Please open to Proverbs chapter 6. This morning we will be looking at Proverbs 6 verses 20 to 35. Let's hear the word of the Lord, Proverbs 6, beginning in verse 20. My son, keep your father's commandment and forsake not your mother's teaching. Bind them on your heart always. Tie them around your neck. When you walk, they will lead you. When you lie down, they will watch over you. And when you awake, they will talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light. and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life, to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes. For the price of a prostitute is only a loaf of bread, but a married woman hunts down a precious life. Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched? So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife. None who touches her will go unpunished. People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his appetite when he is hungry. But if he is caught, he will pay sevenfold. He will give all the goods of his house. He who commits adultery lacks sense. He who does it destroys himself. He will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away. For jealousy makes a man furious, and he will not spare when he takes revenge. He will accept no compensation. He will refuse, though you multiply gifts. Let's pray now for God's help. Our Lord, we delight in your law in the inward man. Your law to us is more precious than gold and silver and sweeter than honey to us. And so we come now to hear and understand and know your law that we might walk in your ways. Lord, we pray that you would use your word to Put to death the corruption that may be in us, and that you might help us to walk in the newness of life, to live a life that is holy and pleasing to you. May we see wondrous things out of your law, and may we see our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in your glory. We ask these things in his name, amen. I saw a story a few weeks ago about a social media influencer who was living in Australia, and he proposed to a woman. And the woman said yes, but then two days after their engagement, the man broke the news to her that he didn't actually intend to be her husband, that this was all for his social media accounts. He wanted to make some videos and get some more followers, and so he had the idea of setting up a mock wedding. And so she, he wanted her to participate in his mock wedding. So I'm sure she was disappointed to hear that news that he didn't really want to marry her, but she played along and she decided to participate in the ceremony and help the man go through his mock wedding and help the man get some more followers. So they went through the ceremony and as soon as it was over, she left and they didn't see each other again. But that's not the end of the story. because two months later, the man reaches out to that woman, and he found out that she was applying for residency in Australia, and so he breaks the news to her that as she's applying for residency, she needs to put him down as her husband. That what she thought was a mock wedding was actually legally binding, and she was legally his wife. So two surprises for that woman. First of all, the man doesn't want to marry you. But then second surprise, actually, he did marry you. You just didn't realize it. And that story just reminded me of the view of marriage that exists in our society today. Marriage is cheap. Marriage is not valued hardly at all. Marriage is a joke, a ceremony, something that you can just go through even for the sake of getting a few more subscribers to your channel. And we can understand that the society would view marriage this way because it's an ordinance of God. It was created by God in the days of creation. God made marriage and he declared that it was good. And so when a society seeks to rebel against God, they're going to rebel against the things that God has ordained. And this is why we see society rebelling. against the good design that God has of marriage. And it's in this kind of society that we as Christians are called to be different and are called to believe the truth about God and to honor marriage. We need to remember the words of Hebrews 13, four, let marriage be held in honor among all. And let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and the adulterous. This is the truth, the doctrine, that we as Christians need to believe and also to live out before the world in front of us. And these words of Hebrews 13, 4 can basically summarize the lesson of Proverbs 6, verses 20 to 35. This father here in Proverbs is trying to teach his son that marriage is to be held in honor among all and that the marriage bed is to be undefiled and that God will judge the adulterous. So for those of you who are here and married, this is teaching and reminder to you to be faithful in your marriages. for those of you who are not married and perhaps God one day might in the future provide a spouse for you. Either way, this proverb here is teaching for you to be pure and to be faithful, be faithful to God and to be pure in your heart and your mind and in your relationships for the sake of a future spouse. And so we need to heed these words of Proverbs 6 because of the culture especially that we live in. In the days of the Old Testament, adultery was a serious crime among the nation of Israel. It could lead to the death penalty. How far are we from that kind of context? We would never consider such a thing. And so if a son needed that type of warning in a society where this was so stigmatized, how much more do young people and children today especially need to hear these warnings? Well, let's begin looking at what the word of God says. We might have our ideas shaped by truth. And so first we see a preservative for marriage given to the son in verses 20 to 24. A preservative for marriage. The lecture begins in verse 20 with the words, my son, this is how we know this is a new lecture, a new topic. Children and young people, you might feel like your parents give you lots of lectures. Well, lecturing your children is a biblical idea. This is what parents need to do because children don't know the things they need to know. So they need to be taught. And so here we have another lecture from father down to his son. And he tells him about the way in verse 24, the way to preserve you from the evil woman. This is the purpose of his lecture. I want to preserve you from the evil woman. I want to give you a preservative. You likely, you know what a preservative is. We have preservatives in our food so that they can sit in cans for years or sit on counters for a long time without getting moldy. We have preservatives for fruit. So those bananas that you buy from Costa Rica and they take weeks to get here and they're still green. Well, they were picked weeks ago, but why are they still green? Well, because they're sprayed with preservatives. And these preservatives help food to not rot. A preservative keeps something there intact. And the father uses this word about marriage, that a young man, if he is married in this case, a young man would need to know how to preserve, how to keep intact a marriage. to be preserved from an evil woman. And so, just like food, over time, can eventually rot, the same is true for your marriage. Your marriage can, over time, rot. It can turn sour. Your marriage can go bad. If you don't actively work to preserve it, You need to use the Bible's prescriptions, the preservatives the Bible gives you to keep your marriage from rotting. You need to work and devote yourself and give thoughtfulness to your marriage. So what is the preservative for this young man? Well, we'll go back to verse 20. My son, Keep your father's commandment and forsake not your mother's teaching. Bind them on your heart always, tie them around your neck. When you walk, they will lead you. When you lie down, they will watch over you. When you awake, they will talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life to preserve you from the evil woman. And so we basically, if you could sum it up really in just one word, what is the preservative? teaching or commandments, and part of that is discipline. The discipline of parents of their children preserves them for the future. It teaches them to have self-control over their desires. They want to do something, but they do something wrong, and so they get disciplined for it, and they're taught that that thing is wrong, and this helps them as they grow older. when they might face other temptations. So basically, you can boil it all down to teaching. And it's the teaching of the commandments of God. This is what preserves the young man from the evil woman. The wording here in verse 22 might remind you of a similar passage, Deuteronomy chapter six. where God gives that great announcement of who he is. The Lord, your God, the Lord is one. Yahweh alone is God. There's one God and it's Yahweh. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. And then he says, and then you need to teach these things to your children. When you walk along the way, when you rise up, when you lie down, And those are the same verbs that are being used here in verse 22. And so the father is saying, son, I taught you. I've already done my duty to teach you and so when you grow up and you leave the home as you're walking along the way, remember what I taught you walking along the way. When you lie down, remember the things that I taught you at bedtime when we prayed for you and when we had those conversations with you as you were falling asleep in bed. Remember, when you rise up, and you're on your own. Remember how we used to rise up together as a family, and we used to talk, and we used to read the word of God, and we used to pray, and this needs to be on your mind. This is the duty of parents, is to teach their children the commandments of God. They need to teach their children of the one true God. And as we have it revealed in the New Testament, that the one true God is three persons. And God has made himself known through Jesus Christ. And Christ is the Savior and the way to God. These are the commandments that we teach to our children, the instruction that we give them. So parents, That's your job, but this is talking to the son. And what is the son supposed to do? Verse 21, bind them on your heart, tie them around your neck. The children are supposed to receive the teaching. And they're not just supposed to let it go through their ears, but they're supposed to grab onto it. They're supposed to make it their own. They're supposed to tie it around their neck. And so the image here is like an heirloom of the family, a expensive necklace with fancy jewels on it. And imagine the parent passing down this expensive necklace to a child and saying, now that you're an adult and now you're going on on your own, I want you to have this. And so the child, the young person now has a choice. Are you going to go rip off that necklace, throw it in the sewer because it reminds you of your family and you rebel against everything that your family stood for? Are you gonna go and take that necklace and sell it at the pawn shop to go and pursue all your lusts and pleasures? Or are you going to keep it with you? Are you gonna hold on to it and be grateful for the inheritance that has been passed down to you from your parents and you love this inheritance? And so you will do anything to protect it and keep it safe. This inheritance that your parents have passed down to you is to love God with all your heart and to walk in His ways and to love Christ and follow Him. And so here is the instruction for you children. When are you going to say that this stuff about Christ and His salvation and the worship of God, this is mine. I believe this. I want to follow this. I do love God with all my heart, and I want to love him even more, and I want to follow Christ with all of my life. When is that going to happen for you, children? Young people, when are you going to say that I'm committing my life to following the Lord Jesus Christ as my parents have taught me to do? It's not enough to just receive the teaching, but now you must grab hold of this yourself. Are you going to have this necklace tied around your neck when you leave your home, when you go out on your own? Well, what are you waiting for? Why not now? Why not commit your life to Christ now? Why not ask God now to save you if he hasn't already and tell him that you want to follow him with all of your life and with all of your heart? This is what you need to do. This is the preservative. This is what will keep you from sin. Your parents, they can put all kinds of rules and controls in place, but you will be out on your own. And what will keep you from sin is God and his help and the guidance of the spirit. And it will be because you remember what you've been taught and you've made it your own. And you're following Christ. He's given you a new heart. This is the preservative that you need for marriage. Well then, secondly, in the second part of the passage, we are told to preserve the sanctity of marriage. So we've been told the preservative is the commandments of the parent. Well now, what is the toxin? What is it that can cause the rot in the marriage? Well, we've seen verse 24, it's to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. This passage is a little more specific than chapter five, which was about a forbidden woman. It's more specifically about a woman who is married. The young man at this point, maybe he's not married, It doesn't seem that he is. Maybe he is married, but the woman who is causing temptation is a married woman, and so she is the adulteress in this case. Now, of course, we can apply these things to purity in all sorts of relationships, not just temptation from a particular married woman. That's not the point. It's just a limit to that. But she's called here an adulteress, and she's called the evil woman. The word that the father uses is a word that specifically is referring to her as a wife, and she's an evil wife. So, like in our day, we have in English titles that will tell you if a woman is married or not. You say miss, that means she's not married, but if you call her missus, then you know that she's married. And that's kind of the sort of title that he uses here, You could say that he's calling her Mrs. Evil. You need to be preserved from Mrs. Evil. And so it's clear that this woman is married and that her intentions are evil. He also tells us that she has a smooth tongue. The smooth tongue, we'll see some of her words in chapter seven, but here the smooth tongue is about flattery. This woman will come and she will tempt you with your own pride. She'll tell you how great you are. She'll tell you that you're the most handsome man in the world. She'll tell you that you don't deserve to be treated the way that you're treated, whether it's at home or whether it's in your own marriage or at work. And she'll just make you think that you're the greatest person in the world. And it's through this flattery that she will seek to tempt you. And so then he tells the young man what to do in verse 25. He says, do not desire her beauty in your heart and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes. The passage will end with the young man in disgrace and destruction. But he tells the young man that disgrace and destruction starts with a look and a lust. He looks at the woman and he sees her in her eyelashes and then he desires, he desires her beauty. She's trying to capture him, it says, trap him in with her eyelashes. She's batting her eyes at the young man. Now, most likely the capturing with the eyelashes is referring to how this woman would put on lots of makeup In those days, makeup was a luxury that hardly any woman could afford. It would take a lot of time and a lot of money. And so you don't just like order it at Walmart because it was made in China and shipped cheaply over here, okay? This is expensive stuff that had to be handmade. And so the average woman of the day is busy. She's grinding wheat to make bread. She's cooking meals over a fire. She's weaving the clothing for her family. She doesn't have time to stare in front of a mirror for a couple hours to put on makeup. And she's gonna buy fibers and cloth to make clothes for her family. She's not gonna spend all her money on some eye shadow, some mascara, So it was very atypical for a woman in those days to wear makeup. But here comes along a woman with makeup on her eyelashes. And so this would be shocking to the young man, something he wouldn't often see. This young woman, this woman trying to capture him, she would have spent lots of time and lots of money on her physical appearance. So in our day, I'm not gonna make the claim that it's evil to wear makeup, but in our day, we can see parallels that there are people who will spend hours and hours of their days on their physical appearance. They will spend piles and piles of money on their physical appearance. In our day, there's the digital way to alter someone's appearance. And so we might say something like this to a young man. Young man, the pictures that you might see, the things that you might see on a magazine cover, you need to not be captured with that. And part of it is you need to understand it's fake. It's altered. That's not what real people look like. So don't be captured by that. And so this is part of what the father's trying to say to his son. So don't be captured with her eyelashes. But then he also says, do not desire her beauty in your heart. This woman has her sin. She is trying to commit adultery and it's her problem. that she would come with flattery, and that she would come trying to bat her eyelashes at you. She's got her problem, and she stands before God in how she deals with it. But the father says to the son, but now you, you have a choice. You have control over what you do. Or you can be like Proverbs 5, The man who is so intoxicated with his wife that he's like, says, what are you doing? You're annoying, get away from me, get out of here. You're gonna be like Joseph and hightail it out of there and flee? You're gonna be like Paul said to Timothy, flee youthful lusts? This is your choice that you now face if there is temptation. Or, Are you going to let yourself be captured with those eyelashes? Are you going to latch on to that and linger and gaze upon that? Remember James 1 14 says each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. James is teaching us that the embryo of sin, the same DNA of sin, is in the act of sin as it is in the desire for the sin. And so there's a temptation, but you get lured and enticed by the temptation when you then desire So he says, do not desire her beauty in your heart. At this point, you have already been hooked. You've already been latched onto her to commit adultery. And this is what Jesus says also in Matthew 5, 28. Any man who looks with lustful intent upon a woman has already committed adultery in his heart. Sometimes people think that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is contrasting Old Testament with now Him in the New Testament, with these new laws. But we see even here in Proverbs 6 that we have the same teaching of Jesus, and Jesus is just bringing it out, that it's not just enough to not commit the physical act of adultery. But Jesus says, don't look upon a woman with lustful intent in your heart. or in the words of verse 25, do not desire her beauty in your heart. And so the point is, do something. Take control. You are told here that there is a response that you need to have to temptation. Do not give in. Do not desire. And we're not helpless here. You're not at the mercy of your life or your past or your nature. Here you can make the right decision to follow Christ. John Owen wrote a classic book on the mortification of sin, putting sin to death. And it's based on Romans 8.13, which says that if by the Spirit you put your deeds, your sinful deeds to death, then you will live. If we want to live, live eternally, then we must put to death the sins, the deeds of the flesh. And so Owen writes about how you do this, and one of the main things he says is, you do it in your heart. You don't just try to control the outside things, but you have to put sin to death in your heart. There are many quotes that I could read you from that book, but here's one thing he says. He says, as men grow older, they do not usually persist in the pursuit of youthful lusts, although they have never mortified any of them. He has changed his master, but is a servant still. In other words, he's saying that there are many men who don't actually put to death the desires of their hearts. They might be 65 or 70 and they might not have young ladies coming and batting eyelashes at them. And so they might not have the opportunity for the act that maybe a 20 year old or a 25 year old might be more tempted with. But he says that doesn't mean you've dealt with your heart. You need to change the desires in your heart. Well, you don't change it on your own. It's the Holy Spirit. By the Spirit, you put these things to death. Think of what we might say to someone who says that they're attracted to the same sex. And they come and they say, well, I just really have this struggle, and I don't know what to do. I can't change it. I feel like I was born this way, and this is who I am. This is how God made me, people sometimes say. What is a biblical response to that? We would say, you better change. You need to change. This is not a biblical right desire. And yet sometimes there are men, Christian men, who will talk the same way about their own lusts. God just made me this way. I'm a man. Isn't this how God made men? Now we can say, you need to change the sinful desires. By the Holy Spirit, you can change. In fact, Romans 8.13 says you must change. You must get control of the desires in your heart if they are sinful desires. So, young man, he says, son, do not desire her beauty in your heart. Then he goes on to talk about the price that this man might pay. Verse 26, the price of a prostitute is only a loaf of bread, but a married woman hunts down a precious life. In verse 26, he's not justifying the first act, saying that it's not really that big of a deal. He's just making a comparison because in adultery, sometimes people will say, well, we love each other. We're soulmates. God brought us together. There are people who even bring God into the equation. They will say, this isn't just about some physical relationship. We have a real relationship and we are friends. She's my best friend. And that justifies in their minds adultery. And so the father is basically saying, look, just because you didn't pay to commit adultery doesn't mean it's free. It costs you your life. This woman, she doesn't love you. This woman is not out for your good. This woman is a hunter. She's got all those deer heads on the wall, all those trophies on the wall, and you're just another trophy on the wall for her. She's just trying to hunt you so that she can show off her trophies. This is what she does. So no, it'll cost you your life. Then he goes on to tell her it's gonna bring pain. Tell him it's gonna bring pain. Verse 27, can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched? So is he who goes into his neighbor's wife. None who touches her will go unpunished. Adultery brings great pain and destruction. It's like the pain, he says, of a man carrying fire next to his chest. And he's using this ridiculous example to say that, young man, you have no excuse. What's your excuse gonna be? So let's put this in terms of a fiery log sitting there on the ground. And you go and you pick up that fiery log and you put it in your arms and then you get great burns all over your chest. You're gonna say, well, I didn't know it was gonna burn me. Are you going to say, well, I just thought, you know, if I could keep it all quiet, if nobody knew that I was holding fire in my chest, if it was just between the two of us and it never became public, I thought I could just keep it hidden and sneak around and then I won't really be burned. It doesn't work that way with logs of fire. Oh, well, all the movies that Hollywood makes, they talk about how romantic it is. They make entire movies about a man going and picking up a fiery log and holding it in his arms. And it just looks so romantic in the movies. And it seems like everybody is doing it in Hollywood. So I thought it would be okay for me to do it. Pretty bad excuse, huh? Pretty bad reasoning. No, you will bring great pain on yourself through this. Then he goes on to say, you're going to be punished. In verses 30 and 31, people do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his appetite when he is hungry. But if he is caught, he will pay sevenfold. He will give all the goods of his house. And once again, the father is not justifying stealing or saying it's no big deal. He's just describing the experience of why people might steal. People might steal, especially in those days, because they're hungry and they might need to feed themselves or feed their family and their children. And he's making an analogy here. People steal. and yet they're still punished. Verse 31 says you caught, and he has to pay sevenfold. The thief would have to pay back, give back what he stole, and then he would have to pay seven times. So if you steal $100, you give the $100, and then you have to find another $700 to give to that person for all the trouble that they've gone through because you stole $100 from them. And he says this could wipe out all the goods of your house by having to make this restitution. So you could lose everything based on a one choice to steal. And you can do all of that. And you know what? People will feel bad for you. They'll pity you in a sense because they can understand why you might steal, but you still have to pay justice. But what about the one who commits adultery? Nobody feels bad for you. Nobody's going to say, poor you. Oh, you were thinking about your wife and your children. Oh, your children were just suffering so much that you just decided that the way to help your children was to go commit adultery with another woman. No, nobody feels bad for adulterers. And then adulterers, just like the thief, still are going to get punished. So all of this is teaching us in imagery and words what the commandment tells us. You shall not commit adultery. We're taught here to preserve the sanctity of marriage. Marriage is sacred, honorable, Marriage is like a sanctuary, like God's sanctuary. It's to be kept holy, to be kept clean. And when one unclean thing comes into God's sanctuary, it has to be removed because it's defiled when something unclean comes in. So it is with marriage. Marriage needs to be kept sacred between one man and one woman, and you must not let anything intrude on that relationship. preserve the sanctity of marriage. Adultery is one of those things where it only takes one wrong to ruin a marriage. There could be forgiveness, there could be reconciliation, but the act of adultery in itself can ruin a marriage. You only have to do it once. And that applies not just to a physical act, but it applies to what you do on the internet. It applies to entangling yourself in a relationship with another person that might be what we call emotional. And by a friendship that is too intimate, you need to have a special relationship between husband and wife that is not shared with any other person. May we preserve the sanctity of marriage. Well, finally, in the last few verses, he tells the son also to preserve his life. Verse 32, he says, he who commits adultery lacks sense. He who does it destroys himself. And so he appeals to the desire of self-preservation. It is a basic instinct in human beings to survive, to preserve our life. We will go through all kinds of things. Your body will go into fight or flight mode. Your body will react and adrenaline will pump through your body to get out of a dangerous situation because your brain is telling you that no matter what the cost, you must survive. Everybody wants a happy life. And so the one who commits adultery lacks sense because you're doing the thing that is most basic human desire. You're ruining it. It lacks sense to destroy yourself. It lacks sense to bring misery upon yourself when you want to be happy. If you want to be happy, adultery won't make you happy. So preserve your life. He goes on to say that he will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away. In the Old Testament law, when a man might commit adultery with a foreigner outside of Israel, he may not get the death penalty, but he would get a public flogging. And so 39 whips on the back would be those wounds that verse 33 might talk about. The dishonor might come from being publicly shamed and publicly flogged. Now remember, as I started out, this is not the society that we live in. So what do we do in a society where there is no shame to commit immorality and adultery? Well, this is where the church needs to come in. And the church is a witness of what should be shameful, what should be a disgrace. Now, of course, we are people of grace. God is a God of grace for those who repent, but repentance includes shame. Repentance includes godly grief, and godly grief recognizes the shame of what you've done. It's not minimizing the shame. So in 2 Thessalonians 3, 14, when Paul is writing to the church, he says to have nothing to do with a man so that he may be shamed. And that's not necessarily that's not they're talking about adultery, but it gives us a principle of how the church sometimes need to practice discipline and sometimes needs to exclude and excommunicate. And one of the purposes of excommunication is that a sinner would feel ashamed of what they've done. In a church that does not practice this, in a church that itself does not live in purity and does not have pure marriages, then does not bring shame upon that sin. God has designed it so that this type of sin would be a disgrace. And the world is going to do what the world is going to do. They're going to cheapen marriage. But the church must be consistent and say that it's a disgrace to commit adultery. And you can't be received back into the fellowship of the people of God unless you will repent and feel that shame. Well, after this, in the last two verses, at the very end, the father brings in a second hunter into the story. He brings in the husband of the wife. The wife, the adulteress is hunting down your life, but now he brings in another man. And it's interesting that this whole story, this whole scenario of the father teaching his son, that other man has been ignored. But we need to remember. We need to remember the other spouse. You need to remember, if you're married, the damage that you will do to your own spouse, not just to yourself. And damage to your own family. And you need to remember the damage you'll do to that other family. And even those of you who are young and those of you who are not married, you need to think about how your actions would affect your future spouse or that other person's future spouse. These things are sacred. They are to be between you and your spouse, the future one. And so you need to think about this. when temptation comes. And so here comes the man, jealous, furious. He will accept no compensation. This is referring to settlements in the court. They would have to prosecute the young man for his part in the adultery. And the husband says, nope, I take no settlements. You can pay me $10 million. I don't care about the $10 million. I want to see this guy pay. The husband is furious and jealous as he should be, and he will not spare. These are the things you need to think about when tempted, when having those desires in your heart. As we close, you just need to remember, why does God care so much about faithful marriages? It's because the Bible tells us that marriage is a reflection of the love of Christ and the church. God created marriage to create that picture for us. And so an adulterous marriage preaches a false gospel of a false Christ and an unfaithful bride. And so we in our marriages want to keep marriage sacred because it reflects the gospel. It reflects Christ. Christ loved his church so much that he gave up his life for her. He died for her to cleanse her from her sin and to forgive her for all of her infidelity and unrighteousness. And so we need to go to Christ and trust in him and know him. And it's through him that we have this power to live out a faithful marriage. May we trust Christ. May we reveal the gospel to the world around us that cheapens marriage and show the great love that Christ has for his church. Let's pray. Our God, may you, by your spirit, impress upon our minds and our hearts these truths of your word. We pray, Lord God, for your church, that she might reflect your greatness in the gospel. We pray that Christ would be seen as the faithful, loving, self-sacrificing Savior in the marriages that you give us. We pray that you would help us as your church to hold marriage in honor among all. We ask these things through Jesus Christ. Amen.