's their money. We tend to be selfish with the things that are ours, and if you would combat selfishness, then remember that it's not yours anyway.

We have to get that through our heads if we would be rightly oriented about money. second, our second presupposition. So this is the baseline concept that ought to undergird our discussion this afternoon. Faithful financial stewardship positions you to receive optimal blessing. Jesus provides a litany of ways to be blessed in Matthew 5, verses 3-11 in the Beatitudes and they center on character. There are no doubt a lot of ways to be blessed by God. Today, we'll be talking about the important connection between finances and blessing. I'm not talking about the seed money that's sown in faith when you simply call the number at the bottom of the screen because operators are standing by, and that God will multiply in our bank accounts or any garbage like that, but rather money is a tool that we can use to bring blessing to others and to ourselves.

When you are freed up, when you are then freed up to become a blesser of men, you actually receive more blessing than you are doling out. Ask any generous person if he's been recipient of greater blessing or if he feels like he's been a bigger blessing to other people, and those who are wired that way and are rightly oriented, recognize that it is more blessed to give than it is to receive. Our faithful financial stewardship then positions us to receive optimal blessing from God. Now, I'm all for practical tips, tricks, and life hacks and with money matters is no exception. But I'm far more of a philosophy principle type guy because the principles can be applied in a variety of contexts.

I'm far more interested in principles financially that I can apply in a variety of financial contexts. And the way that I'll orient this talk then this afternoon is to offer a number of principles, nine to be exact, nice round number, and that they overlap with each other quite a bit. So you'll be saying, well, couldn't this sub point have been a put under, yeah, probably, because there's such overlap among them. And then look at examples of ways that you might apply them. Wisdom requires that when we look at specifics, we try and draw principles from those specifics. I am not prescribing necessarily any of the examples that I'll be giving you this afternoon.

They're just ideas of ways that you might apply the principle to help you better understand the principle. If I could deliver this message without giving any specifics at all, I would, because the principles are what are going to be transcendent. So just to be clear, I'm not necessarily prescribing any of the examples. They're examples. So with that said, we're going to get started with our first principle. And our first principle is to be intentional. To be intentional. When we recognize that the money that we steward is on loan from the Lord, we are more ready to give account for how we spend it. And in God's economy, we receive the greatest blessings when we bring blessings to others.

From bringing dinner to a sick friend to sponsoring 12 orphans to helping with your grandkids tuition, leaving your children an inheritance, having discretionary dollars freeze you up to be that kind of blessing and to receive blessing in turn. Conversely, overextending yourself financially makes all of this harder, if not impossible. So intentional spending does not mean that there's never a time for what we might call unnecessary expenditures. But what it does mean is that when we spend this money with a purpose, we ought to be ready to give account to God for it. And I'll talk about this later on, but for instance, I think the Apostle Paul would approve heartily of taking your wife out to a nice dinner. I don't think that the Apostle Paul would be excited about your needing to make payments on that for the coming calendar year at 18% interest. But if you can afford that dinner, if you can actually afford it, then spend that money with gratefulness and joy.

Live it up, party, receive, feast. It's good. So example applications of this, then, might be to set some goals. Set measurable, aggressive, but realistic goals, like have your house paid off in 20 years rather than 30 by making additional payments to the principal. Maximize IRA contributions. Anonymously bless 10 different families by the end of this calendar year. Increase your giving to the Lord by 1%, whether it is to the church or elsewhere. This is not intended to be a self-serving, give more to the church. Our church is generous. There are lots of ways to give to the church. I want you to be blessed. However you increase your giving to the church, do it sacrificially, give it a shot, or give to the Lord.

Another goal might be to actually think about your spending. I know that seems simplistic, but the alternative is what many of us do, that is spend mindlessly or habitually. It's like counting calories. If you know that's going to take you an hour, a full hour on the treadmill to burn off that donut, you think, maybe it's not worth the donut. Even if it is one of Ryan's homemade, glazed or old-fashioned things, who knows? If you think about why you're spending your dollars even while you're doing it, then you're more likely to be deliberate and intentional about it. If you're getting a great deal or if there's great return for your expense.

Like it's expensive, but it's totally worth it. Yeah, I think great. You'll then spend with a clear conscience and greater joy. That's good. Here's another one. I didn't even bother putting this up there, but buy a vacation home. I think that owning a vacation home is fantastic if you can actually afford it. You excitedly bless others with it. You receive it with gratefulness from the Lord, and your kids know all of this. Like, are there better ways to spend your money? Maybe, but that's a good way. So you see that there's a variety of different types of applications here. Once again, how you apply the application is up to you.

I'm trying to help us drive home the principle. The second of which is, be like-minded with your spouse. So that's what this whole talk is actually about, is trying to get on the same page with your spouse and enjoy these blessings and these joys together. This is part of the great challenge because there's actually a number of thorny issues that will even surface in the context of this talk. Money matters introduce all sorts of conflict into marriages. It's true. If that describes you, you're not alone and it's okay because Sean's going to fix everything in the fourth session. The sooner you can get on the same philosophical page with your spouse, the happier you will be in your obedient and generous fund management.

It's fun because usually you can categorize people in a relationship. In a marriage relationship, you'll often have different personality types, different personalities are attracted to one another, opposite the tract. Sometimes speaking in broad generalizations, you might have the nerdy bookkeeping, spreadsheets are awesome type, and you might have the free-spirited person who doesn't really care, and who calls the bank to find out what his balance is, and would just be happy if money didn't exist at all. And if you don't know which ones you are, the nerds are eager for this talk and the free spirits are ready to move on to session three right now.

In other marriages, now let's say that there's a different category of marriages. People, husband and wife are both really interested in money matters. You have also what can be categorized as the Dave Ramsey types, who are all for eliminating debt above all else and mobilizing your primary wealth building tool, that is your income, to unfettered use, to do unfettered work. You'll also have then what I call the Robert Kiyosaki types, who say that debt of some kind is not so bad if you pay a low interest rate over here to free up capital to do more work for a greater return elsewhere. In our relationship, I'm Kiyosaki and Sonia is Dave Ramsey, and makes conversations interesting.

Work hard as you aim to become like-minded with your spouse and be ready to compromise. Since really in those two camps, for instance, there's great wisdom in both places. Learn from your spouse, learn from others. Sonia has taught me a ton about money management and sensible saving and spending. It's worthwhile to invest time to get on the same page with your spouse. Then what was once for many source of great conflict can become a source of great joy. Some example applications of this might be, pay your bills together. Make an appointment, I'm not ready to call it a date necessarily, but make an appointment with your spouse each month for the next six months or so, it's not a matter of how long, to sit down together after payday and do your bills together.

Sonia and I do this every month and we've done it for a decade or so. We pay the bills together, many of them which are online, not on autopay. We actually don't do autopays. But this forces us to look at it every time. Then we record them in our checkbook register. at that time we transfer money to savings and we write our tithe check, we tithe. We address any sorts of extra bills that come up. You know, you have a subscription to the newspaper once a year. So we have the newspaper bill this month or some strange medical bill came up that's not a typical recurring thing. So those other sort of popcorn bills that pop up.

And then we just address those together. Well, this forces us to look at these things together so that we are seeing the same thing from shocking water bills due to the sprinkler system in September to shocking credit card bills due to Christmas in January to the current balances in the savings account. This is one practical way for you and your spouse to be speaking the same language when it comes to money matters. If the wife simply pays the credit card bill or it's on auto pay, then there's a danger that the husband will just spend without ever being confronted again with those expenditures or without having to give account to his wife for where the dollars went or for that emergency supply of bratwurst that magically appeared in the refrigerator last week.

Principle three is to be moderate. Be moderate. Moderation. Oh, it's actually, sorry, sensible. Be sensible. Sensibility and moderation. You could actually, you could use both of them, but let's stick with sensible. Keeps you from spending beyond your means. It keeps you from overextending yourself financially or from taking on too many financial obligations. How many is too many? Well, maybe more than you need, or so many that you are no longer in a position to plan for the future or be a blessing to others. Clearly, if you think you're too strapped financially to give to the Lord his own money, then the revisiting of your budget is in order.

So example applications here might be to write a budget. Some of you have never done this before, some of you haven't done it in a long time and the odds are, maybe your income's gone up or down in different areas, and it's worth where you're spending habits, maybe the price of gas has changed since you have written your budget last, and so it's worth revisiting. This forces you to take a look at your spending habits. You might well be spending 200 bucks a month dining out, If you had to take a guess at it, you would have guessed about half of that. Well, if you find that you're spending more than you should dining out, then you can try and dial it back.

This is also a good time for you then to distinguish between needs and wants. Another potential application might be to use the cash and envelope system, which basically involves cashing your paycheck and putting your budgeted dollars in labeled cash envelopes. When your envelope entitled eating out is empty, then your dinner date becomes then a walk in the park. When your envelope labeled gas money is empty but you actually need gas, well then you have to borrow from another envelope, another account, or take your bike. That's how it works. Dave Ramsey is fond of pointing out that we are more willing to make a purchase when we put it on plastic than we are when we have to part with cash.

I think there's something to be said for that. Other, I mean, just quickly, some others might be to limit your liquid cash. So having an emergency fund is important, but have no more liquid cash. So I mean, just cash that's not even doing any better than a savings account. These days, it's not that hard to withdraw IRA contributions or whatnot when you actually need it. Just ways to be sensible. How can you make the best return while still being safe and sensible and so on? Another one is policing your own credit card spending limits. We had a credit card one time where as long as we kept paying the balance, they kept raising our spending limit until eventually it was at like $20,000 with a zero balance.

We had a kind of a harrowing thought, what if somebody got a hold of this thing? We told them, look, we never wanted more than 10,000 bucks. They said that's fine. So they put it there. But with our credit card happy society, they want you to have as much buying power as possible. So they'll crank that thing up, but you can put a cap on it. So you see that? Just an idea. Ways to be sensible, protect yourself that also keeps you from going nuts. Maybe you need to have a $500 spending limit on your credit card just to keep yourself in check, perhaps. So, good. Another one might be to actually save money each month, to do whatever you need to do.

You know, maximize your IRA contributions or take it for pity's sake, take advantage of your employer match contributions, that's free money. Okay, moving on. Another principle, be ethical. Be ethical. Christians of all people ought to meet our financial obligations. We actually ought to meet all of our obligations of any kind. Defaulting on debt or carrying a lot of consumer debt shackles you. When you are free from debt, you're in a better position to save for the future and to be a blessing to others. Well, my next point will involve generosity, but when you are being generous with dollars that are already encumbered by a previous debt, you're actually doing a bad thing.

So it makes little sense to not pay the mortgage so that you can help your brother get a new transmission. But if your bills are paid and you have an extra $100, help him out. When you bought your house, you made a deal and it involved a commitment to pay. So honoring your obligations should be a given unless and until you cannot and you need to sell that house. In Romans 13, Paul drives this principal home. You can read it with me if your eyes are really sharp. Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this, you also pay taxes for the authorities or ministers of God attending to this very thing.

Pay to all what is owed to them taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. O, no one anything except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. And any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Now many people have used that passage to say that Christians ought not to have any financial debt at all.

I don't think that's the point that he's making because Paul is assuming some debt on the part of even his faithful readers, taxes, debts of revenue, even debts of gratitude or respect. His point is simply that we need to be faithful to pay our debts. I don't think that Paul would approve of carrying a mountain of credit card debt because it fetters your generosity. I think he would say you should, if you accumulate that, then you work hard to pay it off from month a month so that you may be freer to be a blessing to others. The point is not to have no debt at all. It's to pay your debts, and this honors our agreements and our covenants and actually is good business and brings blessing to others, part of the way our society works.

Example application here might be to work hard to eliminate your consumer debt. So having a home mortgage with a set payoff timeline and fixed interest rate that these days is really low, I think is fine. you do well to try and eliminate that aggressively too if that's all you have. Likewise with other agreed terms for financing cars or whatnot. So if you actually have consumer debt, try and pay it off aggressively and get rid of it. If you can avoid financing those things, that's better still. Just remember, and this is part of the principle, remember that the more financially and contractually encumbered you are, the less you're able to bless others with God's money and to be in a position to receive blessing yourself.

In other words, if a great portion of your paycheck is already spoken for before you even receive it because of a mountain of contractual obligations, you are less able and less free to in turn bless others. Does that make sense? And pay your taxes. Principle five, be wise. And this one really could just be, it could also be its own presupposition. You're supposed to be wise. There you go. The Bible thinks so. And we could say a lot about it, but wisdom helps with everything, doesn't it? It's kind of nice to know what to do. And that, of course, includes money matters, and it includes matters related to relationships and marriage.

So our behavior that incurs certain costs, like late fees, speeding tickets, lottery tickets, most luxury items, they represent unnecessary uses of God's money. Most unwise behavior is preventable if we would but get wisdom. I'm not saying don't pay your speeding ticket I'm saying if at all possible try to avoid getting one in the first place I'm not saying that you shouldn't ever spend a fancy night at the Four Seasons for your anniversary When there's a motel six across the street, there probably wouldn't be but But do try to get a good deal on the night at the Four Seasons and then man Enjoy it as a gift from God with deep gratefulness, and wisdom helps us to make such decisions.

Wisdom begets sensible behavior. Sensibility was a couple of principles ago. If you want to be fiscally sensible, you need to saturate your mind with scripture and to apply the proverbs. Apply the proverbs to your financial decisions. This principle is not really hard to understand, so I'll take opportunity here to offer a few more examples than just one. So here's one. Actually, we'll keep it short. Stay away from charlatans. It's a good idea. My students like the video footage that I've shown them of televangelists because they're funny. What's not funny is when people actually believe them. Stay away from charlatans and televangelists, for crying out loud.

It's not good stewardship to give it to somebody who is, whose chief aim is to profit from your foolishness. Frugality, be frugal. Try to avoid paying more than is necessary for goods. If it's your thing, like a principle application would be like clipping coupons. My wife hates clipping coupons. She would much rather shop sales. She also will take a calculator with her to price out the per each price per unit to see what the best deal is. So use the calculator app on your iPhone when you're at Safeway. And this is just ways to stretch your dollar to make it go further in frugality. Here's another one. Cry once and buy once. Pay more for quality products that you'll end up paying less for in the long term in replacements. So buying one pair of $200 shoes costs less money than buying five pairs of $60 shoes.

The $200 shoes, they're broken in and they will probably last longer than the five pairs anyway, and you don't have the added time of having to shop. So it makes sense. Quality shoes, furnishings, maybe getting it reupholstered actually costs less than replacing it. Vehicles, appliances, they can last a long time, if they're high quality and they're well maintained, or you can buy cheap ones periodically. Sometimes that's the best use of your money. Like you literally can't afford it. Say, yeah, you buy the $200 dishwasher instead of the $600 one. Yeah, sure. But sensibility prevents you from buying designer shoes for your daughter to play in the mud.

It may allow you to buy a $500 suitcase if travel is a big part of your job. So buy once, cry once. Another principle, be generous. Just like the government, we tend to be generous with other people's money. So take this cue from the government, it's not your money, so be generous with it. There you go. The money you have is ultimately given to you by God. What are you going to do with it? That's the question. Yes, we have to earn our money, but we do it with talents and abilities that he has given us. Frankly, you may have more money to steward and to handle and to account for than people who are more competent than you elsewhere in the world.

You didn't earn that status it was given. So again, what are you going to do with that money? Remember that God blesses the faithful and the generous. Besides, generosity is also really fun. So example application might involve blessing someone anonymously. You could maybe give it to the Deacons Fund here at church. They'll disperse it wisely in mercy ministry and the recipients will never know where it came from. It's awesome. There is little that is, and then being on the receiving end of that as you can imagine, is very humbling. There's little more humbling than receiving a great and generous gift and not knowing who gave it. You feel loved. I know because you all have done that to me before. Give to someone who cannot repay you. Give to someone who cannot repay you. Jesus spoke to this very thing in Luke chapter 14 verses 12 through 14. He said, When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors lest they also invite you in return and you'll be repaid.

Isn't that fantastic? Don't do it because they might be able to repay you. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. Your payment's coming. And I would also say there's a, even if we weren't repaid at the resurrection of the just, there's great joy in being able to be a blessing to somebody who can't pay you back. That also removes from the giver the possibility of acting in his own self interests, unless of course you want to keep blessing on your own head by blessing others, which is a good kind of selfishness.

Another one might be to give a fat tip next time you dine out, especially they see you praying. There's nothing quite so shameful as them knowing that you're Christians and then helping to perpetuate the stereotype that Christians are a bunch of tightwads. Be nice to your server for pity's sakes. Paying generously for good and useful service is a means to bring blessing to the world. So Sean and I have talked about this before. Some people are always about getting the free app. He's about getting the best one and happily paying the person who's working hard to produce a good product. That's the way the world is supposed to work, and a way that we can, we don't want them to do that for us if we're doing good work, to be appropriately paid for that.

So it's cyclical, it is a way that we can in turn bless the world. Another one is to gift money instead of loaning it. The next time you have an opportunity to loan somebody money, try giving it instead. Now, Jesus suggested this as a great kind of coal heaping technique in Luke 6, verses 30 to 31. And interestingly, it was paired right there with the golden rule. He says, give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. Give to everyone who begs. And from one who takes, don't demand those things back.

Well, this is a common sticking point for a lot of couples. It is really hard to get on the same page with your spouse when it comes to gifting money to somebody. But it can bring tremendous blessing, especially if you do that in like-minded harmony. It invites blessing for us. I mean, ask anybody who has loaned money or who has just given it, which one is more stressful. And if we can be, we can position ourselves by God's grace with his help in faithfulness to be in a position to give liberally, then think of all the stress you're eliminating from your life by you're still able to bless people and you don't have to worry about getting the money back or any sort of weirdness that's going to go on for the rest of your life when that debt remains unpaid.

So principle is generosity there. Principle seven is to be thankful. of the last one, thankful people are way more fun to bless than entitled people. You be a thankful person and you are going to easily and frequently be blessed by God and by others. And this will in turn result in your wanting to be a blessing to other people. We should be thankful to God to be the means through which He will bless other people. And, and this is important, This means that sometimes we will be the givers, and sometimes we will be the receivers. We could put in here very easily, so be a grateful recipient of blessing. Because sometimes when you say, oh, no, no, no, please don't do that, you're depriving somebody of the joy of blessing you.

Whether it's taking your dishes after dinner, or it is buying you a cup of coffee, and you dig in your heels and you won't let them pay. Well, okay, maybe your heart was right behind that, that you're depriving that person of the blessing of pain for you. I'm on the receiving end of that more often than not. I have paid for coffee like once in the last about six months, going out to coffee with Ryan and Shawn. That's just because I got there late or before them or something, I'm not sure. But yeah, I know what that's like, and it's humbling and God wants us humbled. It is so if it is more of a blessing to give than to receive, then by giving to others, we position ourselves to receive a ton of blessings.

An example application might be, thank God frequently. Many of you use thank you Lord for this day, just to open every prayer. That's actually good, and it's good because it orients us. It's bad if you don't mean it, so go ahead and mean it, but keep saying it. Because when we thank God for our days, it is orienting, we recognize that those days are a gift from him. And so the next time you go out to lunch or dinner, so you're eating out, thank God as well for the resources to be able to do what you're doing. Those are a gift from him as well. Try thanking God together with your spouse next time you're doing the bills.

And while you're at it, thank your spouse for taking time to care enough about those things practically to be doing them with you. Take time to meditate on God's holiness and your own unworthiness. That will make you humble and grateful, because none of us receive what we deserve. Next principle is to be sacrificial. Be sacrificial. God doesn't need our money. It's his. He doesn't need our money. So our giving is not actually for him, it's for us. Kind of like our prayers don't actually change God's will, and mysteriously they are a means that God will use to bring about his will. So our prayers orient our perspective, they don't change his.

So our giving to the Lord is not because he actually needs that it is for us. So what is going to bring us the greatest benefit? Giving as an act of faith. When we give to the Lord, We do so knowing that it's His money anyway. He is more than capable of replacing it and then some if He wants to. And our faithful giving demonstrates dependence on Him. It is a way that we practice dependence when we give to the Lord. Sacrificial giving also combats our presumptuous tendencies about money. James talks about this when he says in chapter 4 verses 13 through 17, come now, you who say. Today or tomorrow we'll go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit, yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. And whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him, it is sin. So sacrificial giving orients our perspective, and as we practice it, it keeps us from presumption. An example here might be to tithe. I recognize that tithing is itself an Old Testament concept. Giving one-tenth, that's what a tithe means, is something that the Hebrews were instructed to do. And in the New Testament, the command is to give sacrificially.

So it might be 1%, might be truly sacrificial, God will bless that. For some of you, giving 10% is actually not sacrificial at all, and you need to ratchet it up so that you're giving sacrificially and cheerfully because it's his anyway, and God will bless that. But tithing would be an application, for instance. Try it. Try giving one-tenth of your gross income to the Lord, unless of course you think the government should take the first cut before God does, in which case feel free to give of your net income. Yes, I'm poking. Account for this expenditure prior to any other on your budget. So that will reduce the overall number of dollars that you have left to disperse toward gas and entertainment and income and all the rest.

So see what happens. That is one way that we can be sacrificial. So it is different for everybody, but our giving is to be sacrificial. And by doing so, we demonstrate faith and live independence. The last principle I want to talk about is to be teachable, to be teachable. If we're honest, we all have a lot to learn in the area of money. At times, your best teacher will be your spouse. Other times, it'll be someone who's younger than you. This is all humbling and some of us fail to grasp and apply the these principles as well as others. Frankly, old habits die hard. So do be patient with your spouse because he or she may be right and you may be wrong.

Perhaps you're right and your spouse is wrong. Consider how you came to your great wisdom. Did it happen overnight or because of your sheer genius? Well, probably not. So be patient with your spouse who's probably coming along slowly. Moreover, as I said, there's probably a good chance, better than good, that you're wrong on some points yourself, and patience will enable you to better see this. But be advised though, men, just because your wife disagrees with you does not mean she's wrong. People have strong opinions and stubborn habits when it comes to money. While their situations show that they could use some coaching.

So do be teachable and approach money matters in a spirit of humility. Example application here might be first, husbands, like ask your wife's questions about money, and then actually listen to the answers. They probably know a lot more than you think, and they have strong opinions about it too. As Jim said, if you and your wife are at an impasse, then you need to be humble and teachable, but also maybe seek counsel from some other people, for the sake of a sanity check, Maybe do it together, talk to your guy, friends, whatever. Wives, submit to your husbands. Your job, ladies, is to be a wise and godly counselor to your husband.

But when you disagree, your job is to submit to his decision, and his job is to own it like a man and be responsible for the outcome. So be patient when he's a stubborn bonehead and know that God will honor your submission. So where does this leave us? Where do you start? Well, you might be saying this is all well and good. These principles, I think principles are good. But we have so much to do and so much to learn. I don't know where to begin. Well, let me offer just a few suggestions. It depends on where you are. It depends on where you are in this process. Some of you are here literally making less money per month than your expenses demand.

Every dollar that you make is already encumbered for the month of March. It may be due to some unanticipated or unpreventable medical expenses, or you were victim of identity theft or something terrible, or maybe you lost your house when it was collateral, when your business failed, or others of you are addicted to luxuries and comforts that require you to spend more than you make. Others need to dig out of a mountain of self-imposed consequences. Others in the room are greedy, perhaps you're even making a lot of money and you even give faithfully to the church or other non-profits. you have no debt to speak of and you're trying to determine how to best invest your money to gain a good return.

You never dream of eating at a sizzler and there's a Taco Bell across the street, and your sin may well be presumption or even idolatry. While every situation is different, some of us in this room need to start with repentance. Repenting of our selfishness, our idolatry, our apathy, or whatever is necessary. Next, we need to look for ways to invite blessing. For some of you, that might be upping your church giving. For some of you, it might be looking for ways you can anonymously bless others. For others, it might mean giving to those who cannot repay you. So maybe we should repent, look for ways to invite blessing.

What should we expect if this happens? As you make it your aim to bless as many people as possible, Now, and going forward, you should expect at least three things. I would say it'll take sacrifice. Blessing others with God's money, by doing so you won't be spending it on stuff you could have gotten. It's true. You won't be spending that money at places that you could have gone. Maybe even good things, but things you didn't necessarily need. Second though, God will honor your sacrifice by applying these principles. You'll have enough money for one thing. Additionally, you'll be inviting God's blessing in many new ways.

We could turn Marysville on its head and Snohomish County. As we exercise excellent stewardship of God's money, it will help the church to flourish and bring greater blessing to the world. So let us invite God's blessing as faithful stewards of His money. Let's pray. Father, we do recognize that it is yours, we are stewards, and sometimes we do a bad job. Please make us more dependent upon you. We are dependent upon you. Help us to be consciously dependent upon you and to act like that is the case. As you go forth in faith, we do invite your blessing. Make us teachable, make us generous, make us sensible and wise, and all of this because we believe that it will bring you great honor and it is your will. So we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

We could turn Marysville on its head and Snohomish County. As we exercise excellent stewardship of God's money, it will help the church to flourish and bring greater blessing to the world. So let us invite God's blessing as faithful stewards of His money. Let's pray. Father, we do recognize that it is yours, we are stewards, and sometimes we do a bad job. Please make us more dependent upon you. We are dependent upon you. Help us to be consciously dependent upon you and to act like that is the case. As you go forth in faith, we do invite your blessing. Make us teachable, make us generous, make us sensible and wise, and all of this because we believe that it will bring you great honor and it is your will.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Father as we talk about this subject that you have instituted help us to Honor you and all that we say help us to understand our roles. Amen Okay first thing I want to say is we are here in communion together as believers and I think all of us have the assumption that we're speaking to believers. Okay, so you'll notice that that most of these talks rely on what the Bible says, because that's God's specific revelation to us, okay? First thing to recognize in this topic is that Christ is Lord over all, one of our favorite sayings around TEC, not a thumbs width, does he not control? And God invented sex, we didn't, okay?

Now, with that said, all of us got here by sex. We wouldn't be here if there wasn't any sex. All right? I mean, you need to think about that. I mean, it is amazing, and we just kind of gloss over that. And I know I can see the kids squirming, oh, I can't talk about that with my parents. Hey, I'm 71, all right? Think about that. Ooh. All right. And the biggest problem is the older you get, the harder it gets to, you know. Yeah. Okay. So, with all of that said, you need to think about the realistic subject of this. And what is the best thing you can do about this subject? Communicate. Everybody needs to talk. The kids need to talk with mom and dad.

The couples that are, quote, engaged need to talk about it and need to talk about it with people that are overseeing them. We old people need to keep talking about it because things change. Things are different than they were when you were 20. Things are different than when you were 10. Things are different when you're 70. You know, it changes. And your wife is changing, and you're changing. And she may realize, hey, what's the deal? So you need to talk. Always talk. Communication is probably the best thing in marriage as a whole. All these subjects, if most couples actually discussed it and then when they reach an impasse, they go to a wiser older couple or even a wiser couple of their own age or sometimes there's younger couples that can help you also.

You can work those things out, but you have to communicate. You have to say, I don't like this, or I wish we could do this, or I wish we had more money, I wish we did whatever. And you need to talk and not just lecture, but listen, and interchange those ideas all the time. It's an ongoing process. I created a monster, or I should say, Gail and I created a monster with Morgan. All she wants to do is talk and talk and then talk some more and massage it some more and understand it some more. Now I understand it on that level. How about this level? What about that level? That is what it's all about. Now women want to do that more than men.

But you know what? It pushes us to actually have good reasons for what we're saying. And if we don't, sometimes it makes you shut up and be more responsible. So the whole thing is set up. The Bible has this institution known as marriage. And I think that one of the great things that has been said, I'll recommend the book I recommended is the one in the back, Ed Weets, Intended for Pleasure. That's kind of a sex manual for people that want to know how the plumbing works. The reason I recommend that book, and I've been giving it to people that we counseled for marriage for many years. I'll tell you a little funny story that's not so funny.

The baby on the front of Growing Kids God's Way, some of you know that. Some of you maybe were growing God's Kids, grown that way in Gary Ezo's program. The cover baby on there, when she got married, She had no idea what was going to happen on the way to the honeymoon. When she found out from her future husband what was going to happen, she just melted. She didn't know what to do because she had only been instructed with the wooden flower model. Okay, that was a famous thing in the Ezo thing. You have this flower, you have the pestle, and you have this and you have that, which doesn't really relate to the equipment that we have.

And it's important to understand the equipment that you have. So God instituted marriage. We saw this already in Genesis 1.27. Jim mentioned it, that bless them, be fruitful and multiply. How does that work? Well, you better be having sex or you're not going to multiply. Genesis 2.21, 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. There is nothing to be ashamed about in the marriage contract. A great quote from this book written by Nancy Wilson I think is really good. She sums it up this way.

Everybody needs to listen up now. Marriage is the fence around sexual relationships. No fence, no relationship. Marriage is the fence around sexual relationship. If there's no fence, no marriage, no relationship. Period. End of sentence, end of discussion. Do not go there. That's called sin. I have 6,000 words here out of the Bible about just this, and I could have enlarged it way more. The Bible talks a lot about sex and what not to do and what to do. If you want to know what to do and you have the marriage and the fence around your relationship, Song of Solomon is a good place to start. We're not even going to read from that.

If you have a poetic imagination, it pretty much tells you what you can do. If you aren't married, we have lots of sexual sins and those sexual sins can be created by married people too. And there's lots of verses about sexual sin. Most of us just instinctively know that's not right. I shouldn't be doing that. That's okay, I should be doing that. Most of us know that up front. Once you start reading your Bible and being convicted of your sin, you confess it and you stop doing it. And then what happens? You're stupid, you do it again. Confess it and don't do it again. Move on, upward and to the right. Maybe two steps back but then a step forward.

You keep moving upwards and to the right and all these things. That includes your finances, that includes your relationship, that includes communication, all the rest of it. As it goes on through the Bible, there are lots of marriage verses. We'll go through those first.

All these that I'm turning through right now are all S for sin. All right, look at that, now I got to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 24.5, when a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife, whom he has taken. What a concept if this society blessed the young married couple to be getting used to each other, establishing their relationship instead of having to go on duty. How many guys in the military get married, have a quick honeymoon, and off to a cruise or off to the war? That's like, hello. It's really amazing how if we just obeyed what the Bible said, how a lot of things would be a lot better.

In Proverbs 5, the whole chapter talks about sinful things you can do with women, and then the writer of Proverbs says, drink in verse 15 of five says, drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad streams of water in the streets? Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A lovely dear, a graceful doe, Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always with her love." So the writer starts off with the sinful stuff and then says, stop all that.

Do this. Hang in here. Don't do the other. The whole thing is always back to the marriage is the fence around how it should go. In Mark 10, 6 through 9, it says, from the beginning, God made them male and female. Well, that's another little comment before we get into the sinful thing. You've all heard it said, God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. It's really important to get this biblical thing straightened out, especially in today's age. As Jim said, people are marrying their animals. There's lots of these verses I could read in the sinful part about women are not supposed to be with animals. Men are not supposed to be with animals.

Duh. And men with men and women with women, not a good idea. not as its design, period. So, you know, don't do that, right? Sin. So from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate, okay? Keep on the straight and narrow, pay attention to your wife. 1 Corinthians 7, basically the whole chapter, 1 through 40, is on sexual relationships, marriage, widows, the whole thing. But now concerning, starting off in verse 1, matters about what you wrote.

Paul again responding back to the letter that he had that we don't have, which he wrote. It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal whites and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a limited time so so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.

But then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Okay, this gets off into a thing, another book that I recommend called Fidelity. It's mainly for men, and it's written by Doug Wilson. The reason that I like the Wilson books is I think they speak very plainly. I love the way they're practical. I know these people, I know their families, and the way they behave, just all kinds of things. They are out there all up front for you to see and do, unlike some famous guys that write books that are highly unapproachable and all of that kind of stuff. These people are down on the ground getting it done.

One of the great questions that in this book he answers, a guy says, well, since my wife, let's see, how does it say here, that her wife does not have authority own body but the husband does. Therefore, my wife has to, you know, do whatever I say. His answer is that don't be a fathead. You don't demand that your wife do something. It's a partnership. Either one of you, both of you, have to discuss and what do you think? I don't like that. I don't like that. I want that. I like that. You have to have those discussions, and you have to respect her because your body's hers, and her body's yours. Oh, how does that work?

We have to have an agreement how we work it out. So that, again, requires lots of discussion and not a problem. Oh, that wasn't so good. We shouldn't do that. OK. You know, it's practical application. It's not a taboo subject. And if you get it worked out, it's wonderful, okay? It's one of the great gifts God has given us, all right? So that's 1 Corinthians 7 for the married. And then down in the second half, I'm not going to read the whole thing because I want to get into the other parts. But the whole thing about divorced women, do they have the right to be remarried and all this kind of stuff. It's good stuff.

Sean will preach on it in a while because he's already in chapter six, and the whole second half of chapter six is important, and I will talk about that a little bit when we get into the sin part. We're still hanging in here on the married part and the good part about it.

And then at the end of seven, it closes out with a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is freed to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord, only in the Lord, okay? In the Lord means you marry Christians, all right? That's another thing. If you're a Christian, you do not marry a non-Christian. That's like not good. Don't do that. That's a problem. If you are married and you come to the Lord and your wife doesn't, say you're the man, you stay married to her if she still likes you. Who knows? God may save her. So you don't chuck them if you get married and all of a sudden your wife is, you know, I'm not a Christian and you are and you're in this new thing.

And I speak with this from authority, okay? I was 37 years old when I got sick. I was a child of the 60s. I was in the 60s, I did the 60s, all right? So all of that to say I married a lady from the 60s too. So lots of baggage. You need to get over the baggage, you need to talk it out, you need to understand how to work it out and move on. So we got married in 1971 after lots of bad things. But we did good. We're still together, and we're still working on it. We're getting close to 50 years. So another part here in 1 Corinthians 10.13 for encouragement after all the sin verses. But I put this in Christ. I got another label.

I have some M, some S for sin, and then some Christ, so what Christ and what God supplies for us. 1 Corinthians 10.13, after he has pounded the Corinthians, just beat them up brutally for their behavior, no temptation is overtaken you that is not common to man. Not common to man, all of us, Christians, non-Christians, we all have these problems, okay? God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with temptation, he will also provide a way of escape that you may be able to endure it. Now, the escape may be as simple as Joseph and Potiphar's wife. No, she doesn't listen to no, you leave.

You leave with her, with your coat in her hand, and you're running naked out the door. Okay? No, not happening. So it may be that simple your escape. Or it may be the escape is not having a phone that you can get on the internet with or not having a computer you can get on the internet with. I don't know what the problem may be, but it's simply solved. If you know where you're getting it, don't do that. Don't use that tool that way. Tools can be good, right? Knives are good until you slit your wrist. Guns are good until you shoot yourself. So don't do that. Then in Galatians 5, 19 through 25, he starts off, the sin comes first, but the second part is the good part, and applies to our marriages and applies to the Christian life.

Now the works of the flesh are evident, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. against such things, there is no law. If you are in the spirit, you have all those characteristics operating at different levels. It's not one of these deals where I confess this and now I have love and oh I confess that and now I have peace.

You get the whole ball of wax when the Holy Spirit is in you, you get all those things to differing degrees, depending on how you're walking, and those who belong to Christ Jesus have been crucified, have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Now, if I crucify the flesh with its passions and desires, then do I have to be celibate with my wife? Come on, use your head. Hello. You are married to her. That's where you're in that fence land. You get to play there. But the desires that you need to get rid of are the passions and the desires of the flesh.

Another word for sin. You know, don't get hung up though on the, oh, I'm in the flesh when I did that, and now I'm being spiritual. Don't do that. The flesh is the idea of sinful man, and spirit control man's a different thing. It's not this, I'm a fleshy Christian. Well, you're a disobedient Christian, but you can't be continually and habitually a fleshly Christian, or you're not a Christian. That's why we have church discipline to make sure people understand That's a different person than what is part of the body. Now, am I saying we're not sinners? No, no, no, no, no. Because that's where 1 John 1.9 comes in, right?

And you have to remember this verse, always. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. So if I'm up here telling you I got it all figured out, I'm lying to you. But I do know that when I do screw up, God will forgive me and I can get back up and march a little straighter than I did before. So all this is a process, we're all in this together.

So then Galatians 5.19, well we did that one. Okay, that was the walk in the spirit. And then Ephesians 5.21 through 25 has been mentioned already, Jim mentioned it. But the submitting to one another a reverence for Christ's wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church his body and is himself its Savior now as the church submits to Christ so also wives should submit and everything to their husbands now I have repeated that to people in marriage counseling one guy he went yes and I washed my wife with the water of the word and she does everything I say." And I said, I'm sorry but we got to read this next verse. And he went, which verse was that? Well this verse here, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. What does that mean? And it well what did he do for the church? He died for the church. This guy got mad. He did not want to hear that. She's mine.

She needs to submit. I don't want to hear that. So the whole issue is read all the verse in context I don't think we have that problem here But if you do have that problem with a husband that's being a jerk like that You don't come on down or get some help because that's just totally wrong He doesn't understand the concept of as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. All right It's just I mean, it's like a duh, okay First Thessalonians 4, 3, 8, whole bunch of sexual immorality, sin. God has not called us to impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God. So if you disregard for the will of God as your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality.

If you want to know what the will of God is, there's one of them. The will of God is that you abstain from those things. And who gives to you, therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not man, but God, who, God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you, he gives you, as you are a believer, his Spirit lives inside of you. God lives inside of you, inside of each one of us. That's the little alarm bell in the back of your mind. If you hear some kind of goofy teaching or something, you go, I don't know if that's right, what is that? I don't know. Those are those little things that you need to really work out. If you hear something you don't like from a teacher, go up and ask.

Maybe you didn't understand it properly, or maybe it's just flat wrong. So inside of us, we've got those alarm bells if we're believers. And we need to pay attention to those things. Titus 2.11 through 14, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, by the way, our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ there, Jesus Christ is called God, in that verse, Titus 2.13, who gave himself up for us to redeem us from all lawlessness to purify for himself, a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works.

So all of that gets you going and gets you all together, doing it all together. And especially when you and your wife are tuned in together and doing these things, the excitement just overflows and you just keep spilling out all over the place. And when you hook up with another couple that's trying to do that same thing, they can then turn in on and sand the rough edges off of you and you can sand the rough of edges off of them. That process is discipleship. That's the one another's and the church body. That's all of us living as a big family of God, which we are. And that's why you can go. We could get on an airliner and go to India or something and meet true believers in India.

And within five minutes, if they can talk English and we can talk whatever, if we can communicate, you immediately know, wow, these people are Christians. And it's really cool when that happens. And it's probably happened to you when you travel around and stuff. But there's just this commonality that happens, and I think it's definitely through God's spirit. Then, of course, a famous one. Hebrews 13.4, let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. The marriage bed is undefiled as long as you are doing what God allows, OK? Now, I've got 20 more minutes and we have a whole bunch of sin verses here.

I really don't want to beat you over the head with all these sin verses. But there are some things that you need to keep in your mind as you think about what you think you want to do if you're tilted in that direction and you think it might be wrong. First thing is, ask your wife, what does she think? All right? If she doesn't like it, you can ask why and all that, have a discussion. But she's yours, yes. But you're to protect her. You don't want to damage the goods that you have been entrusted with. And she, you're hers, and she gets to control what you want. Okay? It's like, if it isn't working like this, you're not together.

All right? So you got to remember this part. Your wife is your reflected glory, speaking to husbands. The Bible teaches that your wife is your reflected glory. If your wife isn't out there beaming, what are you doing wrong? You need to have somebody that's reflecting the right stuff. And that means she's reflecting something that you're doing to her. So you have to treat her so that she's reflecting your glory. Proverbs 12, 4 says, an excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones. Okay, now that's kind of convicting on the wife, but the main point for us guys, your wife is your crown.

You wanna make your crown fit, make it nice, you know, get all the stuff out of it, make it right. And if you're the right kind of guy, she is not going to bring shame to you because she wants to honor you. It's always this cross-pollinization thing. And the thing about submitting is it's really doubly bad on the husband, okay? Everybody thinks, man, I wish I could be the boss. It'd really be good. But when you are the boss and God has set you up as the head of the household, you're responsible for those things. And when it goes bad, you're responsible. In a strange way, you're actually somewhat responsible for your wife's sin because of the way you are running your household or you are shepherding her.

This is a big lesson that I've had to learn over, you know, I mean, at 37 we had a lot of bad habits. As we corrected those habits, things got much better and got better and better. But there's still those hangover things that we need to keep correcting. You fall back into these things, well, I've been doing this for, I know what I'm doing. Give that up. If it's not encouraging and building her up to be a better model, don't do that anymore. You know, change it up. Find out how you can help. The other thing to remember is the Puritans. Now, the Puritans are some of the great sex teachers there are out there. Now, a lot of people might be surprised to know that.

Leland Reichen wrote a book about them that is fantastic. But their comments about lovemaking, oh, and this little sideline, if you were in a Puritan church in the 1600s, 1700s, you could be disciplined in the church if your wife came to the pastor and said, he is not paying enough attention to me. They could discipline you out of the church for that, and they did. So if you weren't nurturing your wife in the correct way, the wife could go and say, hey, he's not taking care of me and they would throw you out of the church. Now, I have yet to be in a church that does that and we at TEC haven't been requested for that, but hey, kind of an interesting thing.

We did that, boy, we might make the papers, you know. But it is amazing how practical this really is when you're living your life. And we get so distracted in our modern day age. We got TVs, we got all this entertainment, we got music, we got these stupid phones that are ringing and we're doing all these games on them and yada yada yada. Think about how it was, at least when it was slowed down. You worked on a farm or you worked in your work, you came home, you didn't have the TV and stuff, you kind of ate together, and then you were tired and you probably went to bed together. Huh, what happens now? Well, or, ooh, you know.

So a lot more time could be had, right, if you go to bed a little early. I heard an interesting story on all things considered. And yes, I do listen to communist radio occasionally. But it was fascinating that they were in Haiti, And this was back in the 80s. And they followed this husband and wife around, and they lived in a modest little Haitian kind of shack kind of thing they had. It wasn't the tin thing, but it was the cement kind of apartment things they built on the side of the hills there. But they were really tight. This couple was tight. Now, I don't know if they were Christians, because it was very secular radio, and they were not trying to talk to them.

But then the guy got a job, and they were able to buy a television. And they thought it was the greatest thing they ever bought. After three months, this couple took the TV out and just smashed it to pieces because they realized when they came home and had their little dinner and took care of their little kid, they had a kid, and put the little kid in the corner of the room and then they got in the bed that they were enjoying each other. And what happened was the TV took over. And they, in their simplistic thing, just went, that's no good. that thing in between us, they took it out, smashed it to pieces and lived happily ever after according to the radio thing.

But it's interesting how those things can creep in and cause us to separate. And that doesn't mean we're not doing good things. Sometimes in ministry, we can get so busy taking care of this person and that person and just busy, busy, busy and then you're tired and you got this to do and now I got it this to do. When you're that busy, you need to find a way to slow it up, take a breath, and not be that busy. So anyway, the Puritans, their little quotes about this is, let's see, be filled with delight and willingly and readily and cheerfully engage with your wife. Your wife is a companion for pleasure. Your passion should be a golden ball of pure fire and by the demonstrations of healthy affection.

So they were, you know, not these guys in the black little suits and all of that, you know, with the scarlet aid looking to hang witches. They were interested in life and did all that. Now, since we got what marriage should be, there's a lot of things about sexual sin in the Bible. Now, a lot of it is very, very repetitive, okay? Most of it is it's men and women together. Perfect, right? Good. Now, when those men and women are married and they're within the fence of marriage, that relationship is good. If you don't have the fence of marriage, no. So the answer is no. Well, how, we're dating. Oh yeah, why are you dating?

Well, I gotta see if I wanna marry her. Oh, okay. And what if you don't wanna marry her? Well, then I'm gonna quit dating her. Oh, okay. Well, then you're gonna date somebody else? Yeah. And we'll find out if I like that one. Okay, ain't it? So what are those people setting themselves up for? Serial monogamy, right? I don't like that one. Chuck it. I don't like that one. So I married her, but I didn't like her, So I divorce her, I get a new wife, you know, on it goes. That's our modern day thing. Now, what is the deal? How do you get married? We've screwed it up so bad, we've got kids going to school, you know, trying to get their degree, and they're 28 years old.

I mean, what is going on with the whole world? When you are 13 years old in Hebrew society, you have your bar mitzvah, right? You were introduced, you were a young man. There is no adolescence out there. There's not this teenage angst and all this nonsense. You were either a kid or you were a young woman and a young man, and we should treat you as such, and we should encourage you to act that out and be that way. I'm really encouraging at the school, our school ECS, that the kids are really, understand that. I have the pleasure of teaching introductory logic, and we teach that to seventh graders. And that's that age where on the cusp of kind of putting it all together.

And of course, they're in the perfect age to be our viewers. So introductory logic is perfect for them. But my thing in class about once a week, I get off on this thing and I pound on them. You are young men and young women. Quit acting like idiots. Just be a young man and be a young woman. And the thing is, they're struggling with all the desires you and I had when we were kids. I mean, I am so jealous of what they're being exposed to compared to what I was exposed to, and I'm a product of the 1950s and early 60s education in America that was somewhat okay. It still was bad, but it had deserted classical education so far.

I mean, I learned to read by look, see, dick, see Jane run, see spot, that kind of stuff. I had no idea about phonics, and I couldn't spell where the darn because I didn't learn what all those symbols meant and translated out. We got kids that my seven-year-old granddaughter reads better than I did probably in fifth grade already. And it's just great. But anyway, all of that to say these are young people that are ready. Their whole desire is to be young men and young women. I mean, remember when you were a teenager. What did you want to do? I want to be a man. I want to go out and do something. I want to, you know.

So we need to encourage that. Now, to encourage that, that means we need to expose ourselves and get these people off and started. Now, I'm a proponent for early marriage. Morgan got married at 19. She could have been married at 18, as far as I'm concerned. Obviously, to the right guy.

But the thing is, all this happens. Everything's working. Everything's developed. You're cooking on all cylinders. And you're out there in the meat market of college in our day and age with all the movies, all the TV shows, everything's OK. And you just throw these kids into that, what do you expect is going to happen? Bad scene. That's why they need to get matched up and be married. And they're married, then takes care of that problem, right? Move on. So I think a lot of these sin things that we're going to talk about for the next 10 minutes or so, they get cured that way. And some of them are just so obvious, right?

I mean, the whole animal thing, or don't have sex with men, women don't have sex with women, and stuff like that. That's just obvious. The other things that can happen, and I have to be careful how I phrase this, But as you, with your partner, want to do certain things, you need to understand clearly what the Bible says about it. And the books we recommend can talk about these subjects. For a glory and a covering is the marriage book that is recommending the thing. Fruit of Her Hands is really a good one. And then This Fidelity is another good one for men. And then the, oh, what's it called? the men book, the young men, future men.

All of those talk about all these subjects and talk about the problems that you have at different ages. We won't go into that because we have some little kids and all the rest of it. But your duty as a parent is when those questions are asked to answer those questions at the appropriate time. As they grow older, whenever that is, I give them everything they want to know. I mean, my son wanted to know about homosexuals when he was nine and we were driving out to church. So I told him and he went, oh, that's not right. And I said, that's correct. And so, you know, at the point, at the point they're able to ask and understand, answer the question.

You know, oh, well, we'll talk about that later or something. Doesn't really work. Now, you don't need to tell a five-year-old, you know, all of that kind of stuff. You understand that. have some wisdom about it. OK, so the whole story in Genesis 19, these are all in biblical order, the whole thing of Sodom and Gomorrah. It comes up all the time in the Bible. It's not good. The wicked are likened. I mean, it goes on and on all the way to the end of the Bible. And Jude, it's there again, that whole sinful episode. And it's just incredible that, you know, And he said, Lot went out to the men. The men are begging that he send all the men out so that they can have sexual relationships with them.

And he said, I beg you, brothers, do not act so wickedly. Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please. Now this guy's really a great dad, isn't he? So he's got these guests in the house and then all of a sudden he says, oh, you want them? I can't give you them, but let me give you my two daughters. Hello, how far out do you have to get? And that's only 19 chapters into the good book, all right? So then that's one thing that's not good. And then after he gets away from them at the end of that chapter, thus both daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.

Hello. The first born son, they called his name Moab, he is the father of the Moabites to this day. And the younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ami. He is the father of the Ammonites to this day. Not a good bloodline, not a good bunch of people, all because of all that sin. Then in all Leviticus 18, oh, Exodus 20, 14, one of the Ten Commandments, you shall not commit adultery, okay? Pretty clear. And then Exodus 22, 19, whoever lies with an animal shall be put to death. That's pretty clear. Don't do that. And then Leviticus 18.4, it goes through this whole chapter of uncovering nakedness. Have you ever read that?

Uncovering nakedness doesn't mean, oh my goodness, I opened the door and my sister was putting on her bra and I got a peek. Oh, what am I going to do? That is not uncovering nakedness. Uncovering nakedness is sexual relations with those people. All right? So it goes on and on with all the people that you shouldn't. sister, your mother, all the rest of it. It goes on and on that way. So uncovering nakedness is that.

Then a Deuteronomy, no, first Kings. This is an interesting one because you hear this all the time on TV. You Christians recommend that you would kill all the sodomites. I call them sodomites. So you Christians would kill all them. This is an interesting verse. In 1 Kings 15, 12, he put away, the righteous king, put away all the male cult prostitutes out of the land and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. So a godly king comes along. He doesn't kill them. He moves them out of the land. He doesn't want them to be part of Israel. He moves them out. So by the time 1 Kings rolls around, they're not just killing these people.

Now, inside the covenant of Israel, the penalty was death if you did that. Outside that, he has male cult prostitutes that they're taking and put them out of land. He just takes them away. Different standard for the church, right? There's a different standard we have. And this is another thing. Don't think it'd be such a hoity-toity in everything that you can't. Why is the world doing all these things? Because they're sinners. They don't know the Lord. They're doing what they're supposed to do. You can't expect them to do anything different. That's who they are. They're sinners, and until they get the Lord, that's what they're going to want to do.

Now, can we have influence on society and all of those kind of things? Yes. But I can't go and make some sinner behave like a Christian. I can go and give him a rule book or something. And if he starts following all those rules, he's going, I must be a Christian. Look at that. following all these rules. No, he's still going to hell because he's following all the rules because he's not trusting in Christ as his only Savior and the only way to heaven. So he's just another legalist that's doing some rule, right?

In Proverbs 5, 1 again, the drink from your own water is the good part of it, but my son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. For the lips of forbidden women drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, her steps follow the path to Sheol. She does not ponder the path of life, her ways wander and she does not know it. And now, O sons, listen to me and do not depart from the words of my mouth, keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house." All these these principles are the same thing.

If you got a problem with that TV show or that person or whatever, don't watch that show, don't turn it off, go far, don't do that. All these things, the principles apply all the time. So you don't need to create some clever legalistic way, oh, that was all right because I was doing this or doing that. Don't do it. Matthew 5.27 is always a good one that everybody likes yelling and screaming about. You have heard it said, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery With her in his heart if you're right I causes you to sin tear it out and throw it away for it is better that you lose one of your members Than your whole body be thrown into hell So for it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body go to hell That's that's true. But this is also hyperbolic, right?

because Right in Matthew in 1519, that's Matthew 5, in 1519, for out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murders and adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. So the idea is here, it's inside of you, and how do you cure inside of you? You replace that heart, you replace your heart of stone with a heart of flesh, right? And then the spirit comes and keeps cleaning that out. And as soon as it gets a little dirty, confess that sin, it's gonna get cleaned out. But your heart of flesh then keeps bumping and you get better and better at it.

It's just a progress, that's the way it is. And if you have a lot of bad habits that you had, it might take a while to get those things out. But you keep on trucking and keep on trying to make it stop. Then the famous one in Romans 1.24, And I can actually end on this. There's a whole bunch of them that I can go through, but you guys know all this stuff. And it's, you don't do it, okay? Just don't do that stuff. But I think Romans 1 is a fantastic chapter. If you really have never really studied it and swallowed it, if you're a member of TEC, you know that we beat on this all the time. We are Calvinistic. We do believe God's in control of everything, okay?

And God's in charge, we're not, okay? He's God and you're not. So in Romans 1, 24 through 32, he has this whole progress of mankind going down. Now mankind goes down because they deny what they already know, that there is a God and they invent their own God. So anytime you meet somebody that says, I don't believe in God, you can tell them that they're a liar because they just created another God. They just got a God that they give a different name to. Nobody is truly an atheist. They either think they're God or they believe in God. That's just it. Therefore, God gave them up to the lust of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen.

They are worshiping thy creature, whoever that may be. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what they ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil and covenants and malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

They are gossips, slanders, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents. Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, they do the bad things, but they give approval to those who practice them. So not only are they doing that, they heartily applaud and give approval for everybody else to come along. Can I think Hollywood? And I think, you know, a whole bunch of people out there, the abortionists, all those people, come along, it's fine. It's just, you know, unviable tissue mass.

It won't bother you. Just get rid of that baby. Okay. With that, I've now gone a little bit over time, and we don't have that much time for dinner. So there's a whole bunch of verses. You guys can look them up if you want. But the whole basic thing is talk, communicate. We are in a community together, a community talks. You and your wife have to be tight. And the way you get tight is talk these things through. Confess those things that you didn't do this right, I didn't do this right, I shouldn't have done that, can you forgive me? You know, and confession, remember that part. You need to ask for forgiveness. You don't just say, I'm sorry.

You need to forgive me for that. And then when that exchange happens, you truly have then exchanged it. and you have forgiven them as you want to be forgiven when you screw up. You know, shoe on whatever foot, don't worry about that. Treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this time together. Thank you for your word. Thank you for your mercy on us. We are sinful creatures that need you and the only reason we can even pray to you is through the sacrifice of your son, which is the ultimate amazing thing you did as God, is that you came down and died for us so that we could see these truths and live them out.

And yet you bless us with so many things and sex is one of them in the proper circumstances and we thank you for that and help us to realize that in more ways and better ways and be those great examples for our children and the next generations to come. Thank you for that and help us now Just enjoy each other over this meal and the rest of the conference. Amen.