A (28:48)
Someday, my two daughters. Think about what happened at your wedding. I'm going to be at a wedding, and God willing, I will walk. Who's going to walk them down an aisle? I'm going to walk my two daughters down an aisle, Bud. And in that moment, I will literally take the hand of my daughter, and in front of everyone there, I will hand her hand to another man. Pray for me. Right now, I'm not doing great. And in that moment, what I will be signifying is I am transferring headship over my daughter from myself to another man. When your husband, or when your dad walked you down that aisle and handed your hand to another man, what he was doing is signifying I am giving you away and transferring headship from me to that guy. So watch this. Your father has a place, but your husband has the priority. So now let me just say something to the younger. If you're the one that's, like, you're in your 20s or 30s, whatever, and you're the one getting married, can I just say something to you? You live in a culture that is satanically discipling you to treat your parents in the exact opposite way that God wants you to treat your parents. The command of the Bible that God says will come with a blessing. It's a blessing. God says. He says this. He says, honor your father and mother. And then he gives a promise that it may go well with you. Honor your father and mother. Honor your father and mother. This world is discipling you to do the exact opposite. This world will disciple you to blame your father and mother. Blame your father and mother. Blame your father and mother. But listen, in Satan's way, there's a curse that accompanies it. In God's way, there's a blessing that accompanies it. And what you need to understand. Check this out, man. Honoring your father, mother. It looks different when you're really young and when you're older and you got your own family when you're young. Honoring them means obeying them. But watch this. As you get older, you need to honor your father and mother. Watch this. You need to give them a place in your life. You know, I'm talking under normal circumstances. I'm not talking about abuser edge cases. You need to give them a place in your life. But listen, the priority belongs to your spouse. So easy way to kill your marriage. Prioritize your parents before your spouse. Third one, last one. You can kill your marriage very easily by putting yourself before your spouse. It's the easiest way to kill your marriage. So here's what we want. Everyone in this room, whether you know it or not, you are gonna default. I'm gonna show you what they are. You have a default mode in your marriage that you don't know that you have. And based on the mixture of the default modes in your marriage, your marriage is one of three kinds of marriages. Now I want you to silently ask the Holy Spirit right now, please show me which one I am. In your seat, just silently. And here's how this works. Everybody in a marriage has one of two default modes. What we want is to walk into a marriage with the spirit of Jesus Christ, who didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Now in every marriage, both people have one of two default modes. You're either a selfish taker or you're a servant hearted giver. One of those is gonna be your generalized default mode. A selfish taker or a servant hearted giver. Now that's gonna result in one of three kinds of marriages. So every marriage in this room, when I say this, you'll be like, oh man, that's us. And you didn't even know it. Okay? When you have a marriage where both people are selfish takers, the marriage feels like a battle because like literally every situation is like, well, here's what I want. Well, here's what I want. Here's where I want to eat. Well, here's what I want to eat. And it's just like this battle over whose will is going to win. So taker and taker marriage feels like a battle. Now in some marriages, what you got is you have one selfish taker and one servant hearted giver. And when you have a giver and a taker, the marriage doesn't feel like a battle, it feels like abuse. Because there's one person who always, they're the doormat. And I'm just gonna tell you how this works. And it's not, listen, it is not gender specific. Sometimes it's the guys, sometimes it's the girls. There's usually one person, they always power up, they always throw a big fit, they're always the one that gets the most emotional. It's tears, it's yelling, whatever it is. And you're imposing your will on the marriage because your default mode is to be a selfish taker. And her or his default mode, God bless him, is to be a selfless giver. And so what happens is one person over functions, one person under functions. One person always gets what they want because the other person is always throwing a fit. And in those situations, one person is like, this is great, our marriage is great, things are going awesome and the other person is silently suffering because they've been married to a selfish fit thrower for however long you've been married. And they never get what they want. So your marriage, it doesn't feel like a battle, it feels like abuse. Now this third one, here's what we all want. When two people are filled with the spirit of Jesus Christ who is a servant, and they both walk in as selfless givers, the marriage doesn't feel like a battle or abuse. Everything just feels like a blessing. It's like both people walk in the door going, man, what do you want? What will bless you? How can I serve you? Where do you want to eat? It's your needs before mine. Where do you want to go? What can I do for you? Let me talk for wives, like, let me just be real gentle wives. You start walking into the marriage going, man, how can I serve you? How can I help you? I'm going to use a word that is like our world Hates, but it's a Bible word, Wives, you start walking into the marriage going, how can I submit to your leadership? How can I respect your authority in our home? How can I bless you? And then, husbands, it's you walking in going, no, no, no. How can I bless you? How can I wash your feet? Yep. I am the head of my home. How can I use the authority in our home to serve you instead of using the authority God has given me in our home for selfish me? How can I help now, husbands, let me just give you a super practical tip, husband to husband, because we're not always awesome at this. What you need to do, husbands, is you need to master the art of something some of you are very unfamiliar with. You need to master the art of. Listen close. It's called non sexual affection. Some of you are like, non sexual. What's that? There's such a thing as non sexual affection. What does that even mean? So, like, ladies, you just need to know, let me just help you out because some of you are nervous. Something's wrong with your husband. A husband can make literally anything sexual. You just need to know that. Y' all gotta loosen up in the 11 o'. Clock. We got a little more fun with it. So it's like, it's just how it works, man. I don't know how it is just how it works. You'd be like, hey, babe, we need to change the tires. He's gonna be like, I'd like, change your tires. You know, hey, babe, we should do the dishes. I'd like to do your dishes. You know, hey, babe, lawn needs mowed. I'd like to mow your. I'm not doing that. You just. All the, all the things, you know, all the, all the things. Okay, so wives, let me just dispel this for you. If you're going, what's wrong with him? What's wrong with him? There's nothing wrong with him. He's a man. There's nothing wrong with him. Okay, now, husband, I heard that. Amen. I heard you. Yeah, I heard you sweating a little bit. Now, husbands, what you need to do though, is you need to. Especially if you. Amen. You should listen real close right here. You need to master this phrase. Master the phrase I love you because. And then get like super specific. I love you because you work so hard for our family. And I see. I love you because you make so many sacrifices that no one will ever know about. I see. And I know. I love you for it. I love you because our children are so blessed to have you as their mother. I love you. I love you because of it. I love you because you so selflessly serve in our home. And the joy of the Lord is your strength. I love you for it. Husbands, if you will master this deal of just like. I know it's not natural. It's not natural for me, but if you just master this thing of like, I love you, because that's gonna go real, real, real good for you. Okay? Now let's just. Let's truck here because we gotta get to these questions about marriage and divorce that are really, really tough here, okay? So Jesus goes on. He says, so they are no longer two, but they're one flesh. And then he says, therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. So, Jesus, big word for a biblical marriage. Watch this. The most important word is one. You're one. Now, again, I'm gonna get up in some of our business real quick here. I'm doing it because I love you. 1. What this means is that when you get married, you take separate lives and you leave lives that were separate. His career, my career, his friends, her friends. His direction, her direction. His religious beliefs, her religious beliefs. I'm gonna get here in a second. His last name, her last name. You leave lives that are separate and you merge them to become one. And this is awesome, man. One new life. You become more like each other. The longer you're married. You start bringing out the best in each other. You do frustrate each other a little bit, but you're growing closer. It's like, I know how you're thinking. I can finish Jana's sentences, y'. All. You start just seeing the way, you know, they. They see things. Even your interest, they start to merge in. In weird ways, weird ways. A few years ago, we were in. We were in Great Britain, me and Jana. And she pulled me into the Jane Austen Museum in Bath, England. And just before I knew it, it's like this happened, like, without me even thinking about it. I'm like, what the heck just happened? You know, like, oh, my gosh, that's my best Mr. Darcy. That's, you know, got that. Now I just want to point this out. Look how happy Jana looks. And I look. My face looks different. I just want to point that out, take that down. The things you'll do, the things you'll do, but you just. You start becoming one, you know? Now, what's that mean? Let me get real practical now. Some of you that are very young. This is going to feel like I'm fighting with You. And that's because you're wrong. I love you. Okay, now what that means, here's what this means. It means some common sense things. It means you need to live in one house. This is super obvious, you know, Unless you're loaded and you got a few houses, then go together, you know. But one house means you need to, you know, in general, you need to be sleeping in one bed. One bedroom and one bed. Here we go. Means you need one last name. One last name. Now let me just point this out. Ladies. In our culture right now is doing this big, like, again, it's the girl boss thing. I'm not taking any man's name. Now check this out, ma'. Am, ladies, when you as a wife choose to willingly take your new husband's name, two things are happening. One, you're visibly symbolizing. I'm leaving the leadership of my father and coming under the leadership of my husband. I just want to point this out. So there's some people like, I'm not taking on the identity of a man. And so you kept your dad's last name. So that's one. You're let that sit. So you're symbolizing that you're coming under your new husband's leadership. But here's the other thing. What you're symbolizing is we are no longer two, but one. It's a good God honoring, wonderful Christian thing for a wife to take her husband's name. Okay, so one last name. Let me do another one. One bank account. Ooh, ooh. Lots of butts clenching, you know, that kind of thing. Okay, here's the thing. I'm just telling you this. The longer I've seen have engine I've never seen. Maybe short term, you know, pain alleviation. I've never seen long term where that worked out. Just feels weird to be one flesh. But then your separate checking accounts and venmoing each other for groceries feels weird. Okay. One set of values. This is why man, if you're single, that you, you need to heed this command. Do not be unequally yolked to somebody that's not a believer. Listen, be very, very careful. Listen, man, be very careful who you marry. It's the second most important decision you'll ever make. Most important decision you'll ever make is what God you worship. Second most important decision you'll ever make, what person you marry. And the Bible says this, it says, what fellowship does light have to do with darkness or Christ with belial. That's a word for Satan. So you need to make sure that you only marry somebody where both of you can say, jesus is our king and we are both submitting our lives to the word of God in the power of the spirit of God, that's the only person you marry. Okay, that's it. Now, oneness. Now, here's the question, and it's a heavy question. The question that people will ask. They ask in this passage is, okay, we're one, but when is there an out? So let me answer a few really difficult questions right here. All right? Now, quick preface here. What some of you are doing right now is you're uncomfortable because you know what Jesus says right here. And you're looking at me going, pastor, explain why the Bible doesn't mean what it says right here. And I'm just telling you, I can't do that. There is a conversation that I decided years ago I refused to have. I refused to stand before the throne of God someday and have to say to Jesus, hey, Jesus, there were some things that you said to the people that you loved, but I thought that it would make them mad and hurt their feelings, so I didn't say those things to them. I refused to have that conversation someday. And it would actually be selfish, cowardly of me, and it would undercut the reality that God's commands are good for us. So, man, just. I'm gonna tell you just what the word. I'm gonna read it to you and tell you what the word says. Let me answer the questions. When does God allow for divorce? If I'm divorced, am I allowed to get remarried? If I was divorced and now I'm remarried, am I committing adultery? Because Jesus. You're going to see what Jesus says here. Okay, so let me answer the first question. When does the Bible make an allowance for divorce? Let me talk about three situations. Situation number one, the Bible makes. It's called an exception clause for the case of physical adultery. Physical adultery. Jesus says, therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. It's saying, don't go to the courthouse to undo what was done in God's house. Why, then they asked, did Moses command a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce and give her away? Verse 8. Jesus replied, Moses, permitted. On the count of three, say permitted. One, two, three. Permitted. He did not say demanded or commanded. He said, permitted. Permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way. From the beginning, I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, the Greek word there is porneia. That's the Greek word from which we get the English word pornography, except for sexual immorality. And marries another woman, commits adultery. Now, this reinforces what we alluded to earlier in this message. The sex is not just a natural appetite, and it is not just two bodies bumping up against each other. It is a supernatural mingling of souls that is so powerful. Watch this. That when two people do it outside of a marriage covenant, that betrayal and violation of the marriage covenant is so deep that Jesus here concedes. He does not command. He concedes, but does not command that you may walk away from that marriage. He does not say that you have to. Particularly in a case where one spouse is practicing unrepentant, habitual. They won't stop sexual immorality, especially in cases of physical adultery. Now, let me just say this. Let me just step in and be a pastor for a second. If you have ever been on the receiving end of a spouse committing adultery, let me just say, I'm so sorry. I literally cannot fathom, like, the pain. I literally can't fathom it. That said, let me just gently say, even in that case, I would encourage you for divorce to be a last resort and not a first option. What I would encourage you to do is at least take a season to pray and ask God if he might give you the power to redemptively restore your marriage. Here's why I say that, man. Because divorce is a radical amputation. And amputations are supposed to be last resource. Think about this. If I'm playing flag football with some buddies and I snap my wrist, my first option isn't amputate my hand. That's the last resort. In fact, the only time you do that is if something so nasty is going on in the hand you got to cut it off to keep it from spreading to the rest of the body and killing the whole body. It's the same with divorce. It is an ugly, radical amputation. And here's the other reason I say that. Think about the example of Christ and the church. The Bible says the church is Jesus bride. Hey, guys, have you seen this? We are the bride of Christ. We have spent our whole lives being unfaithful to our husband. He ain't never walked away from the covenant with us yet. And I'm just telling you, God knows what it's like to have a spouse this faithless to you. And I'm just telling you, if Jesus is alive and the tomb is empty, then anything is possible. And if he can resurrect a dead body. I have watched him resurrect dead marriages, and he can do it. So I'm asking you to pause and consider, man. Might God do that? All right, situation number two. The Bible makes an exception in the case of abandonment. So I'm getting ready to read a very weird verse from 1 Corinthians 7. What happened in Corinth is a whole bunch of it was a super jacked up church, Christians gone wild. They were going nuts. And then God starts radically saving all these people in Corinth, and now they're on Team Jesus. But then sometimes their spouse didn't get saved. So then because the spouse didn't get saved, you got one person on Team Jesus, one person's still on Team Satan. And they start going, paul, what are we supposed to do? Further complicating it, they had some people who were the unbelieving spouse that were abandoning the believing spouse. And they were going like, so are we, what do we do? Are we still married? What are we supposed to do? Now watch what he says. This is how Paul answers to the rest. I say this. If any brother has a wife that's not a believer and she's willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. So if you're the believing spouse and they're the unbelieving spouse, listen, you are not allowed to initiate the divorce because of the incongruence in your value. You're not allowed. Now you may go, well, man, why? It's hard. I'm going to show you here in a second. But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or sister is not bound. In such circumstances, God has called you to live in peace. How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? So what he's saying is, if your unbelieving spouse will stay with you, stay in, because you might be the supernatural conduit through which God brings redemptive energy in their life to save them and redeem your whole family. Now, in the case where the person just abandons you and they're like, I hate the Christian stuff, I'm out, I'm leaving. He's saying it is permissible for you to allow them to move forward with that divorce. And God says, it's okay, it's okay to let that happen. That's situation two. Now situation three is a question people ask Let me address this question. Very difficult people. Ask the question, what about situations of abuse? Now listen really close, listen really carefully. I want to be really careful here because very frankly, we right now live in a culture where a common form of abuse is abuse of the word abuse. And right now, in our culture, sometimes anything that makes somebody feel uncomfortable or anybody that causes somebody to feel a negative emotion is automatically labeled abuse. And they are automatically labeled an abuser. So listen, not everything that is called abuse in our culture is actually abuse. But that does not negate the very real reality that there are real, tragic. And listen. And evil. It's satanic, demonic and evil. Evil scenarios where evil people abuse their spouses physically, sexually, in other ways. That's a real thing. What do you do? Well, in First Corinthians 7 that I just read, he said, in such circumstances. This is what he said, okay? And what he was saying is, if they abandon you, that's a violation of the covenant. That's so deep. He says, you just need to let that separation happen. In the same way, Listen, if somebody is abusing you, number one, you need to call the authorities. Number two, call us. We will help you report that person that is hurting you or your children to the authorities. That's why God put governing authorities in place. We will help you do it. And listen, number three, in situations of abuse, at least separation is necessary. Get yourself out, get your babies out. Get yourself to safety. You need to make sure that's taken care of. Now, second question. These are going to go quick, and then the sermon just ends and I'm going to pray for you. Then people are like, okay, I've been divorced. Am I allowed to get remarried? Okay, I hate. Should I get remarried? I hate answering this question. A personal axiom I have is what people do is they'll walk up to me in the lobby and they'll tell me four seconds of this big life problem, and they'll go, what should I do? I don't know. I've literally heard four seconds of your stuff. I got no idea. So my little axiom is, you can have the wisdom of Solomon, but if you have incomplete information, you're gonna get fool's counsel. So what I'm not gonna do up here is with 28,000 people listening to me trying to pretend like I understand 28,000 different scenarios and give you a one size fits all thing. I'm not going to do that. So let me just generally say this. Some of you shouldn't. Some of you should not get married. In fact, you should take some time, man, to get your roots down deep in Jesus, to be so satisfied with him that you can walk into any future scenario with a cup full and ready to be everything you need to be. You need to do that. But listen to me, what the Bible says is if your divorce was a biblical divorce, then where God allows for divorce, he also allows for remarriage. You're fine. Go forward with no guilt. Now, the last one is a toughy. Some people read the passage I just read and they go, okay, yeah, but Pastor Josh, I got divorced and it wasn't a biblical divorce. And now I'm in another marriage. It seems like Jesus is saying that it's adultery. Am I committing adultery? And what am I supposed to do? Okay, let me say this. And this is again, I don't write to mail. I deliver the mail. If the divorce that you originally got was an unbiblical divorce, you should not have entered into that second marriage. I'm just telling you what Jesus said. But listen to me. But even if your second marriage marriages, if it wasn't a biblical divorce, breaking a second covenant doesn't help the first one. And the vows you made with your now spouse, those vows matter. So what you. I'm going to show you why I say this here in a second. What you should do is receive the full and free forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Understand there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Walk forward in freedom, confess and repent any sin that you had to anybody previously that you sinned against in a previous marriage. And then you just need to walk forward and pour yourself into the marriage that you're in and honor that covenant. The reason that I say this, you're like, ah, here's my biblical case. Listen, I studied way too much this week. One of the reasons I say this is think about what Jesus did with the woman at the well, where he goes, hey, go call your husband. And she's like, I don't got a husband. And remember where Jesus said, you're right, you don't have a husband. You've had five husbands and a guy you're living with right now. Not one of your husbands notice. Jesus didn't say, well, actually, you only had one husband and it was an unbiblical divorce. So the other four weren't actually your husband. Those weren't real marriages and you were just committing adultery the whole time. He doesn't say that. Jesus seems to tacitly acknowledge that those secondary marriages, those were real covenants with real Vows that you should honor, because those vows matter. Now, last thing, church, family. The question is, how should we relate to people who have been divorced? Listen to me, church, family. We should show mercy to people who have experienced the hell of divorce. We should show mercy. Listen, do you know who. You don't gotta tell that divorce is awful. Divorced people divorce people. They're like, yeah, man, that was awful. That was like the worst thing that ever happened to me. They know that. In fact, whenever that verse in the book of Malachi says God hates divorce, it says, God hates divorce. You know what it doesn't say? It doesn't say, God hates divorced people. Listen to me, whoever you are, Jesus Christ loves you. There is no condemnation for you. And for the rest of your life, you don't gotta walk around with like some big scarlet D tattooed on your chest. The only big thing scarlet tattooed on you is a big scarlet F for forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ. That's the most true thing about you, man. That's it. So you walk forward in freedom. All right, now, I'm just. This sermon just goes off. Sermon's done right now, okay? But I want to give you action steps. Whenever the word of God is preached and the spirit of God takes it, he's going to apply it to the people of God. Some of you right now, while I was preaching, you are. You have been heading for a divorce or you've been sinning against your spouse in a way that the spirit. Right now, everybody stay with me. Just stay with me. Just go me real quick. You are heading to do something that you know is not going to honor God, that is actually going to invite hell into your life and your marriage. Repent, man. Come home, bend your knee to Jesus and watch blessing flow in your life. Some of you, here's what I know, and this is going to be awesome, okay? Some of you, we're reaching a whole bunch of young, young men and women right now. It's awesome. I love it. But what a lot of you is, you didn't know what you were supposed to do. So you've actually. You're living with somebody that's not your spouse. You're sleeping with somebody that's not your spouse, or you've actually already started a family and had kids with somebody that's not your spouse. And you right now are coming under the loving conviction of the Holy Spirit that you need to honor God, bend your knee to Jesus, put a ring on it, and enter into a covenant with a person that you're already acting like you're in a covenant with. And what I want you to know is we want to help you do that, because we got a little thing at Lake Point. We say the only time we look down on people is, is to give them a hand up. And so here's what we want to do. We got a whole. I've set this whole thing up. We got a whole team of pastors. They're ready. We are ready to have a mass wedding ceremony. I'm 100% serious. A mass wedding ceremony across all the campuses of Lake Point. Some of you right now, here's what you need to do. You need to text the word marriage to the number 20411. You're going to see a link on there. That's. It's very straightforward. It says, get married. Awesome. And you just need to, like, all right, babe, it's our time. Let's go. Okay. And you can sign up. We got people who are going to walk with you, counsel you, help you, and then we're going to get you married. We're going to throw a big party. And guess what your church family is not going to be doing. These people aren't going to be judging you. They're going to be cheering you on as you step forward into obedience to Jesus Christ. Welcome to Team Jesus. That's what we're going to be doing, okay? So take whatever step the spirit's asking you to do. Let me pray for us. Jesus, thank you for being a loving, forgiving, redeeming savior. Thank you for loving marriages. Thank you for blessing marriages. I pray, Jesus, that you would heal and redeem everything that Satan has broken and stolen. So, Father, I pray that repentance would happen. I pray that today that people would be going home and that just lots of I'm so sorrys and lots of I totally forgive yous would just start pouring out of the hearts of people. I pray, Lord, that you would. That I pray over every marriage that their latter days would be greater than their former days in the words of the book of Job. And that for every marriage at Lake Point, that actually their best days would be ahead of them. And that because of the power of Jesus Christ, they would be saying soon, like, man, this is. Like, this is better than honeymoon season. It is. Thank you, Jesus. So, Father, bless it to your glory. We pray it in your name. And all God's people said amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
