Speaker 1: Let's pick our Bibles up, wave them around.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into the Word together tonight.
Speaker 1: Praise God, let's say this together Say, heavenly Father, I'm so glad to be here tonight to delve into the subject of a covenant of marriage.
Speaker 1: Lord, it's vital information In these last days.
Speaker 1: We're going to shine with the glory of God and be examples to the world with the love that we have in our homes.
Speaker 1: The product of our marriages, our children, are going to be examples, good examples to the community.
Speaker 1: Lord, we're shining with the glory of God in Jesus' name.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: Amen, you can be seated.
Speaker 1: Praise God.
Speaker 1: All right, we've got two foundation scriptures tonight.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking about the covenant of marriage tonight, and so we'll turn in our Bibles to Ecclesiastes, chapter 4, and also find Ephesians, chapter 5.
Speaker 1: And also find Ephesians, chapter 5.
Speaker 1: And I will set my Apple Watch timer because we respect your time and we don't want to get out late.
Speaker 1: We want to share the Word of God with you, but we don't want to go on and on.
Speaker 1: We want to give you the information, all right.
Speaker 1: Ecclesiastes, chapter 4.
Speaker 1: Of course, that was written by Solomon, king Solomon, inspired by the Holy Ghost, verse 9,.
Speaker 1: Two are better than one because they have a good reward of their labor, for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falls, for he hath not another to help him up Again.
Speaker 1: If two lie together, then they have heat, but how can one be warm alone?
Speaker 1: And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him.
Speaker 1: And a threefold cord is not quickly or easily broken.
Speaker 1: A threefold cord is not easily broken.
Speaker 1: And then let's turn back to Ephesians, chapter 5, and we'll start reading with verse 22.
Speaker 1: And of course the location of these verses here is right after Paul is encouraging the Ephesian church not to be ignorant of the will of God.
Speaker 1: And the will of God is for them to be being filled, to be continually and habitually filled with the Holy Ghost, speaking to themselves, giving thanks in all things and submitting one to another in the fear of God.
Speaker 1: And then we pick it up in verse 22, and then it gets on to wives.
Speaker 1: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church and he is the savior of the body.
Speaker 1: Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ.
Speaker 1: So let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
Speaker 1: Verse 25, husbands, love agape, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.
Speaker 1: And so the covenant of marriage.
Speaker 1: You know, it was God's idea.
Speaker 1: God's idea from the very beginning is marriage is a covenant.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no other way for two people to be one without a covenant relationship.
Speaker 1: Now two people can be joined physically and made one through fornication if they're not married, or through adultery if they're married to other people and they're joined that way.
Speaker 1: But that's not God's plan.
Speaker 1: God's plan is for that bond that's exclusively covenant-protected is to add to the binding together of two people and making them one.
Speaker 1: It's a covenant, it's a blood covenant, it's a add to the binding together of two people and making them one.
Speaker 1: It's a covenant, it's a blood covenant, it's a love covenant.
Speaker 1: And so you know, here in the book of Ephesians, paul is writing to the church and he's talking about these things and he brings up marriage.
Speaker 1: Why would he bring up marriage in the middle of all that?
Speaker 1: Because the church is made up of people that are married in covenant relationship with each other.
Speaker 1: That's the building blocks of the church.
Speaker 1: This is one reason why the church has been weak for the last 50, 60 years.
Speaker 1: We've been in an ebb downward because marriage has been attacked in every way possible.
Speaker 1: People have left their primary responsibilities as men and women, as husbands and wives, as fathers and mothers, and they have fled the home to make money.
Speaker 1: Now you look at what is going on.
Speaker 1: I mean, trump just announced the tariffs today.
Speaker 1: You know, I've lived long enough to see how our country used to be a manufacturing company.
Speaker 1: Our country was such a manufacturing powerhouse that during World War II we caught up and we went from 17th militarily to number one militarily almost overnight.
Speaker 1: And that was done on the strength of those corporations and those factories that were shuttered during the 70s and 80s by the stupid policies of mostly Democrats and some globalist Republicans.
Speaker 1: Why are you bringing all this up?
Speaker 1: Because it's affected marriage, it's affected our homes, it's affected the church.
Speaker 1: Praise God, we're on the beginning stages of a revival, and I believe that there's going to be a revival in the sanctity and the opinion about marriage and how important marriage and the home are, and I look forward to the fact that maybe things can turn around so dramatically in this country that we won't have to have two incomes to live.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be better if mom could stay home?
Speaker 1: I didn't get very many amens on that.
Speaker 1: Maybe we need to cast the devil out of you before we go any further.
Speaker 1: I'm meddling now.
Speaker 1: All right, praise God.
Speaker 1: No, that's where I grew up.
Speaker 1: My mother didn't work.
Speaker 1: She stayed at home.
Speaker 1: She worked at home and she was the disciplinarian.
Speaker 1: I ran from her.
Speaker 1: When she had that belt out, I went the other direction and I knew I was going to let her catch me, because if she couldn't catch me, I knew Dad would catch me and I certainly didn't want my dad to be the disciplinarian.
Speaker 1: All right, praise God.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the family of God, the church built with God ordained families, the covenant of marriage, god's idea being one between one man, one woman and God himself.
Speaker 1: You know Ecclesiastes, the threefold cord is not quickly or easily broken.
Speaker 1: God is in that covenant and out of that covenant relationship, children are raised in a loving, stable environment and the church is built.
Speaker 1: Jesus said I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Speaker 1: One way that he builds it is through revelation, knowledge, the revelation of how great marriage is and how great it can be.
Speaker 1: All marriages, all good marriages, suffer trouble, much less dysfunctional marriages, a lot of dysfunctional marriages.
Speaker 1: As a pastor for 30 full-time years and then before that, I did a lot of marriage counseling at Lakewood for people that were in trouble with their marriage.
Speaker 1: Gladys and I will be married 57 years this summer, so we know a little bit about how to get stuck on each other and stay stuck.
Speaker 1: We got stuck on each other.
Speaker 1: Has it been easy?
Speaker 1: Well, it hasn't always been easy.
Speaker 1: It's not easy right now because we're living in two different places for six months.
Speaker 1: That's not easy.
Speaker 1: But what keeps us together?
Speaker 1: That covenant, that love covenant, and it's powerful, it's greater than anything the devil can throw at you once you know who you are in Christ and what Jesus' blood is paid for.
Speaker 1: And so godly marriage is all about the power of agreement.
Speaker 1: In Deuteronomy 32, 30, it says one can put a thousand to flight, two can put 10,000 to flight.
Speaker 1: It's a tenfold according to Deuteronomy.
Speaker 1: And that's old covenant.
Speaker 1: By the way, according to Deuteronomy they did not have the name of Jesus.
Speaker 1: You know, jesus said if two or more shall agree on earth as touching anything they shall ask, it shall be done of them, of my father, which is in heaven.
Speaker 1: So Jesus said that in Matthew 18, 19.
Speaker 1: So the power, everybody say the power of agreement.
Speaker 1: See, this is why the devil attacks marriages, as he can get the agreement out of your marriage.
Speaker 1: He can.
Speaker 1: He can cut the power factor, he can make you a non entity and he can affect the church.
Speaker 1: See, the church is the main nemesis to the devil, and the spirit of antichrist right now is the church.
Speaker 1: If he can affect marriages in the church and get them dysfunctional and where they're, you know, amos three, three says how can two walk together unless they be agreed?
Speaker 1: And so he's going to attack the agreement in your marriage.
Speaker 1: You've got to be smarter than the devil, you've got to not stand for his attack.
Speaker 1: Agreement has to be reached between a husband and a wife.
Speaker 1: It doesn't just fall out of heaven on top of your head instantly oh yeah, I agree with it.
Speaker 1: No, you have to communicate long enough to get into agreement with each other.
Speaker 1: Amen, I said amen.
Speaker 1: So this power of agreement comes under attack by the enemy, and if he can destroy the agreement, then the husband and wife don't walk together.
Speaker 1: The threat to the devil is eliminated, he can destroy the marriage, he can destroy the family, he can destroy, he can limit the church.
Speaker 1: And so this, nine weeks ahead of us here tonight, through eight more after this, is going to equip you better to resist the attacks of the enemy on your marriage and on your home.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know you can win that battle every time if you know what the Bible says about your marriage and about your covenant.
Speaker 1: And so when the pressures of life strain and stretch your relationship, those ties will hold.
Speaker 1: So now let's look back here in Ephesians, chapter five.
Speaker 1: I want to keep reading because I started off with women submitting themselves to their own husbands, not just to any man.
Speaker 1: See, there's some places you go to church and it seems like the women have to submit to every man in the church.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a bunch of baloney.
Speaker 1: No, you submit or you cooperate with your own husband.
Speaker 1: It says your own husband, not somebody else's husband.
Speaker 1: So men aren't the bosses of women.
Speaker 1: They don't go around telling you everything to do.
Speaker 1: It just means that you're one, but one of you.
Speaker 1: God chooses the man to be responsible for the direction of the household.
Speaker 1: He's responsible.
Speaker 1: So he's called the head.
Speaker 1: And so you know we'll get into what that means.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to submit?
Speaker 1: A lot of times I've sat with a lot of marriage couples.
Speaker 1: I used to do a lot of marriage counseling in the early part of the, you know, of course, at Lakewood, and then as we started the church.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've sat with a lot of troubled couples and I've heard just about anything and everything that people can experience in their marriage and one common thing well, she just won't submit to me.
Speaker 1: Well, you submitted to Jesus, you, knucklehead.
Speaker 1: See, I knew he didn't have a word life and I knew he didn't have a prayer life.
Speaker 1: So who's the head?
Speaker 1: Is it you really, knucklehead?
Speaker 1: You're the one that's griping about submitting, but you're not submitted to Jesus.
Speaker 1: How can she submit to somebody that's not submitted to the Lord?
Speaker 1: Somebody's got to take the spiritual lead leadership.
Speaker 1: You're not doing it.
Speaker 1: That can be a real dicey conversation.
Speaker 1: I've had more than a few dicey conversations.
Speaker 1: Usually I don't get to see them again after that first conversation.
Speaker 1: No, they repent, amen.
Speaker 1: All right, let's keep reading Ephesians, chapter 5.
Speaker 1: Let's pick it up, verse 28.
Speaker 1: You see, husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it that he might sanctify and cleanse it with a washing of water, by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that it should be holy and without blemish.
Speaker 1: So what men ought to love their wives as their own bodies.
Speaker 1: He that loveth his wife loveth himself, for no man ever yet hated his own flesh but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord, the church.
Speaker 1: For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.
Speaker 1: For this cause, see, for this cause of what he's talking about, that love that you're one with each other.
Speaker 1: You're flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone.
Speaker 1: You're one In God's sight.
Speaker 1: You're one physically to have children.
Speaker 1: The purpose of being one physically is to procreate We'll get back to that in a moment but it's also to have the bond of marriage.
Speaker 1: To have the bond of marriage.
Speaker 1: It creates a bond between husband and wife that keeps the family glued together under pressure.
Speaker 1: So for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh.
Speaker 1: This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular.
Speaker 1: So love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence or respect her husband.
Speaker 1: So here you have these verses that are hearkening back to Genesis.
Speaker 1: Let's turn back to Genesis, chapter 2, because it all started in the garden, it started in creation, it started in God's idea of the man and the woman.
Speaker 1: In verse 7, it says that the Lord God formed man.
Speaker 1: Seven, it says that the Lord God formed man.
Speaker 1: That word man is the, is the Hebrew word ish.
Speaker 1: He formed ish of the dust of the ground and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life.
Speaker 1: And man became a living soul.
Speaker 1: So he created man by himself.
Speaker 1: Just man.
Speaker 1: He didn't have the woman yet, just man.
Speaker 1: He created man.
Speaker 1: And then verse 18, and the Lord God said it's not good that a man should be alone.
Speaker 1: Well, see, isn't that what Ecclesiastes said?
Speaker 1: Chapter 4, we've already read that.
Speaker 1: See, it's agreeing with God's opinion.
Speaker 1: See, god's opinion is what matters, god's perspective is what matters.
Speaker 1: It's not good for a man to be alone.
Speaker 1: Now, sometimes men find themselves alone, you know, I mean that that happens, but in general, for the purposes of man multiplying.
Speaker 1: What did he tell he?
Speaker 1: He, he said let's make a man, just like ourselves, and let us, let them have dominion.
Speaker 1: And he told them he said be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and take dominion.
Speaker 1: We'll never take dominion unless we multiply and have kids.
Speaker 1: America and Western Europe, much of the world, is a non-sustainable situation right now because the birth rate has fallen, because people have gotten out of their roles of mothers and fathers, husbands and wives.
Speaker 1: They've succumbed to the devil's attack and has minimized the family.
Speaker 1: It's attacked the family.
Speaker 1: Now you've got all the people that think that they're not comfortable in their body that they were born with and now they're trans.
Speaker 1: That's a lie.
Speaker 1: It's obvious.
Speaker 1: It's a patent.
Speaker 1: God made male and female.
Speaker 1: That's all he made.
Speaker 1: He didn't make any halfway in between.
Speaker 1: He didn't make any mistakes.
Speaker 1: So then, what is it?
Speaker 1: Well, it's one of two things.
Speaker 1: It's either demon possession or it's mental illness, or both.
Speaker 1: It's not real.
Speaker 1: It's not something that we should give place to.
Speaker 1: We, with kindness and love, try to help people best we can, but we don't agree with them, amen.
Speaker 1: So here it goes back to it's not good for man to be alone.
Speaker 1: I will make him a help meet for him.
Speaker 1: I will make a help meet for him, and my margin says as before him, I will make a help meet.
Speaker 1: And so in verse 19, he goes and he parades all the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1: He creates the entire animal kingdom.
Speaker 1: We know from science there's 500,000 species of animals that he paraded before Adam.
Speaker 1: And Adam named all the animals.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but that's a pretty smart guy.
Speaker 1: I think I would have run out after just a little while.
Speaker 1: You know you've got.
Speaker 1: You know, oh, armadillo, aardvark, antelope, lizard, lion, llama.
Speaker 1: I mean you know you're going to run out 500,000 of them and not any of them was a suitable help meet for ish.
Speaker 1: Not one of them was suitable for ish.
Speaker 1: And so that kind of throws, all the people that are furries, you know, all the people that identifies.
Speaker 1: I mean we've got the craziest bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: And how many of you know this is demon powers?
Speaker 1: See, the church has got to rise up.
Speaker 1: And people that know better, they get their information from God's Word, amen.
Speaker 1: And the Holy Spirit has given them revelation so they know what the truth is.
Speaker 1: They don't have to fall victim to this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So God, in verse 21, god caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam.
Speaker 1: Now, the word Adam there is humankind.
Speaker 1: So he's not, but it's ish.
Speaker 1: But Adam is hisankind.
Speaker 1: So he's not, but it's Ish.
Speaker 1: But Adam is his name, he's the only representative of humankind right now and he really.
Speaker 1: He comes up short because he's a male and God has female characteristics.
Speaker 1: God is both male and female, has both male and female types of characteristics, has both male and female types of characteristics.
Speaker 1: And so for us to be one with God, for us to be in covenant with God, humankind must reflect God.
Speaker 1: We're made in his image.
Speaker 1: Man by himself couldn't really be in the full image of God.
Speaker 1: He needed the woman.
Speaker 1: Woman can't be the full image of God without the man.
Speaker 1: They need each other to be a reflection.
Speaker 1: Are you all with me now?
Speaker 1: So he caused a deep sleep to fall upon humankind and he slept and he took one of his ribs.
Speaker 1: Literally, I mean, when you see that word rib, it means the side of the ark, it means the rib, it means his bone.
Speaker 1: I mean it was bone, but it means more than that.
Speaker 1: It's his side, it's right.
Speaker 1: It own, but it means more than that it's his side, it's right, it's his side.
Speaker 1: The woman is side by side, not behind, not in front, not beneath, not above, right beside the man, right beside him, and out of that side or that rib, the Lord, taken from man, he made a woman, ishah, and he brought her unto the man and humankind said this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called Ishah.
Speaker 1: I mean she was beautiful.
Speaker 1: I mean he liked what God made Ishah because she was taken out of man.
Speaker 1: So that's the pattern.
Speaker 1: I mean the woman is from the man, but the man is of the woman.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, when a woman gives birth, she gives birth to both genders, male and female.
Speaker 1: So the connection is amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, only God could dream such a thing up.
Speaker 1: It's marvelous.
Speaker 1: We don't have to mess with it, we don't have to fool with it, we don't have to have a bunch of people coming in here and socially engineering our marriages.
Speaker 1: Are you with me now?
Speaker 1: And so verse 24, therefore, because of all this, therefore, shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh.
Speaker 1: They shall be one flesh.
Speaker 1: So Ish and Ishah became one flesh and of course, that you leave your father and mother and cleave unto your wife and the two shall be one.
Speaker 1: You know, jesus said the same thing in Mark, chapter 10.
Speaker 1: Let's run over there real quick.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Bible is clear about these things.
Speaker 1: I mean it's in the mouth of two or three witnesses.
Speaker 1: Everything is established.
Speaker 1: Jesus himself talked about it in Mark, chapter 10.
Speaker 1: Verse 6, from the beginning of the creation, god made them male and female.
Speaker 1: For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.
Speaker 1: So then they are no more twain, but one, one flesh.
Speaker 1: What, therefore, god hath joined together?
Speaker 1: Let not man put asunder that joining together is a sexual union.
Speaker 1: It implies that, in fact, when you go back to Ecclesiastes, when he's talking about laying there, he's not just talking about laying for warmth, he's talking about laying in the sexual sense.
Speaker 1: There is a marital act that goes with marriage only, that's designed to create a bond between father and mother.
Speaker 1: It's there.
Speaker 1: God created it.
Speaker 1: You don't mess with it.
Speaker 1: And when you do mess with it, when you mess with altering it in some way, depriving one another in any way, that way, then you're messing with the bonds that God created for there to be to keep you together.
Speaker 1: Are you with me now.
Speaker 1: I had a couple in our first building.
Speaker 1: They came and they were, you know, they're probably 40s.
Speaker 1: They had a couple of teenage children, one, about, I bet, 17-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl that was going on 21.
Speaker 1: And it caused me great concern the way she dressed to go to church.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, let's make sure our children are dressed appropriately when they come to church.
Speaker 1: This is God's house and this is the atmosphere where miracles happen.
Speaker 1: Let's respect ourselves and let's respect everybody else by not allowing our children to, you know, be dressed like they're going to a rave.
Speaker 1: First of all, I wouldn't let my kid go to a rave, but anyway.
Speaker 1: But I didn't say anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we're just starting out.
Speaker 1: They wanted to meet with me, we're having trouble in our marriage, we've got a dysfunction, we don't agree about the kids, we don't agree on much of anything.
Speaker 1: And the Holy Ghost said ask them if they ever sleep together.
Speaker 1: And so I did.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's kind of embarrassing, but I said well, how often do y'all get together your marital relations?
Speaker 1: How often do y'all get together?
Speaker 1: And they looked at each other and they didn't answer right away.
Speaker 1: And I said, and finally the wife said, well, we don't sleep in the same bed.
Speaker 1: I said, oh okay.
Speaker 1: Well, how often is that?
Speaker 1: I mean, are you all together on a regular basis?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, we sleep in separate bedrooms.
Speaker 1: So I thought, well, no wonder you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: You're not even in the same league, you're not even married.
Speaker 1: What are you roommates?
Speaker 1: I mean that's what I asked.
Speaker 1: What are you just rooming together now?
Speaker 1: Is that what you've got?
Speaker 1: You've let your marriage go.
Speaker 1: I mean, where in your marriage did you decide to sleep in separate beds and then now separate bedrooms?
Speaker 1: Your children see that and you are reproducing a false picture of marriage.
Speaker 1: I mean I would be surprised if you don't have a whole lot of trouble with those kids because they don't see anything that resembles normal.
Speaker 1: That was another meeting that was pretty short, it didn't last very long.
Speaker 1: I just I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I grew up in a normal home.
Speaker 1: I mean my parents were affectionate toward each other.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't see everything, but I mean I know that they kissed each other and I knew that they, you know, and they hugged each other, and I mean it was not some weirdness, and so you've got to solve that.
Speaker 1: If that's going on.
Speaker 1: You've got to solve it.
Speaker 1: That's a dysfunction, it's a major problem.
Speaker 1: Jesus said you leave your father and you cleave.
Speaker 1: Cleave means what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Cleave means what exactly?
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean meat cleaver, it means cleave.
Speaker 1: It means to catch by pursuit, to cling to, to adhere to, to stick.
Speaker 1: Everybody say I'm stuck.
Speaker 1: All you married people, all the married people say I'm stuck.
Speaker 1: I know I've got others that aren't married.
Speaker 1: I've got some teenagers in here.
Speaker 1: Y'all are probably turning red, I know, but it's okay.
Speaker 1: You need to know the truth.
Speaker 1: You're getting old enough to understand things, to catch by pursuit, to cling to, to adhere to, to stick, and so this certainly implies some basic truths that need to be practiced consistently and regularly.
Speaker 1: And look at Ephesians, chapter 4.
Speaker 1: Now, the one thing about the bond or the tie that I want to mention Ephesians, chapter 4.
Speaker 1: Are you getting anything out of this tonight?
Speaker 1: Well, you may have heard it before, but it's good to refresh yourself and besides that, you can help others that are having trouble.
Speaker 1: Ephesians four, chapter four, verse one I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the Lord.
Speaker 1: Therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the Lord, worthy of the vocation wherewith you're called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Speaker 1: There's one body and one Spirit, even as you're called, and one hope of your calling.
Speaker 1: One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all and unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, pastor, that's talking about the church.
Speaker 1: It's talking about you and your wife, if you're married.
Speaker 1: It's talking about your marital union, because God sees you as one.
Speaker 1: And it talks about endeavoring to keep the bond of the spirit, endeavoring to keep the, the unity of the spirit, and the bond, the bond of peace.
Speaker 1: There's a bond of shalom, or a tie or a rope or a chain.
Speaker 1: I mean it is a connection that's not easily broken when it's done right.
Speaker 1: I mean this is not just talking about the church at large, it's talking about the individual members of the church, which are the husbands and wives and the parents of the building block of the church, the family.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to get to that that the marital union creates a tie or a bond that keeps the husband and wife knit together.
Speaker 1: That's why fornication, sex outside of marriage, is so bad, because if you'll read in the book of Proverbs, you know, can a man take fire into his bosom and not be burned?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you read Proverbs, chapter 5.
Speaker 1: It talks all about how the husband is supposed to take pleasure in his wife, rejoice the wife, be ravished, always with her love ravished.
Speaker 1: But when we go outside the marriage, or if we have relations before marriage or outside of marriage, like when we're single and we just decide to go have relations with whoever, we hook up which is the modern vernacular they hook up, online, hook up.
Speaker 1: What does that do?
Speaker 1: Well, the reason it's wrong is because it creates a bond that has no protection of a covenant.
Speaker 1: That bond stays there Even when you drift apart.
Speaker 1: You never see that person again.
Speaker 1: That bond is there and on that bond, on that line between you and that person, can flow familiar spirits from their life, coming all the way down through their family line, through their parents, their grandparents, their great grandparents, all their family line, all the way back to the beginning of creation.
Speaker 1: Have got demon powers that can come right down that line and they don't even have any godly purpose in your life.
Speaker 1: And they're going down that line that you created when you had those relationships and it comes into you and now you're battling.
Speaker 1: Those spirits are called familiar spirits.
Speaker 1: Now see, we've got enough battles because when you get married, your, your wife or your husband have those same things.
Speaker 1: You're going to have some familiar spirits to deal with.
Speaker 1: That's why you need agreement.
Speaker 1: You can, when you identify spirits that are coming into your marriage, try to to create strife, try to create poverty, try to create sickness.
Speaker 1: You've got authority to cast those things out.
Speaker 1: But what do you do when you've had about two, dozen or three dozen illicit relationships and then you finally get married and it's really tough sledding.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, maybe I'm not trying to condemn you.
Speaker 1: I'm saying there's a way that you can repent of that.
Speaker 1: You can renounce all of those false relationships that had no godly purpose, even if they were before you were saved, renounce those soul ties and forbid the devil to come down that line at you.
Speaker 1: You have no authority.
Speaker 1: I'm now married and I'm now with the person that I chose to have a covenant with.
Speaker 1: And you, the blood I plead the blood against you.
Speaker 1: This isn't helping anybody.
Speaker 1: Oh, I tell you.
Speaker 1: Praise God for the word, amen, all right.
Speaker 1: So I want to give you four things here.
Speaker 1: Marriage facts to leave you with here.
Speaker 1: Just about done, got a few minutes.
Speaker 1: Praise God.
Speaker 1: Number one marriage is a love covenant between one man and one woman and God himself.
Speaker 1: If you read your Bible, you'll notice what Jesus said about marriage and what Paul says about marriage are a little different.
Speaker 1: What he says about divorce is a little different.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Well, because Jesus was dealing with Jews that were not born again.
Speaker 1: They could not love one another with the love of God.
Speaker 1: They didn't have the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost.
Speaker 1: They were spiritually dead.
Speaker 1: They were limited in their love to phileo human love.
Speaker 1: But we are not limited to phileo love.
Speaker 1: We have phileo love but we have agape love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost when we got saved.
Speaker 1: The agape love is in us and we're able to love.
Speaker 1: Husband, you can love your wife with a sacrificial love.
Speaker 1: You can put her first.
Speaker 1: You can give yourself for her.
Speaker 1: She can be malleable toward you.
Speaker 1: She can treat you right.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because you've got the love of God on the inside of you.
Speaker 1: You can love people even when they're not quite very lovable.
Speaker 1: You can love them when you're not quite in agreement yet, but you're not going to give up pursuing agreement.
Speaker 1: Everybody say a love covenant, all right.
Speaker 1: And then number two the God part of the cord is not just lip service.
Speaker 1: You know it's easy for people to say, yeah, it's a threefold cord, god's in our covenant.
Speaker 1: Well, it's just not lip service.
Speaker 1: God is the Word and the Spirit.
Speaker 1: In other words, god is a Word life on behalf of both partners in this covenant, and a prayer life.
Speaker 1: Both of you have to have that.
Speaker 1: You both have to have a Word life and a prayer life.
Speaker 1: Both of you have to have that.
Speaker 1: You both have to have a word life and a prayer life.
Speaker 1: You've heard me say this over and over and over because of all the times that I've sat with people with trouble in their life.
Speaker 1: Usually you can find out that they're lacking in that area.
Speaker 1: They're so busy.
Speaker 1: Again, the devil has got us so busy that we don't have time to pray, we don't have time to read our Bibles and we wonder why our house is hell.
Speaker 1: We wonder why there isn't any agreement.
Speaker 1: We wonder why there's strife.
Speaker 1: We wonder why things aren't better.
Speaker 1: We wonder why we're poverty stricken.
Speaker 1: We wonder why we can't seem to ever have enough money at the end of the month.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's because the Word and the spirit, the God part of your covenant is weak.
Speaker 1: It's not, it's not non-existent, it's just it has to be stirred up, it has to be identified, it has to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have to exercise our own will.
Speaker 1: We're not just robots.
Speaker 1: God's not going to just go ding and all of a sudden everything's going to straighten out.
Speaker 1: No, we've got to contend.
Speaker 1: Amen, Everybody say.
Speaker 1: I'm a contender for the faith.
Speaker 1: So the God part of that cord is the word and the spirit, the word life and the prayer life.
Speaker 1: And this love is agape love, the God kind of love, not just the human kind of love.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 1: Number three I'm going to talk about the husbands.
Speaker 1: Husbands love your wives, give themselves, give yourself to your wife, sacrifice yourself.
Speaker 1: Love your wives, give themselves, give yourself to your wife, sacrifice yourself for your wife.
Speaker 1: You know sometimes you want to do something, but you know it means a lot to your wife.
Speaker 1: You'll forego that thing that you planned.
Speaker 1: You'll do something that makes her happy.
Speaker 1: That's what agape does, that's what a godly husband will do, and he'll do it over and over without any resentment, without feeling like he's cheating himself.
Speaker 1: You know, you put your wife up there on that on that priority list.
Speaker 1: You nourish her, you cherish her, as the Lord does the church.
Speaker 1: You pursue her.
Speaker 1: To cleave means to pursue, pursue her, cling to her, stick with her, lay with her Amen, I mean that's that's up to her.
Speaker 1: Stick with her, lay with her.
Speaker 1: Amen, I mean that's up to you.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, when I get home, I just want to be left alone.
Speaker 1: I see you're using the word I a lot.
Speaker 1: Well, how about your wife?
Speaker 1: She's working too.
Speaker 1: You both just want to be left alone, then, and you both just want to get in the opposite side of the house and just be alone the rest of the night because you're so tired from working.
Speaker 1: And see, this is what the modern workplace has done to our homes.
Speaker 1: It's worn the husband and the wife out and exhausted them in fighting the traffic all the way home and all of that, all the road rage and the pressure and the multitasking which we're not, by the way.
Speaker 1: Humans are not really built to multitask, and yet we're demanded to multitask.
Speaker 1: We're multitasking way too much now, and it's causing all kinds of psychological problems we're just now discovering.
Speaker 1: Is there any wonder, then, that marriages in many cases are in trouble in the church Because we're just worn out?
Speaker 1: Now let's get off the merry-go-round, let's start making some different choices.
Speaker 1: Let's choose.
Speaker 1: Let's choose better, leave and cleave.
Speaker 1: Everybody say leave and cleave.
Speaker 1: For this cause shall a man leave his father?
Speaker 1: You know, guys, if you're a mama's boy, stop it.
Speaker 1: You're no longer a mama's boy.
Speaker 1: Okay, you left her house.
Speaker 1: She's your mother, she'll always be your mother, but you don't obey your mother.
Speaker 1: You don't honor your mother above your wife.
Speaker 1: You don't do that.
Speaker 1: You establish boundaries between your family, your mother, your father, your siblings, your cousins, your family, all of that.
Speaker 1: You, you're the one to establish a boundary and say, no, we're not your vacation place.
Speaker 1: For two weeks every summer, we're not available.
Speaker 1: We have our own lives and we just can't, we can't accommodate you.
Speaker 1: We'd love to see if you're going to come to Houston for a vacation.
Speaker 1: We'd love to see you.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can take some time to go to Galveston with you, or maybe we can go some some something.
Speaker 1: You know, but, but you know some people just they.
Speaker 1: They take their half out of the middle because the husband is such a weak person he can't say no to his mama.
Speaker 1: That's the recipe for unhappy marriage.
Speaker 1: No, leave and cleave.
Speaker 1: You're a new creation.
Speaker 1: You know, when you got born again, you became a new creation.
Speaker 1: The moment you got married, you became a new family.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing.
Speaker 1: And now you've got a covenant with God.
Speaker 1: It's a threefold cord, it's not a 16-fold cord.
Speaker 1: It's not a big old network of everybody's trouble.
Speaker 1: When my cousin called me oh honey, I've got to go over there.
Speaker 1: They're having oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1: No, no, prioritize your house and your wife.
Speaker 1: Men, amen.
Speaker 1: Leave and clean and then pursue peace and agreement with your wife.
Speaker 1: Let her be a help meet for you.
Speaker 1: Let her surround you and aid you.
Speaker 1: That's what a help meet is One who surrounds you, one who aids you.
Speaker 1: Let her surround you and aid you.
Speaker 1: That's what a helpmate is One who surrounds you, one who aids you.
Speaker 1: Listen to her advice.
Speaker 1: Women have a way of hearing from God that's different than men.
Speaker 1: Men logic.
Speaker 1: You know they use their brain all day.
Speaker 1: You know they just want to think everything out.
Speaker 1: It's got to make sense.
Speaker 1: And you ask a woman how did you come to that decision?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I saw a maple tree the other day and it had a red leaf and I just thought what I mean?
Speaker 1: You ask a woman how she made a decision.
Speaker 1: It makes no sense, but she made the right decision because she felt that she perceived it down.
Speaker 1: That's how women are wired.
Speaker 1: I mean you're a fool if you don't listen to your wife.
Speaker 1: Don't run to daddy and ask daddy first.
Speaker 1: Don't run to mama and ask mama first.
Speaker 1: This is your wife.
Speaker 1: She's a help meet for you.
Speaker 1: Give her an opportunity to be a help meet.
Speaker 1: Listen to her advice, let her have input.
Speaker 1: Every decision you make is not made independently, without her.
Speaker 1: No, that's not what it means to submit.
Speaker 1: It means that you're heirs together of the grace of life.
Speaker 1: Remember, she's right beside you, you're together, you're in lockstep.
Speaker 1: And so to get in lockstep, have you ever tried a three-legged race?
Speaker 1: Have you ever tried one of those three?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's really kind of the way it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, if one starts bucking the other one, you're going to fall flat on your face.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be able to make the race, you know.
Speaker 1: So what do you wait for agreement?
Speaker 1: Don't get in a place where you have to make a decision so fast that you don't consult your helpmate and leave her out of the decision and don't listen to what she has to say about it.
Speaker 1: Is this helping anybody?
Speaker 1: Everybody shout leave and clean, all right.
Speaker 1: And then, wives, honor and respect your husband.
Speaker 1: Listen patiently to him, Give him your best advice, let him pursue you.
Speaker 1: But be catchable.
Speaker 1: Now, that doesn't mean you can't make the first move.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you can't walk over to him and sit in his lap and kiss him on the cheek and on the neck or on the ear, or whisper sweet nothings.
Speaker 1: You know what sweet nothings are, don't you?
Speaker 1: Oh, baby, I love you.
Speaker 1: I go see Gladys every day and I whisper sweet nothings in her ear.
Speaker 1: I mean she's you know she's living in a different place, and so I want to make sure I give her all the love and the words that she is mishearing.
Speaker 1: That's my job, that's my duty.
Speaker 1: And so, wives, you honor and respect.
Speaker 1: Men need affection.
Speaker 1: Women need to have words.
Speaker 1: I mean men.
Speaker 1: If you're not speaking kind words to your wife, you're missing the boat.
Speaker 1: You speak those words and women, you've missing the boat.
Speaker 1: You speak those words and women, you've got to be catchable, be responsible to his advances, stay very close to him, endeavor to agree with him so that shalom can abound in your home.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to Ephesians four.
Speaker 1: It says with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of marriages like that.
Speaker 1: I mean you.
Speaker 1: You have different ideas about a decision.
Speaker 1: You want to build a home and you want to save longer.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a great goal fixed.
Speaker 1: And so what do you do?
Speaker 1: Well, you don't make that decision right way.
Speaker 1: Let's just talk this over and let's pray, let's get the mind of the Lord, let's find out what God wants us to do and see that implies that word life and that prayer life.
Speaker 1: And when you have that word life and prayer life, one of the two of you might very well have a word from the Lord about the decision you're about to make.
Speaker 1: And if it's your wife, man, you better listen to your wife and wife.
Speaker 1: If it's the man that has a word that says you know, the Lord spoke something to me today.
Speaker 1: Honey, I want to run this by you, but daughter, blah, blah, blah and you make a decision based on what God wants.
Speaker 1: You don't make it on the basis of pride.
Speaker 1: And well, I'm a right fighter.
Speaker 1: Have you ever known a right fighter?
Speaker 1: They just have to win every argument.
Speaker 1: First of all, you ought not be arguing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know you have a difference of opinion.
Speaker 1: You can have a difference of opinion and disagree without being disagreeable.
Speaker 1: You can say well, honey, I don't agree with that.
Speaker 1: Right now You're wanting to do this and I'm not ready to say yes to it.
Speaker 1: Honey, can we wait on that?
Speaker 1: Let me, let me get on the same page.
Speaker 1: We, lord, we, you know, let's get the mind of the Lord on this.
Speaker 1: See, sometimes that's good just to wait until you can get an agreement.
Speaker 1: But you have to endeavor to agree with it so that, what?
Speaker 1: So that shalom can abound in your home.
Speaker 1: And then you know wives, your parents and your family are your responsibility, so those, your husband, shouldn't have to tell your mother anything.
Speaker 1: That's a mother-in-law.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding?
Speaker 1: Recipe for disaster for the husband to get involved with a mother-in-law.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding?
Speaker 1: Recipe for disaster for the husband to get involved with a mother-in-law and tell her don't be coming over here.
Speaker 1: That's your job If there's a.
Speaker 1: Well, you know my mother and I we talk every day for hours on the phone.
Speaker 1: Well, you know you need to grow up.
Speaker 1: Can I just say that?
Speaker 1: I mean, you're really immature.
Speaker 1: That's not godly marriage.
Speaker 1: You're just.
Speaker 1: You're allowing your parents have too much sway into your life, too much influence into your life.
Speaker 1: Now you're married, you have a new.
Speaker 1: You're a new, literally a new creation, and you're going to get smothered.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying these people are evil, necessarily.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying you're developing an ear and all the emotional connection is going out this way and it's not reserved for your husband and your children.
Speaker 1: So have some boundaries.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying don't talk to them.
Speaker 1: I'm saying let's have boundaries, let's not go over the edge.
Speaker 1: Remember, you and your husband are one in God's sight, you're one in God's sight and godly marriage and agreement is what you're protecting.
Speaker 1: Amen, come on, let's lift our hands and receive the Word of God tonight.
Speaker 1: Hallelujah.
Speaker 1: Thank you, lord, for this initial teaching on this subject.
Speaker 1: It's a very useful subject.
Speaker 1: Glory to God.
Speaker 1: We thank you, lord.