SPEAKER_00: This podcast is a ministry of Grant Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grant Parkway, visit GrantProquay.org.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, Lord Jesus, it's it's good that we remind ourselves of that refrain from that great hymn, This is my story, because you're a God who tells the story.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible opens up by saying that the earth was void and formless, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and but the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
SPEAKER_02: And then it says this, and God said, And God said, and ever since Genesis 1, verse 2, you've been telling a story.
SPEAKER_02: It's the only story big enough for us to live in.
SPEAKER_02: And you've been telling that story in power as we just sang about that Christ resurrected in power.
SPEAKER_02: You're not a God of permission.
SPEAKER_02: You don't come today and ask us for permission to tell us some things we may or may not want to hear.
SPEAKER_02: You come in power, and your word is powerful.
SPEAKER_02: It never goes out and comes back void, but it accomplishes the purpose for which you sent it.
SPEAKER_02: And so there's power and there's purpose in this room, and there's people in this room.
SPEAKER_02: And so tell the story of marriage to these people in power, God, and use everything at your disposal to do that.
SPEAKER_02: That's our prayer.
SPEAKER_02: It's the crying need of our day and our age and our culture.
SPEAKER_02: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_02: And everyone said, Amen.
SPEAKER_02: You can have a seat.
SPEAKER_02: I invite you to take your Bibles if you would and open it up to page one.
SPEAKER_02: I want to just begin at the beginning because I'm not very smart.
SPEAKER_02: I know that men get stuff and we don't read the directions when we go to put it together, and it just kind of comes out looking like modern art sometimes.
SPEAKER_02: Uh marriage can be that way.
SPEAKER_02: If you're our guest today, we're beginning a new series today.
SPEAKER_02: We told you last week.
SPEAKER_02: Uh the series entitled Mary is entitled Marriage Matters.
SPEAKER_02: Marriage Matters.
SPEAKER_02: And uh we're gonna talk about matters that pertain to marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and there are certain things that are germane to marriage, but today I want to talk to you.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna talk about matters that pertain to marriage in the next couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_02: But today I want to use this first Sunday in this series to establish the fact that marriage itself matters.
SPEAKER_02: You say, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: We live in a day and age and in a culture where marriage doesn't really hold.
SPEAKER_02: It used to be held in high esteem and value, but here's kind of the uh uh the the past couple weeks, I don't have to go far in my life.
SPEAKER_02: The past couple weeks I've had conversations like this with people who come to see me for marriage counseling.
SPEAKER_02: They don't go to our our church.
SPEAKER_02: By the way, somebody came to me one time and they said, Hey, I'm thinking about coming to see you, but I don't want you to use me as an illustration.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I don't use people in my church.
SPEAKER_02: I see a lot of people for counseling, they'll come to my church, and and and and I'm not trying to make light, but I'm just trying to give like like this about 10 days ago I had a conversation with a couple.
SPEAKER_02: They said, Hey, we're thinking about getting married, and in the course of uh of talking to them, uh we're just talking, and and the guy said this, I don't need a piece of paper to tell me I'm married.
SPEAKER_02: Because my first question was, Why are you here?
SPEAKER_02: And he says, Well, you know, she wants to get married, make it right.
SPEAKER_02: And I said, For something to be made right, it means it's wrong.
SPEAKER_02: What's wrong in your relationship right now?
SPEAKER_02: Well, nothing's wrong.
SPEAKER_02: Uh and then he kind of got all bowed up, and I was like, ooh, I like this.
SPEAKER_02: I'm interested.
SPEAKER_02: It's about three o'clock.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sleepy at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_02: Let's mix it up here.
SPEAKER_02: Let's take our shirts off an arm racle or something.
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Well, I don't need a piece of paper to tell me I'm married.
SPEAKER_02: And I said, What do you need to tell you they're married?
SPEAKER_02: He goes, I'm married, I'm already married to her in God's eyes.
SPEAKER_02: And this is somebody actually believes this.
SPEAKER_02: He says, I'm already married to her in God's eyes.
SPEAKER_02: I said, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: The first time we slept together, we joined our bodies.
SPEAKER_02: That's what marriage is.
SPEAKER_02: I said, Have you joined your body with another woman before you've joined your body with her?
SPEAKER_02: Uh, well, I mean, I mean, yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: And so, how many times have you been married?
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, if you, if you, I'm just chasing your definition to its logical conclusion.
SPEAKER_02: If you're saying, hey, marriage is who I had sex with, then you married the first woman you had sex with.
SPEAKER_02: How old were you the first time you had sex?
SPEAKER_02: 14.
SPEAKER_02: And so, if in your definition, you married that girl, you were with him, you're 14, you've been committing adultery every since.
SPEAKER_02: And so this is an adulterous relationship.
SPEAKER_02: So you're not just living in sin sexually, you're living in adultery.
SPEAKER_02: And the Bible says that adulterers don't inherit the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_02: And the lady sitting there slipping a Coke Zero that I gave her, and she just looked at me and said, I told you it wasn't gonna go well.
SPEAKER_02: And why do I tell you that?
SPEAKER_02: Because here's the thing I don't want it to not go well for you.
SPEAKER_02: I want it to go well for you.
SPEAKER_02: There's three different kinds of people in this room.
SPEAKER_02: There's people in this room that aren't married, and you think you're gonna get married, it's gonna fix everything.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's married people laughing at you right now.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: Then the second kind of person in this room is the person that is married and is just kind of like, oh, this is awesome.
SPEAKER_02: We've been married 10 minutes.
SPEAKER_02: Woo! By the way, I'm gonna give you some things right out of the Bible that are really foundational and instructional, and I'm gonna use big words today because I just like to use big words every once in a while, so you know I got a degree.
SPEAKER_02: Uh but let me tell you, here's three stages of marriage.
SPEAKER_02: First of all, we shouldn't get this.
SPEAKER_02: There's idealism, there's realism, and there's maturity.
SPEAKER_02: Idealism, when you first get married, like, every once in a while, my 16-year-old likes to give me marriage advice.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, Dad, do you and mom fall asleep on each other's chest like in the movies?
SPEAKER_02: No, nobody sleeps like that.
SPEAKER_02: It's not comfortable, okay?
SPEAKER_02: And I want I don't want your mom like laying on me because she's hot.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, get off of me.
SPEAKER_02: I'm time to go sleep.
SPEAKER_02: The only time a man wants a woman laying on him, he doesn't want to sleep.
SPEAKER_02: How you like them apples?
SPEAKER_02: And so that that's that's idealism.
SPEAKER_02: Idealism, you think.
SPEAKER_02: This person is gonna fix me.
SPEAKER_02: No, this person's not gonna fix you.
SPEAKER_02: They're gonna expose how broken you are, how selfish you are, how how just greedy you are.
SPEAKER_02: That's idealism.
SPEAKER_02: Second stage of marriage is realism.
SPEAKER_02: Honeymoon's over.
SPEAKER_02: The greatest day of your marriage is the day you wake up next to a stranger.
SPEAKER_02: One guy over here was like here's what I mean.
SPEAKER_02: You think, I know you think, oh, this person's my idealism is where you use the phrase soulmate.
SPEAKER_02: People married a long time, don't use the word soulmate anymore.
SPEAKER_02: This is my soulmate.
SPEAKER_02: This is the woman that makes me crazy, makes me want to drink and think bad thoughts.
SPEAKER_02: I love her, but she makes me crazy sometimes.
SPEAKER_02: That's what you think.
SPEAKER_02: But enough about my wife.
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, uh it's great.
SPEAKER_02: I never looked at my wife and thought, that's my soulmate.
SPEAKER_02: My wife, every once in a while, I go to things I don't want to go to just because my wife says we're going.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, oh, we're going.
SPEAKER_02: And she'll come and go, we're leaving in 30 minutes.
SPEAKER_02: You better get dressed.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, ma'am.
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna get dressed.
SPEAKER_02: That's marriage.
SPEAKER_02: You don't always win in marriage.
SPEAKER_02: There's idealism, there's realism, and that's when it's hard.
SPEAKER_02: Some people it's two years in, some people it's five years in.
SPEAKER_02: It's that five to uh about 11-year window, it's just a grind.
SPEAKER_02: You start having kids, and you're just like, oh man, there's no way you can be as tired as me.
SPEAKER_02: And your wife is at home, got that kid glued to her, and you walk in and she's just smoking.
SPEAKER_02: Here, get this kid up off of me.
SPEAKER_02: Y'all better back off of mama and go to Chick-fil-A for about an hour.
SPEAKER_02: I'm about to kill some fools.
SPEAKER_02: And you gotta work through it.
SPEAKER_02: I remember when we had started having kids, I traveled and preached all over the country.
SPEAKER_02: I was on the road 185 days a year.
SPEAKER_02: I remember coming home, I'd been in a camp with like 2,000 teenagers.
SPEAKER_02: It was like a cesspool of hormones.
SPEAKER_02: I came home and I walked in.
SPEAKER_02: I was like, I'm so tired, man.
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, we're looking for my wife.
SPEAKER_02: Our oldest was about 18 months old.
SPEAKER_02: I walked in, and this is my wife was sitting on the kamo and being straddled by a toddler.
SPEAKER_02: She looked at me and she said, Did you go to the bathroom by yourself this week?
SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden, I just couldn't tell her how tired I was.
SPEAKER_02: I just said, Here, sweetie, get off of mommy.
SPEAKER_02: My wife, I went out in the living room, started playing with my kid, walked in, my wife just laid down, face down on the bed, sound asleep.
SPEAKER_02: I was like, I think we're gonna go Chick-fil-A, have a little play day.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: That's just that's realism.
SPEAKER_02: And then maturity.
SPEAKER_02: Maturity is when you just settle in and go, hey, this is the person.
SPEAKER_02: I woke up with a stranger, and that's not a bad thing because the person you married, they changed.
SPEAKER_02: You might as well go on the highway and pick up a hitchhiker.
SPEAKER_02: I know when you first get, oh, we know each other so well.
SPEAKER_02: I just think silly rabbits tricks are for kids.
SPEAKER_02: You do not know.
SPEAKER_02: You know them to a certain degree.
SPEAKER_02: How many of the people in this room have been married more than 20 years?
SPEAKER_02: Let me see your hand.
SPEAKER_02: Look at me.
SPEAKER_02: Based on how well you know your spouse now, do you think you really knew him back then?
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Because I say to people, hey, you might as well pick up a hitchhiker.
SPEAKER_02: They look at me like, you have such a negative view of marriage.
SPEAKER_02: No, I've been married 21 years.
SPEAKER_02: Greatest thing I ever did was not just get married, but marry the person I married because it has shaped marriage is the crucible of conformity to the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: There's nowhere to hide.
SPEAKER_02: It ain't sexy.
SPEAKER_02: She's not impressed, it ain't magic.
SPEAKER_02: She's done seen all your tricks.
SPEAKER_02: Bam.
SPEAKER_02: See, men love.
SPEAKER_02: Men, you can be a boy to a lot of women, but you can only be a man to one.
SPEAKER_02: So, let's get to the Bible, huh?
SPEAKER_02: Uh you're like, hey man, that guy's a little jacked up today.
SPEAKER_02: No, there's matters that pertain to marriage, but then I want to establish, I just want to establish that marriage matters.
SPEAKER_02: And here's what I want you not to do.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want you to listen to the lens of your marriage, because we all do it.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, pastor preached on marriage.
SPEAKER_02: I got a good marriage, let's check out make a grocery list.
SPEAKER_02: No, no.
SPEAKER_02: See, there's a robust and rigorous dialogue happening in the public square about marriage, the definition of marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Congress is voting, states are voting, and Christians are silent because you cannot enter into the dialogue and speak from a God-informed worldview.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what I want to do today is I want to talk about the creation of marriage from the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: Genesis chapter 1, verse 26.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible says this.
SPEAKER_02: Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let us let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
SPEAKER_02: So God created man in his own image.
SPEAKER_02: In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_02: Excuse me, he created them, and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
SPEAKER_02: And we'll just stop right there.
SPEAKER_02: I want to say three things about the creation of marriage.
SPEAKER_02: And the first one is obvious but radically consequential, and it's this that God created, we're created in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: You're created in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: When the Bible says, ladies, right there, a lot of times some people will ask me, when it when he says, starts in verse 26, come, let us make man in our image.
SPEAKER_02: That's not man as in male, female.
SPEAKER_02: That's the Hebrew word Adam, and it refers to mankind.
SPEAKER_02: Let us make humanity, let us make people, not just men.
SPEAKER_02: Let us make people in our image.
SPEAKER_02: You say, what's the deal?
SPEAKER_02: When we fully grasp what it means to bear God's image, to be made in the image of God, two things should happen.
SPEAKER_02: You should be struck by the majesty of this statement.
SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02: I'm made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, you should kind of grasp uh the tragedy of your unrealized potential.
SPEAKER_02: I'm made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: Now, what am I doing with that?
SPEAKER_02: Those are these two contrasting and sometimes conflicting realities.
SPEAKER_02: Uh you say, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: Six ways, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: You're made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you six ways we're like God.
SPEAKER_02: Six things about God, and we'll just put them all up at once.
SPEAKER_02: Number one, God is creative.
SPEAKER_02: God is creative.
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, he's spiritual.
SPEAKER_02: God is spirit, John says, and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and truth.
SPEAKER_02: God is not a person.
SPEAKER_02: God is spirit.
SPEAKER_02: He's spiritual.
SPEAKER_02: Thirdly, he's intelligent.
SPEAKER_02: He's intelligent.
SPEAKER_02: Fourthly, he's communicative.
SPEAKER_02: He's communicative and he communicates.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 19 says, day after day or night after night, the heavens pour forth speech.
SPEAKER_02: There is no realm within which their voice is not heard.
SPEAKER_02: God cannot not communicate.
SPEAKER_02: All the way back in the beginning, and we started in verse 26 of Genesis 1, but if you go to verse 2, the Bible just kind of describes what there was, and then it says, and God said.
SPEAKER_02: And God has been speaking ever since then.
SPEAKER_02: He's communicative.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: The fifth thing about God is He's relational.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Come let us.
SPEAKER_02: That's the Trinity.
SPEAKER_02: There's relationship in the Godhead.
SPEAKER_02: And then number six is he's moral.
SPEAKER_02: It's about ethical aughtness.
SPEAKER_02: Morality is like art, it involves drawing a line somewhere.
SPEAKER_02: At some point in your life, and some point today, and what I'm asking you to do is to put the pen down on the paper or the pencil down on the paper and draw a line as it relates to your understanding of marriage.
SPEAKER_02: As a 20-year-old single person, as a 16-year-old single person, as a person that's been married a long time, you ought to draw some lines and let the Bible define what God intended when God created and instituted this thing called marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Because you're made in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: Now you're probably thinking, great, I thought this was a sermon about marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Why are you telling us this stuff about six ways we're like God?
SPEAKER_02: These things are true about God and they ought to be true about us.
SPEAKER_02: Here's why.
SPEAKER_02: Because we do marriage out of the context of our needs and not our identity.
SPEAKER_02: We do context, I mean, excuse me, we do marriage out of the context of our needs, not out of our identity.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible says this is who you are, and this is how you're like God, and therefore this is how you should act.
SPEAKER_02: But when you do things at, when you do marriage, you come at marriage from the place of need, and let me just say this: this will have a little, you should have another little list, not just your sermon notes, but just crazy things about marriage that are actually true.
SPEAKER_02: Marriage is not the place you go to get your needs met.
SPEAKER_02: Marriage is the place you go to meet your partner's needs.
SPEAKER_02: That's the way God designed marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Marriage is not intended because if you're in a marriage and you, because here's the thing.
SPEAKER_02: Because if you think marriage is where I go to get my needs met, then you're always evaluating your partner, your spouse, your husband or your wife.
SPEAKER_02: You're not experiencing them.
SPEAKER_02: You always got a scorecard about how they're measuring up.
SPEAKER_02: Are they doing good?
SPEAKER_02: Are they doing bad?
SPEAKER_02: Did I get enough of this and enough of that?
SPEAKER_02: But the Bible says, and Bible, it's all through the Bible, hey, that the goal of marriage is that you meet your partner's need.
SPEAKER_02: You meet I meet my wife's needs, and therefore she doesn't have to worry about her needs.
SPEAKER_02: So what is she free to do?
SPEAKER_02: She's freed up to take care of my needs.
SPEAKER_02: And so there's this relationship where these two people don't just need each other, that they enjoy each other.
SPEAKER_02: And so we come at marriage out of the context of our needs, not our identity.
SPEAKER_02: And so what happens as a result of that is that you end up keeping score, and it's comparison, this kind of thing of, hey, hey, and it's like two seventh graders on the high dive, and you're daring the other one to go first.
SPEAKER_02: In every relationship, somebody has to initiate, I'm gonna meet your needs.
SPEAKER_02: And men, the Bible says that's our privilege.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a responsibility, it is a responsibility, but it is a privilege that I initiate meeting my wife's needs.
SPEAKER_02: And my wife's needs are not my needs.
SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of times, as we'll see in just a little bit, my wife's needs are nothing like mine.
SPEAKER_02: Like every once in a while, my wife will say, Well, just sit on the couch and tell me about your day.
SPEAKER_02: And my day was so crazy.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes it starts with a breakfast meeting at six in the morning and ends with an elder meeting, at which I get home at 11 o'clock at night.
SPEAKER_02: And she'll say, She'll wait up for me to come home and tell her about my day.
SPEAKER_02: And she'll say, How was your day?
SPEAKER_02: It was great.
SPEAKER_02: The sun rose in the east and set in the west.
SPEAKER_02: What's for dinner?
SPEAKER_02: And she looks at me and goes, That's all you're gonna give me?
SPEAKER_02: That's all I got.
SPEAKER_02: I have 14 words and I just used them right there.
SPEAKER_02: That's all that's left.
SPEAKER_02: And she just kind of smiles and is like, okay, well, let me get you something to eat.
SPEAKER_02: And after I eat, she just backs up, changes course correction two degrees, and comes at me again.
SPEAKER_02: And asks the same question a different way.
SPEAKER_02: We're on to you, ladies.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna keep asking the question until you get what you need.
SPEAKER_02: So I just learned to say after 21 years, what do you need from me right now?
SPEAKER_02: I'll give it to you.
SPEAKER_02: You ain't gotta beat it out of me, you ain't gotta steal it from me.
SPEAKER_02: I'll give it to you.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes I go to bed, I hear you out there, amen, women.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes what we want to hear from you is you saying that back to us.
SPEAKER_02: What do you need from me?
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's a short list.
SPEAKER_02: Now that we've taken care of the food need, let's move on to other things.
SPEAKER_02: But it's 11.07 at night.
SPEAKER_02: What's your point?
SPEAKER_02: God, you're created in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: And you say, What's the big deal?
SPEAKER_02: Two responsibilities for that being creating God's image.
SPEAKER_02: Number one, your first greatest responsibility that comes with this is to know God.
SPEAKER_02: It's to know God, is to know what God is like.
SPEAKER_02: Now I say know God, I don't mean just not like become a Christian.
SPEAKER_02: I mean like I'm not talking relationship, I'm talking intimacy.
SPEAKER_02: Just as it's Paul in Philippians 3 when he says, I want to know Christ.
SPEAKER_02: He's already a Christian.
SPEAKER_02: What's he talking about?
SPEAKER_02: He's talking about moving from the surface level of knowing God into kind of the deeper things of God.
SPEAKER_02: He says, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings so as to somehow become like him.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, when it gets hard in marriage, you men and women, you've got to have a deeper, intimate relationship with God that it doesn't just strain your relationship.
SPEAKER_02: You don't turn on each other and you become two ticks and no dog, and it's just, oh, this, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
SPEAKER_02: Because the deeper and the more intimately you know God, the more you can endure in the name of suffering.
SPEAKER_02: And there's gonna be points in marriage, especially when you get to that part where you're adult, you got adult kids, and you think, okay, I'm done raising them.
SPEAKER_02: No, you're not.
SPEAKER_02: Them adult kids is crazy.
SPEAKER_02: And then you got that going on on the back burner and on the front burner, your parents need you to parent them.
SPEAKER_02: And so you're parenting your parents, and you're turning back around and trying to say to your adult kids, really, are you doing that?
SPEAKER_02: Is living together the best idea?
SPEAKER_02: You weren't raised that way.
SPEAKER_02: Hello! And so you got all your energy is dissipating on both ends.
SPEAKER_02: And it's easy just to look at each other and go, You don't need anything from me, do you?
SPEAKER_02: The answer is yes, you do.
SPEAKER_02: You see, being made in God's image comes with one responsibility.
SPEAKER_02: The greatest responsibility is to know God.
SPEAKER_02: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: Let me just read from Acts chapter 17.
SPEAKER_02: You don't have to turn there, it'll come up on the screen.
SPEAKER_02: Acts chapter 17.
SPEAKER_02: Here's what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_02: Paul is talking to these really smart men.
SPEAKER_02: They're called the Aropicus.
SPEAKER_02: Kind of a gathering of all the intellects.
SPEAKER_02: And so Paul, standing in the midst of the Aropicus, said, Men of Athens, and I perceive that in every way you're very religious.
SPEAKER_02: So for as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God.
SPEAKER_02: What therefore you worship is unknown, this I will proclaim to you.
SPEAKER_02: Translation, let me tell you what God is like.
SPEAKER_02: You people are religious, and you're just going through the motions with these empty rituals.
SPEAKER_02: Let me break it down to you and tell you what God is like.
SPEAKER_02: And he says this, verse 24 the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
SPEAKER_02: See, it's not about need.
SPEAKER_02: You don't come to God because God needs you to come to him.
SPEAKER_02: He gives to all mankind life and breath and everything, and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined the allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps spill their way towards him and find him.
SPEAKER_02: It is actually not far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring.
SPEAKER_02: We are made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: We are not here because of a chemical biological reaction that took place because of a physical reaction between our mom and dad.
SPEAKER_02: We are his offspring.
SPEAKER_02: That is the truth.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the consequence in verse 29.
SPEAKER_02: Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and the imagination of man.
SPEAKER_02: One of the most fundamentally consequential truths that you and I need to embrace today in America is that I am made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, I cannot think, I cannot allow culture to squeeze me into its mold of the way it thinks about God, because what they do is that God is this configuration of the art and the imagination of God, of man.
SPEAKER_02: And so God is whatever you need to be, the art and the imagination of man.
SPEAKER_02: So if my God's a God of love, then my God would never deny me anything that would make me happy.
SPEAKER_02: Here's another thing about marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Marriage is not the place you go to be happy.
SPEAKER_02: Fight the power.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_02: Marriage is the place you go to be holy.
SPEAKER_02: If you marry the right person, it's like holy sandpaper.
SPEAKER_02: And some days you love that, and some days you just think, I wish you didn't know me so well so you couldn't call me on stuff.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: The two responsibilities being made in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: The first one is to know God, and the second one is to be like God.
SPEAKER_02: That sounds like, oh, great.
SPEAKER_02: A lot of responsibility.
SPEAKER_02: Here's all the little happy thoughts about marriage, unless you should write this down.
SPEAKER_02: Marriage is not about duty, and it's not about delight.
SPEAKER_02: It's not, you know, either or.
SPEAKER_02: It's not duty or delight, it's both.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible says this in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 1.
SPEAKER_02: Be imitators of God.
SPEAKER_02: No pressure there, huh?
SPEAKER_02: But the sentence goes on.
SPEAKER_02: The verse goes on.
SPEAKER_02: Be imitators of God as dearly loved children.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, God is so pleased with you as his dearly loved child, you can just put all your energy into being like him.
SPEAKER_02: See, when you and I do marriage based on our needs, it's all duty.
SPEAKER_02: But when you do it out of our identity, that God is creative, spiritual, intelligent, community, relational, moral.
SPEAKER_02: But if you do it out of your needs, what happens is you end up in a non-creative, unspiritual relationship where dumb decisions are made.
SPEAKER_02: You stop communicating, you isolate, and you make immoral choices to self-medicate your bad marriage.
SPEAKER_02: That's what happens in a relationship.
SPEAKER_02: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: Look creative.
SPEAKER_02: If you've been married longer than five months or much less five years, ten years, twenty years, ask yourself, what's the last thing, ladies, your husband planned for you that totally caught you off guard?
SPEAKER_02: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: You're made in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: We get to represent who God is.
SPEAKER_02: Second thing the Bible tells us about the creation of Mary is number one, we're created in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, we're created different.
SPEAKER_02: We are created different.
SPEAKER_02: Here's what the Bible says in verse 27 of Genesis chapter 1.
SPEAKER_02: So God made man in his own image.
SPEAKER_02: In the image of God, he created him.
SPEAKER_02: Male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_02: Now just you don't have to write this down, but hear this.
SPEAKER_02: There are not six words in the English language that you could use to say more than those six words right there.
SPEAKER_02: Male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_02: Enough said.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes I'm talking to my wife and I look over and she's crying.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, What?
SPEAKER_02: What?
SPEAKER_02: Don't stop talking just because I'm crying.
SPEAKER_02: Well, this may surprise you, but it's not enjoyable for me when you cry.
SPEAKER_02: I feel like I'm beating you up.
SPEAKER_02: You're not beating me up.
SPEAKER_02: I need to hear this.
SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't need to say this, can wait till tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, let's keep talking.
SPEAKER_02: Male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_02: Or every once in a while, my wife will say, Well, you always, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_02: And I was on the debate team in college.
SPEAKER_02: Oh.
SPEAKER_02: See, the purpose of debate is to build what's called the prima facie case.
SPEAKER_02: If one plank of your plan falls, your whole plan falls.
SPEAKER_02: So when my wife says to me, You always, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
SPEAKER_02: Your honor, I would like to call exhibit A three days ago when the situation presented itself.
SPEAKER_02: I did not do that.
SPEAKER_02: So she cannot accuse me of always.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
SPEAKER_02: Would you flow all that information to the affirmative winner?
SPEAKER_02: And then this is on the happy thoughts about marriage.
SPEAKER_02: When I do that, what happens is we begin to fight about how we're fighting instead of what we should be fighting about.
SPEAKER_02: That's called unfocused fighting.
SPEAKER_02: I can give you the name of a marriage counselor and you can go see them and pay them$175 an hour for them to tell you that.
SPEAKER_02: So you gotta ask yourself when you start fighting, hey, are we fighting about how we're fighting or what are we fighting about?
SPEAKER_02: Because I want us to fight about what we've got to fight about.
SPEAKER_02: Fight's not a bad word.
SPEAKER_02: We're not yellers in my family.
SPEAKER_02: I don't raise my voice to my wife or my kids.
SPEAKER_02: She doesn't yell back at me.
SPEAKER_02: But sometimes we're talking and words will come out of my wife's mouth, and this thought will go through my head.
SPEAKER_02: How in the world did you get that thought?
SPEAKER_02: Where'd that come from?
SPEAKER_02: That's the craziest thing in the world.
SPEAKER_02: But I don't say that.
SPEAKER_02: Because I'm looking at her, kind of thinking, now if I say that, that's 46 more minutes of talking.
SPEAKER_02: And my wife knows me so well, she'll look right in my little beady eyes and she'll say, I see you doing the cost-benefit analysis.
SPEAKER_02: Why don't you just come on out with it and we'll just get it settled right here?
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, this thought goes to my mind too.
SPEAKER_02: This is how depraved I am.
SPEAKER_02: You should pray for me.
SPEAKER_02: Take it, Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: We have a DVR so I can record that and not miss it while I have this conversation with my wife.
SPEAKER_02: Not all the time, but every once in a while, because when I come, here's what I think, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Here's another on the little happy thoughts about marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Here's a mistake we men make.
SPEAKER_02: We confuse provision with leadership.
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02: We think, hey, I bring home the bacon, you fry it up in the pan, what else you want me to do?
SPEAKER_02: Well me, call me when supper's ready.
SPEAKER_02: And then call me when you're in the mood, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Because I'm ready.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: We think, hey, hey, I bought you a nice house.
SPEAKER_02: I bought you that nice SUV you drive.
SPEAKER_02: Come on, I'm a good leader.
SPEAKER_02: Hey, provision is a part of leadership, but it is not the some expression of leadership.
SPEAKER_02: Because you can give your wife a nice house and a nice SUV and send your kids to private school, and your wife will resent you to the day you die.
SPEAKER_02: Uh-oh.
SPEAKER_02: Did you feel that?
SPEAKER_02: We kind of stepped into a drop-off there.
SPEAKER_02: Some of you are like, oh, circle that again right there, Pastor.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Because see, here's the thing, man.
SPEAKER_02: When you are, when you think provision is all you gotta do, then what you're saying to your wife, you're making your relationship all about material things.
SPEAKER_02: And marriage is not about material things, it's a spiritual relationship.
SPEAKER_02: Material things are part of it.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing at all.
SPEAKER_02: But your wife, who's made in the image of God, see, this is why it says the most consequential thing.
SPEAKER_02: Remember, God is spiritual.
SPEAKER_02: Guess what your wife is?
SPEAKER_02: Crazy.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: She's spiritual.
SPEAKER_02: So when you just heap up all this stuff on her and you think, there, I'm being the man of the family.
SPEAKER_02: Provision is just a part of it.
SPEAKER_02: It's not all of it.
SPEAKER_02: Because here's what happens we provide, and then we're kind of like, it's awesome, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02: And your spiritual wife is going, no, not awesome.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: I need more than that.
SPEAKER_02: If your wife has ever said to you, maybe using different language, I need more.
SPEAKER_02: If your wife is always knocking on the door of your heart saying, Hey, hey, won't you let me in?
SPEAKER_02: I want to, I just want in.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to.
SPEAKER_02: What she's saying to you is, I'm a spiritual person, and you're coming at me with all these material things, and that ain't all there is.
SPEAKER_02: See, we're made different.
SPEAKER_02: Male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you an example I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to go into this, but just put it up on the screen.
SPEAKER_02: Years ago, a man named William Harley wrote a book called His Needs, Her Needs.
SPEAKER_02: I want you just to look at this list and see the difference in what it's a women.
SPEAKER_02: Number one need is affection.
SPEAKER_02: For the man, number one need sexual fulfillment.
SPEAKER_02: You say, guy coming back to the first service, he goes, Could you talk about affection more?
SPEAKER_02: I said, here's a phrase men never use.
SPEAKER_02: It's called non-sexual touching.
SPEAKER_02: He's like, Yeah, you said that.
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02: That means that you just touch your wife in a way that it doesn't go anywhere, it stops right there.
SPEAKER_02: If every time you touch your wife, because here's what happened: a man touches his wife, and she's like, Oh, that's sweet.
SPEAKER_02: No, he touches his wife.
SPEAKER_02: We have initiated the launch sequence.
SPEAKER_02: The space shuttle is about to launch.
SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
SPEAKER_02: But guess what?
SPEAKER_02: She doesn't want to go to orbit all the time.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes she just wants you to touch her, and that's it.
SPEAKER_02: She wants you to walk by.
SPEAKER_02: We have a master bathroom in our house, and sometimes I walk in and my wife's getting dressed, and I'm like, oh, hey, whoa, hey, hey, hey, hey, hoo, hey, hey.
SPEAKER_01: Your wife doesn't like that.
SPEAKER_01: Here's why.
SPEAKER_01: Because the men, we we're like, hey, hey, hey, the kids ain't here.
SPEAKER_01: You know, this is the divine opportunity right here, God's given us.
SPEAKER_02: Your wife wants to be fabric-free.
SPEAKER_02: Can I say that with your kids in the room?
SPEAKER_02: And then I'll uh uh around you and it not always turns sexual.
SPEAKER_02: That's affection.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes, men, you express affection to your wife by what you don't do.
SPEAKER_02: Say that again.
SPEAKER_02: That's got some Jedi mind trick there.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes when it says the woman's number one need is affection, sometimes you express affection by what you don't do.
SPEAKER_02: What do I mean?
SPEAKER_02: You don't objectify your wife.
SPEAKER_02: You don't relate to her like, hey, the greatest and most consistent thing I need you to do is satisfy me sexually.
SPEAKER_02: That's a justification, objectification.
SPEAKER_02: It's not marriage.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to get into all this.
SPEAKER_02: I just want to, I just want to just notice a difference in the list.
SPEAKER_02: Women, affection, conversation.
SPEAKER_02: By the way, the average woman needs 15 hours of conversation a week.
SPEAKER_02: How about you get you some of that, man?
SPEAKER_02: I told my wife, you better get a puppy.
SPEAKER_02: No, we gotta have those conversations.
SPEAKER_02: We gotta talk about everything.
SPEAKER_02: And that's not a complaint.
SPEAKER_02: It's just like, oh, some days I'm just like, because see, y'all think because I talk for a living, I love to talk.
SPEAKER_02: No, I love to be quiet.
SPEAKER_02: I love just to go home and just do nothing, read a book, or just stare at this at the flat screen.
SPEAKER_02: Take me to your leader.
SPEAKER_02: My wife's been home all day thinking of things she wants to talk about.
SPEAKER_02: And when I get home, she's got like a miner's hat on with a miner's light and a pickaxe.
SPEAKER_02: Follows me around.
SPEAKER_02: And there was one, she'll say, I'm just following you around like a little puppy.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, kind of took the words right out of my mouth.
SPEAKER_02: If I don't say that, here's why.
SPEAKER_02: Because my wife has needs.
SPEAKER_02: And by her walking around behind me, she's saying, I need something from you I can't get from anybody else.
SPEAKER_02: I know some of you men are kind of like, 15 hours, you kidding me?
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna give you a question at the end, knock off about half of that to today.
SPEAKER_02: You're like, awesome.
SPEAKER_02: Third, honesty and openness.
SPEAKER_02: Honesty and openness.
SPEAKER_02: Ladies, if you do not have full access to your husband's cell phone, something's wrong.
SPEAKER_02: Uh-oh.
SPEAKER_02: Did you feel that?
SPEAKER_02: Some of you are like, well, uh, see, uh, you know, it's business.
SPEAKER_02: No, it's not business.
SPEAKER_02: Stop lying.
SPEAKER_02: Your wife should be able to pick up your cell phone and look through it at any time.
SPEAKER_02: And, ladies, your husband should have full access to your cell phone.
SPEAKER_02: You can't demand openness and honesty and not give it.
SPEAKER_02: Fourth, financial support.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible says, men, if you don't provide for your family, you're worse than an infidel.
SPEAKER_02: That's an unbeliever.
SPEAKER_02: Number five, commitment to the family.
SPEAKER_02: You don't just need to be husband, you need to be dad.
SPEAKER_02: One of the ways you show affection to your wife is by spending time with your kids.
SPEAKER_02: One of the way I show affection to my wife is when I go home.
SPEAKER_02: My kids don't care how tired I am.
SPEAKER_02: They want to go out in the street and play cats.
SPEAKER_02: They want to go for a walk.
SPEAKER_02: They want to walk the dogs.
SPEAKER_02: I hate them dogs.
SPEAKER_01: Uh go walk them dogs.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, them dogs got legs.
SPEAKER_01: They've been walking all day.
SPEAKER_01: No, we're going to put them on leashes and walk around the neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01: About halfway through that thing, I think, who's walking who here, okay?
SPEAKER_02: That's women's.
SPEAKER_02: I read that women's list and you should look at that and kind of think, man, women are so thoughtful.
SPEAKER_02: Look at men's list.
SPEAKER_02: Number one, sexual fulfillment.
SPEAKER_02: Number two, recreational companionship.
SPEAKER_02: Three, an attractive spouse.
SPEAKER_02: Number four, domestic support.
SPEAKER_02: Number five, admiration and respect.
SPEAKER_02: Are we that vain?
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, you are.
SPEAKER_02: You joke to your wife when I said that, your wife just looked down.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Why am I telling you this?
SPEAKER_02: Because we're created different.
SPEAKER_02: You're created male and female.
SPEAKER_02: He created them.
SPEAKER_02: Now, why am I telling you this?
SPEAKER_02: Let me get to let me give you the two big words I want to give you.
SPEAKER_02: The first one is complementarianism.
SPEAKER_02: And the second one is egalitarianism.
SPEAKER_02: And there's a reason I'm telling you this.
SPEAKER_02: It's my pastor to kind of tell you what the Bible says, but also look at me to kind of help you understand why this is important that you get this.
SPEAKER_02: And this is a great example.
SPEAKER_02: Don't check out on me.
SPEAKER_02: We're just about done.
SPEAKER_02: You still with me?
SPEAKER_02: Remember, we're just laying the foundation.
SPEAKER_02: There are matters that pertain to marriage.
SPEAKER_02: We'll get into those next couple of weeks, but today I want to establish that according to God, that marriage matters.
SPEAKER_02: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: Here's we're we're created different.
SPEAKER_02: Complementarianism means this that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Men and women have different, we are different, and because we are different, we have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage.
SPEAKER_02: For the man, it it's it's just the Bible uses the phrase headship.
SPEAKER_02: It's just kind of a godly headship.
SPEAKER_02: You lead your family, you're the head of the household.
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't mean that you're the king or or you're whatever.
SPEAKER_02: That means that you you have this sense of responsibility about things.
SPEAKER_02: For the woman, it's glad submission.
SPEAKER_02: Submission is not about value, it's not, oh, you're second-class citizens, you submit to us.
SPEAKER_02: It's about order.
SPEAKER_02: By a woman submitting to her husband, you're requiring your husband to step up and be the man.
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of women just get tired away on their passive husband to be intentional and lead out, and they just take over.
SPEAKER_02: And ladies, you want your husband to be a leader, but when you take over, what you're saying to him is, you don't have to lead, I'll do it for you.
SPEAKER_02: And he's like, Okay.
SPEAKER_02: You know, I grew up with a home full of women, and so this is natural to me.
SPEAKER_02: I also heard that this month.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm just like, my man, my man, this woman's gonna eat you alive.
SPEAKER_02: He looked and he goes, Oh, I don't think she'll do that.
SPEAKER_02: Call me in a few years.
SPEAKER_02: And not because she's maniacal or bad, but because you're passive.
SPEAKER_02: And women eat passive men for lunch.
SPEAKER_02: He goes, Oh, I mean, that's your opinion.
SPEAKER_02: I said, Do you believe the Bible?
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, I believe the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: So I turned back to Genesis where it says, as a result of the curse, and her desire will be for you.
SPEAKER_02: And I said, That doesn't mean she wants to get with you.
SPEAKER_02: You read that, like, yeah, her desire is for me.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02: Her desire is to usurp your authority.
SPEAKER_02: And you're just kind of smiling like, well, you know, I was raised by my mom.
SPEAKER_02: I was raised by my mom too.
SPEAKER_02: But I still got to be the head of my family.
SPEAKER_02: I still got to love my wife and lead my family in such a way my my two daughters look and go, I want a man like that.
SPEAKER_02: I want a leader, not just a pretty kid that has a lot of money.
SPEAKER_02: I want someone to lead me.
SPEAKER_02: It's bigger than just you and me.
SPEAKER_02: See, compliment, that's complementarianism.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the second one.
SPEAKER_02: Egalitarianism says men and women are equal.
SPEAKER_02: There's no distinction in the roles.
SPEAKER_02: Men and women are equal.
SPEAKER_02: Now that sounds, you know, like, hey, what's the big deal?
SPEAKER_02: Let's just unpack it here just a little bit.
SPEAKER_02: See, God's design, plan, and purpose for marriage is male and female.
SPEAKER_02: We're different, but God made it that way on purpose.
SPEAKER_02: See, it's male and female.
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, that's his plan and his plan for the world depends on it.
SPEAKER_02: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_02: It is God's plan.
SPEAKER_02: Male and female, he created them.
SPEAKER_02: That's his plan, and his plan for the world depends on it.
SPEAKER_02: You say, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: Just look in Genesis chapter 1, look at verse 28, the next verse.
SPEAKER_02: It says, and God blessed them.
SPEAKER_02: And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over all these things.
SPEAKER_02: He lists in there.
SPEAKER_02: But just look at the first part of verse 28.
SPEAKER_02: He says, and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_02: Unless you have a man and a woman in your definition of marriage, how can you be fruitful and multiply?
SPEAKER_02: You just can't.
SPEAKER_02: You can't, as a Christian, just sit around and kind of go, Well, I don't want anybody, I don't want to rock the boat.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, what's marriage for you?
SPEAKER_02: Is marriage for you?
SPEAKER_02: No, God defines marriage.
SPEAKER_02: God created humanity and said, This is what the kind of relationship I want you to be in.
SPEAKER_02: I want this to represent my relationship with my bride, the church, male and female, he created them in his image.
SPEAKER_02: He made them.
SPEAKER_02: He said, Well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's such a big deal because you just take it to the next level and you've got to embrace it in the creation story, male and female.
SPEAKER_02: In the creation story, God establishes sexual orientation by what he creates.
SPEAKER_02: He establishes sexual orientation because, see, here's what the gay community is doing right now while we're sitting in this room.
SPEAKER_02: Books are being written.
SPEAKER_02: A man named Matthew Vines has written a book.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Oh, I'm homosexual and I'm a Christian.
SPEAKER_02: And you know, and if you come from the egalitarian viewpoint that says, oh, man, men and women are the same, there's no difference, what the gay community does, they come along and says, Yes, yes, there is no difference in male and female.
SPEAKER_02: That we're we're all equal.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, since there's no distinction and no difference, it doesn't matter if you marry a man or a woman.
SPEAKER_02: And if you have that viewpoint, then you can't say anything to them except raise your voice and yell.
SPEAKER_02: But if you believe the Bible and you can say, well, you know, the Bible says men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, but they are different.
SPEAKER_02: They're male and female.
SPEAKER_02: He created them differently, and he did it for a reason.
SPEAKER_02: In our culture, sexual orientation is just about desire.
SPEAKER_02: I desire that person, so I must be oriented this way.
SPEAKER_02: No, when Adam and Eve sinned, sin and into the world, that's the way sin may manifest itself in you that you struggle with same-sex attraction, but that's not your identity.
SPEAKER_02: You see, we keep going back to this identity.
SPEAKER_02: My identity is I'm made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: I am not defined by what I desire.
SPEAKER_02: They say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_02: Think back to when you were 16.
SPEAKER_02: And if you remember when you were 16, remember the things you desired when you were 16?
SPEAKER_02: Remember the people you desired when you were 16?
SPEAKER_02: Hello.
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever fathomed what life would be like if you would have married that person?
SPEAKER_02: You see, so if you define life in terms of what you desire, there's no certainty for you.
SPEAKER_02: See, we are different.
SPEAKER_02: We're made in God's image.
SPEAKER_02: We're created differently.
SPEAKER_02: And thirdly and finally, we share the same responsibility.
SPEAKER_02: We share the same responsibility.
SPEAKER_02: And it's in verse 28 of Genesis chapter 1.
SPEAKER_02: You still with me?
SPEAKER_02: See, here's what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_02: And God blessed them.
SPEAKER_02: Let me just stop and ask you a question.
SPEAKER_02: What if God's intent for marriage?
SPEAKER_02: God's not a hate monger, he's not trying to make people miserable and blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_02: What if God's intention, look at me, beloved, what if God's intention for your life, if you're married or if you're single, God's intention is for you to get with a, if you're a woman to get with a man, if you're a man to get with a woman and live your life in such a God-honoring way that God looks down and says, you know what?
SPEAKER_02: I can bless them because they can handle it.
SPEAKER_02: I want to bless those people.
SPEAKER_02: What if God's intentional design for marriage is to put a man and a woman together so that he could bless them so they could do what God had called them to do?
SPEAKER_02: If that was really God's intent for marriage, would that change the way you thought about marriage?
SPEAKER_02: Because I hear people all the time, well, you know, I'm single, you know, and I'm not in no hurry to get married.
SPEAKER_02: I always ask why.
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, you know, I, you know, uh.
SPEAKER_02: Or my guy started off telling you about, it's like, well, you know, we're only a piece of paper.
SPEAKER_02: I married her first time I was with her.
SPEAKER_02: Really?
SPEAKER_02: How many times have you married and divorced a woman?
SPEAKER_02: Since the first woman you were with was 14.
SPEAKER_02: And the man said, Oh, I couldn't count.
SPEAKER_02: I looked at her and I said, Does this concern you?
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's why we're here.
SPEAKER_02: This can't be fixed in four sessions of pre-alcouns.
SPEAKER_02: Only God can change his heart.
SPEAKER_02: But I was hoping maybe you could help us.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: See, when you're a spiritual being, to be with an unspiritual man is frustrating.
SPEAKER_02: Put this on your little happy thoughts about marriage.
SPEAKER_02: The greatest turn on in the world for a woman is a spiritual man.
SPEAKER_02: Is a man that when you talk about, oh, it's crazy, you know, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and our mom may have to come live with us.
SPEAKER_02: We gotta buy a bigger house, and da-da-da-da-da.
SPEAKER_02: And he's not up going, I ain't got any beer in the fridge.
SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you what, this makes me want to drink.
SPEAKER_02: But you just pour it all out there, and he just smiles and says, Well, honey, let's pray about this.
SPEAKER_02: Before we do anything, let's just kind of pray and seek God's heart on this.
SPEAKER_02: A woman is turned on by a man like that.
SPEAKER_02: I don't care if you're 23 and single, you're just kind of like, There ain't no men like that.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they are.
SPEAKER_02: They're hard to find.
SPEAKER_02: And you don't find them in the club.
SPEAKER_02: I have a friend of mine.
SPEAKER_02: He's, I mean, he's like in his 30s.
SPEAKER_02: He goes to all these high-end clubs in Florida.
SPEAKER_02: He's got money.
SPEAKER_02: Just come on, dude.
SPEAKER_02: So I didn't find a woman like Marcy.
SPEAKER_02: I didn't find Marcy in a club.
SPEAKER_02: You may find that hard to believe, but she wasn't in there.
SPEAKER_02: Here's what the Bible says, and let's be done.
SPEAKER_02: The Bible says in verse 28, and God blessed them.
SPEAKER_02: That's God's intention all along.
SPEAKER_02: Man, woman, I want to bless these people.
SPEAKER_02: He says, be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_02: Second thing I want to ask you, and I'm not kidding, have you had all the kids you're supposed to have?
SPEAKER_02: Uh-oh.
SPEAKER_02: Uh-oh, did you feel that?
SPEAKER_02: Some of you men pulled the hamstring.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh, oh.
SPEAKER_02: Easy coach, I had to pull up there.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02: You're not supposed to have all the kids you think you can afford.
SPEAKER_02: You're supposed to have all the kids you believe God wants you to have.
SPEAKER_02: He says, be fruitful and multiply.
SPEAKER_02: He's saying, Well, you only got two.
SPEAKER_02: We wanted five or six, but we're going to have two.
SPEAKER_02: We had difficulty getting pregnant.
SPEAKER_02: We had to go see specialists in fertility, this and that, and prayed every month, cried because we weren't pregnant.
SPEAKER_02: People in this room right now, they're trying to get pregnant.
SPEAKER_02: Pray for them by name.
SPEAKER_02: God, please open the will, make them fruitful.
SPEAKER_02: Somebody that really shaped my understanding.
SPEAKER_02: Our uh O B G Y N, I don't know what that stands for, and I don't want to know.
SPEAKER_02: Don't come tell me, ladies.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: We gotta go to the letter dot lady.
SPEAKER_02: Uh when we had our second child, she looked at us and she said, now have four more.
SPEAKER_02: I said, What?
SPEAKER_02: And she goes, have six more.
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, these things are expensive, by the way.
SPEAKER_02: Uh And she said, here's the she's not, she's from Pakistan.
SPEAKER_02: She said, here's a problem with your country.
SPEAKER_02: The wrong people, the wrong kind of people have all the kids.
SPEAKER_02: And she goes, and they're going to fill the earth and subdue it.
SPEAKER_02: You've been to the mall lately?
SPEAKER_02: They're filling the earth and subdue it with idiots.
SPEAKER_02: That have lazy parents who don't say to their sons, hey, you don't treat a woman like that.
SPEAKER_02: No, a girl does not exist to meet your needs.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02: You're here to earn the right to compete for her heart.
SPEAKER_02: That's all you should be doing in dating, courting, pursuing a marriage relationship.
SPEAKER_02: Because here's what we've done.
SPEAKER_02: We take everything that belongs to marriage out of the context of marriage.
SPEAKER_02: Then why do you need marriage?
SPEAKER_02: You don't need it anymore.
SPEAKER_02: But God says, back to the this is called the cultural mandate.
SPEAKER_02: And God gives it to the two of him.
SPEAKER_02: He blessed them, and God said, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
SPEAKER_02: Basically, God says, create culture, make culture.
SPEAKER_02: And by the way, man, he didn't give it to you and say, you go get them, big boy, while your wife stays home and holds down the floor.
SPEAKER_02: No, he gave it to them.
SPEAKER_02: You need to, with your wife, engage the culture, the world in which you live.
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_02: Here's how I know that men are not including their wives in the cultural mandate.
SPEAKER_02: You say, How do you know?
SPEAKER_02: It's when you die, and I is your pastor, sit down with your wife and say, Hey, did you have insurance?
SPEAKER_02: Did you have any annuities, retirement?
SPEAKER_02: And 9.9 times out of 10, the woman goes, He took care of all that.
SPEAKER_02: I have no idea.
SPEAKER_02: That's not fair to your wife.
SPEAKER_02: You need to, the two of you.
SPEAKER_02: He blessed them and he told them, do this.
SPEAKER_02: And here's a little word.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the question I'm going to give you, and we'll be done today.
SPEAKER_02: That'll knock off some hours off your 15 hours this week.
SPEAKER_02: And God blessed him and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds, over the heaven, and all this stuff.
SPEAKER_02: It's that whole thing.
SPEAKER_02: Your wife, man, was created to have dominion, not just you.
SPEAKER_02: And because we relate to our wives as physical beings instead of just spiritual beings, then what happens is that the place of greatest insecurity is in their emotions.
SPEAKER_02: And so your wife has a here's the question.
SPEAKER_02: Let me just give it to you before I forget it.
SPEAKER_02: I want you, men, I want every one of you to ask your wife this.
SPEAKER_02: And it's simply this what has dominion over you these days?
SPEAKER_02: In other words, what feels bigger than you?
SPEAKER_02: Because as her husband, it's your responsibility to put that to death.
SPEAKER_02: To just kill that.
SPEAKER_02: Just what has dominion over you?
SPEAKER_02: What thoughts or feelings?
SPEAKER_02: Now, here's one of the obstacles, and let me give this this on the Happy Thoughts About Marriage practical list.
SPEAKER_02: Here's one of the obstacles to that.
SPEAKER_02: Men think men speak and listen through the realms of what is truthful.
SPEAKER_02: Women speak and listen through the filter of what is valid.
SPEAKER_02: And it's not right or wrong, it's just different.
SPEAKER_02: Remember, we're created differently.
SPEAKER_02: Men speak in terms of truthful.
SPEAKER_02: Black and white, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_02: That's truthful.
SPEAKER_02: Now, I'm not saying women are truthful, but women speak and listen for the most part in terms of what is valid.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, I feel this very deeply.
SPEAKER_02: And men, you can invalidate your wife when she kind of opens up and tells you, I feel, and it can be crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_02: It can be, oh, you're like, where in the world do you get these thoughts?
SPEAKER_02: That's because she's giving you a valid feeling and you're responding out of your truthfulness.
SPEAKER_02: And what you need to do is kind of go, I can tell that that's very real for you.
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about that.
SPEAKER_02: Because that has dominion over her.
SPEAKER_02: It feels bigger than her.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing in your life, in your wife's life, that should feel bigger than her.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because part of the cultural mandate, God said to them, Rule over creation and subdue it.
SPEAKER_02: Have dominion over all these animals.
SPEAKER_02: It ain't the animals your wife's worried about.
SPEAKER_02: Put your guns away.
SPEAKER_02: You ain't got to kill bears and lions.
SPEAKER_02: That'd be great.
SPEAKER_02: If it's that easy, hey, hey, I shot some stuff, honey.
SPEAKER_02: Now, fix me dinner.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: What feels bigger than your wife these days?
SPEAKER_02: I don't want you to walk out of here today.
SPEAKER_02: And sometime between now and next Sunday, I want you to ask your wife, hey, what feels bigger than you these days?
SPEAKER_02: And I want you to engage in the process of just shrinking that down.
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
SPEAKER_02: Because see, there are matters that pertain to marriage.
SPEAKER_02: But before we get to those, we've got to establish that marriage matters.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a piece of paper.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a ceremony, be it civil or church or whatever.
SPEAKER_02: It is a covenant.
SPEAKER_02: It's two different people in a relationship.
SPEAKER_02: And you're intended to meet your spouse's needs.
SPEAKER_02: You're not intended to go into that and go, now you will meet my needs.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: That's not what it's about.
SPEAKER_02: And lastly, you share the same responsibility.
SPEAKER_02: And your responsibility is to shape and make a culture.
SPEAKER_02: Stand to your feet.
SPEAKER_02: Let me speak a blessing over you.
SPEAKER_02: Hold your hands out.
SPEAKER_02: Your God in infinite wisdom loved you so much.
SPEAKER_02: He gave you someone who would drive you crazy.
SPEAKER_02: Because you all, like sheep, have gone astray.
SPEAKER_02: You've each turned to your own way.
SPEAKER_02: Marriage is not the place you get your way.
SPEAKER_02: Marriage is the place for you and your spouse ask God to have his way.
SPEAKER_02: Depart now and submit your marriage to your God and Father.
SPEAKER_02: And let him have his way.
SPEAKER_02: In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Bless you, you're dismissed.