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No, but you guys know me. I'm pretty open. I just want to be a real open uh open book to you guys and and really as we continue to dive into a very difficult series, I want to say on the front end, um, congratulations, you've made it halfway through. And you're still here. So that's good, that's good. I'm proud of you guys. Uh for those of you that are guests today, you're like, what is he talking about? Uh well, let me just tell you, we've been in a sex series, and it's not, it's it's not just sex, it's bigger than sex. In fact, today's message is on marriage, but I can say that uh this series has been very helpful, it's been very instructive, though difficult, and uh and we're three weeks in. We've got three weeks to go, and I really believe God wants to say something to us powerfully, and we've said this almost every week uh in different ways, but I want to say it again. The church has to break the sound barrier on this issue. Okay, because we've got a lot of hurting people, wounded people, a lot of people who are really struggling in their sexuality. We've got identity crisis, we got we've got gender crisis, uh, we've got uh sexuality crisis all around us. We've got so many people that are hurting, and so the church has got to step in and speak up on what God has to say. In fact, uh we need to remember, uh and I'm gonna say this a couple different ways today, that God is the one who created sex. He created uh it for good and for his glory, and so we we can speak to it confidently, we can speak to it without getting into our uh middle schoolish tone or awkwardness or all those things, we can really we can really step in and speak about sex uh clearly and definitively because God's Word speaks about it clearly and definitively. Okay? And I believe God has some things that He wants to say to us today. And before I get to that, let me just tell you that these first three weeks of this series, and including our men's retreat, have been a powerful reminder that when the church does break the sound barrier, we actually do start talking about these things, that God begins to heal people who are very broken in this area. And I can say that uh without giving any specific names. I look forward to these, some of these folks sharing their testimonies. Uh, but we've had people for the first time acknowledge that they were sexually abused. They were sexually abused as kids, uh, they were sexually abused in a very, very, very dangerous, difficult situation. And we've had people come and share, and and them being able to share that for the first time with somebody has been free. Doesn't mean that it's all like done and they're healed now and it's all taken care of, but it does mean that they've decided, you know what, I need to get honest, and God is beginning a process of healing in their life. Praise God for that, right? And I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for those of you who have been praying about this because there are many that are have been silently sitting in the shadows, feeling shame and guilt and fear, not knowing what to do with that. And by God's grace, they're getting free. We've also had people this week, I've had conversations with people on phones and on uh coffee and just in different contexts that are getting free from addiction, porn addictions, uh, extramarital affair interactions. God setting people free has been an incredible uh just encouragement to my spirit, encouragement. I hope you know, hope you know that God is at work. His Holy Spirit is working, and people are saying, I don't want to live in the shackles of addiction any longer. Isn't that awesome? Like, praise God that people are getting honest and they're getting real, we're dragging this stuff into the light so it can die in the light. And so we want to be the kind of church where if you if you've got issues, if you've got struggles, well, first off, welcome to the club, right? Because we all have issues and we all have struggles. But also that you can bring that and you're not gonna get shamed and guilted into the corner, condemned, because condemnation is not from God. Right? We have freedom in Christ. We have redemption, we have restoration, we have grace from our Savior who meets us in our mess. He's so good at that and setting us free and giving us hope. And so there's also been some folks who are single that have confessed that they've been having sex outside of marriage, outside of God's plan. We've had couples that have been living together. We have couples that have been, well, just flat out just being uh disobedient to God in this area, and they've come and they've said, I don't want to live in this any longer. Like that's God. This culture says do whatever you want. And God says, follow me because I want to bless you. I want you to experience what's best. And so we're seeing people get free, and I just want you to know God's at work. And we praise God for that. And if you have not personally gotten honest yet, if you've not personally like really let the love of Christ flood your heart and begin to set you free in this area, let me just say, do not let this opportunity pass you by. Don't. Don't do it. Don't keep carrying that baggage. Some of you guys got a backpack full of rocks, and you're just carrying that thing around, and it's it's all shame and guilt and fear. And oh, God wants to set you free. He wants you to unpack that and to be able to walk in purity and holiness and walk in his grace and his goodness. Okay. So, that being said, uh, we are jumping back into 1 Corinthians chapter 7 today. And so if you have your Bible, go ahead and pull that out. 1 Corinthians chapter 7. Uh, we're gonna read just seven verses in 1 Corinthians 7. I got a little overly ambitious thinking we would get all the way through 16, but there's no way we can do it today. Uh, as we were praying, as I was praying, preparing, felt like God said there's some things that we need to do to get through these passages and just to paint a picture of marriage. And so when you guys think about marriage, um, you've probably been influenced. Not probably, you have been influenced by the culture. You have been influenced by media, you have been influenced, I have been influenced by the picture that the world gives us. And at a very, very simplistic level, uh, you kind of get uh male and female or man and woman, they they meet each other, uh, they are attracted to each other, they fall in love, and they meet, they live happily ever after, right? That's kind of the mindset. In fact, culturally speaking, you don't even have to get married. You just meet each other, you fall in love, and then you live happily ever after until something better comes along. But that's the culture's view, and that's that's kind of how the culture paints this picture. And we know that that's not how the Bible paints this picture at all. That's not God's uh blueprint for marriage. And so I want to read to you guys from this section, we want to address and make some observations that Paul writes here in this letter because it's very specific to the Corinthian context, but it does apply to us today. Okay? Um so I want you to read along with me here. 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 1 says this. Now, in response to the matters you wrote about, it is good for a man not to have relations with a woman. But, because of sexual immorality is so common, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband. A husband should fulfill his marital responsibility to his wife, and likewise a wife to her husband. A wife does not have the right over her own body, but her husband does. In the same way, a husband does not have the right over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another sexually, except when you agree for a time to devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again, otherwise Satan may tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all people were just like me, but each has its own gift from God. One person in this way, and another in that way. So we're going to stop there today. Now, just so that you guys can understand what we just read, because if you just read that out of its context, like what is Paul talking about? What is he trying to say here? Well, first off, um, Paul has been addressing all these dysfunctional issues within the church at Corinth. So he's been addressing uh divisions, he's been addressing how they've not handled sin correctly, um, and particularly sexual sin. Uh, he's been addressing some of these big things that he really wants to make sure that they understand. Listen, God has a plan, he has a purpose, he has a desire for you. You're not living and experiencing all that. But then what happens here in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 is Paul actually starts addressing questions that he received from the people at Corinth. So apparently Paul had written a letter previously, chapter 5, verse 9 speaks to this idea that he'd written this letter, and now the people have kind of pushed back against Paul and his instructions to them. Uh in fact, the tone, you can't really get it fully when you read it like it's in here, but the tone is kind of what you see with your kids sometimes when you tell them to do something, and they say, Why? Right? Or why not, mom? Why not, Dad? Basically, Corinthians are pushing back here and they're saying, Well, why can't we, Paul? Why not? And so it's funny that you still see an immaturity in the church there, pushing it back against what Paul is writing to them. And again, remember, as I say Paul is writing, just to reiterate this point, God is inspiring Paul to write this letter. That's why it's in the Bible. Okay, this isn't just a letter that Paul wrote that's disconnected from the Spirit of God. Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and this is at the level of divine revelation. So we can take this and say this is God's word spoken to us today, right? Just making sure we're on the same page. But Paul is responding to a practical, direct, specific issue that these Corinthians were pushing against. And so he says, now in response to these matters, you wrote. And because he had just talked about sexual immorality in chapter 6, it makes a lot of sense that in seven, he goes right into marriage. It's just a great segue right into marriage. Okay? And he starts out by saying something here. He says, It is good for a man not to have relations with a woman. Now, there's a lot of parts to this, but um, first stop to understand what is he saying when it says relations with a woman. This was the euphemism of Paul's day. It was used among people. Uh, actual, the the word not have relations is really just code language for have intercourse with the woman. Okay? So that idea here is that Paul is getting pushback from them because he says it's not good for uh a man, or even it's not a question of it's not good. He said it is good for a man not to have relations with the woman because Paul's really talking about that marriage uh is not always the best plan. It's not always plan A. Are you with me? Now, this next week, I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you now because some of you are starting to, your your wheels are cranking. Well, what's plan B? Or is there a plan B? It's actually no, there's actually just God's plan. But here's the thing there are some of you in this room that are single today. And I want to go ahead and say it on the front end that if you are single, you should still be walking in God's plan for your life. Okay? So you don't have to be married to be walking in God's plan. We're gonna come back to that in just a minute. But the point is that there was some real corruption in the thinking of the people at Corinth because in chapter 6, what we find is this hyper-sexualized culture around Corinth was really flooding the church, and they were basically taking sex and saying, you can do whatever you want with it. You can have sex whenever you want, however you want. It doesn't really matter. We know that even in the church, there's a man sleeping with his stepmom. Okay, that's how that's how far they had taken this idea of having liberty in the area of sex. But in chapter 7, Paul's addressing much more this issue of there is an attitude in the church that if you want to be really spiritual, then you abstain from sex. That if you want to be really spiritual, if you really want to be mature, that you shouldn't be having sex at all. Now, do you see the extremes here? One group is saying, go for it, have all the sex you want because you're free in Christ. The other group's saying, no, we shouldn't be having sex, don't have sex, it's not good. If you want to be really spiritually mature, you should not have sex. Even if you're married, you should not be having sex. That's the way that these people were thinking about this issue. Now, Paul is trying to address this and give some practical instruction to this, but notice that in this in this rest of this passage that we've already read, he's speaking to the fact that there is a healthy place to have sex. And what is that healthy place? Marriage. Just to make sure we put that on the front end, all out there, that he is already making the case that you should be having sex, but you should be having sex within the confines, within the boundaries of marriage. Now, I want to kind of walk us through this first point that Paul makes about marriage and about the purpose of marriage, but I want us to zoom out today. So just hang with me for just a minute. When Paul is speaking to this issue, he understands that just uh that the human heart tends to go to these extremes. It tends to go to these extremes of either we're we're full on, again, licentiousness, liberty, or and or we're over here in like legalism, moralism. And I definitely see how this plays out today in the church. Because we won't talk about sex a lot of times in the church unless we're saying no, no, no, don't, don't, don't. So kids growing up in the church, teenagers growing up in the church, their idea of sex is that it's a don't do it, don't talk about it, you never do it, uh, it's a bad thing. They actually start with a negative attitude about sex. And what we should be saying in the church is sex is good because it's God's gift. And it's a beautiful thing. Anybody read the book of Song of Solomon? If you have, it'll make you blush. Okay? You know that the book of Song of Solomon is filled with imagery about a man and a woman in God's proper context for sex. Alright? And so we see that the Bible speaks about this issue and we see that it's a good, good thing. We also see throughout the Bible lots of pictures of how sex can be a bad thing, how it can be abusive, how it can be used outside of God's boundaries and create a lot of pain and destruction, right? We see a lot of that in the Bible. And I would just say to you this morning, if you are a believer in Christ, we have an opportunity to paint a new picture of sex and marriage to the world that is beautiful and compelling. Because sometimes in church we only focus on the no's and the don'ts and the stops and not don't do that, right? And what we should be saying is, how about let's follow God's plan and focus on the beautiful picture of what he's given us? The beautiful grace. This is why, even though I live in a culture where we where marriage is messed up and sex is messed up, I have great hope this morning. I have great hope. And I can speak not with all doom and gloom, but with a positive sense because I know that God is good. And I know that if we follow God's plan, that we can experience his goodness even in our sexuality. And many of you in this room have experienced much pain, much suffering, much shame, much guilt, much fear, a lot of destruction in your life because of sex. And I want to say to you that today can be a new day for you. It can be. It can be a new day for you. Those of you that are married and experiencing a lot of pain through your sexuality in marriage, this can be a new day for you. So, Paul is trying to instruct them, but I think there's some things that will definitely help us as we go through this. Verse 2, Paul begins to get to make a case for why it's a bad idea and even a dangerous idea to either obviously go into sex and do with it whatever you want, or two, have this uh view of hyper-abstinence, like that abstinence is really what God's shooting for, which isn't true. It's not biblical. And the first thing he tells us is in verse 2, it says this he says, because of sexual immorality, or but because Paul saying one of the protections, one of the blessings, one of the benefits, one of even the purposes of marriage is to protect our purity. Right? He's saying that our marriage is a great way to walk in purity because we have these sexual desires that are God given, and they're inside in us. We are attracted to the other to the opposite sex, we're attracted to a person sexually, and God tells us that we should pursue that, but within his boundaries, within his guidelines, within his plan. So Paul says, because there's so much sexual immorality around you, get married if you're really struggling with this. Get married and allow that to be a help in your sexual desire. Now, if Paul had stopped there, that would be a very small view of marriage and sex. Agreed? Paul is not saying that this is the only reason you should get married. Okay? Now, I think this is sometimes the culture's view of marriage, like, or even in the church culture, well, if I get married, then I won't struggle with sexual impurity anymore. Then I won't struggle with lust, or I won't struggle with porn, or I won't struggle with any of these sexual addictions. And if if you're honest with yourself, men and women in the room, and you're married, you can say to single people and to young people, sorry for you, it doesn't stop when you get married. You understand what I'm saying? That we still can struggle with temptation. Somehow in our minds, we paint this picture that if I get married, then I won't struggle with temptation anymore in sexual ways. But for those of you that are married, you're like, uh, no, it still happens. You still struggle. You still have impure thoughts, you still have lustful thoughts, you still can struggle with sexual impurity because it doesn't go away just because you have a spouse. In fact, some of the people that I've talked with even this last week, or people that are married people, struggling through addiction within marriage. Because why? Well, it's a bigger issue here, but marriage cannot fix all your problems and your sexual immorality. Your spouse cannot fix all of your problems. There is a really, really, really bad idea that permeates our culture that says if you can find Mr. Wright or Mrs. Wright, the one, then they will complete you and all your problems will go away. Some of you are like, you know this is a facade. You know it's a mirage, right? But in our lives, there's this idea that we brought into the Jerry Wire mentality of you complete me. Here's the problem. You don't complete me. In fact, you can't complete me. You can't compliment me, but you can't complete me. Only God can complete me. Only God can truly make my heart what it was intended to be. Only God can fully meet all my needs. In fact, if you live with the Jeremy McGuire mindset of you complete me, guess what will happen? You will be sorely, chronically disappointed with your marriage. You will always be looking to your spouse to be Jesus. And as I say to my wife all the time, I want to be the best husband I can be. I'm a terrible Jesus. Right? And the fact is, is that in many of you, in your life and in your relationships, if you look to your spouse to be Jesus, you will crush them with your demands, with your expectations. And so we play the same thing for a person to do what only Jesus can't do. Not just sexually, but in every area of that relationship. So some of our couples inside the church, many couples, walk around sad because they got married thinking, this person will complete me. Because they can't. Because they're a person. They're valuable, it's impossible. So single people, don't buy the lie that if you find the right person, they'll complete you. They won't. Because they can't fully meet all of the needs of your heart. They can't meet all of the needs of your body. We can find though that purity, look, get married. So that at least you're having sex inside the bounds of a marriage relationship. That was the only reason that the only personal reason. The first one is this procreation. Which is just an interesting way of saying that we are to make babies. God forms them, by the way. It was not like we make them. I kind of think that that phrase is a little bit odd. But that when we are together in a marriage, we are seeking God, that God wants us to be fruitful and multiply. What does Genesis 128 say? It says this God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Now, my wife and I have a lot of shortcomings in our marriage in a lot of ways, but I think we're doing okay with this one. We've got six, okay? For those of you that are guessed. And so we're just trying to honor. Is it really cutting out a lot? We're just trying to honor. Hey, we're just trying to honor Jesus, honor God by having babies, right? The point is this is that God says in his Word that when Adam and Eve were in the garden, he gave them a specific instruction to be fruitful and multiply. Noah, if you guys know the story of Noah and the flood, after the flood happens and after they recover from that, he's the they get the sign of the rainbow, the promise, and God says again to them, because now they're just a small group of people. It says, be fruitful and multiply. So part of our sexuality and part of our marriage is about procreation. It's about making babies, having more children. We've had some interesting conversations with our kids about this as of late. And I'll leave it at that. But I will say, listen, the goal is not to just have more people on the planet. The goal is to raise up more worshippers of Jesus. It's not just to have more babies so that we feel fulfilled by our children. It's actually to raise up disciples, to develop them. What we just did with this parent-child dedication was to say we want these children to know and to love and to follow Jesus all their life. And so that's what we're doing, not just so that we can say, hey, we have these kids who are really entertaining and they're cute and incredibly frustrating at times, but really God wants to bless our life. They do bless us and they are a joy. And I feel like that I'm so grateful for our children. But guess what? My primary role in their life is to point them to Christ. It's to disciple them, to point them to the person of Jesus. So they can follow Him. They're just gifts from God that I get to steward. And this is not a parenting message this morning, but I would just say to you guys, if you are a married couple, let me submit to you. Do not decide how many children you're going to have based on finances alone. Or based on the culture's view of what's normal, what's not. Make that decision in prayer. Pray and ask God. Be open-handed before God. God has called my wife and I to stop at this point with biological children unless a miraculous thing happens. But I know that we're very open-handed to consider adoption if God would open the door for that one day. We don't know. Why would we consider we prayed about it each step of the way. And some interesting things happened that I can tell you offline at some point. But humorously, God decided to give us the number of children we have. I'm not saying everybody should have six kids. But I will tell you that in marriage, you need to pray about it. Not just make a decision based on what makes sense to you or what's convenient, what's comfortable. If you make it based on finances, you'll have very few. Right? Because you get overwhelmed by the realities of what could happen. Or as the lady at the gas station last night said, as we walked out after getting our food, that's all the birth control I need right there. She said that to my mom, by the way. Point is this we get to have children, and they are gifts, and that's part of having sex, and it's part of being married. The second thing I would submit to you this morning, the Bible teaches us about the purpose of marriage in this beautiful picture is pleasure. Now, I don't I don't want to spend a ton of time here, but I want you to think about this for a second. God has given us the gift of pleasure, even the ability to enjoy pleasure. And in the context of marriage, in the context of a relationship, that with those boundaries, though those proper proper boundaries, God wants us to enjoy his gifts. In fact, Paul, in this passage, notice he says, if you have these desires, he doesn't say they're bad, they're evil, they're horrible, stop doing it, don't have sex. He doesn't say any of that. What does he say? He says, get married. Have it in the right place. Enjoy God's gift in the right place. You see, God wants us to have pleasure and he wants us to have it without all of the strings attached of shame, guilt, fear. And I can tell you, young people, that having sex outside of marriage, single people having sex outside of marriage, you're getting ripped off. You are. You're getting ripped off because you're getting a cheap imitation of what God wants you to have and to enjoy. But we can have pleasure in our relationship. And that pleasure is bigger than sex, by the way. You guys know that, right? Sex is a great experience that's given by God. God even gave body parts to men and women that are specifically designed for pleasure. He didn't have to do that. He did that because he's a good God. Proverbs 5, I'm not going to put it up on the screen. It's an interesting passage where in Proverbs 5 he tells us to pursue our spouse and to enjoy them. I already talked about Song of Solomon. Why does the church not paint these pictures? Why did the church not talk about these beautiful pictures of pleasure inside of sex in marriage? Maybe we're ashamed. Maybe we're fearful. Maybe we're concerned, we're we're like broaching some topic that's going to be offensive. The Bible's not offended by sex. God is offended when we take his gift of sex and we pervert it. He's deeply offended because it's sinful. And isn't that sin anyway, where we take these pleasures God's given us and we pervert them? Where we take good things and we turn them into gods and we worship them? We take sex and instead of enjoying it for the gift that it is, we begin to pervert it and we turn it into something that it's not. But God wants us to enjoy his gifts. But we also find the pleasure of relationship inside of marriage. There's something about companionship that God's given in marriage. There's something about just the nature of that relationship of being known, like fully known and still loved. That's really powerful. And it's a pleasurable experience. There's an ability to enjoy that. And let me say again, single people in the room. You don't need a spouse to be completed, but you also, God can, God can serve you, He can minister to you, He can bless you as a single person, He can use you. It is a gift. In fact, verse 7, Paul says, What does he say there? He says, I wish that all people were just like me, but each has his own gift from God. One person in this way and one in another way. What is Paul referring to there? He's saying, I'm single. I wish you were all like me. Now we know enough about Paul, if we've if you've done any study on Paul's life, that Paul was a part of the Sanhedrin. He was like one of the Pharisees of Pharisees. In fact, we get his like a little bit of a uh his his list of his compishments. And if he was in the Sanhedrin and he was one of the leaders of his day, then we we can say he was married, because it was required to be married to be in that position. So Paul at some point was married, which means now he's not. We don't know if his wife passed away and now he's a widower. We don't know if his wife left him when he went crazy for Jesus, and she's like, You're a lunatic now, and I can't follow you anymore. We don't know. We do know this that in this moment he's single and he says it's a gift. He sees it as a gift. You guys know Jesus was single? Okay. Regardless of what some people say Jesus was single. What I'm saying to you is you don't have to have a spouse to experience God's goodness, even his pleasure. But you can experience God's goodness even as a single person. And Alex is gonna speak to this next week because we uh we said, who's the pastor on staff who is single most recently? Oh, Alex, okay, you get the single message. No, seriously, he's gonna bring a great message because we as the church, if we're going to really walk this thing out and disciple people well, we have to have a robust view of singleness. We need to understand how awesome singleness can be and what a gift it is. Right? And so at the same time, we'd also say marriage is a gift. Paul's not saying marriage is not a gift, he's saying it is a gift too, but for different reasons in different ways. So pleasure is a part of this. I've got to move on. Fourthly, another purpose, partnership. Partnership. That God wants to provide partnership through the process of marriage. Now, how many of you guys know that marriage will shape you? Anybody? Marriage will shape you like none other. It will shape you in ways because when you are in close proximity to a person like that and you are exposed, it will shape your life. It will shape your spirituality. And so in Genesis, we read about Adam and Eve, and we read about how that God gave Adam, Eve as a helper, as a helpmate, and uses this idea of compliment. And as I said earlier, you don't have to have a spouse to be complete. God can use his church family to help with some of those things and those deficits you may feel, those hurts you may feel. But know this: that God works in the marriage relationship to really create a unique partnership that's only experienced in marriage. And I want to give you a few ways that this plays itself out. First off, is just flat out your personal spiritual maturity. Um, we've said to singles before, if you want to follow Jesus, be single. If you want to be like Jesus, get married. Some of you understand what I'm saying in that. Doesn't mean you can't be like Jesus if you're single, by the way. Because in fact, you have a leg up, you're single. Um, Jesus was single. But the point is this when you get into a marriage relationship, the rough edges are gonna get knocked off. The difficulties of your character are gonna surface. Now, listen to this. This is what Tim Keller says about it. He says, while your character flaws may have created mild problems for other people, they will create major problems for your spouse in your marriage. Agreed? They might be mild. Another way to think about it is this the things that seem really cute when you're dating will be annoying when you're married. The things that you thought were like, oh, they're so cute, that's so funny. And then you get married and you're like, if they don't stop. And I'm not just talking about which way they they roll a toilet paper or where they put their toothbrush and stuff like that. I'm talking about a lot of these character things that seem like, oh, you can kind of over look over them because you romanticize them. But then you get married and they're just like driving you up the wall. You so in our hearts we're really shaped by marriage. Francis Chan says this about it. Marriage is one of the most humbling, sanctifying journeys you will ever be a part of. It forces us to wrestle with our selfishness and our pride. It also gives us a platform to display love and commitment. And so in our marriage journey, we can partner together to help each other grow. This is not what the culture talks about when we talk about marriage. As I said earlier, you know, look at the movies, look at the Disney movies, and it's like you just the princess and the prince and the happily ever after. Like that's what you think about. No, marriage is a partnership of spiritual growth to help each other grow into the person God intended us to be. Even at times knocking off the rough edges. There's a scripture that we like to quote from Proverbs 22. Typically we talk about it when we're talking about men, but it says, as iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another. That sounds very masculine, right? Clanking of iron, there's just something about that. But you know that it's not just talking about man and man, like helping each other grow spiritually or knocking off, it's talking about people, right? Just person and person. And I think in marriage, that's definitely iron and iron. And sometimes it's like sparks. Lots of sparks. Some of you know what I'm talking about. But God can use our marriage. We can also partner together, though, in parenting. I've already mentioned parenting. And moms in the room, you know, those of you that have a spouse alongside you, it's such a gift. It's such a gift to have a dad. And this is a charge to us men. Do not disconnect men from parenting. Do not say that's the wife's job. That's that's mama's job. We men, we have the opportunity to lead in our homes, to disciple, to be the lead discipler in our homes, to help our kids know Jesus and follow Jesus and to demonstrate for them what it looks like to be a man who sacrificially lays down his life and who serves and who cares and who really leads and teaches our children. Yes, we're gonna do it differently. Yes, it's gonna be challenging to stay engaged in that. Yes, our natural bent is not as nurturing as our wife is. But we men have got to step in and not take a passive role or become absent in that role. Uh this weekend I took my kids camping. While my wife was away in Colorado with our oldest daughter, I took five kids camping. So if my eyes look like they have bags under them because I didn't sleep, because the three boys took over my space while I tried to sleep on the hard ground. And I had one kid like drooling on this side of my face and one kid snoring in this ear, you know. But as I was with our kids out there camping, I was reminded again of just how much of a gift my children are, but also just the role I have in their life. And we just talked about, you know, I just prayed over them. And I'm not like, I'm not super dad, not this amazing dad. I really blow it a lot with my kids, and I have to seek their forgiveness a lot. But just thinking about how how incredible it is to have that opportunity. And so, how does this all again fit into marriage? Well, I get to parent with my wife in that. Now, I want to say a word here because I know we have some single parents in the room. And if you are a single parent, you're a single mom, you're a single dad, God can meet you in that. You're not doomed, it's not, it's not hopeless. The church, it's our job, one of our primary, one of our great opportunities, responsibilities, jobs to come alongside of single moms and single dads and help them and support them. And and I know that we've got some men even in our kids' ministry areas who could step in and be a fatherly figure for those kids that are growing up in homes that don't have a dad there. And I pray that we would do that. Men, if you see a single mom, come alongside of her and help her and support her and encourage her, pray for them. It's an incredibly difficult task they have in front of them, but God can work in that. God can work and He can use them. And I'm so thankful for you, single moms, that are here walking it out without that partner. God is honored by you and by your commitment. And I praise God for you. Another way that we can partner, just give you two more. One is prayer. We can partner in prayer. There's something that really uniquely happens when we pray with our spouse, when we come and agree on things. So, by the way, that means if you're not praying in your marriage, you're missing out. An opportunity to really grow together spiritually, but also an opportunity to really see things happen, to see God work and move. If you're not praying and agreeing together, there's something we can partner together in prayer. Scripture reminds us that if we agree on anything and ask it in his name, it'll be given. There's a power that comes in prayer. But there's also a danger that if you're walking in conflict with one another and you're praying, 1 Peter writes that your prayers will be hindered. If you're wondering why God's not answering your prayers and you've been treating your spouse terrible, guess what? God's saying, you need to get that right before you come bring in your prayer requests to me. Because you think that they don't impact each other, they absolutely do. They absolutely do. And so we get to partner in prayer, and then finally, we get to partner in mission. I hope you know that there's a much, much greater purpose in our marriage, again, than just having sex, having babies, just surviving life, raising family, managing finances. We get to live on mission together. We get to partner in that. God has given us an incredible invitation. Listen, this is what Francis Chan says. I think this is so, so helpful. He says, eternal-mindedness keeps us from silly arguments. There's no time to fight. We have better things to pursue than our interests. Too much is at stake. God created us for a purpose. We can't afford to waste our lives. We can't afford to waste our marriage by merely pursuing our own happiness. Many people will tell you, focus on your marriage to focus on each other. But we discovered that focusing on God's mission made our marriage amazing. I can tell you one way you don't fix narcissism in our hearts by looking at yourself every day, saying, How do I fix myself? Let me tell you how it's fixed. By lifting our eyes to God who made us. Seeing God, seeing him rightly. In our marriage, when we lift our eyes to his bigger purpose, our marriage issues, our marriage struggles, they tend to work themselves out. Because we begin to actually see through a transcendent lens. We start to see through an eternal purpose rather than my temporary happiness. And so marriage is meant to be a partnership where we live on mission. You know how many people are on this planet who do not know that God loves them? Who do not know that Jesus died for them? Do you know how many people live in our city, in this geography right here, who do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Who don't know where they're going to spend eternity? It's a lot. And God wants to use your marriage and wants to use my marriage to point them to Christ. Did you know that? How awesome is that that marriage is actually much, much bigger than simply surviving life, but actually using it to make more disciples of Jesus, to point people to life in Jesus. Finally, it's a picture of Christ. Marriage is a picture of Christ. When you put all these purposes that I've been mentioning, that really, again, these are some of the writings of Paul, some of the writings that all the way back to Genesis, when you put all these things together, you realize that there is a much better picture of marriage than our culture offers us. There's a much better picture of just romantically falling in love and hoping that you stay there. It's a picture of Christ and his church. And I just want to read this to you from Ephesians chapter 5. I don't have five have time this morning to unpack all of it, but just notice this. Ephesians 5, verse 22. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. Now, as the church submits to Christ, the wives are to submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. He did this to present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. In the same way husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He loves his wife, loves himself. For no one is who no one ever hates his own flesh, but provides and cares for it, but just as Christ does for the church. Since we are members of his body, and he goes on there to quote Genesis again, saying the two will become one flesh. Listen, one of the greatest gifts you can give your children, if you're a married couple, is to live this kind of marriage, this picture in front of them. Husbands to love our wives and to lay down our lives for them. For wives to show them what it looks like to respect and honor their husband. Is this a fight? It creates a lot of fights, that's for sure. Right? It's a challenge. It's a battle. But this is what God calls us to do, calls us into. He calls us to seek Him. You see, to live the Christian life. It's beautiful and it's life-giving, but it is not easy. It is not easy. And for me to stand up here and say, you know, hey, go love your spouse and lay down your life for them, hope you figure that out. Like that's just that's what we do sometimes in church. We give people a bunch of rules, but we don't tell them how to do it. We give people a bunch of guidelines and instructions if we say, all right, go figure it out. Hope you have a good week. Listen, the only way I can lay down my life for my wife is to reflect daily on the fact that Jesus laid his life down for me. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be moved to sacrifice. And I'm still gonna have days where I don't get there. I'm still gonna have days where I live for myself. And I want you to understand this morning that God is not calling you to a morality view-based view of marriage. He's not just saying you need to define it as God defines it, and you need to be these perfect people in marriage, and then he'll be happy with us. He's saying, trust me, follow me, rely on me, depend on me, and you will experience marriage like you've never experienced before. I said this earlier and I'll say it again. The church should be living out marriages that are so compelling, so beautiful that people want to know Jesus. They want to know the God who created it. They want to know the God who made them and who loves them and has a plan and a purpose. Because here's what happens. If you and I, if we miss this, if we miss the fact that we're actually that our marriage was designed for a lot more than just having sex, making babies, or just having companionship, if we if we just buy the culture's view of romantic love, we shrink down God's view of marriage and is God's plan for intimacy and oneness. We shrink it down, and when we do that, we begin to worship the created instead of the creator. And when we do that, we get ripped off and we go through pain and we go through destruction and we go through hardship because all of the things in this life that Are created that are even good things, if you worship them, they will take your life from you. They'll suck it from you. Does that make sense? But only God gives life. And He gives us life in marriage that is beautiful and it's amazing. And instead of distracting us from God, it actually points us back to Him. This is a lot. And I want to go ahead and tell you now that next Sunday night, 5 to 7, right here, we're going to have a very candid and open and honest conversation about how some of these things flesh themselves out. We can't talk about all it today, this morning, but we're going to have a conversation about how do you pursue your spouse in marriage? Sexually, emotionally, mentally, physically, how do you pursue your spouse in marriage? And we invite you to that. In singles, next week we're going to speak specifically of singleness and want to encourage you in singleness. But here's my hope today. My hope today is that we would not settle for the culture's view of marriage, but we would ask God to help us experience what He has for us. My hope today is that we wouldn't focus on the restrictions, but we would focus on the yeses in Christ, the pleasures that he offers us, the gifts that he offers us. Are you with me? And that we would rely on the grace of God to actually become the men and women God's called us to be. Men in the room, if you're not loving and laying your life down for your spouse, I'm not here just to beat you up. I'm here to call you to follow Jesus. I'm here to call you to trust him and to ask him to help you actually become that kind of man who sacrifices for your wife, who lays down your life for your spouse. Women, if you're struggling with honoring your husband, I'm not here just to beat you down and condemn you. I'm saying come and follow Jesus. He knows what it looks like to surrender and to submit and to honor the Father, even letting himself be sent to the cross on our behalf. God is a good God. Marriage is a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. And God wants us to experience the fullness of what He has for us if we will just surrender. If we will stop trying to do our own thing, we'll follow Him. Let's pray. God, I thank you so much for every person sitting here in this room and all the ways that you're working. God, this talk doesn't do marriage justice. This discussion, it's way bigger than this. But God, we also know that, man, there's so there's so much joy in following your plan. God, there's so much goodness that we miss out on when we choose not to follow your plan. God, I pray that today, somehow, some way, that you would change our minds. As the scripture says in Romans 12, that we would not be conformed to the pattern of this world in our marriage and in our sexuality, but we would actually be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That we would see that you're the creator, God, who is a good creator, and that you have a plan and a purpose for our sexuality and for our marriage that is much better, much better than what the world offers. God, how awesome is it that you made it where a man and a woman can know each other in such intimate ways and show in very tangible ways your love to one another. What a gift. What a grace gift. So I just pray that Point Community Church would be a place full of marriages where men are not going to porn to try to get their needs met, where men in this church are not going to extramarital affairs to find themselves, find their satisfaction or find the honor that they are longing for. But that we would be honest, we'd be vulnerable, we'd be, we would confess, we need you, we would follow you, we'd trust you. And I pray that for women, they wouldn't look to extramarital affairs, they wouldn't look to even other friends to meet the needs that you designed for their spouse to meet, God. I pray that in marriage we would first and foremost, as couples, look to you to meet our needs, complete us, and then to love and to serve and to compliment one another within marriage. So that you might receive maximum glory from these marriages and that people around us might come to know Jesus because our marriage is so compelling, so beautiful. And where we have failed, God, we just call on your grace. Please help us. Where we are weak, may your grace be strong. Where we are struggling with selfishness and pride, God rescue us, redeem us, God, help us. We need you desperately. I pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.