Marriage Before Adultery

for the reading of God's word. I will quote for you Exodus 20 verse 14, you shall not commit adultery. But if you want to turn with me to Genesis 2, the focus of today's sermon, starting in verse 18, Then Yahweh God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. and out of the ground Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and he brought each to the man to see what he would call it and whatever the man called a living creature that was its name and the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him so Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept.

Then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. And Yahweh God fashioned the rib, which he had taken from the man into a woman. And he brought her to the man. Then the man said, this one finally is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called woman, because this one was taken out of man. Therefore man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. You may be seated. It's the word of God. Hi, sweetheart. Glad you're here. I want to I want to make a brief note especially since we have guests coming in the middle of a apparently very long series that I thought I'd be done with quickly when I first started we're going through the Ten Commandments and so we are technically exegetically going verse by verse through Exodus 20 verses 1 through 17 but because of the nature of the Ten Commandments each, you know, a single verse of one of the commandments can end up taking us several weeks of actually jumping around to other sections of the Bible.

So we end up with what becomes a number of topical sermons all related to that particular commandment. And we have been through the first six commandments. And what we mostly have discovered as the result of spending a significant amount of time on them is that we are anything but experts on them. other than in breaking them. And so here we are, we're starting the seventh commandment, which any rational person in here has to understand that that is in some interesting way the hardest one, at least we'll say rhetorically.

With all the other commandments, I felt no need to censor myself. I generally think I have a pretty clean mouth now anyway. but with this commandment there are some cautions we have to have and to put your minds at ease before we even begin hopefully nobody was overly worried about me anyway doing something I shouldn't but I'm going to give you the words of Matthew Henry who is quickly becoming the guy I want to meet second when I get to heaven so I'm going to I want to meet my savior and Matthew Henry's moving up on the list. Like this guy was just, he was just the best.

Which is interesting. I think he was Presbyterian. I don't even have a Baptist in the top three now because I've got Calvin up there. But anyway, Matthew Henry was saying this about some laws in the Old Testament related to human stuff. I'm afraid he would say some of the words. Let me just read what he wrote.

He said, we need not be at all curious in explaining these antiquated laws. So there were some laws where there's some details that we want to be careful how we talk about it was his point. He says, it's enough if we observe the general intention, but we have need to be very cautious. Now here's where he's speaking about what I think I'm concerned for you and me.

He says, less sin take occasion by the commandment to become more exceedingly sinful. Of course, that's a quote of Romans 7. If you don't recognize that, that's explained in Romans 7. He says, and exceedingly sinful it is when lust is kindled by sparks of fire from God's altar. And this sentence here, I'll read it twice, this sentence from Matthew Henry.

The case is bad with the soul when it is putrefied by that which should purify it. So I'll repeat it. The case is bad with the soul when it is putrefied by that which should purify it. And point being, as we talk about things that are scriptural and are important to talk about in the Bible and need to be talked about, we also have to be cautious because there are certain types of sins that just talking about them, particularly using unnecessary levels of detail, can actually incite in the sinful person or even a regenerate person that still has indwelling sin levels of sinfulness that I don't want to be the cause of.

Additionally, we have a variety of people of different ages in this room. And there are people who we would say are maybe too young for certain content that other people wouldn't be too young for. and so while there may be people in this room that I would say certain things to to try to get them thinking about something there are people in this room that aren't ready for that now having said that I going to tell you something that I hope you know but will be quite evident to you when I say it and that is that the world system that you live in right now does not care how old your child is That world system, in fact, wants to sexualize your child as soon as possible. the devil is aware as you must be that the sooner the world can get a hold of your child and get them addicted to or excited about things that they are not ready to have the self-control to deal with they will do it and i will add in 21st century united states this is quickly becoming something that's going to be legalized and it's going to be promoted okay so whereas 40 years ago even your average pagan neighbor would have been disgusted to know that there's an organization called NAMBLA out there today. That's probably considered moderately normal, but at any rate, it's going to be promoted soon.

All right. So we need to warn our children about something that we're actually a little bit afraid to even talk to them about. And when I say afraid, what I mean is you don't always know how it's going to go. And you don't want to incite things that you shouldn't incite in them. So as we get to the seventh commandment, one of the things we saw in all the commandments so far is that there's a good thing that God has given.

And that good thing God has given has now been perverted or corrupted by Satan and the world system and even our own sinful hearts. And so, you know, in the case of worshiping idols, it's not that God is taking away these really neat things from you that you could be worshiping and enjoying and gaining knowledge from. It's that God knows that no idol can actually help you.

And so God tells you, don't worship idols, worship me. Not because he's egomaniacal, because the only good thing for you is to worship the one true God. Do you understand? We would never call God egomaniacal, but his own glory is his priority and it ought to be. In fact, if his own glory wasn't his priority, he'd cease to be God at that point. A little dry today.

Sorry. My wife informed me that on my podcast, when you hear me swallow, it's like this horrible sound like ASMR or whatever people call that stuff. So now I'm all self-conscious about it and breathing into the mic and things. So anyway, enough stories about me. So when it comes to the commandment not to commit adultery, there's a few obvious things on the surface.

One of the things on the surface would be that, you know, you don't cheat on your wife. Right. That's that's the simple one. And in the case of adultery, where I wanted to begin was I wanted to give you a little bit of the information from our confession about marriage. So where I want to begin is marriage. If I was going to preach on marriage and someone said, hey, let's do a marriage thing.

I'd probably guess off the top of my head. We've got at least eight sermons ahead of you. OK, I'm going to do one sermon that just tries to get a basis of what marriage is so that we can use that to talk about adultery for the next couple of weeks or so. And so it's going to be a fire hose of information. and it won't be as deep as anybody thinks it ought to be if you're really trying to preach on marriage.

But I want to wet your whistle about it. Marriage is to be between one man and one woman. This is our confession. The foresight that God gave these guys in the 17th century to help us out today. We didn't have to modify the confession to account for the craziness going on in our culture, right? One man and one woman.

If all you did was put that on a bumper sticker, you'd get your windshield knocked out in the next year or so, I guarantee it. This is so counter-cultural that you're going to have enemies over it. Elijah, you should put it on your van. Maybe you get an insurance claim or something. Get a new van out of it or something. Neither is it lawful for any man to have more than one wife. right so when you start talking about marriage with people in your society your neighbors one of the things everyone's going to bring up is well what about the guys in the old testament that had a bunch of wives and in fact there were times god gave them the wives and god blessed these guys and and see you kind of have to deal with that i'm not going to answer that question today but i'll just tell you it's not lawful to have any more than one nor for any woman to have more than one husband at the same time so the idea is is you could be married and remarried under certain circumstances.

In particular, death of your spouse frees you from that obligation. Second point in our confession, marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and the preventing of uncleanness. So our confession, which doesn't speak about every Christian doctrine available, found it necessary to put a whole paragraph on marriage in there. and so when we think about as a church where we stand on issues there's going to be some things where it's it's not confessional we may have a point of disagreement about something here and there where we can say it's a secondary or a tertiary issue when it comes to marriage that's something very foundational to our church's confession in the heidelberg catechism which of course I didn't print this I have to look it up on my phone in the Heidelberg Catechism there is a question about adultery and I want to ask that question and then answer it for you and of course I of course I didn't save where it was alright sorry about that I show you the Heidelberg Catechism after But basically the question of the Catechism was is it sufficient to just not cheat on your spouse That was the question You know is this commandment limited to, hey, pretty much do anything you want to do, but if you're married, you can't go do things with another person.

And the answer was an emphatic no. It entails a whole lot of other things. So as we've seen, the commandments are very expansive, and Jesus Christ will see in a week or two. He explains the commandments to us in a deeper way than we ever would get it from the surface. So first of all, I want to look at Genesis 1 and 2 and we're just going to get a picture of marriage.

The very first marriage that ever existed. And for those of you that think maybe somehow there could be a perfect marriage, if there was one, this would have been it. Alright? Sinless man and sinless woman. This was our chance in humanity to make marriage work. So if you're sitting there thinking, well, somehow or other, you know, that there was some possibility that it could all be perfect and joyful all the time.

Here was our chance. So let's find out what happened. So the first thing I want to point out to you as we look at verse 19 of Genesis 2, or 18, Yahweh God says it's not good for the man to be alone. And that could be all sermon series in and of itself. Some of you men need to consider that. You need to think about the fact that you need to surround yourself with other men.

You know, I think Elijah just read something about a multitude of counselors. You know, people that isolate themselves break out against sound wisdom. It's one of the reasons you attend and are committed to and covenanted with a local church. You know, we saw this in action recently where men of the church were exhorting another man. I don't want to talk too much about a situation, but we were trying to exhort a man and he didn't want accountability.

It was one of the difficulties we were facing. Right. But look in chapter one, something that we all know and you might remember. verse 4 and God saw that the light was good in verse 4 he notices the light was good verse 12 let the earth bring forth vegetation plants yielding seed after their kind and trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind and God saw that it was good moving along verse 18 just the second part and God saw that it was good I think most people who have been in church a while know the pattern here things are going to be good, good, good, good, good and at the end of day 6, verse 31 God's going to say everything's very good God sees His creation as very good and we all know this because anybody in here that's ever tried to defend a 6 day creation a 24 hour literal 6 day thing And we all say, well, you know, if there was death, it wouldn't have been good.

But what we actually have to understand here is in chapter 2, where God's describing the events of day 6, there is a moment where God says something's not good. Which I never really caught before I started thinking about preaching this chapter. That's intense. In the midst of good, good, good, good, good. Everything's good. Everything God does is good.

Everything he can do is good. Something not good occurs. And of course, it wasn't because God had made any kind of error. We know that. God had planned things this way, and I think he wants this to pop out at us. So he says, it is not good for the man to be alone.

He says, I will make him a helper suitable for him. And a lot of you will know that in the King James Version, and maybe Elijah's got the new King James, maybe it says a helper meet for him, which would have been the old English way of saying suitable. So this is a helper that is able to meet the needs that are necessary. And so that's where we get the phrase help meet from.

So if you've ever seen the phrase help meet, or if you've ever called yourself a help meet, those two words ended up combined for people into the phrase help meet, so that they could say, you know, I'm a help meet for my husband. And now, in almost every culture that's ever existed, what God says about the roles of men and women has been utterly offensive. So there's some cultures that have realized, hey, if we at least adopt what the Bible says, we'll be prosperous because, well, everything God says is right.

So you do the things he says and you prosper. but the idea of a woman being created to help a man is something that bothers a lot of people and so I heard I heard something that somebody said once that I really liked and so I want you to turn to Psalm 33 just to put your mind at ease about this if you're a woman and you're thinking to yourself okay I like my husband I love him but I'm not his helper that's such a subservient role And, you know, the old joke is, you know, it's like you were just put there to pick up the guy's socks. And that's funny to everybody because it seems like every husband has a problem leaving his socks around. But I just want to point something out to you.

In Psalm 33, 20, if you turn there, it says, Our soul is patient for Yahweh. It says, He is our help and our shield. so the same word that's used to describe the woman and her role in regard to her husband at creation it's the same word that's used to describe Yahweh God as our helper I don know if it should bother you so much to be a helper if that puts you in a category with God Psalm 115 another good one This would be a good one to memorize It on my list of psalms to memorize Verses 9 to 11. Just really quickly, check this out.

O Israel, trust in Yahweh. He is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust in Yahweh. He is their help and their shield. You who fear Yahweh, trust in Yahweh. He is their help and their shield.

So for people to be bothered by being called a helper, I think that you're mistaken. I think it's a wonderful role that God has given. And so Adam's in the garden. Nothing bad has happened yet, but apparently it's not good that he's alone, which we need to understand. And God says, I will make him a helper suitable for him. So he's speaking. and God could have created a woman at that moment could have created a woman out of the dust dust was sufficient for man he could have done it any number of ways the old saying is how did God create the world in only six days I say the old saying, it's old to me now the question is really why did it take him so long God didn't need six days to do anything right?

God does things the way he does them to teach us. And most of it's because we're dull of hearing because we're slow to understand. But so let's see what he does next. Because if I was reading a story and I was trying to think about it, I'd say, well, the next thing is going to be here comes the helper, right? I will make a helper suitable for him. I would expect the next sentence to be a description of this helper building process.

Instead, it says, and out of the ground, Yahweh God had formed every beast of the field. So all of a sudden he starts talking about all the animals. And every bird of the sky. And he brought each of them to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever a man called a living creature, that was its name. So subsequent to saying, I'm going to get the guy a helper, he just starts parading animals in front of him.

And Adam starts naming the animals. and I'm not going to postulate what he called any of them. Every time somebody gives an example of Adam naming an animal, it's always like, well, that's an animal that probably developed after the ark, when I think about them. But here's Adam naming all the animals. He's exercising dominion over his creation. He's naming everything.

We could do a whole series on that. I was thinking about the other day, I took some quiz online just for fun. It was like, which flower is this? I got like 12 out of 18. I thought I probably did pretty well. I thought, here's Adam just naming everything, though.

I mean, who knows how long it took, you know, just all afternoon, all day. I don't know how long it would take him. Maybe it was pretty quick because Adam was a lot smarter than any of us. You do realize, I've said this, I think, before, we're getting dumber. We're not smarter than the people 2,000 years ago. We're actually, like, devolved, okay, if you believe in, like, if anybody ever talks about evolution, it's like, well, in a sense, that's true.

It's just we're devolving. We're not as wise as Adam. We're not as quick and smart as he was. But so he's naming all these animals. And it says in verse 20, And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field. So he gets all done.

This is exhaustive. We're still discovering things all the time. Of course, I think we know a lot of kinds. Maybe not all the species. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him. So now it's implied that this parade of animals that he was naming was for more than just God didn't know what to name them.

All right, which isn't true. That's exaggeration. It's because God was trying to point something out. I think God wanted Adam to get to the point where he knew there's there's nothing here for me. I am desperate for the Lord to provide for me. none of these things can handle me. None of these things are things that I would want to help me.

None of these things are like I am. And so here's Adam waiting and waiting to find a helper suitable for him and we don't have any single guys in the church but you know there's this if you're a single guy or if you know a single guy and he's wondering why God doesn't provide a wife well I guess sometimes maybe he's not ready. Maybe he needs to understand some things first.

It's going to be a little while. So there's no helper suitable for him. And Adam now understands this utterly. If you can imagine for one moment here, at this time, the idea is that Adam has now reviewed literally every beast in creation. It's not like he did half of them. God brought every beast of the field before him and Adam named him and there was no helper suitable for him now it gets really good verse 21 so Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man so Adam gets put to sleep and he slept seems like an unnecessary phrase but there's no unnecessary phrases in God's word there's a reason God puts every jot and tittle in there we need to understand, we need to investigate, we need to read them and so God causes the deep sleep to fall upon him and Adam sleeps, Adam's resting Adam's likely exhausted at this point probably a little bit tired after all this work this wasn't a tired free existence in humanity we still get tired I mean God causes him to sleep and he's asleep and then it says then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place Yahweh God fashioned the rib, which he had taken from the man into a woman, and he brought her to the man.

So, God takes a rib out of Adam, and he builds a woman out of it, basically. It says fashioned in my version in the LSB. He built a woman out of man's rib. Now, one of the things people ask is, so, is this why men only have 11 ribs and women have 12? or however many we have, 16 or whatever. It's like, well, no, if you lose a finger, you know, subsequent children are not born without fingers, right?

So we still have the same number of ribs. But the idea is this. God didn't go to the dust to create woman. All right, and I've seen a lot of ink spilled about why. And I tend to buy the idea here that this is one of the reasons why we consider woman the glory of man. That's why 1 Corinthians says that.

One thing to consider, I don't know how much zoology you've done, and some of you kids probably do a lot of studying animals in your school. We're the only species, I'm sure there's a few more, but we're the only species where the woman clearly is the beautiful one. Almost every other species, it's actually amazing how it's the man that has the pretty feathers or all the different things going on, the mane for lions. we're the only species where sometimes it's questionable why women are even with guys.

We must give them something other than just good looks because our women are beautiful. They're the glory of men. Matthew Henry said, get a tissue out if you're subject to these kinds of things. Matthew Henry said that the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam, not out of his head, not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.

Adam lost a rib, and without any diminution to his strength or comeliness. But in lieu thereof, he had a helpmeet for him, which abundantly made up his loss. What God takes away from his people, he will one way or other restore with advantages. In this, as in many other things, Adam was a figure of him that was to come. for out of the side of Christ, the second Adam, his spouse, the church was formed when he slept the sleep, the deep sleep of death upon the cross in order to which his side was opened and there came out blood and water, blood to purchase his church and water to purify it to himself. so he brings the woman to Adam and Adam says in verse 23 this one finally is bone of my bones some versions say at last Brian Borgman translates it wow and the idea is that it's absolutely emphatic this is not just oh hey there she is this is like mind blowing.

And if you imagine this is the first woman he's ever seen. And she's perfect. Now I know everybody in here, y'all have perfect wives. I get it. Eve was more perfect than even your wives. Alright?

Even Julia Joy. And what Adam says in Hebrew I'm not a Hebrew expert, y'all know that. But what Adam says in Hebrew is, basically, I'm Ish. Okay, so we say like I-S-H in English. We'd say Ish is man. And he says, this is Isha.

Okay, so she came out of man. This is Isha. She's one with me. Now, in English, we say man and woman. And woman, my understanding is, its etymology is that it's the womb of man. All right.

So it's the human that has a womb. All right. Now, of course, in 21st century United States of America, I've just violated 17 principles of, you know, prejudicial speech online by saying a woman has a womb. but it's true and that's how God has made women and men to be different. And so immediately Moses in verse 24 we believe this isn't Adam speaking anymore.

Moses says therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. So when Adam does his proclamation this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh Some people have thought, oh, Adam wakes up and rather than figure, well, God made her the way he made everything else from the dust of the ground. He somehow instinctively knew that he took one of my ribs, even though chances are there wasn't a big scar or a lot of pain going on at this point.

Because God could have perfectly healed him and there wasn't sin and death and all those things going on yet. The point of him saying this is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones has nothing to do with the fact that Adam figured that out. It has more to do with the fact that he knew he was in a covenant relationship with her. And there's other passages in the Old Testament.

Again, if I was doing an eight sermon series just on marriage, we wouldn't have gotten this far already in the first sermon. So we condensing things So that we can get a good understanding at least of why adultery the seventh commandment is what it is So Adam is married before God, and Moses says, therefore, so because of what we just read, man and women are bone of bones and flesh of flesh. He says, a man shall leave his father and his mother.

There's no fathers or mothers yet. Like this is pretty interesting. Right? This was always the intention. God was going to create families. And those families were going to spread.

And the whole purpose was going to be to spread the glory of God. And that's what we try to do in our own small way now is smaller units of families. we're trying to pass things on to our children that they might do the same. But he says, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And so we just went through the fifth commandment a few weeks ago.

And in the fifth commandment, we talked about what an amazing priority it is for you to honor your parents. And for some of you, you're under that commandment as some kind of absolute thing at this moment. And you need to be obeying your parents regularly. and I gave you exhaustive lists about how you could try to do some of that. Mary gave me a thumbs up.

She must be reviewing it. Thank you, Mary. But what we have here is an explanation that one of the greatest, most important relationships you have, obedience to your parents, subjection to them, is absolutely and utterly superseded, and in a sense made obsolete by your commitment to your spouse. many a marriage has been destroyed by people who didn't leave.

Some people didn't cleave, but some people haven't left. Some people get married and their mom's still running the show in their head. It's usually not the dad, I think, but dads too probably can do that to people. There's a lot of people who just aren't mature enough to handle that, But in some cases, people aren't understanding that there is a priority.

Your wife needs something and your mom needs something. You take care of your wife. That's just what it says. It doesn't mean you ignore your parents. It doesn't mean you find every opportunity not to honor your parents. If there's an opportunity because, oh, well, I have a wife.

I can't do anything for my mother anymore. You have to find other ways to honor your parents. marital strife will often come through the form of one person just seemingly not being part of the union with their spouse because somehow they still have some loyalty or allegiance to something that's not part of that union it's usually their own family their own blood so we have marriage created men and women are to be together there's a natural urge that people have that causes them, hopefully at a certain age because things have not been incited too young there's a natural urge that actually makes people want to be married I'll submit to you that some of you are so sinful if it wasn't for that nobody would have wanted to ever even start thinking about it okay we're creaturely and there's a point where there's things that drive us alright and men and women are supposed to be driven to want to get married to have families and in some cases young men start to have feelings that they want to see satisfied And if they're biblical people, it's going to drive them to become the type of man that will attract a woman who would want to marry them. Someone who they can take care of.

Someone who they can supply for. Someone who that woman thinks, this man will not leave me. This man will be loyal to me. So you have this natural urge that comes. To want to be married. We're naturally attracted to people of the opposite sex at some point in time in your life.

If you're not, that's unnatural. Even worse, if you're attracted to the same sex. That's extremely unnatural. If you fall in the category of people that God had to write laws about called bestiality, where you could find a helper suitable for you in the list of beasts, there's a problem. And God can forgive sin, and God also cleanses people of sin. and so our hope would be that anybody that would become regenerate get a new heart by the Holy Spirit and believe in Jesus Christ that through continual renewal of their mind and the washing of regeneration by that Holy Spirit that you will eventually stop having unnatural desires and so if you know somebody that says well I'm a gay Christian you can say to them there's no such thing now that doesn't mean so hear me correctly here that doesn't mean there's not people that become Christian who suffer temptation to do all sorts of sin that they have to learn to battle what it means is that when you become a Christian your identity is no longer with the sin that you loved or even the sin that you struggle with the most, your identity is with Jesus Christ who is sinless So we talk more about some of those things later So in verse 25 i just want to look at that verse and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed and this seems kind of strange sounding almost what we need to realize is that there is an inherent shame since the fall with your own nakedness it doesn't mean you're to be ashamed necessarily, like ashamed of your body or things like that.

It's more about the fact that we are aware of our nakedness now. So whereas if a parade of ducks walk by here and none of them have clothing on, we don't bat an eye. It doesn't bother us. If you go to a farm and you decide you're going to look at the cows and maybe you're going to buy a pig and all the things that can happen, nobody goes to a farm and is somehow blushing because the animals are undressed.

All right? But if you see a human being undressed, it's shameful. And even people who go places where they end up taking their clothes off to do evil, almost as soon as the evil part is finished they put their clothes back on. It's like one of the most natural things for us and it's why with little children when your little child seems to be so innocent that they have no idea they're naked you kind of have this hope like oh they're so innocent.

And then once your kid starts to sense that modesty where they know they need to cover up where they're going to the bathroom and they say mommy you've got to stay outside and you guys aren't there yet, it's going to happen. You're all grown up. They're starting to have that awareness. And so this sense of shame is something that God gives us as a gift.

God gives us as a gift. In Jeremiah 6.15, speaking of unrepentant Israel, God says, were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? So he's asking, were they ashamed? They've done abominations. the right response to being abominable is to be ashamed. If you're not, you have a problem. He says they were not even ashamed at all.

Listen, he says they did not even know how to feel dishonored. I wish I'd gotten a different version, but the other version says they didn't know how to blush. They were committing abominations and they felt no shame. shame is our indicator from God that we have a guilty conscience that we've done something that we ought not do and we need a savior the man and his wife were naked and not ashamed and as Elijah pointed out from Proverbs 11, there was another person who stripped naked and was made to suffer shame.

So while pre-fall, Adam and Eve didn't have to be ashamed to be naked together. Jesus, I'm not going to say he was fully naked. I don't know all the details of how this works. But crucifixion was something that historically they said was done. You were stripped naked to cause you to suffer more shame. And Jesus Christ suffered the shame of the cross.

Jesus Christ, it says in Hebrews 12, verse 2, endured the cross, suffering the shame because of the joy that was set before him. And the joy set before him was what? Remember the theme of the sermon. Anybody want to say it? Can't hear you. Yeah, what did God have ready for him?

He had a bride. Jesus Christ went to the cross for his bride. That's why in Ephesians 5, when Paul tells wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. And then he says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. And you think, okay, this is a great chapter about marriage.

And then he says, I'm speaking of Christ. I'm speaking of Christ and his church. It's the mystery, he says. he says this mystery is profound Ephesians 5 22 to 33 and he's relating marriage to Christ and what we start to think is oh so marriage happened and then that gave God an explanation for the gospel and it's the other way around the gospel is what marriage was created to picture for us and so when we start to think about adultery, when we start to think about a human being before, during, before marriage or after marriage, engaging in activity with somebody who is not their lawful spouse, when we start to think about that and you think about Jesus Christ, and the way I always say, think about Jesus having eyes for another bride.

You're part of the bride of Christ if you're a Christian today. Do you want him to give up on you? Do you want him to walk away from you because you failed? And so Jesus Christ is the husband that we all need. He is what marriage points to. so what I want you to understand as we start to get into adultery is that God has given start and we start to get into preaching about adultery I should say God has given us the good thing all right Everyone reads the commandments thou shalt not do this thou shalt not do this thou shalt not do this And so we always say thou and we're being all forceful about it, right?

It just means you right you shouldn't you plural but the point here is that God gives us the good thing too. And we're so convinced that there's all this fun to be had and God just made a bunch of rules to keep us away from it, right? That's because that's what we do to each other, you know? Wife buys the snack and says, you stay out of the pantry, you know?

People make rules like that. It's because she loves me. But God gives us what's good. and then God tells us it's good and then God tells us what's bad and because of the way we are the bad interests us and before you start to think well that's just my sin nature in Genesis chapter 3 well in Genesis chapter 2 God tells Adam and Eve you can eat from every tree in the garden.

Except one of them. If you imagine the most perfect fruit ever created at this point, right? Everything since then has been marred by sin and corruption. God says, here you can have all this stuff. It's all perfect. But just don't eat from that one tree.

Just one tree. And perfect Adam. And sinless Eve at the time. Representing you though. They still said, no, we're going to try the thing that God literally told us is not the thing that's best for us. And you did, you know, I tell you before.

The only difference if you had been in the garden is you'd have sinned quicker than Adam. Adam was our perfect representative. None of us can complain about the man God chose to be our representative. So marriage is a good thing. A couple final notes. This is kind of a side trail.

But therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife. One point I want to make about that. I overlooked it when I got there. I'm not a good note guy. is that it doesn't say, therefore, a man shall leave his government school and cleave to his wife. You leave your parents. It's implied here that parents have a responsibility of stewardship over their children.

And you don't abdicate that responsibility by sending your children somewhere else, particularly for non-Christians to raise them. so I understand the need for Christian schools and those are useful and things like that but you leave your father and mother and cleave to your wife and then finally because Lent just started turn to 1 Timothy 3 I'm not a big contemporary issues guy but I'm reformed and protestant so 1st Timothy 3 a good chapter for all of you to be reviewing regularly as well as the elders and deacons book that we have was that Keith? No that was Cox the elders and deacons book as we're a small church we need to be able to certify elders and ordain elders we need to be able to do this with deacons you need to be able to look at another guy and say hey I think you're deacon material you know things like that Be careful, they'll just point right back at you. Basically, every man should be deacon material, I think.

But, in chapter 3 of 1 Timothy, I'll just start at the beginning. It's a trustworthy saying, if any man aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a good work. An overseer then must be above reproach. It says, the husband of one wife. So already, Beth Moore is unqualified. Okay, just get that out of the way if anybody's in that camp.

But we'll go over here to the deacons now. Deacons, likewise, must be dignified, not double-tongued. And then in verse 11, it says this thing about women must be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. And you might start to think at that verse, oh, well, maybe that's Paul's way of saying, well, women can be deacons too. and then in verse 12 he says deacons must be husbands of only one wife and so the requirement for being a deacon or an overseer is you got to be the husband of one wife I don't think it means you have to be married necessarily some people argue that but in this case you have these leaders of God's church are expected to be able to be leading homes well having children that are submissive to them.

They're husbands of a wife if they happen to be married at that time. But I'll say one thing, they certainly weren't forced to take a vow of celibacy. Now, in chapter four, right after chapter three, which, do you remember the first, do you remember the most important three rules of Bible interpretation? there you go context context context right chapter four but the spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith this sounds bad paying attention to deceitful spirits sounds really bad and doctrines of demons i don't know how much worse you could describe it By the hypocrisy of liars who have been seared in their own conscience.

Now listen to what they do. These guys are probably really bad guys who forbid marriage. Well, who do you know that forbids marriage? I mean, our culture is trying to destroy it, right? But in reality, they're just trying to open it up to literally anything at this point, right? Who forbids marriage?

Roman Catholics. This is why the Protestant Reformation was such a huge deal. If you read about some of these guys that are the reformers that we love, they all married nuns. Because these women who loved God and by faith had trusted in Christ and were doing what they were told was how they served the Lord, they found out, whoa, I can get married. So all these desires I have that God gave me that are normal and natural, I can go and find a husband.

You have some of the greatest people of the Reformation, like Martin Luther's wife. were former nuns who were freed from that And then it says because it Lent listen and advocate abstaining from foods which God created to be shared in with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. So let me tell you something, on Friday, eat some beef, okay? Every Friday for the next five weeks, make it a point.

You don't have to, but I'm a Protestant and I'm happy to be one. marriage is a good thing. Anybody that tries to tell you otherwise is mistaken. If they want to go to Corinthians and try to come up with a verse from Paul about how he thinks some people ought to be single or whatever. Like it's not, it's not an easiest verse to figure out, but there's answers to it.

Marriage is a good thing. God didn't tell us to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and expect us to do that without covenant relationships of men and women who are producing legitimate offspring and then raising them. Lord willing in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. And so marriage is a good thing. It a good thing that God has given He given it to each and every one of the adults in this room in fact And so as we start to venture into understanding the Seventh Commandment, I want you always to remember that God has already provided something better than what all your Seventh Commandment violations will give you.

Spurgeon said you expect that you will be married and then your troubles will be over some people have a notion of marriage like maybe Adam and Eve had he says some say that then they begin he says I don't endorse either of those but I'm sure that they are not over for there are new trials that will begin I think some people come into marriage thinking well now everything will be okay and they find out okay there's more I have to learn the other one I liked he said married life is not all sugar but grace in the heart will keep away most of the sours So something to think about. If you want to change your spouse, the old Christian saying is change yourself. Father in heaven, we thank you for the gift of marriage and we pray that we would have a right view of it.

And that you would help us as we begin to study what it means to violate the seventh commandment. that we would do it with the proper discretion, and we would also do it with the boldness that we need so that people might hear what's needed to help them to be free of one of the most pernicious and intoxicating sins there is. I pray, Lord, in particular, that you would protect our children from the type of evil that people want to perpetrate upon them, even sometimes just through words or images, and that you would help us to together all repent of even our hearts wickedness that we commit and help us to be men of virtue women of virtue as we go forward to serve our king amen