Supposed to be quiet in the church,
but that's hard to do with one of these plastic bottles. All right, is this one on? Okay. Yeah, we should be getting it
through. Okay, that's good. Everybody
here okay? I mean, here with your ears,
not just that you're here. Before we begin, let's seek the
Lord's blessing. Heavenly Father, thank you for
this gathering. Thank you for those who gather
with us online. We pray that you will bless us
all with a message of Christ and that our hearts will be strengthened.
In Christ's name we pray, amen. We are so unlike Our Lord Jesus
Christ. It is written that it was his
very sustenance to do the will of his father. He said, it's
my food to do the will of him who sent me. I don't think anybody
here can make that boast. I don't think that any of us
would say I could be sustained simply by doing the will of the
heavenly father. He loved God. Now, I realize
he is God, but again, the mystery of the incarnation, we just gotta
swallow it whole. He was both God and man, and
in his manhood, he looked toward heaven and called his father
God. And he loved God with all his heart. His mind, heart, body,
soul, every fiber of his being loved God. Sometimes I wonder if I love
him at all. I certainly don't act a whole lot like it. It's written of the Lord Jesus
Christ, he knew no sin. It didn't mean he didn't know
about it. But having never committed it,
he never knew by his own experience, due to his own transgressions,
what it was like to stand as one condemned by God. I know sin. I know it by the
experience of doing it. I know sin by the experience
of the fear of judgment that it generates. Sin is not to me, and I imagine
the same is true of you. Well, I know it's true of you,
whether you know it or not, but I imagine that your experience
is the same as mine. Speak of knowing sin, it's similar
to when we talk about knowing a person. And I'm not just acquainted
with sin. I know sin. Sin and I have been
companions from the moment I was conceived in my mother's womb.
And when I first drew breath, according to David, as I exhaled
that breath, I was speaking lies. And as a friend of mine once
wrote in a song that he wrote, he said, my life began in sin
and hasn't changed much. how unlike the Lord we are. And this often causes us to wonder
if we have any real connection to Him. Let me read you a poem
written by John Newton, a fellow that wrote Amazing Grace. This
thing keeps cutting out a little bit. If it cuts out altogether,
ready to turn up the other knob. But you might think that a person
who could write a hymn so powerful as Amazing Grace must certainly
be one of those giants of the faith who never experiences doubt. But this is another poem by the
same man, and see if this experience doesn't match yours. "'Tis a
point I long to know. Oft it gives me anxious thought,
do I love the Lord or no? Am I His or am I not? If I love, why am I thus? Why this dull and lifeless frame? Hardly sure can they be worse
who have never heard His name. Could my heart so hard remain,
prayer a task and burden prove? Every trifle give me pain, if
I knew a Savior's love. When I turn my eyes within, all
is dark and vain and wild, filled with unbelief and sin. Can I
deem myself a child? If I pray or hear or read, sin
is mixed with all I do. You that love the Lord indeed,
tell me, is it thus with you? Now there are four more stanzas. Well, I'll just read them for
you, because I don't want to leave you in a bad state of mind. He goes on to
say, yet I mourn my stubborn will. Find my sin a grief and
thrall. Should I grieve for what I feel
if I did not love at all? Could I joy his saints to meet,
choose the ways I once abhorred, find at times the promise sweet
if I did not love the Lord? Lord, decide the doubtful case. Thou who art thy people's son,
shine upon thy work of grace if it be indeed begun. Let me love thee more and more,
if I love at all, I pray. And if I have not loved before,
help me to begin today. But the sentiment of that poem
is often found in my heart. How can I truly be joined to
Christ. How can that be? I know all the
doctrines of grace. I understand that one is joined
to Christ by the work and will of God. It's entirely an act
of grace. I understand that. Yet there
is within our, certainly in our natural way of thinking, the
idea that if we loved Him, if we were joined to Him, we would
act differently than we do. we wouldn't be so easily tempted
by sin. We would not be so careless. We would not be so unfeeling
when the gospel is preached. We would not find prayer such
a difficult thing to do. I'm glad John Newton wrote that.
I feel like I preached a message one time and when I got done,
Tim James and I were both on the ticket, so to speak, both
of us preaching, and when I got down and I was standing next
to him and they were singing the last hymn, he looked at me
and says, you've been reading my mail. All believers know this concept. some more than others, but we
all understand it. In this passage that we read
here a little while ago from Mark chapter 10, verses 1 through
12, there is great comfort for those of us who wonder if we
indeed are in Christ. Now the text is looking at this
text of scripture as it stands. This text is often used as a
guide to Christians on the issue of divorce. But it would be wise
to note two things about what is written here and therefore
understand how it is applied to Christians. Number one, the
Pharisees asked him this question about divorce And their purpose
was to trap him. They wanted to find some reason
that they could put before the people to show some fault in
the Lord Jesus Christ so the people would quit following him.
And really, they were wasting their time because, in short
order, our Lord would start saying things to them that would make
people quit following him. Until finally, on the day that
he was crucified, we read, all his disciples forsook him and
fled. So don't need the devil's help in getting people not to
follow Christ, you know. They'll do that pretty well on
their own. But these Pharisees, they asked this question, and
it was a legal question. Because they were legalists.
And by that I mean not only that they thought that one's own righteousness
His acts of righteousness and fulfillment of the law, they
thought that's what put them in right standing with God. But
that meant that they were always examining the laws. And they
would add to them. Sometimes because legalists just
by nature love to burden other people. And then they would add to them,
because they were kind of commentaries, for instance, the law of the
old covenant set aside one day in seven in which you were not
to do any, quote, servile labor. You weren't to plow your field,
you weren't to plant seed, you weren't to sweep the house, you
weren't to cook. It was supposed to be a day of rest. And in time,
it also became associated with gatherings for worship. But they sat around and thought,
OK. And remember, in their calendar,
a day started at sundown. That was the beginning of a new
day. And so their Sabbath day started on Friday night when
the sun went down. And it was over Saturday night
when the sun went down. Well, that brings the question.
Well, just when has the sun gone down? And they debated about
it. And my understanding is they
eventually came up with, okay, when you can see three stars,
then the sun has gone down. Now, that's what these guys were.
So they were straining at gnats and swallowing camels. They came to him and they said,
is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? The passage in Matthew
that tells the same story says they asked, is it lawful for
a man to divorce his wife for any reason? And I would assume
that they meant by that any of the reasons that might be recognized
under the law. Again, they were trying to show
that there was a difference or that he had some argument with
Moses. And so he asked, well, what did Moses command you? And
in verse four he said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate
of divorce and send her away. And there were more liberal rules regarding
divorce, at least for men, than you might expect under the law.
Pretty much, if a wife didn't please her husband, he could
send her away. Well, verse 5 says, it was because
our Lord answering them about this law from Moses. He says,
it was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this
law, Jesus replied. Now, what does he mean by that?
Well, you can imagine now you've got a home where a man is rather
selfish and his wife doesn't turn out to be what he thought
she was. Or for one reason or another, she's become displeasing
to him. And it was a very patriarchal
society. The man ruled the house. He could
rule it with an iron fist and nobody could do anything about
it. In fact, in the times even of Moses and up into the judges
and all this, the man of the house had the power of life and
death over the people in his house. Therefore, If the wife became
displeasing to him, he might just kill her or just make her
miserable. Why? Even though they were God's chosen
nation, they were every bit as wicked as any other human beings. They were not ruled by love.
And where selfishness and power mix, you have people of hard
hearts. So while these righteous men
These Pharisees, they called themselves righteous. They're
asking this question, acting like they're very interested
in right and wrong, and the Lord says, that rule that Moses gave
you, that permission to divorce your wives, all you gotta do
is write a certificate, fill it out so it's formal, and she
can show it and go on about her way. That law was given to you
because you're so hard-hearted. It's better for you all to divorce
than for you to beat on her and maybe kill her because you don't
like her. So he hardly lifted them up,
did he? He's saying, you scoundrels,
the only reason that God allowed for this under the law is because
you're so hard-hearted. We've got to make a safety valve. So that when you build up pressure,
you don't take it out on your wife, you can just send her away. But then the Lord says, but at
the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Now,
first point I noticed, this rule is under the law. Believers are
not under the law. Now that doesn't mean that believers
do not have marital obligations. There are instructions in the
New Testament regarding this matter. But we are under bondage
to the law. But what did the Lord do? In
answering their question, He does not appeal to Moses. He
goes even farther back. He says, but at the beginning
of creation, God, quote, made them male and female. I've heard people say, In our
day, you know, the Lord Jesus Christ never did talk about gay
marriage. Yes, he did. Because he said
God made them male and female and said those two are joined
together. I just point that out for your mild edification, if
anybody ever says that to you. It's not the point of the message.
Now, God made them male and female. For this reason, because there's
such a thing as a man and a woman, a man will leave his father and
mother, he will leave the household into which he was born to establish
a new house, and he will be united to his wife and the two will
become one flesh, so that they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined
together, let no man put asunder." Our Lord answered this by reference
to the first marriage, and he laid down a principle that makes
an adjustment for the fact that we live in a broken world. He
said when this thing called marriage was originally set up, it was
going to be one man and one woman, and since there was no death,
it was going to go on forever. These were things that could
be implied from what he said, given the state of things when
Adam and Eve were married. Of course, sin came in, and therefore
this allowance was made, he said, only for marital unfaithfulness. Can a person initiate divorce
proceedings? But I'll tell you this, the gospel
goes even further. Life under the gospel is not
the bondage of the law. The law demanded that we do things
we don't want to do or are incapable of doing. The gospel appeals
to that new nature, that spiritual nature created within us that
desires what is good. And it operates on different
principles. And I'll say this, and this is, believe it or not,
it's not a message on divorce, but you gotta lay down this stuff
so you understand what the message is about. Even in marital unfaithfulness, While
we may say from the legal aspect of a marriage, then it's justifiable
for the party that's been wronged to initiate a divorce under those
circumstances. And we could not find fault with
the person if they did so, because to step outside the bonds of
marriage for the fulfillment of sexual desire, to be united
to someone else other than your spouse is a wholesale overthrow
of the covenant of marriage. I won't take too long on this,
but essentially the sexual relationship is the essence of marriage. It's what makes people married.
That's why if two people stand before a preacher and say their
vows and sign that certificate, for one reason or another they
never consummate that marriage and then they decide we really
don't want to be married. They don't have to get divorced.
They can get it annulled because all society from, that I'm aware
of, for as far back, has considered that the sexual union is the
essence of marriage. Without it, there hasn't been
a marriage, therefore, you're not breaking a marriage, you're
just annulling a ceremony that went on. And so to step outside of that,
you are joined with a spouse through this physical relationship,
You're one. To step outside of that is a
wholesale overthrow of that union, consequently. And it's horribly
hurtful. It's damaging to The marriage
itself, damaging to children if they're present, it's damaging
to the society or the community in which you live, because homes
are the building blocks of communities and all that. It's a gross violation
of nearly everything. And so if someone, the wronged
party, said, I just can't take it, and they initiated a divorce,
we could understand that. The gospel also says, forgive
ye one another's sins, as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven
you. While the gospel does not necessarily
lay upon us a burden to forgive someone who has strayed like
that, the gospel says, you can, you have grace to do that. It'll
take time to rebuild trust. A relationship broken like that,
that kind of deep betrayal is hard to come back from. And almost,
naturally speaking, it's almost impossible. But believers are
not natural. And I've known of people who've
come back from that. and their marriage be even stronger
than it was before. Now having said these things
about marriage and divorce, I said them merely to lay down a platform
or a stage upon which to preach the message that's on my mind. The permanence of marriage is based on this one principle. Verse eight, and the two will
become one flesh, so they are no longer two, but one. Now, as a pastor, I have been
called on to visit with those who are enduring the grief of
losing a spouse. And I always feel so inadequate
to that, because there are many things in life that you really
do not understand unless you've experienced it. And I have not
lost a spouse. But one of the things you do
when you go to visit people like this, a lot of times people have
grief, but they don't have words to express what they're feeling. And so I've said this on a few
occasion to such people. When we come into this world,
we are individuals. We are a whole person. But in
marriage, two people are combined into one. And when one of them dies, it
leaves the remaining one feeling like half a person. And virtually everyone I've told
that to nodded their head. They could identify with that
description. You were whole until you got married. And then you
became one with someone else. And when that someone else is
taken away, you're just half a person. You don't know how
to live. Nothing makes sense without them.
They are so much a part of you, Just the world in a way doesn't
make sense or has no value nor purpose without your spouse. I came to this text because I
was looking at a thread on a YouTube video and the question of what
does one flesh mean came up. And I'll try not to take too
much time with it, but it's a wonderful concept. Indeed, it begins, is
inaugurated, as it were, by the sexual union between a man and
a woman. They become, objectively speaking, one flesh. Which is an interesting thing
when you realize Adam was created a whole individual, and then
God took a piece of him and made a woman. And then he brought the woman
back to the man, Gave the woman to the man, and now he was one
man again. He was one flesh. Woman came
out of man, and he is not complete, in many respects, without her. In fact, and I didn't get to
bring it up in our class on Song of Solomon. Well, that's because
we didn't get the next verse. But he refers to Solomon refers to Shulamith,
the woman in the story, as his spouse. And that word spouse
is derived from a word meaning incomplete. Incomplete. Someone deprived of their spouse
for whatever reason is left feeling incomplete. We are made one, and as time
goes by, and our lives intertwine more and more, and through the
rigors of marriage, and for you young people, I'll just let you
know, all that beautiful romantic stuff that you see about weddings,
and for which you pay so much money to recreate, has nothing
whatsoever to do with marriage. It's a celebration, and fine,
if you want to do it, have at it. But that giddy high is not
what marriage is made of. Marriage is made of real life. Marriage is made of being knocked
down and then getting back up. Marriage is made of having differences
and having to come to some kind of resolution so you can live
at peace. And those unwilling to do that
work generally end up getting divorced, and it's unfortunate,
because the work is always worth it. Because in the process of
the work, of taking to, and you know, I don't think that it was
work for Adam and Eve, but we're sinful, and we're selfish by
nature, and it's work. But as you go through that work, You actually, if both are approaching
it through love, it'll improve both of them, and it'll form
a relationship unlike any other relationship on earth. But as you go through this process,
there is a physical union, but there's also a psychological
union. Now, everybody's marriages are
a little different. personalities are involved. But there's some people, and
I've mentioned this before, both informally, sometimes from the
pulpit, but they seem to be so intertwined, you never talk about
one of them. If you mention one of them, you're
going to mention the other one as well, because you can't even
think of them. as separate people. I give examples, but I don't
want to embarrass anybody or make them think, you know, shine
a spotlight on them. But if you talk about one, the
other one's automatically assumed. You mention it. Why? Because their lives have
become so intertwined, there's virtually nothing separate and
individual about them. Their goals have been united. Their values have joined and,
you know, changed and morphed to where they have essentially
the same values. They do the same things. That's what it is to become one.
And that's why this process goes on throughout life, and that's
why it's so difficult when you lose half of it. But this being one, it's wonderful. It resolves itself into a very
comfortable relationship. And while I don't want to sound
insulting, it's kind of like a pair of old shoes. You know,
everybody else may look at it and think, okay, whatever. Boy, they're comfortable, they're
enjoying one another. Now, what's that got to do with
what I introduced about not feeling as though you are joined to Christ?
Turn over to Ephesians 5. Ephesians 5. Now here Paul gives
some instructions about the relationship, the essential relationship in
a household, which is not parents and children, it's husband and
wife. Your children, wonderful as they
are, and I mean, I dearly love my children, and it's a bit of
a heartache that they live so far away so that I can't be involved
in their lives day to day. It might be good for them that
I can't, but nonetheless, I enjoy being around them. But the foundation of our home is
Bonnie and me, and we're still here. And unfortunately there are many
marriages that get so consumed with the children that the husband
and wife forget to nurture their own relationship, and when the
children leave, suddenly they stand there as two individuals.
They're not one. Maybe in the objective sense
they're one, but they're not one in goals and values, and
they're not content together. Turn too many pages, I'm in the
wrong book. Okay, Ephesians chapter 5. It says in verse 22, wives submit
to your husband as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of
the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which
he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to
Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands. Now note here, it does not say
rule your wives. The scriptures do call on women to submit to
their husbands, but it never tells, and I can recall, never
tells husbands to rule their wives. Husbands, love your wives. Just as Christ loved the church
and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her
by the washing with water through the word, and to present her
to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any
other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this way, husbands ought to
love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife
loves himself. After all, no one ever hated
his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ
does the church, for we are members of his body. That all sounds, now I'm a romantic
at heart. I just am. I love love. And just going that far, I think
that's just wonderful to think of. Husbands love your wives. I don't know how good I am at
that, but I do like that idea. Probably like every other man,
when I was younger, I thought it had more to do with being
in charge, and that's not what being a husband's about at all.
Being a husband, and this is what the word husband means,
to take care of. to look out for, to protect and
provide for, even to dote on. But something much more wonderful
than that's about to come up. It says, we are members of his
body, verse 31. For this reason, a man will leave
his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two
will become one flesh. That ring a bell? That's what
the Lord said to the Pharisees. And he was quoting Moses' comment
on the marriage of Adam and Eve. Now, verse 32, this is a profound
mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. I think that marriage is the
most wonderful thing left on this earth. And if two people
work at it, nurture it, love one another, it builds something
that cannot be found in any other relationship. But marriage is not an end in
itself. It was designed by God. to demonstrate
the relationship between Christ and His church. And what is that
relationship? The two have become one. Think on that a minute. The two
have become one. They have been joined in the
intimacy of spiritual union. Now we may be united to our spouse
in physical and psychological ways, but we cannot be united
spiritually. We do not communicate with one
another on the spiritual level, but we communicate with Christ
that way. It's the only way we communicate with Him. We are spiritually intimate with
Him. And I realize that, you know, our flesh gets in the way,
and I'm not talking about, you know, quote, some kind of higher
life and the simple life of faith. I'm just saying that the union
between a believer in Christ, and yea, the whole church in
Christ, is an intimate spiritual union. Secondly, this union is
made by God, not by man. One thing I find interesting
in the story of the first marriage, it says that God brought the
woman to the man. How do you think you got to Christ? Did you go on Tinder and swipe
right? I think right's the way if you're
supposed to accept somebody. Everybody else swipe and left. No, no Jesus. No, I want, no.
That's not how you were brought to Christ. All that the Father
gives to me will come to me, says the Lord Jesus Christ. He
that hath heard and hath learned from the Father comes to me. Now it may feel like to us that
we came to Christ, and in one sense we did, but we came because
we were brought. We were made for Him. And the Father Himself, God Himself,
joins His people to the Lord Jesus Christ. He chose us in Christ before
the foundation of the world. And in time, by the work of His
Spirit, He put us in Christ in our experience, such that we
are united with Him. Now, remember what I said about
being united or being made one with our husbands or wives? We have the same home. We are
not thought of apart from the other. I know the world can think
of us, they may not even know that we're joined to Christ.
some of the world, and it may not be an important issue to
them, but the important one, it's important to him. God sees
us in Christ. He sees us in Christ as a single
individual, such that what is true of the
one is true of the other. Their destinies are intertwined. Now, of course, like I said,
this was written in the context of a patriarchal society. Back
then, women, for the most part, could not inherit. Why? Well,
it was assumed that when a woman grew up, she left her father's
household and she came under the protection of a different
household, the household of her husband. And so the sons inherited
from their fathers because they are the heirs of the household
and she inherits simply by her connection to her husband who
inherits from his father. And the idea is her destiny was
altogether tied up in his. A woman's destiny, her way in
this world was not tied to her father, it was tied to her husband.
As he fared, so did she. Oh, do you see the wonderful
truth in that for you and me who believe? We are united to Christ such
that his destiny is ours. However he fares, however God
perceives him, that's how we fare, that's how God perceives
us. We are one. The songwriter in
the song, Before the Throne of God Above, there is a stanza,
I hope I get it right. One with himself, I cannot die. My soul is hid with Christ in
God. My soul is hid with Christ on
high. Christ my Savior and my God. One with himself I cannot die.
Why? Because he can't. Death has no dominion over him,
has no dominion over us. There is no sin in him. From
the viewpoint of God there's no sin in us. He has the favor
of God, he's the heir of God. And we become the beneficiaries
of that inheritance because we are one with Christ. The child of God can know, well,
they can't end up in hell unless Christ does. They cannot be cut
off from the Father unless Christ is. They cannot separated from the
love of God unless Christ is. They cannot be denied the fullness
of divine blessings unless Christ is. And here's what we know about
these people who are made one with Christ. In this life, they often do not
act like Him. Spiritually, they have the same
values as Him. Spiritually, they love the same
things as Him. But they still got this body
of death. Paul says, who will deliver me
from this body of death? And someone said the imagery
there is one of the punishments they would put on murderers was
to take their victim and tie their victim to him as that carcass
rotted. You can imagine how awful that
was. That's the life of a believer.
He's dragging around this carcass. We have crucified the flesh with
its lusts, and it's rotting, and we can't get rid of it yet,
but we will, or God will get rid of it. But the fact that
we carry about this body of death does not alter the fact we are
one with him by the work of God, and according to the principle
that God made regarding marriage, so it is true with us. What God
has joined together, let no man put asunder. If God has joined you to Christ,
you cannot be separated from him, because your identity has
been lost in him, and you and he are one in the eyes of God. I'm just going to stop there.
That's a good enough conclusion on its own.