Marital Rights
Practical Church (1 Corinthians) • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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[LAUNCH VIDEO]
Announcements
Good morning. Welcome to Southern Hills Baptist Church. Thank you for joining us today.
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We are halfway through our Annie Armstrong Easter Offering campaign. As a reminder, Annie Armstrong is a fundraising effort by the North American Mission Board. Each year, we raise money for church planting in the US and Canada. Every dollar of Annie Armstrong goes to a church plant. This year, our goal as a church is $10,000. So far, we have raised about 10% of that. So, please be praying about what God would have you give towards that effort.
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If you are a guest with us, know that this is our weekly Family Worship service. Our children will remain with us for the entire service. We do have a nursery available for children under 4 just down the hall if you would like to use it.
Please stand as I read our Call to Worship. This morning, we will do a responsive reading. I will read the words in white and we will all read the words in yellow.
Call To Worship
Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
Preserve my life, for I am godly;
save your servant, who trusts in you—you are my God.
Be gracious to me, O Lord,
for to you do I cry all the day.
Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.
For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.
Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer;
listen to my plea for grace.
In the day of my trouble I call upon you,
for you answer me.
There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like yours.
All the nations you have made shall come
and worship before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name.
For you are great and do wondrous things;
you alone are God.
Teach me your way, O Lord,
that I may walk in your truth;
unite my heart to fear your name.
I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name forever.
Opening Hymn
Scripture & Prayer: Pastor Bob (Matthew 21:1-9)
Song #1
Missions Minute: Primera Iglesia Bautista in Wakefield, NE
Saturdays
Pastor Leo
10-12 people
Offering & Prayer
Song #2 (Goodness of God)
Lord’s Supper
Please be seated.
(beat)
Our God is a good and faithful God. He endures through our ignorance of Him. He endures through our selfishness. He even endures through willful disobedience. The Old Testament describes one of His characteristics as being “slow to anger.” The KJV translates it as “longsuffering.”
Only a good Father would suffer through our ungratefulness and moral depravity. As we read through the gospels, we see Jesus imaging God well in suffering the ignorance and sinfulness of those around Him. He has come to call them all to repent and to give their hearts to God—not just the Israelites but all nations.
As He will instruct the disciples later, the good news must leave Jerusalem and go into Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. But Jesus first modeled it for them. Would he dare go into enemy territory and share the good news of the restoration of mankind?
We’re going to continue our reading about Jesus from the book of John. Today we will begin chapter 4:
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the town and were coming to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
After the two days he departed for Galilee. (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.
At this time, I am going to have our ushers come forward. If you are a follower of Jesus, in that you have accepted Him as Savior, bowed to Him as King, and been baptized in obedience to His commandment, we invite you to participate with us. In just a moment, we will pass the plates. Please take a piece of bread and a cup and hold it until we take together.
Pass
Instruction from Jesus: Read Luke 22:14-20
And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
Prayer of Blessing on bread and cup
Song #3
Pastoral Prayer
World -
Country-
State-
City-
SHBC-
Introduction
If you have your bibles with you this morning, please turn with me to the book of 1 Corinthians. Today we will be starting chapter 7.
We are now well into Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. Over the last few months, we have seen him address the immaturity of the church body which included them boasting in their gifting, freedom, and human wisdom, fawning over their favorite teacher, and dividing over the most trivial of issues.
Last week, Paul corrected the underlying misunderstanding of the church about sexual freedom that was available in Christ. It seems that many of them had carried over their preconceived Greek notions that the body and spirit were completely unconnected. That is—they believed that that physical matter like the body was corrupted and would perish, but that the spirit would live on. Their conclusion—then—was that it didn’t matter what happened in or to the body as long as the spirit and mind were believing the right things.
This led some of them to think that they could do whatever they wanted in the body, because it wouldn’t affect the spirit. But Paul pushed back on that idea. He corrected their theology to help them understand that—for the human imager of God—the body is as indispensable as the spirit. That the body and spirit together make up the person, and that one cannot be a proper human person without both body and spirit.
That—even when our cursed human bodies do perish here on earth—God will raise us to new life in a glorified and uncorrupted physical body. This will accomplish His restoration of the human imager to its original form, uncorrupted by the curse of sin. Ultimately, followers of Jesus will return in their original designed forms to the Garden of Eden—now extended to the ends of the earth in the new creation at the end of time.
(Beat)
This week, Paul will build on this foundational understanding of God’s human design as he begins to respond to some of their questions.
[TITLE SLIDE]
And he will start that by building on that correct theological understanding of sex by addressing marital rights.
Turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. We will begin there in verse 1.
[MAIN PASSAGE SLIDE x3]
Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. (/) For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. (/) Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Paul is now shifting his address from the things he has heard about the church and responding to a letter that the church in Corinth had sent to him directly. It appears that they had written a letter in response to a letter that he had sent them prior to 1 Corinthians. In their response letter to his original, they have inquired about several things, which Paul will begin addressing in chapters 7 and 8.
[POINT 1 SLIDE]
Celibacy (v 1)
The first thing that Paul wants to address from their letter to him is a statement that they made within their letter. It has to do with the issue of celibacy. Look back with me at verse 1:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”
Paul addresses this statement made in the letter, where they wrote that it was “good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”
The wording here in this statement is interesting because of the word choice in Greek for man instead of husband. It is not entirely clear whether Paul is addressing a statement about celibacy for single people or celibacy within a marriage. But, given the context of the letter and the Corinthian church—and the fact that Paul will address singleness later in the chapter—most scholars assume that the statement that Paul is addressing has to do with abstinence of sexual contact within a marriage.
The literal rendering of the statement in Greek is “it is good for a man not to touch a woman.” But the word “touch” in Greek is a regular idiom for sexual contact. So, our Bible translators have tried to make it easy for us to understand the sense that is being conveyed.
But if these are married church members who are claiming that it is good to remain celibate in marriage, what do they mean by that? Why would it be a good thing to abstain from sexual contact with your own spouse?
For us to properly understand this, we need to return the Ancient Greek context. Last week, we discussed the belief of the Greeks—and later the Gnostics—of dualism. That is that the body belongs to the material physical realm while the soul exclusively participates in the immaterial spiritual realm.
For many Romans, there was an understanding that it didn’t matter what happened in the physical body, for it was only the mind, or spirit, that mattered. Some of these new Christian converts have carried that misunderstanding into their new spiritual walk with Christ. The focus on the spiritual alone could lead one to two opposite extreme conclusions.
The first extreme conclusion is what we saw in chapter 5. That if one is completely free in Christ and it doesn’t matter what happens in the body, that we can throw off all law and do what we please, for it is only the spirit that matters.
The other extreme conclusion on the opposite end of that spectrum may be what we are dealing with here: that if the spirit is the only thing that matters, then we should deny all of our physical bodily impulses as much as possible.
It seems as if both of these extremes existed within the divided Corinthian church. On one side, they had men refusing to give up their sexual immorality, even to the extreme of incest and the visitation of prostitutes. And on the other side, they had people who had begun denying their own spouses of sexual intimacy out of the desire to be more spiritual.
But Paul is going to take exception to this wrong-headed conclusion just as he did the last. And it is for this reason that he laid out the proper theology of the human design at the end of chapter 6. As always, poor theology will lead us to poor conclusions. Again—garbage in, garbage out.
What this group of Corinthian believers is suggesting is unheard of in the Judeo-Christian heritage. From the time that God had called Abraham, He set them apart from the nations as His holy people. In doing so, they were not to look like the world. And one of the ways that they were different was their understanding of humankind—that man and woman were designed and created for a purpose greater than just to appease their divine overlords.
God designed humans to be His physical imagers on earth—to rule His creation well as His stewards and to point the rest of creation back to Him. And part of that design was that man and wife were to come together as partners and procreate to “fill the earth and subdue it” to their righteous rule.
Therefore, a healthy understanding of God’s design for mankind should help us understand that God has created sexual intimacy within marriage for good. Not only does it serve the purpose of “filling the earth” with offspring, but in His grace, God has made the union of husband and wife for the joy of the couple and for His own glory.
So, for the Corinthians to suggest that celibacy within marriage was even an option was outrageous for Paul. It is a conclusion that could only stem from a poor understanding of theology and the story of God.
In fact, the mandate to “fill the earth” through procreation was so important to Israel that failure for a husband to provide his wife with sexual intimacy was grounds for a biblical divorce. Look back with me at Exodus 21:
[SCRIPTURE SLIDE]
If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
Failure for a husband to supply marital rights to his wife was grounds for a divorce under the law of God given through Moses. And this was an underlying principle that applied to all marriages. The Jews of the first century took this so seriously that it was against their law not to marry and try to build a family.
By law, husbands were required to fulfill their marital duty on a regular basis. So much so, that rabbi’s even began providing guidelines. An unemployed man was to satisfy his wife’s marital needs daily. For manual laborers, the requirement was twice a week, once a week for mule drivers, once a month for camel drivers, and every six months for sailors. Failure to do so was grounds for the wife to leave the marriage in divorce.
Paul is not going to expect these Gentile believers to fulfill the Jewish law, but they must understand the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law was to be obedient to God’s call to “fill the earth” in Genesis.
Unlike the Jews, Paul will not disparage singleness. In fact, he will speak well of it later in this chapter (More to come on that in a few weeks). However, for those who have already married, celibacy is not an option. Each husband must provide their wife with sexual intimacy.
And those who are single should take heed as well to Paul’s message, for their call to follow Jesus will not be easier than those who are married. They will face severe temptation.
[POINT 2 SLIDE]
Holy Pragmatism (v 2)
So, for those who are considering remaining single for the purpose of spiritual wellness and service to Jesus, Paul offers some advice. I call this advice his holy pragmatism. Look with me to verse 2:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.
Notice that Paul clearly disagrees with the Corinthians statement that it was “good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” He uses the word “but” as he begins to counter their argument. In contrary to the group of Gentile believers, Paul does not seem to be concerned about them denying the desire of the flesh, but in staving off the temptation of it.
Simply said, all humans have a base desire for sexual intimacy. It is part of God’s design that is coded within our DNA for procreation and subsistence. Our challenge is not to suppress that urge, but to bring it into submission to God’s design to be used only within marriage.
God has designed marriage between one man and one woman to be the only proper place to express their human sexuality—and He called it good. So, for humans to be married and deny God’s design is not to seek greater spirituality, but to ignore God’s mandate and live in disobedience. As always, the concern is not so much with the activity, but the heart.
This group of Corinthians is still leaning into human wisdom. They are disobeying God in the pursuit of spirituality for the purpose of self-fulfillment rather than the pursuit of glorifying God. If they properly understood theology, they will fulfill their marital impulse to their spouse, which would multiply joy through pleasure and offspring and bring glory to the Creator God.
Now, I want to make a quick note that Paul’s focus here is on married couples. He will specifically address the single believers later where he will imply that they can fulfill the mandate to “fill the earth” by making spiritual children—that is, in making disciples.
But his point here is that those who do not continue a normal sexual relationship with their spouse are not only ignoring God’s mandate, but inviting temptation into their lives and making their spiritual pursuit of holiness more difficult. It is not wrong to be married, after all—for the desire for holiness should trump marital status.
Paul goes on to say that “each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.”
The word “have” here is a reference to the “knowing” of a spouse. They are both idioms for sexual intimacy. In other words, Paul is saying that the best deterrent to sexual temptation is marriage.
Additional, by saying that each should have their “own” spouse of the opposite sex, he is excluding the practice of polygamy. This reaffirms the orthodox theology of marriage and sexuality set forth in Genesis 2.
Clearly stated—Paul has corrected their theology and their incorrect conclusion that they should avoid sex within marriage and reminded them that the marriage bed has been designed for the good for human imagers who will submit themselves to God’s design.
[POINT 3 SLIDE]
The Marriage Bed (vv 3-5)
The rest of this passage will be Paul helping the Corinthians understand how good theology should be reflected in the marriage bed for the purpose of fulfilling the spouse, bringing God glory, and practicing holiness. Let’s go to verse 3:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.
I want you to pay attention to the first statement. Paul says that the husband should “give” his wife her conjugal “rights.” The word “give” here in Greek means to pay or repay. In other words, it is the fulfillment of a contract or agreement by one party to another.
And the word for “rights” that he uses here in Greek means a debt that is owed. Paul uses this same word in Romans 13:7 when he speaks of owing taxes and the obligation of paying them to the authorities. In the same way, he now presents the wife in this first clause as an authority to which the husband owes payment of conjugal love.
In other words, Paul is saying that within a marriage, not only is sexual intimacy is expected, but it is due. That is—there is an obligation of duty that must be paid to the opposite partner within a marriage. And that payment comes in the form of conjugal love.
And in the second part of the sentence, Paul will flip it to say that the wife owes the same marital duty to her husband. Therefore, we could say that a spouse is both a debtor of sexual intimacy to their husband or wife, and the authority to which a conjugal debt is owed from their spouse.
Why is this so? Why is it that by entering into marriage, one comes into the debt of another? I think there are two reasons for this, so let us explore them both.
First, it is because in marrying a person, you have entered into a covenant that has been established by God for humankind. And by marrying, I do not mean that you have a civil contract with another person through the state; rather that you have united with a partner of the opposite sex and have become one flesh through the union of the two bodies. Remember that a covenant is a sacred vow, in which one or more parties make commitments to each other. At that moment of matrimony, they therefore each become debtors to the other party.
And the most important stipulation in the marriage covenant is that husband and wife are united as one flesh through the giving and receiving of sexual love. This is the second reason why a married partner becomes a debtor to their spouse. It is only through their sexual union that husband and wife can become united in one flesh. Genesis 2:24 says:
[SCRIPTURE SLIDE]
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
God’s design for humanity was for a man or woman to leave their family and be united in matrimony with someone from the opposite sex. Notice that the union of the one flesh comes through “holding fast.” And as you can guess, “holding fast” is a euphemism for sexual love.
If you are married, you are—by nature—a debtor of intimacy for your spouse. The union of a marriage comes through not only the initial act of intimacy, but through the repeated coming together of husband and wife in conjugal love. And it is a two way street. Each partner is a debtor to the other. And failure to pay that debt on a regular basis will cause friction and disunity within a marriage.
(beat)
When I do marriage counseling, one of the first things that I want to know is how often husband and wife are engaging in their marital duty to each other. I don’t need specifics, I just want to know how often. Is it days, weeks, months, years? And you might ask, why would you want to know such a thing? Isn’t that private and to be kept between the husband and wife?
But it tells me how bad things are in a marriage. It shows me where I need to start helping them. You see, sexual intimacy is the highest form of communication within a marriage. If they are not uniting regularly in body, they will probably not be united in mind. And if they are not uniting regularly in body, they are also disobeying their created purpose as husband and wife made in the image of God.
So, it becomes a two-fold issue. There becomes a disunity between husband and wife, but there is also becomes a disunity between the married couple and God. They cannot draw close to and glorify their creator God if they refuse to fulfill his mandate. And because of these consequences from disunity, the enemies of God will drive a wedge in that marriage relationship if you allow them to. Above all, Satan and his ilk are destroyers of relationships.
Uniting often—and regularly—will help the married couple to maintain unity and fend off temptation. But Paul goes further. Verse 4:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
Not only do the husband and wife owe each other sexual intimacy, but in the conjoining of the two people into one, they no longer have sole authority over their bodies. The husband belongs to his wife and the wife belongs to her husband.
It should be striking to us, that in a patriarchal world, women in Ancient Judaism and Christianity had such authority within the marriage. This is part of what sets them apart from the other nations. In most Ancient cultures, women were property to be used and disposed of by men as they saw fit. Oh, but not in God’s economy.
God created both men and women. And they were made for a purpose. The fact that the Bible says that Adam was created first does not make Eve a lesser creature. In fact, if you pay attention to the words written in Hebrew, Eve is the creation that makes Adam finally whole. She is not made from a rib, as if Adam could be made whole from the removal and restoration of a single bone. Instead, she is called Adam’s helper because she is taken from his side.
The text implies that Adam was put to sleep and that God took half of him and created a complimentary partner. The implication is that without Eve, Adam could not be a whole person. Without Eve, Adam would not be able to fulfill his mission and mandate.
Women were created by the Almighty Holy Creator God to be equal in value, but different than men. They have a different intention and purpose within God’s design. And because men and women are meant to come together in unity through the marriage covenant, neither can be whole by themselves.
When they enter that covenant of marriage, they willingly become debtors—they willingly submit themselves to one another. In that way, each has authority over the united body. Paul will use this same symbolism of marriage unity to speak of the church to the church at Rome. In Romans 7, he says that “through the body of Christ,” believers belong to one another.
He will also go on to elaborate on this point in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3: that each partner within the marriage become willing servants of the other for the good of the united body under Christ. That husband and wife willingly enter into a covenant of mutual submission to each other.
Husband and wife should be selfless lovers, seeking the good mental health and spiritual wellness of their spouse through mutual service in the marriage bed. Paul continues:
[PASSAGE SLIDE]
Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Paul says that husband and wife should not deprive each other the duty that is owed. The word “deprive” here in Greek is to steal, rob, or defraud. That is—to withhold conjugal love from your partner is to rob them of their God-given purpose.
Withholding sexual intimacy from your marriage partner when it is desired is unbiblical. To withhold as a punishment to your spouse is manipulative and will cause severe harm to the relationship. The failure to come together regularly may deepen trust issues and cause the rejected spouse to experience greater sexual temptation.
On the other hand, we cannot get legalistic about this. Remember that both partners are called to serve one another, seeking the good of their spouse. In that sense, we should never coerce sexual love. That, too, is manipulative and hurtful. The coercion will cause serious trust issues and damage the relationship in every capacity. This action, too, can cause the hurt spouse to experience greater sexual temptation.
All of that being said, husbands and wives should fulfill their marital duty to each other as often as possible when their partner desires. There is not fine print with an opt-out clause in the marriage covenant. We should seek to serve our spouse in the marriage bed regularly.
But, as always—it comes back to the heart. Both hearts should desire to serve one another and bring God glory through their regular union. Both partners should seek the good of the other, never withholding or coercing through manipulation. But know there will be times where a husband or wife doesn’t feel that they can fulfill this obligation. And in those times, we should give our spouse grace and seek to love them more by serving them in other ways.
When you, as a united partner, learn to take pleasure in serving your spouse, you will begin to learn what it means to find joy in all capacities of life.
Paul finishes his thought: Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Paul gives the Corinthians one concession for withholding conjugal love from a spouse. Abstention from sexual intimacy within marriage should only be used as a purposeful fasting period for rest or spiritual discipline, and only in equal agreement between partners.
A spouse cannot withhold sexual love out of devotion to God because intimacy within a marriage is worship of the God who created male and female for the purpose of coming together in unity.
Failure to come together often and regularly can and will lead to issues of temptation in addition to bringing disunity into your home. Failure to come together often and regularly can breed chaos and fragment self-control within both husband and wife. Failure to come together often and regularly can put us and our families in spiritual danger by making temptation more alluring.
(Beat)
Christian, if you are struggling with issues with sex, pornography, or sexual immorality, they must be addressed. Don’t forget that Paul instructed us to flee from sexual immorality. You may think that you can conquer those things alone, but you cannot. Confess to someone you trust and let them help you walk through it and hold you accountable.
Husbands and wives, if you are struggling with sexual intimacy, it may be that there are severe issues with communication and trust within your marriage. Do not be ashamed about it. Ask for help. My door is open to you. Or, if you rather, I can recommend someone to you. Practical biblical counseling can help you get back on track to imaging God wellas a united couple.
[PREVIEW SLIDE]
Application
Next week, Pastor Jon Pennington will be with us and will be “tracing God’s plans” with us through Zechariah 4. I hope that you join us for that and for our rescheduled potluck and Family Business Meeting.
But, before we close, consider God’s plan for your marriage—or for your future marriage. How will you step into God’s design for you and be the partner that He deigned you to be?
How can you better love and serve your partner now?
Let us seek to bring God glory through our marriages.
For those of you not married at this time, you too have many things to learn from this passage. How will you attune your heart to God so as to serve those around you and bring Him glory?
Will you respond to the call of Jesus to make disciples and multiply spiritual children?
Will you be more united to the church as the body of Christ?
Invitation
If you aren’t following Jesus this morning, know that God has designed and created you for a purpose. Come and be a part of His family and we will help you walk into all that He has designed for you.
CLOSE IN PRAYER
CLOSING HYMN
CONGREGATIONAL BLESSING
