The Battle for Biblical Marriage

What an incredible joy and blessing it is to gather with believers in a setting like this and actually hear people sing. Amen. It just seems like for a season there when we gathered together in numbers like this and in settings like this, you heard a lot of stuff, but not necessarily people singing. So he was encouraging to hear to hear you sing, and y'all did, okay, it did okay. My assignment tonight is to address the issue of marriage and family, and I think it is beyond critical to address this issue and address this question. In this day and age, marriage and family are absolutely under assault. I mean it really is, and from multiple angles and perspectives, and these are things that I've been talking about for a long time. But it's interesting that, you know, there are some things that the more you talk about them, and the longer you talk about them, the more evident they become, the more obvious they become, and sometimes it takes a while for people to kind of go, oh, yeah, I see that, and hopefully it's just it's not too late. We talked this morning about abortion as spiritual warfare, and I think the attack on the marriage, the attack of marriage and family is part of that same thing is spiritual warfare. When God declares to us that, you know, the marriage between a man and a woman is a picture of the living, loving relationship between the Lord Jesus Christ and his bride, the Church, it makes sense that our adversary, the devil, would do everything in his power to attack that institution, to deface and to defame that institution. And that is precisely what is happening. That it's under attack for that very reason. And you know, oftentimes when we talk about issues like this, we talk about marriage being under attack and marriage being redefined and all this kind of stuff, and you know, all of these issues that we're talking about, people talk about, you know, yes, this is true, and these things have been happening, and if you to go back and see sort of when these things started happening, a lot of people say, you know that it really the wheels came off in the sixties. You know, that's kind of, you know, just a common assumption, right that it was that era when the wheels just came off, And people have actually made statements like, you know, you need to go back to, you know, a time before that. We need to go back to those wholesome days of the nineteen fifties, to which I always respond, if you go back to the nineteen fifties, you're not taking me. And then they'll say something like no, no, no, the nineteen fifties without the racism, Like without the racism, it's not the nineteen fifties, right, I mean that, But it wasn't just that. It wasn't just that. Think about all the things that people are trying to escape and go back to a more wholesome time when we didn't have all these crazy things happening. Let's just take a little journey. Nineteen fifty is when the Korean War began, so you're not going to get away from wars. Nineteen fifty one very interesting. It's when South Africans had to start carrying their racial ideas. Oh yeah, yah, yeah, remember, just make that up. Nineteen fifty two, Who can forget the polio epidemic? Thousands Dad and named for life. We think about all this crazy sexual stuff. But Playboy magazine was first published in nineteen fifty three. You know that? Did You don't act like you knew that Playboy magazine first published in nineteen fifty three? Of course, you know in my home country. Nineteen fifty four, you had Brown versus the Board of Education, which led to the Little Rock Nine. And everybody knows that picture, that image of these nine little black children being escorted into a school in Little Rock, Arkansas by the National Guard. That was the nineteen fifties. Nineteen fifty five, Alan Ginsberg published his poem Howell, which was celebrating homosexuality. Nineteen fifty six helps scandalize the world on live TV, shaking his hips, making people crazy. Nineteen fifty seven, there was a movie called Gypsy, which was a stripper bio, the biography of a stripper that was turned into a movie. In nineteen fifty eight, there was the movie Lolita, which celebrated pedophilia. Nineteen fifty nine, Castro took power in Cuba. So so much for the idyllic nineteen fifties. Amen, But okay, if not there, then where then where do we go to? If it's not the if it's not the nineteen fifties, maybe we just didn't go back far enough, right, Maybe we need to go to the eighteen fifties. I'm definitely not going with you there, seventeen fifties, the sixteen fifties. Listen, whatever era you choose, sin is there. Here's the other problem. Longing for another era is actually the sin of discontentment, blaming God for not putting you in the right place in time. And ultimately the problem is an overrealized eschatology. We want the promises that God makes for the life hereafter to be realized in the here and the now, and that's just not going to happen. So the problem is we haven't gone back far enough. If you want to go back, as it relates to marriage in the family, you had to go all the way back to before Genesis three, because that's where it got messed up. Amen, that's where it got messed up. Listen to this from Andreas Costenberger. Measured against the Biblical teaching on marriage in the family, it seems undeniable that Western culture is decaying. In fact, the past few decades have witnessed nothing less that a major paradigm shift with regard to marriage and the family. The West Judeo Christian heritage and foundation have largely been supplanted by a liberation ideology that elevates human freedom and self determination as the supreme principle for human relationships and their confusion. Many hail the decline of the biblical traditional model of marriage and the family and its replacement by new competing moralities as major progress. And you know that sounds like hyperbole, right, I mean, who would see the demise of the family as major progress. There are a number of people who do. Ari Hoyckman was the head of the UN Population Fund. He denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out of wedlock births represent a social crisis, and he claims instead that they represent a triumph of human rights against patriarchy. Now, let me unpack that for you. This UN leader was arguing better for women to raise children by themselves than to do so in male headed households. Linda Gordon one of the leaders of the feminist revolution, this sort of third wave feminism. She wrote, the nuclear family must be destroyed. It's always funny to me when people talk about feminism and they say things like no, no, no, feminism. Feminism is just there because you know, men weren't doing what they were supposed to do, and they weren't leading, and so women just had to step into the vacuum. If you believe that, you know nothing about the history of feminism. That is absolutely not true. Listen to Linda Gordon's words. The nuclear family must be destroyed and people must find better ways of living together. Whatever it's ultimate meaning, the breakup of families now is an objectively revolutionary process. No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children. Just marinate on that for a moment. No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her special responsibilities to her children. Families will be finally destroyed only when a revolutionary social and economic organization permits people's needs for love and security to be met in ways that do not impose divisions of labor or any external roles at all. But that's Linda Gordon, right, that's just radical stuff. But that's not mainstream feminism. Okay, how about the Declaration of Feminism the Declaration maybe you heard of it November nineteen seventy one. The Declaration of Feminism. Marriage has existed for the benefit of men and has been a legally sanctioned method of control over women. We must work to destroy it. Yeah, that sounds like a bunch of women who just saw men as not stepping into no. The end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women. Therefore, it is important for us to encourage women to leave their husbands and not live individually with men. That's feminism. That's why Betty Fridan called the family a comfortable concentration camp. Wynnie McElroy, commenting on this, says, although gender feminist view of marriage borders on the absurd, for example, houseworkers surplus value, it is key to understanding the depth of hatred they aim at heterosexual sex and men. This, in turn is key to understanding the emotions that fuel sexual correctness. To the sexually correct feminist marriage oppresses women and the family breeds patriarchy. There's that word again. Both result from capitalism. Happily, married women are considered pathological and traitorous. That's what we're dealing with here. Stephen Baskerville sort of sums this up. The sexualization of politics and the politicization of sex is the most important and least scrutinized political developments Since the nineteen sixties and forty years, the political left has transformed itself from a socialistic campaign against prosperity an enterprise into a sexual attack on the family, marriage and masculinity. So it's not just a war on marriage and the family, but it is particularly a war on masculinity. That's the problem. The problem. You hear this word patriarchy used over and over again, right, and now it's the patriarchy if you're in the know, right, it's not patriarchy. It's the patriarchy. The idea that male headship is inherently repugnant and oppressive. Small problem, as it was God's idea, which means to go to war with the idea of patriarchy is to go to war with the God of the Bible. And that's exactly what we see happening. And this is not new. So let's go back to where we started this morning, and let's look more closely at the biblical text in Genesis chapter two. We looked at Genesis chapter three this morning, in the fall. But let's go back before the fall, because that's where we got to go to. It's not going to help us to go to the nineteen fifties or eighteen fifties, seventeen fifty wherever. You've got to go back to the place before everything went wrong and when we go back there, we see marriage in the family as God designed and intended it. Genesis, chapter two, beginning of verse eighteen. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. By the way, this is the first time that God says something is not good. But sin hasn't entered into the world, so this not good is not a moral not good. God's not saying that something is immoral. He's saying that something is not good in the sense that it is not complete in the way that he intends for it to be. It's not good for the man to be alone, because that does not complete this picture that God is painting. If you will now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. Now that sounds completely out of place. It's not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper for him. Seems like the next line ought to be so he made, but that's not the next line. The next line is him forming the beast of the field and getting Adam to name the animals. There are a number of reasons for this, and we will get to those, but let's just think about a couple of theological issues here. Has no concept of alone. Amen that that wouldn't even have been a word in his vocabulary. Alone? What is alone? When you when you walk with God in the garden in the cool of the day, what is that? Why? Why is that even going to creep in? He has no concept of need as far as he's concerned, and as far as he knows, all of his needs are met. He's not aware of a need of his that is unmet. Thus, God demonstrates here that marriage is his idea, not man's. And this is incredibly important because the way marriage is being attacked it is by people basically arguing that that men established marriage in order to establish dominance over women. Not only is that not true, it's ridiculous. Do you know how hard it is to convince young men that they need to get married? And so these people again, these these they're they're they're evolutionists, and they believe that, you know, men just sort of evolved from lesser primates, right, and then all of a sudden as we evolve from these lesser primates, the male of the species who's bigger and stronger than women, and able to dominate women and able to just have sexual conquests with women. One day, get together and have a meeting and say, listen, I've got an idea. How about each of us just take one. Come on, y'all. As we say in Texas, that dog won't hunt. In all seriousness, how do you how do you get there? How do you how do you get to the idea that men established marriage which actually domesticates us, Amen, takes us from being these wild things out there, and and and and and ties us to family and responsibility and all the time. Now it was God's creation, It's God's idea. So the man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the heavens, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. In other words, none of what he named was suitable to be his helper or his corresponding part, if you will. So, the Lord God calls the deep sleep to fall upon the man, And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. I love the fact that he makes the man go to sleep. The Bible doesn't tell us why he made the man go to sleep, and when the Bible doesn't answer a question, we should just leave the question unanswered. But isn't it fun to contemplate why do you make the man go so? Well? Because it would have hurt? I mean, God could have not made it hurt without making a man go to sleep, right. I think he made the man go to sleep for two reasons. Number one, so he wouldn't mess it up, and number two so he wouldn't take credit for it. Just saying right in the rib that the Lord had taken from the man he made he fashioned into a woman. The Bible doesn't use the same word for what God did when he made man and when he made woman. What he did with women is a lot more intricate and involved. It's almost like the Bible says, he grabs some dirt and there's Adam. Then he took her rib and he's like, wait, just wait, hold on, not yet, just now. Then the man said, m m m m, I promise you. That's the direct Hebrew translation right there, right, Yeah, this is at last bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She should be called Ishah or a woman, because she was taken out of ish or man. Amazingly, this is a reference to the complete equality of men and women. This is, at last, unlike anything else that he's seen or he's named. This is at last bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She's everything I am. She should even be called Eshah because she came out of ish He is not looking at a lesser being. He does not consider this a lesser being. He does not consider her of less value, of less worth, but he considers her everything that he is. This establishes a number of parameters for us. Number one, God designed marriage, not man. God design marriage not man, which means that man doesn't get to redesign marriage. We don't get to redefine marriage. There is no such thing as same sex marriage. I don't care what we write into our laws. I don't care what we write into our constitutions. We do not get to redefine this institution that God gave us at creation, that has been part of human existence since the origins of mankind. God designed marriage. It's his. God is the one who made marriage possible by bringing Eve to Adam. God set the parameters for marriage a man and a woman. And God is the one who organized the family. He's the one who gives the family its structure. Children could have come into the family any number of ways, but they come into the family being nurtured in the body of the woman for forty weeks, and then being nurtured from the body of the woman and nourished from the body of the woman thereafter. And we have the audacity to say that it's because of men, you know, organizing and designing things, that there is more of a nurturing burden on the woman than the man. That is absolutely ridiculous. God designed this. God designed it this way, and he designed it this way for a purpose. I love well anyway, I'll believe that word it is. Listen to this from Scott Brown and Jeff Pollard in their book The Theology of the Family. We need to recover the belief that God's purpose for and instruction of the family is a vital aspect of life in this world. We need to affirm in our generation that God created the family as an important element in the outworking of his eternal purpose. First, God created the family to give structure and order to the human beings that He made in his image. Second, the family provides the essential labor of teaching and preparation of children for churches, communities, cultures, and nations. Third, God creating the family in order to pass the Gospel from one generation to the next. Finally, God designed the family to be a living demonstration of various aspects of the glory of the Gospel and of the embodiment of biblical truths. This is why God has ordained that the family is the fountain head of culture. It is the first place on earth that culture is made, and it is the formation and I'm sorry, and in its formation of all other cultures. That's what the family is. That's what the family does, and ironically, the way God designed it. Women have a unique and powerful role to play in this process. It's so pivotal that we all know, no matter what language you speak, there's some version of the saying the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. You can't manufacture that. Forty weeks in the womb and then utter dependence for nurture and nourishment, a bond unlike any other. And God designs it that way, and we look at this beautiful gift and we spit on it, and we say that it's oppressive to women. God help us. God also gives marriage it's purpose or purposes. And there are three main purposes that we see for marriage here in this text. They are procreation, illustration and sanctification. Procreation, illustration and sanctification. Sorry, your happiness didn't make the list. It's always a fascinating one to me. You know, people come in and they just I'm just I'm just done. I just can't take it anymore. I'm just you know, I'm just I'm leaving. No, you're not. You can't leave you. You said better or for worse. I'm not even gonna ask you if this is better or worse because they're both covered. You said sickness health. I'm not even gonna ask you if this is sickness or health because they're both covered. You said rich or poor. Not gonna ask you which one this is because they're both covered. And you said until one of us die, and if one of you was dead, you wouldn't be talking about leaving. Yes, But you just don't understand. I am miserable, I'm unhappy, and I just don't believe that God would want me to stay here and be miserable and unhappy. Really, I just want to make sure I understand this. His only begotten son, his sinless, perfect, only begotten son, he crushed and killed for sins that he did not commit in order to redeem and ransom sinners. But you, he wouldn't want unhappy. I'm just trying to just trying to make sure that I'm understanding. You know that I'm getting this. Jesus got misery and suffering and agonizing death. But unhappiness means God's will for you has to be in another place, just something that you on. Procreation illustration sanctification. Procreation. What are we talking about here? We mentioned this earlier. It's God's first command, be fruitful and multiply. It involves bearing children and training children, and spreading the Imago day through the earth. It involves this cultural mandate that God gives us. Secondly, illustration, it's a physical model of a spiritual relationship. It's a triune representation of a triune God. It's really interesting when you think about this whole. It's not good for the man to be alone. You have the triune God, God, the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, who has existed throughout all eternity as one God in three persons. The Father is not the Son or the Spirit. The Son is not the Father or the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father or the Son. But the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. The Son is eternally begotten to the Father. The Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit exists in perfect unity and harmony within himself, absolutely and utterly complete, wanting for nothing and needing absolutely nothing. And this triune God, in this perfect relationship within himself, within the God he had, creates man in his image. He says, it's not good. So from the man precedes the woman, and then from the union of the man and the woman proceeded children. A beautiful, trying representation of the tryan God. You know, whenever I talk about that, somebody will come up and they'll ask me a question, and usually they're distraught, you know, because maybe they're single and they're just and they go, you know, I get that, and I see that, but what does that mean? Because you know, for me, I'm single, and so what does that mean, because if you know, if you had the marriage and then the children, and there I just ask a question, were you born of the union of a man and a woman? Yes, well, then you close the loop. Whether you get married and have children or not, you are fulfillment of this. Tryon picture, amen, somebody, and of course an earthly picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church. Sanctification again, procreation illustration, sanctification, active sanctification, avoiding sexual morality, enjoying God, honoring sexual relationships. First Corinthians, chapter seven, Washing with the water of the Word, Ephesians five twenty six, Speaking the Truth and Love Ephesians four, fifteen and sixteen, and then twenty five to thirty two. Marriage is sanctifying even when it's not making you happy, it's making you holy. Amen. People ask me you know where I grew up, and I tell them I grew up most well, some in Los Angeles, but mostly when I got married. Marriage. Marriage will grow you up. It will sanctify you. It will reveal sin and immaturity in you like nothing else in the world except having kids. And then you have both of them, marriage and parenthood sanctifying you. Then there's passive sanctification, learning to live with another imperfect sinner, procreation, illustration, sanctification. These are the purposes for which God gave us this incredible institution that we call marriage. God also establishes human sexuality. God designed men and women a binary A man somebody a binary. God designed men and women. There's two sexes. If you want to talk about genders, there's two genders. There's only two genders. There's only ever been two genders. There's only ever going to be two genders, because God only ever created two genders. And then people will always come up and they will say, well, yeah, well I've heard that there are these people and and and and and they're they're born, they're born intersex. Yes, there are people who have birth defects, but what these birth defects mean is that they have elements of both genders present. So intersex doesn't prove that there's not two genders. It actually verifies and validates the fact that there's only two genders, because whatever form of intersex is, it is some sort of interplay between the two genders. That's all there are. That's all there are. God designed the union between men and women, and he made it obvious Amen. He made it obvious. And in case we get confused, God designed the fruit of that union, so he lets us know when we got that right. Amen, he makes it clear and he makes it obvious. It's the way we were designed. God also designed the parameters surrounding that union. Another thing that God establishes is God establishes male headship before the fall. Even within evangelicalism there people who you know who. What they're trying to do is they're trying to be God's PR firm, right, like God needs a PR firm. Here's the news flash. God is not running for God. He was the only one around when the votes were cast, and there's never going to be a recount. He does not need a PR firm. Not really concerned about your opinion of him. He's utterly secure. And so what some evangelicals want to do is they want to sort of appease people who are upset about the patriarchy. And they want to say, oh no, no, no, no no. God didn't design marriage that way. That only came about after the fall. And even you know when Eve was cursed, right, you know when he will rule over you, that stuff came because of the fall. Not so much. A careful reading of Genesis one and Genesis two makes it clear that God designed male headship. Let me just give you these five reasons. Number one, the woman was made after the man male headship. Number two, the woman was made for the man. It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a help or suitable for him male headship. Thirdly, the woman was made from the man. Four the woman was brought to the man. And five the woman was named by the man twice twice. And in case that's not enough, in case that's just too sophisticated for you, let's just look quickly at the biblical text. Turn with me to the Book of Romans, and look at Romans chapter five. We almyst have to five and I we're gonna We're gonna start before what I want to get to, because this is just too good. Look at look at you any verse six. For while we while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even die. But God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one couple, and now what yours says in mine either, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sin for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. But sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. Why does Adam get blamed? Male headship before the fall, not as a result of the fall. Male headship is not punished because of the fall. Male Headship is God's design for marriage. Patriarchy is not an evil institution created by men to dominate women. Patriarchy is a God given order designed by God to protect women well for the sake of time. We won't go through this from the count Yes we will. From the Council on Biblical Equality. Nice fancy name. Listen to what they say. But scripture is our authoritative first. Number one, Scripture is our authoritative guide for faith, life and practice. So far, so good. Two patriarchy, and then in parentheses male dominance. We've already We've already left the building. Patriarchy does not mean male dominance. It's male headship, but they use that in order to prejudice the word patriarchy. Male dominance is not a biblical ideal, but a result of sin. Again, like the patriarchs would probably have a lot to anyway. Number three, Patriarchy is an abuse of power, taking from females what God has given them, their dignity and freedom, their leadership, and often their very lives. Listen to this from the United Nations. Again, that's the Council on Biblical Equality, right, an evangelical organization. Listen to this from the United Nations. The family is an institution that has historically been a stronghold of patriarchy and embodied men's social power and domination over women. Patriarchy, in its wider definition, means the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family, and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general. Sounds like the un was writing the statement for the Council on Biblical Equality. But if you look at old dictionaries of the English language, we get this big, old green dictionary called it the homeschool Dictionary, because like every home school family, we know that homeschools in the English language has that big, old, thick green Websters eighteen twenty eight Dictionary of the English Language. Right, it's amazing to go there and look at what words have meant. And so patriarchy is the jurisdiction of a patriarch. Patriarchy in the Bible, the leaders of the families are clans of ancient Israel. The term derives from Hebrew heads of the Fathers, translating in the Septuagint as rulers of the Fathers, and simplify as patriarchs in the New Testament and Apocrypha. Within the discipline of Biblical studies, the term has come to refer more specifically to the four generation of Israel's founders described in Genesis twelve through fifty, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his twelve sons. That's what it means biblically and theologically. And yet, do you see what's happened here? We take this word, which has always had a clear biblical meaning and understanding, and we transform it into something that's wicked. And then we read back into the Bible and we say that this wickedness actually comes from people who use the Bible in order to impose this wickedness on women. Acts two twenty nine. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David. Again, if patriarch means evil dominance, do you see how problematic that is? Just to a simple reading of the Bible, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us today Hebrew seven four. See how great this man was, to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of his spoils. This is hugely problematic. Folks, don't run from patriarchy. Don't do it. It's like your mama told you about bullies. You start running and you'll never stop listen to this from Calvin. Moses now relates that marriage was divinely instituted, which is especially useful to be known for since Adam did not take a wife to himself at his own will, but received her as offered and appropriated to him by God. The sanctity of marriage, hence more clearly appears because we recognize God as its author. The more Satan has endeavored to dishonor marriage, the more should we vindicated from all repri roach and abuse, that it may receive its due reverence. Marriage is an honorable estate, amen. It is the cornerstone of civilization. The war on marriage is a war on civilization itself. The war on the family is a war against women. Ironically, the war on biblical masculinity is a war against women. The freest, safest, most prosperous women in the world are women who live under the umbrella of Western civilization and Christendom and the fruit of the Reformation. You tell me where else outside of the Christian world, outside of the world shaped by Western civilization, You tell me where else you'd rather be a woman. And yet it is in that world that we are now completely revising history and going to war with the very thing that has brought that greatest protection to women that the world has ever seen. You know, one of those events in history that kind of is marked in everybody's memory, not that we were there or remember it, but we've heard about it is the sinking of the Titanic. And there's so many stories and so many lessons right from the Titanic, from man's hubris and pride and everything else. But there's another aspect of that that is being lost. That ship hits that iceberg, and the unsinkable begins to sink the Titanic. It can't sink, but it's sinking, and help is not going to make it in time. And in a moment where many people would have said every man for himself, instead, the cry that went out all over the Titanic was women and children first. Women and children first, not because that was the policy of the Titanic staff and crew, but because it was ingrained in the culture of the people on that ship. That was masculinity. You call it toxic if you want to, I'll tell that title. When it comes to protecting my wife and protecting my children and laying my life on the line for theirs, when it comes to teaching my sons the principles of women and children. First. If that's toxic, then I'm toxic and I'm passing toxicity on. But it's not, it's not. God designed us and he made us differently, and those differences are glorious, and those differences bring glory to the God who made us. And the ultimate manifestation of that glory is in this beautiful picture of Christ who lays down on his life to rescue and redeem and save his bride, the church. He who knew no sin, became sin for us so we might become the righteousness of God. And him Christ died for sin, once for all, the just, for the unjust, in order that he might bring us back to God. That's the picture. That's the picture that marriage is supposed to point to, this picture of redemption. And we're arguing that somehow it makes little of women. No, in this picture of redemption, women represent that precious and priceless thing that was redeemed, and we represent the one who makest it so highly that he voluntarily gave his life to redeem it. We must not allow the culture to redefine marriage. It is a glorious gift from a glorious God, and it is worthy of our defense. Let's pray, Father, we do thank you and praise you for the good gift of marriage. We thank you and praise you for the blessing that it is. We thank you and praise you for the truth to which it points. And we beseech you, o God, that in the midst of a culture that is at war with marriage, because it is at war with you, that you would grant us wisdom and encourage to stand firm and to proclaim the good news of our good God and this good gift that he is given not for our glory, for each of us is an imperfect sinner and need of a perfect savior, but for your glory, because it is to that end that we pray in Jesus' name, Amen,