The Sanctity of Marriage

A number of years ago, I had a personal tradition, and that is that after Unloving Bread, I would, that next week, give a sermon related to the subject of marriage. And I've let that slip in recent times. But I want to give a sermon on the sanctity of marriage. We live in curious times, and they're just getting curiouser and curiouser, aren't they? And maybe that's not a strong enough word for what we're facing, because they're obviously, in this society, an all-out attack upon the institution of marriage. Any time I address the topic of marriage, I realize that there are people who are single, and there are people who are widowed, and there are people who are divorced. And yet, you know, when we are introduced to the story of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first thing we're faced with is that marriage was instituted. And so, we do need to speak on the topic from time to time. In pulling out an old file, I ran across an article that was written by Mitt Romney. At that time, he was governor of Massachusetts. And this appeared on OpinionJournal.com, titled, One Man, One Woman. This was written in February of 2004, so it's a few years ago. But at that time, you may remember there was a debate waging about whether we needed a marriage definition, which doesn't, marriage, imply that it's one man, one woman. But we have forces working within our society, trying to take us away. And we have this unrelenting attack upon the institution of marriage. And against the things that we'll find here in just a minute, that God established back in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. So, Mr. Romney wrote that, and this was after in the state of Massachusetts, there had been a state supreme court ruling that permitted same-sex marriages. Now, he says, contrary to the court's opinion, marriage is not, quote, an evolving paradigm, end quote. It is deeply rooted in the culture, the history, and tradition of civil society. Marriage predates our Constitution and our nation by millennia. The institution of marriage was not created by government, and it should not be redefined by government. I think it's a very important point that he makes there. As our wedding ceremony states, marriage is a divine institution ordained of God at the creation, and that truly is. And so, government has no right defining or redefining it. Continuing, he says that marriage is a fundamental and universal social institution.

It is the foundation of a harmonious family life. Marriage is the basic building block of society. The development, productivity, and happiness of new generations are bound inextricably to the family unit. And as a result, marriage bears a real relation to the well-being, health, and enduring strength of any society. Marriage has everything to do with building a stable new generation and...

nation.

I also found...this is an email that came from H.B. London. H.B. London is a first cousin of James Dobson, and with focus on the family, Mr. London runs what they call the pastor's ministry. And for a number of years I took, I received this kind of this weekly email from H.B. regarding some of the trends. He tends to be very political. He wants pastors to get your congregations involved and call your senators and write your congressmen and things like that. But this particular time, this too comes from 2004, he said that an institution we care deeply about, the family, is not only under attack in our country, as it has never been before, but it is heading toward extinction. And then he gets political as far as the activism out there. And that's right, and it's true what he's saying. But he was calling for congregations to get involved in asking their leaders to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment. He said, we must show them that protecting one man, one woman marriage is of vital importance to our nation.

From focus on the family, I downloaded a fact sheet. They give kind of an overview, got all kinds of references here about some of the research done in the last 20 years or so. Current snapshot of marriage in America. And it says, in 1970, 3.2% of the nation's population over age 18 was divorced. 1970, and that was just the other day. Don't laugh, that's the year I graduated from high school. Just the other day, 3.2% of those over the age of 18 were divorced. By 1996, there was another study that took place, 1996. So, 26 years later, that percentage had risen to 9.4. So, it hadn't quite tripled, but the trend is distressing. Another fact, from 1960 to 1990, the number of children living with a divorced parent increased by 352%.

From 1970 to 1996, the percentage of cohabiting couples rose 412%. Now, 1996 till present, I think that it's only gotten much, much worse, because we have peoples of whatever age who think nothing of just simply living together. Don't want to be bothered with the legalities of all of it. From 1970 to 1996, the number of all people over 18 who had never married increased from 16 to 23%. And that's another trend. Fewer people are opting for a commitment called marriage. Well, a little later here, quote from another study, marriage and well-being, married people live longer and generally are more emotionally and physically healthy than unmarried. Married people have lower rates of alcoholism, suicide, and mental health problems. Married people are more likely to describe themselves as being, quote, happy and contented with life, end quote. Well, I think that's all we need to see from there, but there's a large study that was done by the Rutgers University. It came out in 2003, the National Marriage Project. It's a lengthy report. You can do a search and find it easily. But the state of our unions, plural, the state of our unions, 2003, and let me just read a little smattering here and there. This is written by Dr. David Popeno, who was one of the lead individuals making this study. Marriage has been much in the news lately, but we hear very little about the actual state of marriage. How is marriage actually faring in American society today? Is it becoming stronger or weaker? Is it sicker or healthier? Is it better or worse? Well, I'll skip lots of this. Let me go down here. He says that marriage is a fundamental social institution. It is central to the nurture and raising of children. It is the social glue that reliably attaches children to their fathers. It contributes to the physical, emotional, and economic health of men, women, and children, and thus to the nation as a whole. Over in there, some of their concluding remarks have written that it is easy to ignore children's interests in marriage when marriage is defined primarily as a couple relationship. And yet, children have a compelling stake in their parents' marriage. It is a source of social and economic advantage for them. It provides a reliable means of attaching fathers to the family over long term. It brings together under one roof the two people who have brought them into the world and who have a mutual interest in their well-being. One of the best things society can do for children is to create the conditions for happy, healthy marriages. The sanctity of marriage. We have all kinds of information that we can look at on the dark side of what's happening to marriage, not just in this country, but around the world. In the years, that number of years, probably over 20 years, from time to time the church has used the church's ministry, have been trained in using this marriage assessment called Prepare and Rich. You may have heard it. I generally don't use it anymore, but at one time we used it a certain amount. The prepare side of it is an assessment to help in counseling a young couple, well, or a not so young couple, but a couple moving toward marriage. The enriched side of it is of an already existing marriage where they want to make it better. A number of years ago, and within that, these assessments, they have all types of different categories.

Of course, you have the premarital, you have then the married couple, you have some who both have been divorced, so different categories. A few years ago, they added another category called those who are cohabiting because pastors were having people come to them, and they were living together, and maybe they'd been living together a long time, and they came on in counseling on how to keep their, whatever you call, that type of relationship together.

This comes from this Rutgers study as well. The percentage of children living in single parent families has risen from 9% in 1960 to 28% in 1998.

35% of children under 18 now live apart from their biological fathers. So that's more than one out of three do not live with their biological fathers.

More than 40% of first-time mothers ages 15 through 29 are not married. Now, James Dobson wrote, as he looked at some of these statistics, he added, he said that behind these numbers are millions of hurting people. Husbands, wives, and children, for whom everything stable and predictable has shattered. These statistics represent the pain of loving wives who committed themselves wholly and unreservedly to men who later rejected them for others.

These statistics speak of husbands who are struggling now to raise their kids alone because their wives decided they didn't want to be mothers anymore. And, of course, they reflect the pain of children who cry themselves to sleep at night because they hear their parents at each other's throats in the neighboring room. Let's look at the subject of marriage. Marriage foundations, the sanctity that God attached to it.

We have more and more people who don't bother with marriage. More choose to just cohabit or to come together when they want whatever fulfillment they're looking for. Personal gratification. Let's go over to Genesis 2.

Genesis 2.

And we will look at the passage from verses 18 down through 25. We see a number of things here, but let's read it first. Genesis 2 verse 18. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone.

I will make him a helper comparable to him. Now, we get some of the rest of the story filled in, the next two or three verses. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called, each living creature, that was its name.

Now, this is harkening back to the events of the sixth day of creation that was spoken of or written of in the latter verses of chapter 1. And God delayed for a reason, He delayed creating Eve. And here is a period of time where the animals passed by and reviewed in front of Adam, and Adam named them. The male and his female, for each one there was a direct and perfectly created counterpart for whatever animal that was. Verse 20, So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.

In verse 21, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother. And we have this quoted in the wedding ceremony that we've used for decades. And a lot of wedding ceremonies will have this included as well. And be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Now, in reading through this, what do we find? Well, we see that a purpose for marriage is to have male-female companionship, a relationship.

Because up to this point on that sixth day, as the animals passed by and Adam named them, it was impressed upon him that this perfect counterpart for himself had not walked by yet. There was no one suitable for him. There was no one there to compliment him, to fill him up. There was a void in his life, and that's the way marriage is supposed to be. Now, if we share a few movie quotes, men especially are fluent in movie quotes. It's a whole language of its own. But one of the great sages of 20th century America, Rocky Balboa.

At one point he was explaining, I've got gaps. She's got gaps. Together we fill gaps. And his own eloquent way, I think we get the point. Or we have Jerry Maguire, the end of the movie, the character there, Tom Cruise played. And he came looking for his wife.

What is her name? I'm drawing a blank. Renee. Yeah, Renee Zewiger. And he comes looking for her. And he's finally explaining that you complete me. And I think that's when she rudely said, shut up, you had me at hello. Or, let's see, one of the men up in Murfreesboro reminded me after the Church of Jack Nicholson.

As good as it gets, thank you. Good as it gets. When he told Helen Hunt, you make me want to be a better man. You make me want to be a better man. Well, Adam was a singular piece of a puzzle designed to have another piece. But at this point, none existed. And when he was created, when he first saw her, that's when he said, together, you know, she and I are from one bone, one flesh. We're one. I think also as we read through these verses, we see that marriage between one man and one woman is God's idea.

God did this. The Creator God did this. And God doesn't make any mistakes. If you look back across probably the page in your Bible, the last verse of chapter 1, it says, then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. That was the sixth day. That's when Adam and then later Eve were created. And God said, it's very good. A man and a woman being bound together in a miracle institution is God's idea.

Marriage is the very first institution that God created with respect to human beings. Right on the heels of Eve being created, there's some type of a binding here that took place. And the man shall be joined to his wife, singular. His wife, not wives. That came along later. But when Christ walked the earth, He pointed back to right here. A man shall leave, a man and a woman leave his father and mother and plead to each other. One man, one woman.

I think we also see here that human beings are relational beings. And this marriage between one man and one woman was the first of an interdependent human relationship that we have coming along. This is where it started. Of course, then they got the resources together and they raised a little cane and then they raised a little able and the rest is history. But this is the beginning of this interdependency where human beings are bound together. And sometimes it's a very intimate, close relationship.

And again, God designed husband and wife as the primary relationship of family. Now, we read the latter part of verse 24, they shall become one flesh. So there is this oneness that is spoken of. And this involves far more than the physical side of marriage. That's certainly there. One of our booklets, I think it's the one on marriage and family, the man wrote about this pleasure bond that is there.

And there is a pleasurable experience that is there that God intended. But this binds two together when there's this exclusive relationship. It binds two together. They become one. There is an intimate oneness. But that unity is far more than the physical act. It binds us together emotionally. It binds us together spiritually. Many of us here have that blessing of being called together and sharing those things spiritually with a spouse. And what a wonderful blessing that can be.

But within a marriage, God is one author I read years ago. And He likened it there in James 1. He talks about looking into the perfect law of liberty. And it's kind of painting the picture as one would look in a mirror. And that within the marriage that God gives us a spouse, and then He holds it. It's as if God holds up that spouse as a mirror to see reflected back at us what God wants us to see. And what God may want us to change.

For instance, fellows, if we are wanting to complain about being nagged at, maybe God's trying to tell us something. Maybe we ought to learn that when the house is falling apart, it's important to our wives that we repair the toilet. That we repair the leaky faucet. That repair is something that doesn't work. Because you see, it's a foreign thought to we male types, but the home is this reflection of who and what our wife is as a person.

It's everything to her. And when it's in disorder and disarray, and when it's broken down, then it says something to others. And so, if we're being nagged at, then maybe God's trying to tell us something that we need to learn from that, and go into action to take care of our family, and act more quickly. But you know, within a marriage, the individuals are not carbon copies of each other.

But the more each individual is over time transformed into the image of Christ, the more we move toward unity and oneness. As Christ said so long ago, I and my Father are one. There is a marvelous unity there within the God family. That right now is the one we call God the Father and Jesus Christ, our elder brother.

There is a remarkable unity that was there long before we human beings came along. Different individuals, yes. You see that in the height of His agony that night when Christ was praying in Gethsemane. And He cried out to the Father, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me. But then He said, nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. He was perfectly submissive to the plan that they had had from, well, Revelation tells us, from the foundation of the world.

Now, there is a synergy. This is where you have different parts, and in this case you have two parts, two individuals who come together and become greater and accomplish more as a singular unit than they ever would have accomplished as separate individuals. Now, let's get some thought to this idea of God's purpose of taking two and making them into one. And let's back up, first of all, over to Chapter 1, Genesis 1. And here in verse 26 we begin reading, Then God said... Now, as we know, the word God here is translated from the Hebrew word Elohim.

In the Hebrew, when you have that, whereas it's transliterated between languages, when it ends in the I-M, that denotes a plural. Like in English, we often would just add an S or an E-S to denote a plural. Elohim, God said, let us... And the translators recognized there's a plurality here, and they used the capital U. Let us make man in our capital O, our image, according to our likeness. And so, we see that God creates human beings after His own image, His own likeness.

And verse 27, so God created man in His own image, and the image of God He created Him male and female. He created them. And so, He did this by design, and God doesn't make mistakes. But one of the reasons to have an institution where two move toward becoming one, is first of all, to mirror God's image. That's our first point, to mirror God's image. In many, many ways, a marriage over time begins to more completely mirror the relationship between God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.

At the very core of God's nature is a relationship. God is a family. And Paul wrote there to the church at Ephesus, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. God is building a family. A family is a relationship of a group of people, all interrelated and all dependent upon each other. So each individual, at least here first of all in a marriage, compliments the other person, fills in the gaps, fills the void, makes the other one want to be a better person.

And as God is one, so are a pair of spouses and a married couple to be moving toward becoming one, sharing that oneness that is a reflection of the very character and unity of God.

Now, we read already in chapter 2 verse 18, and the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. Now keep your place here in Genesis. Not that it's hard to find again, I guess.

Let's look at 1 Corinthians 11. 1 Corinthians 11. And just notice verse 11.

1 Corinthians 11 verse 11, Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman independent of man in the Lord. And this too speaks of this mutual interdependence. Our second reason, as far as God taking two and making them a singular unit, is to mutually complete the other. To mutually complete each other. And to complete speaks of the process of creating something that wasn't there, that didn't exist.

Now this presupposes, this understands that male and female is different. It amazes me how much research is out there showing and demonstrating and documenting the very clear differences between males and females. And every so often, you'll see, I know once, here just in recent weeks, here is a link to a news article. Kind of like it was a news flash! Research shows men and women are different. Well, duh! We've all seen that. We were blessed to have a son and then a daughter. And then another one later on. But those two were just Ben and Jenny just a couple of years apart. And I remember we had moved to Lubbock, Texas. Ben was five, Jenny was three. Probably a year later, I came walking in the front door. And here came two little children running up to me and they began telling me about the same event that had taken place there in the backyard. And Ben began telling me about our tomcat and Thomas caught this bird. And he told me what he did to the bird. And, Dad, you should have seen the blood and the guts were everywhere. And he ate that bird. What a super cat! And then there was a puddle of tears behind him. And Jenny began telling me about that poor, poor birdie. And what Thomas and how could Thomas the cat do that to that bird? And if I hadn't known before, I would. I think I would have concluded, you know, I think they're different.

They're different. Male and female. There are differences. There are gaps. And together, God intends that we mutually complete the other and fill the gaps that are there. I should underscore that everyone in a spiritual sense, in an eternal sense, everyone has the same incredible potential.

The Apostle Paul made that clear when he wrote those of the churches in Galatia. That's not male and female. There's no bond or free. There's no Jew or Greek. We're all one. If we're Christs, then we're Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. So we need to underscore that. Equal in worth, but different in design by God's very purpose. He made us that way to learn, to complement, and to complete each other. And in the union of one man and one woman, we can mutually complement the other in the way that God designed us. And that is true physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, in every sense of the term.

Okay, number three, as far as God decided to take two and make one, number three is to illustrate the relationship between Christ and the church. Now, once again, keep your place here in Genesis, lest you never find it again. And let's go to Ephesians 5. Ephesians 5. And we read some of the thoughts, inspired thoughts, of the old single man Paul. But we remember that all Scripture is by inspiration of God. Ephesians 5. And I think it's always healthy for us to start in verse 21, because here it tells us that we're to be submitting to one another in the fear of God. Submission is a two-way street. It's not just one way. It's not a wife, toward, or husband. We're in this together. We all submit. And then it says, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Yes, just like when Jesus cried, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done. Verse 25, husbands loved your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her. And as the Passover was coming up, weeks leading up to that, the Passover, the days of Unleavened Bread, we understandably focus quite often upon the sufferings of Christ. We, as Paul said to the church at Corinth, we discern the Lord's body. We break it into its pieces to try to understand it a little more completely. And He gave Himself. He died a horrible death for His wife. And, fellas, maybe we need to chew on that some more. Whether or not, and consider whether or not we are giving ourselves for our wife and for our family in the way that Christ gave Himself for all of us. Verse 26, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word.

That He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having a spot or wrinkle or any such thing. But that she should be holy and without blemish. So, us husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. I've got a book at home. The title is, Husbands, Do Yourself a Favor, Love Your Wife.

Verse 29, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. And in verse 31, I think we've read this somewhere else. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, and oh, is it ever a mystery sometimes to those of us even in the body of Jesus Christ, but certainly to the world around us that does not have a clue as to what is being played out here. So, thirdly, God designed this work to become this singular unit to illustrate the relationship between Christ and the church.

And as one spouse serves the other, and loves the other unconditionally, and puts the other's needs in front of his or her own, and as he or she lays down their life for the other, we live out. We illustrate. We demonstrate the relationship between Christ and the church.

And just as Christ loves the church, so much so that He gave Himself for her. So, a husband and wife are to be devoted to each other in the same manner. Now let's go back to Genesis 1. Another reason where God said that I'm going to take two of you and I'm going to make one unit out of you.

Genesis 1. And notice this time, verse 28, the first half. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. And as we have commented before, if there is one commandment the Almighty gave to the human family, that they have obeyed, this is it.

They have figured a way, they have realized it is not rocket science, that it will work. And they have answered the call of the wild, and they have filled the earth. Seven billion and counting right now. That's a lot of people. A lot of people.

Now, this fourth point is to multiply a godly legacy. In other words, marriage provides for, this process of two coming together as one. And that speaks of the physical union, yes. It provides for the means of having, and then also beyond that rearing of children.

No woman on her own, no man on his own is prepared to have a child. It just can't work. It has to take two. You have to work together for that. Hopefully it's within something that is sanctioned by God.

God created family to be the primary learning environment for children. It's kind of a little micro-society, where they learn to love, they learn to relate, to relate to different types of people. They watch how mom and dad interface with other people.

They slowly but surely find that home, hopefully, is a safe haven. The world is filled with young people who don't have that. But hopefully within our families, the children have safe havens, where the time comes when they go out in the world. And you know, sometimes the world can cloud up and storm all over a person. And God help us to always have a family to run home to, where we're accepted and we're loved and we're appreciated and we're needed.

But God took the man and the woman and created a singular unit to bear children, to multiply a godly legacy. Now, going back to this Rutgers study that came out, let me read just a little more from Dr. Popano. He said, In three decades of work as a social scientist, I know a few other bodies of data in which the weight of evidence is so decisively on one side of the issue. On the whole for children, two parent families are preferable. If our prevailing views on family structure hinged solely on scholarly evidence, the current debate would never have arisen in the first place.

A number of years ago, Denise in her fifth grade class, you know, you've got children basically 10, 11 years old in the fifth grade, and she had four boys living with a mother. Fathers not involved, not in their lives. And somewhere in the course of the year, in discussing the boys' behavior with the mother, the mothers would say to Denise, I don't know how to handle him. I can't handle him.

And to me, it just underscores the fact that we all need both the father and the mother. I suppose many men can remember, like I can remember, being my brothers and I in a bedroom. You got to the point where, you know, we're all 6 feet tall, 6'1", and there's a little mother. She'd call to us in the morning saying, OK, you boys, get up, get dressed, do your chores, get some breakfast, you've got to get to school. What will we do? We ignored her. We were warming in bed. Don't bother us, Mom. She'd call the second time. We'd ignore her. But then we heard a chair from the breakfast table sliding backward, and by the time Dad looked in the door, we had our blue jeans hitched up, and we were well on the way to moving fast.

I'm sorry, it's just the way it is. That's where, when sadly we do have, due to death of a husband or divorce, hopefully there's an extended family where grandfathers and uncles and others, cousins, can fill the void because that male influence is desperately needed. So, another quote here, this is from Carl Zinsmeister, Dr. Zinsmeister, again, with part of this Rutgers study, says, there's a mountain of scientific evidence showing that when families disintegrate, children often end up with intellectual, physical, and emotional scars that persist for life. He went on talking about the drug crisis, teen pregnancy, juvenile crime, and then he said, all these ills trace back predominantly to one source, broken families.

Broken families. All right. Why did God take these two and say, I want you to become one? Number five, I hope I've enumerated those. Number four was to provide, to leave behind this godly legacy. Number five, to found a healthy society, to found, to create, to develop a healthy society. Because we look at this world we live in today. The unrelenting attacks of the accuser of the brethren, the enemy of God, Satan the devil, have been taking its toll.

The family unit is being unraveled one strand at a time. And if you roll back the decades, if you had people like Sullivan, last name of Sullivan, who had a love of country and a love of family, that would not be understood in many circles in this world today. Historians tell us, it's a record of history, that every civilization that strays away from the union of one man and one woman and the building of a family, that any society that strays from that will eventually collapse. It's the story of ancient Greece, it's the story of ancient Rome, and it's happening before our eyes in our country as well. But if within the church of God, we strive with the help of God to recapture and to uphold God's ideal for marriage and for family, the significance, the benefit, the value beyond description, because individuals thrive within a happy marriage.

Individuals in a marriage are made complete as they experience oneness over time. And as the years go by, that's where one spouse can start a sentence and the other one finish it. That's why Grandma cries and Grandpa can taste the tears, rather the salt from the tears rolling down her face. It's a beautiful thing. We've been blessed. There was, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Fritz Sr. up in Murfreesboro just past 65 years together. What a beautiful thing it is. I remember the time in Roswell, New Mexico, we surprised A.C. and Vera Cates with their 60th wedding reception.

And their children, three children, came in, and the children had marriages that had lasted 38 and 41. Success, I think, breeds success. Oftentimes, again, there are other factors that may damage. There are things that happen that destroy a marriage that's outside of our control. But not only do the individuals in the marriage thrive, children thrive.

We've seen it through the years at camp. Some of you have taught school or are school teachers. You've seen it in the classroom. And some of you, as a niece, could tell with a child just wondering, okay, what's wrong? What's going on at home? And then finally, okay, now I understand. We've had kids, we've had a thousand and some kids come through the years down at Camp Woodman. And it's like I told them this morning, Mark and Neville and Smith, I've never ever had a problem with one of the Smith kids.

But they've got dad and mom, they've got uncle and aunt, and they've got grandpa and grandma. And the very thought that I might call one of them at home and say, well, I'm having trouble with Jacob, would scare the wits out of them. Now, as I said this morning, you know, up there, Mark's a different story. He came and worked at camp last year, and he was a little bit of a challenge, but now he did quite well.

But when we have solid families, solid communities, we have a society across the board that thrives. When marriage is held up as the ideal, societies flourish. But without strong, committed, stable marriages and families, the rest of society is weakened and will eventually crumble. And also, God is glorified because after all, He's the one who said, Take your spouse, leave your parents, and go start a whole new unit and become one.

And in the process, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached because we live in a world that, you know, oftentimes, usually it's the times of funerals we think when we lose someone who's been with us a long, long time, and maybe it's been a 40 or 50 or 60-year marriage. We can't help but think, you know, that person, that couple's picture needs to be placed on the wall at every justice of the peace and in every church building in this country. Young couples need to be required to hear the story of what that couple went through.

Let's close over here in Philippians 2.

Philippians 2, it's a personal belief of mine that in the church of God, we ought to have the happiest marriages of all time. Now, that's dependent upon the other person in the marriage as well, so we understand that.

Philippians 2, verse 15, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. So, with the help of God, let us deeply appreciate our spouse, our family, and let us shine as lights to a world in darkness. So, have a wonderful Sabbath, brethren.