I'd like you to turn your Bibles this morning to Matthew chapter 19. I began a series today on marriage, family and the home. I told our church, I charged our church already. I believe it has become time for us to add a paragraph to our doctrinal statement about what we believe that marriage and family is. It has not always been necessary. Three hundred years ago, Baptists included a significant doctrinal statement about what marriage is, what family is, what husbands and wives should be. And somewhere in the blessing of an America that knew that, I guess we took that for granted that people knew what God intended marriage to be, even when we fell short of it. And I want to preface what I'm going to say here in Matthew chapter 19. You and I fall short of God's ideal. No, no one is suggesting no, no one's going to insist. I'm certainly not going to preach in this series that we have arrived at God's ideal. Even those who are following God's patterns, sometimes sin intervenes. Sometimes marriages fail. When two people are charged to be bound together, sometimes only one of those people can break that bond. There are people who are divorced who did not choose that. That was not their first choice. It happens. Sometimes both were at fault, sometimes one. Sometimes, in retrospect, it's hard to know. It's hard to know what happened. Life gets complicated. I'm not excusing us when we fall short. I'm just acknowledging at the beginning of the series that you and I fall short. Even couples who are here today who who are married longstanding couples will admit to you that they sometimes fall short of God's ideal of husbands cherishing their wife as Christ loved the church. I've never met a man who put his thumbs in his galluses and says, I love my wife just like Jesus loved the church. I've heard them say, I want to do that. I aspire to do that. I would try to do that. But I've never met a fellow who said, yeah, me and Jesus, we're just the same there. I think the men here, the godly men will admit that we fall short of that standard. I'm sure the godly women would say, you know, I haven't, I don't always measure up to God's ideal, to God's perfect standard. If that doesn't tell you something about how bad sin is, how bad depravity is, Those of us who are saved by the grace of God, we've been given the Holy Spirit to indwell us. We've been given the word of God to guide us. And yet we're like the Apostle Paul describes in Romans chapter seven. Sometimes we know what we should do and we just don't do it. And we know we shouldn't do something. And sometimes we just do it. And we don't have anybody to blame. It's not our spouse's fault. It's not God's fault. It's not our neighbor's fault. It's just something in us is that old sin nature is what it is that we're going to battle until the day we die or the day Jesus comes back and we fall short. So when when I lay down foundation principles or talk about God's ideal, I am in no way saying to anybody listening or anybody observing that we're the people and we know it all. We do it all. We're perfect. And What we're going to do is we're going to look at God's word. We're going to look at the principles in God's word and we're going to measure ourselves against God's word. We're not going to measure ourselves against each other. We're not going to say, well, that marriage is better than this marriage or this. We're going to make God's word the the standard. We're going to we're going to look at God's ideal because that's that's the only real a warrant we have in Matthew Chapter 19 verse number three. The Pharisees also came to Jesus. Tempting or testing him and saying of him is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause and he answered and said unto them had ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said. God said, God made them male and female, and God said, for this call shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they twain shall be one flesh. Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. Therefore, God is joined together. Let not man put asunder. Then they ask him, why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your heart suffered you to put away your wives. But from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, commiteth adultery. And whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery." Shorthand here, God has this ideal. If you don't measure up to God's ideal, sin has intervened. Don't don't speculate too much here. Don't don't try to case study this to death. Just say God has an ideal. God has an ideal. When you depart from that, sin has intervened. Why? Why would then God ever allow divorce? Well, as it turns out, the very system of divorce in the Old Testament was a severe mercy. Men were so depraved that They would take a wife and then for no reason, abandon her. God said, that's not right. It's not right to financially abandon someone who has been brought into a marriage relationship and so there has to be some kind of accountability. I think every culture, if it wants to survive, has to understand that when you have children, when you enter into a relationship and you have children, you have some responsibilities to those children. Whether you stay in that home or not, Dad, you've got a responsibility for your offspring. You have a financial responsibility. Say, well, you know, the mother and I are separated. We don't live together. It doesn't matter. You've got a responsibility to those children. One of the great tragedies in our culture is absentee dads. We have indifferent moms, but we also have absentee absentee dads who who begat children and they don't they don't take help take care of their children. That's not right. There ought to be a law. There ought to be some. And God, Jesus said God allowed this because sin sometimes cause some problems and you have to deal with the situation where people are. In preface, I also don't think that any of us have arrived. And the second thing is sometimes situations are very complex and Christians are not saying that you that there are simple answers to every case study. Sometimes. Relationships have become very complicated, they have become very complicated, I'm not saying I'm not talking about situation ethics, I'm just saying unraveling. The problems that we are capable of creating is hard and no one's suggesting otherwise. No one's suggesting, well, all you have to do is wipe the slate clean. No, when marriage is involved, when children are involved, it becomes very complicated. And we should be humble about that and we should also be helpful about that because Every one of us is somewhere on that spectrum of either understanding God's perfect ideal or undertaking God's perfect ideal. And we need to be humble about that. Now, I choose this text for Mother's Day because I don't know of anything that protects motherhood more or should mean more to mother than the institution of marriage. You know, motherhood and marriage ought to be synonymous. They ought to be yoked together. I've got to tell you, not to be pious, not to be puritanical, that's God's ideal. Motherhood should always be in the context of marriage. That's the way God intended it to be. God made us male and female. And he gave Adam. His wife and performed the first wedding ceremony. Now, some people say, well, it wasn't really ornate, there wasn't a lot of pomp and circumstance. Look, who are you to criticize God's ceremonies? Well, that's that tells us something about human nature, too, is like, well, you know, was nobody walked down the aisle, nobody. You know, through the bouquet and nobody. Look, when God does a wedding, maybe we should just sit still and be quiet, you know, and admire the way God does things. My point being this, if we had marriage and motherhood so yoked together that they were just inconceivable that they should be separated, no pun intended. If we had them yoked together, we'd be a lot better off. The farther you get motherhood from marriage, the worse off you're going to be. One more preface and then I'll get into the heart of the message. Let's make it clear. Children. I don't know if it was Chuck Swindoll or who said this, Charles Stanley. There are no illegitimate children. To refer to children as illegitimate is in our culture, is a disservice to the child. No child should be characterized or criticized because of his parents or her parents. It's just inconceivable. To look down at a child because of the marital status or lack thereof of their parents, well, that's just stupid. It's not the child who's at fault. It's not the child who should be penalized or punished. We should not get into the mode of disrespecting children. Children are the heritage of the Lord. You say, well, the parents didn't quite. That's not the child's fault. When a child is born. It's the heritage of the Lord, you said, but how does that work when somebody is out of the will of God or. Well, without going into the theology that's over my head, I just want you to know God's in control and God works all things after the counsel of his will. And we need to be careful not to disrespect children who have come from sinful relationships or relationships that fall far short of God's ideal. The children should not be penalized, not even emotionally, not even psychologically. We should not penalize them. They'll bear some penalty. They'll bear some burdens because of it. Make no mistake, but we should not heap burdens on them. So I'm using Jesus answer here to say, how do we know what God's ideal is for marriage, family in the home? I'm going to say at the outset, it must be God's word that gives us our foundation. It must be God's book that gives us the blueprint. We can't get up. Christians cannot take the latest Gallup poll that tells us what 60 percent of this group thinks marriage is or was or should be. I tell you what, if you're going to use opinion polls for the foundation of your life, you build your house on shifting sand because public opinion blows to and fro. It often depends on how the questions ask it all. It all depends on how somebody feels. It all all depends. You know I have some experience with the psychology of opinion polls and it turns out here you're not going to believe this. It turns out that sometimes people don't tell the truth when they're asked questions. Sometimes people answer questions with the answer they think the questioner wants them to say. Sometimes people aren't honest. My point being, if you think, well, you know, 80% and 90% of the... I wouldn't bank my life on any opinion poll, not even the ones that agree with me. I know those are the better ones. But I wouldn't bank my life, I wouldn't build my life, I wouldn't take the blueprint for marriage, family and a home from public opinion. Because it is not to be trusted, public opinion is not to be trusted. We got to get our blueprint, we got to get our framework, we got to get our foundation from God's word. Not only do we have to get it from God's word, We must believe that God's word is true. If you say, well, I don't believe the Bible, I don't take my instructions from the Bible, then I have no biblical answer for you. Now, I believe there are I believe there's a case to be made for what I consider God's ideal for marriage. I believe there's a pragmatic argument for it. I believe there's a practical argument for it. I believe the culture, a state, a government would be well served to understand that God's ideal for marriage is best. It is best. I don't think there's any real argument practically for changing God's definition of marriage. I don't think there's any benefit to that. I don't think there's any blessing that comes from that. I don't think there's any good thing that comes of it. But I have to say, if you don't accept God's word as true. Then what's going to happen is we're going to devolve into this. Your opinion, my opinion, I feel I think I my. I weigh this thing over this thing. And there is. There's really no answer to that. And so when when someone says, I disagree with how you define marriage, my answer is, I have to let the Bible, I'm not letting the Bible define it, but I'm going to submit to what the Bible says marriage is not what Gallup or Harris or some survey or some politician or some special interest group. I can't use that as the foundation of my life. And I urge you not to use that as the foundation of your life. I got to tell you, I've lived long enough now to see the vagaries of public opinion and the winds of what matters and what doesn't matter. to go all over the landscape. And who knows where the next good wind will take human opinions. So. Number one, marriage must be defined in terms of biblical creation. It's not a coincidence that the assault on marriage, family and the home has come at the end of three generations of teaching evolutionary origins for the human race. That's not a coincidence. That's not just a happenstance that, well, we are willfully ignorant that God spoke this universe into existence. And the Son of God, by the power of His spoken word, brought something out of nothing. And He formed this earth And the creation in six literal 24 hour days and on that sixth day, he formed man of the dust of the ground. You say, well, how do you do that? Well, he formed him of the dust of the ground. So how exactly do that? Well, he formed him of the dust of the ground, the dust of the earth, and he breathed into him the breath of life. That's where man came from. I believe Adam is historical, real person. I don't believe he's just figurative or allegorical or some legend that Jesus made up. I believe Adam really was created on that sixth day of creation. Now, the last three generations, the popular culture, popular science has mocked that. No, that that didn't happen while we were I've heard them all. We're we're we're evolved from apes. No, no, no. We're evolved from another. Tried that there was apes and then there's this other tribe that's that's our we're not descended. One scientist told me, says, I wish you Christians would stop saying that we teach we're descended from apes. I said, well, what are we descended from? He says, well, we're descended from pre-humans. Oh, that's how that makes a lot of sense. What are they like? Well, they're kind of like apes. I made that last part up, that was just he wouldn't use the term. Oh, I see. We're not descended from apes, we're descended from ape-like creatures. Oh, I see. You say, what's that got to do with marriage? Well, Jesus' answer about falling short of the ideal of marriage here, he says, have you not read that he which made them at the beginning God made everything. And when God made humanity, when God made the first man and the first woman, He made the first man and the first woman. He made them male and female. God did that on purpose. Maleness and femaleness are not a result of the fall. It's not something that's gone wrong. It's not something that, well, you know, we've got these sexist gender of, you know, stereotypes. And, well, you know, we make little boys be little boys and we make little girls be little girls. I'm here to tell you on the authority of God's Word, God made us male and female. And it wasn't it wasn't something that that sin corrupted or I mean, sin did affect everything, but maleness and femaleness is not a result of the fall. It's not a it's not a stage in our evolutionary development that falls short. Oh, that if we get rid of this maleness and femaleness, God made us that way. And when God makes everything in Genesis 1, he says it was good. Not potentially, you know, when it finally gets rid of the difference between maleness and femaleness. God made us this way. This is absolutely fundamental, foundational. I would not have thought 30 years ago that you'd have to tell people, you know, well, that's how God made man, male and female. Not three different genders, not four, not one, but two. God made Adam and then he made Eve. Adam and Eve were the first man, the first woman, the first husband, and the first wife, and they are the father and the mother of all living people. Well, that's just crazy talk. I'm not sure the genome mapping group is going to go with that. Is that a large enough pool to come up with all of the humanity that we have now? What about, you know, not sure that... Look, I give you this for free. Don't be baffled by science, falsely so-called. If you think evolutionists have no agenda, you are incredibly naive. Do you know why evolutionists are willfully ignorant of creation, not because the evidence is not there, it's because they will not go where the evidence takes them. They will not have a God to reign over them. They're willfully ignorant. The heavens declare his handiwork. The very nature of man declares the existence of God. Now, Jesus answers this question about what happens when marriage fails what happens when marriage gets off the track what happens when sin interrupts the ideal. Jesus does not immediately say well get to a counselor quick you know get get to he doesn't immediately go into the prognosis of well this is how to fix this problem. I think he does talk about that. I think the Bible does have the answer. But what Jesus does first is he goes back to the to the beginning. He said we can't talk about marriage. We can't talk about family. We can't talk about husbands and wives unless first we go back to the beginning and say God made them. Male and female. This is the cornerstone of everything I'll preach this. This is the foundation of everything we'll proclaim. This is why we stand where we stand about marriage. One man, one woman, one lifetime. Is this just intolerance? Is this just a narrow mindedness? Is this just old fashionedness? Is this just a well, we don't we didn't know any better. And now we know better. No, this is the foundation of everything. I'll preach about what marriage is. what a husband should be, what a wife should be, what that home should be. This is the foundation. Now, if Jesus doesn't know what he's talking about here, and those who reject the gospel and reject the biblical record, I understand they have no reason to pay any attention to anything Jesus said, although it is odd. It is odd to hear politicians and public figures invoking Christianity in defense of homosexual marriage. It's dumbfounding to me. The fact that sin goes a certain direction is not news to me. I hope it's still horrific and it still shocks us. But the fact that sin takes us these paths away from God, that's not news to us, surely by now. But for someone to say, you know, I've been reflecting on what marriage is and my Christian values I think my Christian values teach me that. Well, I'm telling you, that's blasphemous. I tell you, that is the most heinous crime against Christianity I've ever heard. Well, they must be good Christians. Well, I don't know if they're saved or not, but I'm telling you, the stuff they're talking is nonsense. The warrant they give for well, you know, I believe the golden rule and that golden rule tells me Let people do whatever they want to do. Well, that's not exactly what it says, but you're telling me that you're going to invoke Christianity as a defense of this sinful, wicked redefinition of what marriage is. What I'm saying to you this morning is if we can't find these truths in God's word, then we don't have any truth. It's just a matter of opinion. And that's where the world is. Make no mistake, the reason the world is sanctioning homosexual marriage, which has to be the most ridiculous phrase I've ever heard. The reason the world sanctions that is not because they've suddenly found new evidence about human nature. You say, but people want to do something. Really? Since when did the urge to do something become a warrant for allowing it to be done? I'm waiting for the Society for Bank Robbers to tell us that, hey, I was just born that way. You know, sometimes when I drive past the bank, sometimes I think I have that gene. I'm just making fun now. I'm just saying. I'm not saying. Sometimes I drive past that bank and I think, man, they wouldn't miss 50 grand, would they? Sometimes they can't even find all their money. Turns up missing. I'm thinking maybe I've got the bank robbing gene. Maybe I've got the kleptomaniac urge. Maybe I've got, maybe I just like to punch people in the nose. I'm pretty sure I got that gene. I'm pretty sure, I don't know if that's, I'm pretty sure I got, oh, sometimes I just want to just haul up and shock people. Well, I'm waiting for the society to, you know, poor anger management. You know, I might have the gene for driving fast. I look at the speed limit. I mean, sometimes it is just ridiculous. 45, really? You want me to go 45? I'm sure, safely, I could do 70. I'm almost positive, weather permitting. On the interstate, sometimes, I think my gene for speed says, you know, I think I could do 80. Maybe 90. I think I've got the urge to do that. Now, some of you sitting out there, that's just crazy stuff. You've got that urge for speed, too. I can see it on your driving record. Now, who made that rule? Why don't we get together and say, well, you know, some people just like to drive fast. Well, that's true. Some people just got the urge to. Rob Banks, some people just got the urge to smack their wife around and beat up their kids. That's just the way they are. God made us all different. I hope the hackles on your spine raise up saying that preacher, that is stupid talk. We will not have people treating their wives and their children. We won't have people rob a bank. And we've got to have some rules. Why is that? Well, because you believe just because people have the urge to do something or be something. You know, some people have the urge to be lazy. They do. They don't want to do nothing. That ain't good English, but you know who I'm talking about. Think, why don't you go out and get a job? Well, you know, I'm waiting for a management position. I'm waiting for just an ideal job. Look, why don't people want to work? Some people do want to work and can't work. Some people don't want to work. Some people don't. Are we going to make laziness a genetic predisposition for I better not give people ideas or they will say, well, I just have I just have the I have the urge to not work. You see, urges are wanting to do things are no explanation for moral right and wrong. We have to go back to to the Bible. Let me close with this. I don't want to teach anything that Jesus wouldn't teach. I believe this is the safest answer to people who criticize biblical Christianity. They think we they charge us with adding something to to the Bible or adding something to the gospel or adding something to what Jesus says. I don't want to do that. I don't want to add anything. I don't want to superimpose my opinion. I don't want to create some a lifestyle that suits me and then say, oh, this is what the Bible says. I don't want to superimpose what I think on the Bible. If what I teach and preach to you doesn't come from the clear teaching of God's word, I want you to reject it. You say, well, I don't think Jesus really deals with this subject at all. I think Jesus just tells people be nice to each other, be kind, Help help each other when you can and above all, be tolerant. Now, you can actually find that in the Bible. I don't think you can. I believe Jesus defines the beginning of creation, the foundation for marriage, the foundation for the home, the place where motherhood should matter most. God told Adam, he said. This this this is the woman. And she became the mother of all living. Every one of us is here today. Because of Adam and Eve. A man and a woman. God made us that way. And Jesus says, this is how I will answer your questions about marriage. This is how I will define the home. This is how I will deal with the objections, the failures, the faults, What happens when people don't measure up to God's ideal? How do you deal with that? How do you respond to that? But Jesus doesn't hesitate here. Jesus said, Have you not known? Have you not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? Let's bow our heads. You say, Preacher, we know this. This is so fundamental. This is so simple. But I see this is the foundation, this is the. The basis for everything we teach and preach about marriage, family, the home, what a husband should be, what a mother should be. How children should be raised in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. We are what God made us. God made us male and female. This is part of the sovereign eternal counsel and will of God. You reject this at the peril of rejecting the very idea of God or the very creation of God. You can't sit here and say, well, I believe God made everything. But I don't believe that he made it the way you're described. Look, have you not read? Have you not read? Jesus says that we can trust what the Bible says about creation. Jesus doesn't say that it was some myth or some fable or some legend or some fairy tale that God told stupid Hebrews. who couldn't really understand evolutionary science and the secular hypothesis of, you know, the creation of the Big Bang. It's Jesus said you can read this. This is what happened. God created everything and God made humanity male and female. Father, bless the service today. There is a connection to The gospel, it's Adam and Eve who sin and plunge the human race into sin. And it's the promise to Eve in Genesis 315 that a virgin born son would come one day, would live a sinless life, would die on the cross to pay for our sins. Father, I believe the assault on marriage, the assault on family, the assault on Genesis is a thinly veiled attempt to deny who Jesus is and why Jesus came and what the cross means and what sin and death and hell and heaven are really all about. Father, I pray you bless this sermon today, bless this series as it develops to me, not only unction, but give me the ability to be understood. Perhaps everyone here understands and knows these things. Perhaps some are struggling and dealing with friends and neighbors, maybe in their own lives. Is God's Word true? Is God's way right? Give us open Bibles and open minds and open hearts. If someone here doesn't know Christ, I pray they wouldn't wait for another service or wait for another Sunday. that they come and say, I know I'm a sinner. I believe Jesus died for me. Let them be saved. We'll give the glory to You and to Your Word today. In Jesus' name.