“Whom God Has Joined” (Part 1 of 2)

These books, magazines, TV shows, reflect a culture that is increasingly confused about relationships, especially traditional marriage today on Truth for Life Alastair Begg looks at the importance of sexual purity and marital fidelity in the midst of this broken culture invited to take your Bibles and will turn to Exodus chapter 20, and to the 14th verse for those of you who may be visiting with us today.

We are in our series on the 10 Commandments this morning. As you will note, we've come to the seventh, which reads as follows. You shall not commit adultery if the statistics are accurate. This is a very vital statement just at this point in history, and no more so than at any other point, but certainly breaks with real significance into an environment in which more than half of our nations men are reputed to have been or are involved in extramarital affairs.

1/3 of the women in the United States of America are also so described at the same time the Christian population makes big claims for end loud cries about traditional values and get it would appear that many allies are equally confused about the very values we choose to shout about in a very recent study, some two thirds of the Christians interviewed said that divorce was a quote reasonable solution to a problem. Marriage and 45% of the Christians interviewed stated that the children produced by unhappy marriage partners should not serve under any circumstances to keep the family intact so we have a strange problem. We have moms and dads on the one hand, extolling the virtues of purity before marriage and fidelity after marriage and then themselves devastating and disappointing. The very children that they are seeking to rear in the framework of these biblical principles as long ago at 1631. The producers of aversion and addition of the King James version Bible, where find 300 pounds by Archbishop law that finding was significant 300 pounds was probably equivalent to a lifetime's earnings and the reason for the fine was simple. The folks who have produced this Bible had been responsible for leaving a word out of it. It was the third word in the 14th verse of Exodus 20, thus rendering the commandment you shall commit adultery from 1631. On this edition of the Bible became known as the wicked Bible and sadly and without any humor we might ironically admit that it would seem that all too many preachers and hearers have been putting the wicked Bible to bad news. We don't need to start rehearsing the last few years of American Christianity and the tawdry dreadful example that has emerge from the walls of Christendom.

We are all tired with the same brush as Christians.

While we know that Jesus in the sermon on the Mount said we were to be salt, thus having an impact upon our culture that would bring taste and would bring distinctiveness to that which was putrefying that we were to be like in the midst of darkness sadly we are not quite as salty as we might be. Indeed, we are somewhat tasteless in our life would seem to be very dim, at least in the matters of sexual purity and marital fidelity. The problem is that we have half of it correct Jesus in John 17 prays for his followers nieces.

I pray father that you do not take them out of the world, but that you leave them in the world that you keep them from the evil one. So if we might picture that the boat is in the water. Is it supposed to be. We live where we were supposed to live. We haven't gone up a hill and hid. We are in the thoroughfares of life. That's right. And that's where we should be but sadly the boat is taking on water at an alarming rate.

Instead of being able to channel our course without inviting the mindset the thought forms of a culture which is alien to God and to God's word. We are shipping water faster than ever we should Lord Justice Denning writing in the United Kingdom said we reach the position where adultery or infidelity or misconduct as softhearted people call it is considered to be a matter of little moment. It is no longer a bar to advancement to any offices of state high or low, whereas any other form of stealing would mean the end of a career. And frankly, we know that to be true. It is exemplified on every occasion that we turn around in the political processes of this country, strange ambivalence. I was in the 60s and the early 70s. On the heels of a sexual revolution that psychiatrists and sociologists began to give a measure of intellectual sophistication to old-fashioned sin, Martin Hunt, sociologists, writing in 1969, said the disapproved model, namely polygamy seems better suited to the emotional capacities and requirements of many people, particularly men.

It offers renewed excitement and continual expressions of personal rediscovery.

It is an answer to the boredom of lifelong monogamy.

We are says by nature polygamist, but he should have said was we are by nature dreadfully sinful, rather than accommodating ourselves to a lifestyle which is warped the Scriptures, the 10 Commandments here, and in particular call as to line up against the perfect standard of righteousness.

Call us to bring ourselves with the enabling of God's spirit into a lying which far from tyrannized thing and destroying releases as imperfect freedom is the ultimate freedom to become a bondslave to Christ and to his word.

It is the ultimate enjoyment to live in obedience to God's truth. Now this introduction concerning the confusion of our culture is in order to help us understand that as we take these ancient words from Exodus 20 they do not simply reverberate in the air with insignificance by the actually come to our lives with great import and impact the confusion that is represented in our present culture in relation to all matters of sexual and moral purity is having an impact that is so incredible that it is virtually out of control. It is estimated that 80% of adolescents in psychiatric wards are the product of this kind of marital care's that three out of four teenage suicides and nerve which from the inability of the adolescent psyche to call with the fact that his dad or his mom or her mom or dad let them down or very expert at making it appear that we are able with a little support group here in the little counseling there to absorb all of this. It's not the case, we are confronted by broken up people with their broken down life's they go broken up homes and broken husbands and wives. You think that it is almost time for people to waken up and say you know I wonder if we were to go back to the maker's instructions. If we wouldn't find something there to address the predicament wouldn't be an amazing thing to hear one of our leaders bold enough to simply say, guess what this week I was reading my Bible and Isaiah read my Bible.

I discovered that Almighty God, in whose hands is our breath and our destiny has determined that life is so sacred and marriage so precious and purity so important that we are going to convene a gathering of people who will examine what it might mean for our society for our schools for our towns for our universities to begin to live life in accordance with the principles of God's word in your dreams and your dreams.

Don't wait for don't expect don't even waste your time trying to make it happen.

I would say because never in the history of humanity has there been a significant turnaround in a culture as a result of the embracing of external factors and trying to lay them down on every awakening has come as a result of the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the only power to change a life and only with a changed life will there be a change mine and with a change mine. Will there be a changed lifestyle. If you think that I am more than a little pessimistic and I don't want to be because of all people.

We want to stay where we began this morning. There is all we want to believe the best and hope the best we want to try for the best. We want to impact our culture for its good, but listen in DeFuniak Springs that well-known place the Somme in Florida. Wherever it is lawyers for a man charged with child abuse asked the trial judge to remove a plaque containing the 10 Commandments from outside the courtroom door. The reason being said, the attorney was that it prejudiced the jurors as they entered his client had clearly broken the seventh Commandments.

I didn't want anybody seeing that commandment or any other commandment. As he walked in.

Nobody had the guts to remove it or to say leave it in so they fudged it and they all left subsequently in the state of Georgia and in the state of Florida to other cases were brought concerning the 10 Commandments on the wall outside the court and in each case, the judges ruled for their removal, declaring the display of the 10 Commandments to be on constitutional so we live with this strange schizophrenia inside the courtroom.

The plaintiff stands and looks of the words written behind the judges head in God we trust no one has a clue in their minds what that means, and he certainly not art ought not to be so foolish as to believe that to trust in God means to obey his word and means to honor these 10 Commandments, which we want to unscrew from the walls of our corporate you are unscrewing hopefulness and replacing it with hopelessness where unscrewing principal and replacing with that which is merely puerile extensions of men's fleshly interests or what does the Bible say in the midst of this confusion well the good news is that as confused as things are around as the Bible is really clear and what I like to do is address with you the clarity with which the Bible speaks concerning the sanctity and to have marriage, and therefore the keenest nature of adultery.

Let's be very very clear that every time the Bible speaks about marriage. It makes it obvious that it is a high view of marriage and all that is per part and parcel of marriage God has ordained and loves and is committed to including all the physical enjoyment that that union contains the Bible makes it equally clear that marriage is not a sacrament, some of us have been brought up believing, nor is it a redemption ordinance unique to Christians but marriage is a creation ordinance as Jesus spoke, he said that it was from the beginning that God ordained that a man should leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh. So that from the very beginning of the creation of man and the construction of the civil order God intended that marriage should be what was involved in the lives of men and women. This is something that we need to think out. We want take time to think it out now. But God's design for the continuance of the human race was marriage, and there are good marriages that aren't Christian believe that because God established marriage is a creation ordinance and there are bad Christian marriages because in Christian marriages. You have sinners saved by grace, who still sin.

We need to think biblically about these things and many of us have determined that because something happened before we were Christians that somehow or another, God wasn't interested in it before we were Christians hearing God wasn't interested in marriage before you became a Christian giving that he didn't care about your marriage because you are in a Christian.

Of course he cared. He established it from the beginning of creation marriage would have significant that is not to say that Christian marriages do not have unique potential and unique power because of the presence of Christ. But as Christians we need to be concerned about all marriage. The marriage is even of our non-Christian neighbors and friends and status is not in question, and its standard is also clear in Ephesians chapter 5. You may like to turn to and remind yourself it's their we have Paul announcing the nature of marriage calling upon husbands and wives to live together in a certain way and the picture that he uses of the love between a man and a woman is the love between Jesus and his church, and he wants husbands to love their wives in the same way that Christ loved the church, has been should love their wives as their own bodies because we never hated our bodies but we feed for them we care for them. In what way, just as Christ does the church sources, such as Paul. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. He says this is a profound mystery this thing. But I'm talking about Christ and the church. I will you notice in passing their especially young people, as you look down on this in Ephesians chapter 5 in the process.

Here in verse 31 what happens.

How does marriage take place will first of all you leave your mom and dad okay. You should ask them about it and certainly if you're going to ask for a girls hand in marriage is you go and ask her dad because he may have a lot to say and with them a lot of justification, which, if you thought about yourself for a moment or two, you would understand why, but you go and you leave your father and your mother and then you get united to your wife. That's why we have marriage ceremonies, and the truth and become one flesh. I don't miss this to understand what our culture says is you go out and you find a girl or a guy, and you become one flesh with address is par for the course and that it may well be that you like them enough to go and ask her dad if you could marry them and then grabs if they say it's okay and even if they don't you go ahead and legitimize your illicit sexual relationship. This is the word of God. This is the maker's instruction book. This is the pathway to purity July to fulfillment to God's best, and everything else less than or other man is a dead-end street is that tragedy is a disaster waiting to reach out and grab you and some of you already know that to your own personal pain.

Listen to the word of God. Do not despise the instruction of God's word pay attention pay heed to the standard and status and sanctity of the marriage bond.

It is to be held in honor. It is not to be entered upon lightly nor carelessly as the marriage service says but thoughtfully, with reverence for God and with due consideration of the purposes for which it was established by God in marriage.

Two people are not entering into a contract in marriage to people are entering into a divine covenant. It is a great mystery they become one. It is one plus one equals one, they become interwoven with one another emotionally and psychologically and physiologically in an and in every dimension and it is this great union of all of that.

That makes marriage what it is that you see in passing loved ones is the monstrosity of removing one element of marriage from the context in which it is said, namely the sexual element of marriage. When you remove sex from the context of marriage, it becomes a monstrous thing, it becomes a disappointing thing becomes a devastating thing it becomes less than what God is intended when a man says that he wants a woman. He is not telling the truth he wants something that a woman makes possible.

And no one keeps the packet when they smoked the cigarettes and the discarded life's around our nation and heartache and pain and the shame and the disappointment that are represented in a congregation such as ours that bears testimony to the vacillation of many others in relationship to absolute biblical truth is believable and we are not alone.

So before we all get on our high horse to go and hit the main street to tell our non-Christian friends about Paul's traditional volume, let us examine our own hearts in relationship to the same boat and the answer is not in our homes. It's not in our huddles because as I say to you in our homes and in our huddles, we are equal to some of the most significant abuse of the very principal that is here contained. Do you hear me, do you hear God's word. The sacred union in marriage is not to be intruded upon by anybody. It is not to be arbitrarily broken by anyone.

I don't care what Cosmopolitan says I don't care about people magazine trashed a lot of nice start reading your Bible if some of you young women read your Bible is as much as you read that hogwash you'd be a lot more fit for getting married and you are right now some of you men paid attention to the principles of the book of Proverbs rather than filling your head with junk you would be a lot more attractive to some of those young women as they try to make their way through ask God his way back. The Bible is clear about the sanctity of marriage listing to Truth for Life. That's Alastair big warning us against accommodating the cultures warped lifestyle, it's surprisingly easy to get pulled into distorted thinking when we don't know our Bibles. That's why it's so important for us to study Scripture. In today's book recommendation will help you reflect on God's Word every single day for a full year book is titled Truth for Life 365 daily devotions and it's written by Alastair big the Truth for Life devotional will engage your mind and stir your heart as you spend time each day with God and his word you will enjoy reading passages from Genesis to Revelation. Learning how to apply what you put Alastair often encourages us to read through the entire Bible. It's practice he's found profitable in his own life.

So he's included a Bible reading plan in the footer of each page. If you include those passages as part of your daily devotions. You'll read through the whole Bible in a year requester copy of Truth for Life 365 daily devotions today is yours when you donate to support the teaching you hear on this program, visit us@truthforlife.org/about Lapine. Thanks for being with us today.

We hope you enjoy your weekend. Hope you're able to worship with your local church and then join us Monday for the conclusion of today's message will hear about the extensive damage causes and will learn three ways to safeguard ourselves from the lure of infidelity Bible teaching of Alastair big is furnished by Truth for Life were the Learning is for Living