Well, good morning again. Our scripture reading comes to us from Matthew chapter 5, verses 27 through 32. Follow with me. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better for you to lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell. It was also said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we do come to you now as we open your word. We pray for your spirit to be upon us, To illuminate our hearts, our minds, speak truth to us, give us the power to respond to it. Let it take root within us and grow and bear fruit. All to the glory of Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen. I should probably give a little warning here, obvious from the text there. It is a Subject that deals with sexuality. So parents may get questions from your children. I hope you use that as a opportunity to disciple, okay? The word is what it is, and I will go through it as such. Martin Lloyd-Jones has a full chapter prior to him actually doing commentary on this passage. He entitles that chapter, The Sinfulness of Sin. And here's the summary of that. If you don't understand sin and the sinfulness of it, then you're starting in the wrong place when it comes to this text. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you're both a saint and a sinner. You cannot take a breath and not sin. And we need to understand, Jones is talking about this, we regularly, yours truly, can go a day, two, three and never think about the sin in my life at all. I can get so busy, so caught up in everything that's happening around me that I don't even recognize that I've sinned. It's just an everyday occurrence. But brothers and sisters, God is holy to the extent that I believe we cannot even fathom. He is just and he is righteous. and he does pass judgment on sin. Jesus is gonna pull that out in this text. This is the second and the third antitheses, as I've called them, this theological word that's used to describe six teaching segments in chapter five, that Jesus is saying, what you have learned, what you are espousing and teaching, scribes and Pharisees, is incorrect. Your interpretation is wrong. Let me give you the truth because I am the way, the truth, and the life. Our generation treats sin lightly, and that's probably an understatement. Society thinks of sin as an aberration, an illness, something that is to be treated, certainly not condemned, and not repented of. It must not be suppressed for fear of the psychological damage it can do to someone who cannot live or be who they think they should be. It doesn't believe, the world doesn't believe in moral absolutes. It believes that we're victims. But there are no victims in Christianity. Jesus' teaching is to show us the sinfulness of sin, and to show us the repercussions of it. Judgment and hell. So I guess this is a fire and brimstone sermon. Okay, last week we talked about anger's relationship to murder. And many of us would have said, I've never killed anyone. I've never taken a life. But we have anger in our hearts. This week we're going to look at adultery. And it has the same relationship with lust. Many of us would say, I've never committed adultery, but I guarantee everybody in this room has had lust. Guarantee that. Our society is a long way from this seventh commandment. Modern thinking has affirmed the legitimacy of adultery. It's okay, as long as love is involved. I love this person. I don't love this one anymore, but I love this one over here. So the world says, well, it's all about love, so go ahead. You deserve it. But the direction that society moves, Jesus stands in the gap. He walks against the wind, against the flow, against the current, and he is calling his people to do the same. He gives a moral standard in the Ten Commandments, and they are rigid. And let's face it, they're hard to keep, particularly when Jesus brings them to full flower. I mean, murder, yeah, I can keep that. Adultery, I can keep that. But when you start talking about lust and when you start talking about anger, even stealing, we go, well, I don't rob banks, but I take this here and that there. This moral standard, the scribes and the Pharisees had no problem with adultery. Like you and I would say, we've never committed this. That's an external act. I don't even have to worry about that. But the seventh is tied to the 10th commandment that says, thou shall not covet. That's a desire of the heart, an inward desire. And Jesus is going to pull these two together. and show that the root and the problem is in the heart. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything of your neighbors. We read that list and we think, oh, okay. We fall into this gap though. We recognize our neighbor's house. Maybe ours isn't big enough. we think. We may covet our neighbor's wife, or his car, or his boat, or other things. This desire comes from the heart, and it's a sinful desire. And we know about the heart. Jeremiah tells us that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can understand it? Today there's little regard for this commandment. It's treated in a trivial manner. Psychologists even advocate for sexual indulgence. They believe that you should expose yourself in a healthy way to pursue sexual fulfillment. Like you and me, the Pharisees felt that they were innocent of this. They never committed adultery, but again, lust is the root of adultery and we all commit that. Jesus says that it is a matter of the heart. Later in Matthew, he'll talk about it's not what goes into the body that defiles a man, it's what comes out of the heart that defiles the man. And he will say murder, and he will say sexual immorality in that list of what comes out of the heart. The temptation of lust is unavoidable. It is all around us. It will bombard us day after day. We need to be diligent in the fight. But many of us find the fight difficult because we have become callous to the world around us. Daniel Doriani in his commentary on this speaks of the callousness that we have. Brothers and sisters, I'm going to step on toes here. We are obsessed with entertainment. We are obsessed with it. But our society, our public discourse is counter to Christian culture. It's counter to Christianity. Turn on the TV, you'll see comedians treating adultery and fornication as but a joke. Creates laughter. Our commercials and clothing promote lust. Books are filled with salacious and perverted writing. Songs promote physical desire, infidelity, and pleasure. Movies glorify sex. Multiple partners. Our public policies assume that everyone over the age of 18 is sexually active, and if not, they should be. How many evenings do we spend in front of a television that is bombarding us with these messages? And yet we don't even feel dirty. We think that's the norm. I can handle this. But brothers and sisters, as you become callous, you set yourself up for failure. Men, will think it's okay to be flirtatious. Oh, I know. No big deal. I'm not going to get involved with this person. I'm just being friendly. Those are the first words of an adulterer. Secularism, as I said, doesn't like absolute standards. But when they begin to fret over the consequences of sexual immorality, teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS and such, you would think that they would catch on, want to put a stop to it. But no, they will not teach abstinence. They will not teach fidelity in marriage. Instead, they'll teach safe sex and condom distribution. We have to battle the culture. And it starts with the way we react in our own lives. Jesus takes up the topic of lust to begin with. We must understand what Jesus forbids. We should also know that it's harmless, it's natural to recognize someone else, a woman that is beautiful, a man that is handsome, There's nothing wrong with that. God's created everyone in his own image. But it's one thing to make an aesthetic observation. It's another thing to turn this over in the imagination and then to entertain immoral fantasies, thinking that no one can see what's in my mind. No one can see in my heart who's going to catch me. God knows. God sees. Likewise, it's good to dress attractively, to dress nicely, but it's not seductively. Many of you know I worked previously in apparel. I worked for Levi Strauss. When I went to Levi's from Dockers, Dockers I worked in the men's division, sold shorts and shirts. And then I went to women's wear, which means I sold juniors products and women's products. And many of you know the difference between those. Juniors are in the odd sizes and women are in the even sizes. There's a differentiation in the way they're actually produced. Women has more curvature. Misses have had children. And so they have hips now. Listen, I sold shorts. The most profitable place that I sold shorts was in South Beach, Miami. They shouldn't have been called shorts. It didn't take a half yard of material. The only reason they were called shorts was to fit them into a category. I remember, see, going to New York, okay, and they're showing the line, and this is the first season that I'm gonna be selling this to my account, JCPenney, okay? Midwestern business. And they do the models on the runway. And I gotta tell you, it looks like they're just wearing underwear, okay? Why do I say that? I say this to the girls in the room, to the women in the room, understand what a man thinks. Oh, it may be fashionable, but listen, you are contributing to lust just by what you wear. And I'm not saying that you have to You know, be Little House on the Prairie. Okay? You don't have to wear things up to the collar. Okay? You don't have to wear skirts and things down to the knee. I'm just saying modesty. Modesty. Because it is an issue. And women, you can help men by dressing appropriately. Now for men. I want to point you to Job chapter 31. He says something profoundly here. He says, I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I gaze upon a virgin? Covenant language. God has made a covenant with us for salvation. I have redeemed you. I have purchased you. Job held to his righteousness. And he said, in the same way, I'm going to make a covenant with my eyes. I am not going to let them wander. He knew the difference between viewing something aesthetically, but not dwelling upon it. We cannot prevent certain thoughts or ideas from entering the mind, but once they do, we have a choice to make, whether to entertain them or to cast them out. Martin Luther said, we cannot stop birds from flying over our heads, but we can keep them from building nests in our hair. I worked with a woman, Mary, I'll leave her last name off, when I was with Levi Strauss. She grew up Catholic, but very quickly in her teenage years she left the faith, what faith there was. She was really agnostic, she would tell you that. She wasn't sure if God existed or not, but she was moral. So moral she'd fit in most churches. And she had a profound saying that she lived by, you are your choices. And she would tell people who worked for her, you're your choices. You have to accept the consequences for the things you do. We in the church need to hear that call. We are our choices. Jesus wants us to see that we're our choices. And if we choose sin, the sinfulness of it, And he calls us to radically and aggressively address sin, particularly here, the sin of lust. And he goes on to demonstrate with two illustrations, one of the eye and one of the hand. He says, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. And in the Greek language, it is Rip it out. It's not surgically removed. It is a radical extraction. And the throwing away is to heave it, to really let it go. Get it as far away from you as possible. In the same way, he uses the hand. And he says, if the hand causes you to sin, cut it off. And he purposely addresses the right, not the left. Now, I know there's left-handed people in this room. It's no offense to you. Majority of people are right-handed. So this is the dominant side. This is what he's saying. This is the part that you really need to address, your dominant side. So if you're left-handed, you can just say my left eye and you can say my left hand. But the illustration is graphic. Well, is this instruction helpful? Surely Jesus is not serious about this, is he? He is serious. He's dead serious. He's not just not to be taken literally. It's hyperbole. He's trying to graphically jar us to let us understand how sinful sin is and this sin of lust. It's not to be trifled with. Not at all. Why the high and why the hand? Why these members? It's because the eye is the focal point that allows the desire, the temptation to come in. And the hand is what carries that out, that handles the lust, the adultery. So he's talking about these things. Now, is it true that those are the source of sin? No. because I guarantee you that a one-eyed man or woman and a one-handed man or woman will still lust. For that matter, blind men can lust. Blind women can lust. The eye represents that arousal of desire and the hand takes what is not theirs. not only covets, but takes it. Adultery is stealing then, but it's much more than that. The heart, we don't need hands, we don't need eyes to lust. They're contributing factors, but it's the heart that is the source of desire, it is the source of lust, adultery, it is the source of sin, it is the root of sin. The point Jesus is making is we need to take extreme measures to prevent it because it is deadly. The result of this action, this desire taking full flower is judgment, it's death. We need to mortify sin. Jonathan Owen wrote a book called The Mortification of Sin. It talks about a daily discipline of addressing sin in your life. You want to go to exercise instead of reading that dense mortification of sin? Get yourself a copy of the prayer book, The Valley of Vision. Read some of those prayers of confession. The detail that those writers went to, to touch every aspect of your being, your life, our lives, and the ways we sin in those manners. I am in awe of these men that went before us." Do that, because the temptation is real. Proverbs 5 verses 3 through 5 say this, for the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil. But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death. Her steps follow the path to Sheol. It looks good at the beginning, but it soon turns to destruction. God has given us vivid imaginations. It is a blessing for us to have. Desire has a negative, lust, but it also has a positive. It's what drives a man and a woman to come together, to fulfill marriage. Imagination is also good in other ways. There's probably not a book in the world that's been written that didn't have a writer with a vivid imagination. Art requires vivid imagination. Writing music or lyrics requires imagination. Inventors need imagination. Leaders, men and women, need to be visionaries. Vivid imaginations that can picture something to come. And in the context of marriage, the imagination is good. Sexual desire is not a bad thing when it's used as it is given by God. Like sleep or food. We need food for energy. We need sleep to build ourselves. But if you sleep too much, you become a slugger and you may not do the job that you're supposed to do. It can be costly. You can overeat or you can undereat. Both can become problems. The intimacy between a man and a woman is God given and it is appropriate. We need to know this. It's taking what does not belong to us that corrupts the mind. Therefore, Jesus instructs us to be serious about sin, the sin of lust. Remember Joseph in Genesis 39? Potiphar's wife, he's captured, he's working for the man, and his wife is tenacious for Joseph. Every day wants him. Until one day it gets really close and she's got him by the garment. And he sheds the garment and he flees. Why do I bring this up? We need to use every possibility, every resource to flee the temptation of lust. You've already lost the battle if you get too close. I think about going camping with kids And you set up the fire, and you're going to roast marshmallows. And you tell the kids, don't get too close. The fire will burn you. There's the warning. Doesn't take long. They want to see how close they can get. Oh, I'm OK. I'm OK. Get back from the fire. And then the next thing you know, they've touched a rock that's close to the flame, burned their hand, or they've gotten their marshmallow too far in and the flame comes up and burns the hand. If you get too close, you've lost the battle already. We need to be diligent. We also need something else. We need a want to, an ought, a desire to fight the battle, to hate sin. We need to see it as God sees it. We don't need to be like Augustine. Augustine's mother had prayed for him. He recounts this in his book, Confessions. And when he was dabbling with Christianity or religion on one hand, and had a foot still in the world, he thought he was kind of religious by praying. And he prayed this prayer, Lord, give me chastity, just not yet. Still wanted to take of the pleasures of the world. We can't do this. We need an antidote for lust, and there's a couple of them. The first one is this, contentment. Contentment. The world bombards us with discontent. But we need to be content. Paul says to Timothy, but godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into the world and we can't take anything out of the world. But if we have food, clothing, With these things, we will be content. Take that principle and apply it to your spouse. They may be sitting to your right or to your left. You shouldn't look at your spouse and think, you know, I wish they did this better. I wish they were this way. I wish their personality was a little bit more outgoing. No. Brothers and sisters, we look at our spouse and we say, thank you, God, for the one that you have given me. They are. my helpmate. One little aside. Pastor Jake and I run into this in counseling. You need to bridle the tongue. You know people. I know you interact with people and you'll get around them and they'll talk about their spouse, whether it's their husband or whether it's their wife. and you'll hear all their flaws. This is one of those things, biblically speaking, if we don't have something good to say about our wives, we really shouldn't say anything at all, okay? That is the first step of going with the flow of the world and setting yourself up for failure. God has given you your spouse. Through his providence, he has brought them into your life. I'm extremely blessed. Both my grandparents, their marriages were over 60 years. The only thing that ended those marriages was the death of one of the spouses. My mother and father were married 61 years, and only the death of my mother ended that marriage. When I grew up, that's all I knew. Marriage was something that you entered into one time. It was a serious decision to make. Divorce was not an option. I wasn't, I wasn't, I didn't have my head in the sand. I knew what happened. My best friend, when I was in grammar school, late grammar school, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, his mother was divorced. I knew about that. He always wanted to come to my house, and I didn't want to go to his house. His house was chaotic. His house was full of discord. Chuck wanted to come to our house because my mom was there. His mom was at work. My dad came home for supper every day at six o'clock. If he had to go back, he would, but he came. So it was the family he never had. And enough of that. I just want to make the point, when we think about lust, adultery, divorce, those should be off the table. They should not be things that we dwell upon. We want the positive aspect of things. Let me move on quickly. Contentment. We need to be content with our partner. We need to love them and be content with their love. This is a scourge for the wandering eye. Love and contentment for your spouse. Contentment breeds faithfulness. Contentment breeds righteous fidelity. But in order to do this, to have contentment, you must be bored again. That's the whole premise of the Sermon on the Mount. to be poor in spirit, to mourn sin, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be pure in heart. All these are characteristics of one who has been born again. And if you want more about being born again, read Jeremiah 31 or Ezekiel 36. It talks about the new heart that you're given. A heart of stone is removed. God's word is written on your heart. You're sprinkled clean. You're given the Holy Spirit, the power then that enables you to do this, to keep his word, and to battle against sin. That's where the desire comes to see sin the way God sees it, to loathe it, to desire to put it to death. So Jesus is calling us to do this, but it's more than putting to death sin. It's a call to holiness, to righteous living, to covenant fidelity. We must be born again. The next antidote to lust is this idea of the mind, the heart, and the will. When I was in seminary, I took a marriage counseling class. Paul Tripp taught the class. We read two textbooks, one his, What to Expect in Marriage. The other one was by Dave Harvey. It was called, When Sinners Say I Do. If you have not read that book, I highly recommend it. Highly recommend it. When I did my little review at the end of the course, and we were asked, you know, what did we like the best? And I mentioned this book. And Paul Tripp put a little smiley face on my little paper at the end. I was hoping that it wouldn't offend him. This idea of when sinners say, I do, it speaks to the way we are to respond to one another. And this idea of repentance, this idea of mercy and forgiveness, these three valves that he talks about that have to be opened to make things come about. And I'll get to that more in a moment. But this idea of the mind, the heart, and the will. Our minds are the sentinel for our bodies. They are the one that, it is the one that's on guard, so to speak, for our person. This is why Paul says in Corinthians that we are to take every thought captive. to the obedience of Christ. Because if the mind doesn't take that thought captive and say, is this true or not true according to God's word? If it accepts it, the heart receives it. Because the heart believes everything that the mind tells it. And if the mind is tainted, the heart becomes tainted. And if the heart gets tainted, it responds and acts out. So I see this woman, well, not bad looking. And then I'm gonna think about, well, I'll entertain that a little bit longer. The heart goes, okay. There it is. And then the sin will lust and work it out. So we need to be careful. We need to set our minds on things above, as Paul says in Colossians. We need to renew our minds. They need to be transformed, as Paul says in Romans 12. We do not need to be conformed to the image of this world, but be transformed. It's hard work. We're not perfect at it. We fall all the time. It's like a child learning to walk. They go from crawling to pulling themselves up on a table, and then they take a few steps, and they fall. As parents, you help them up, maybe a sibling does. And they start to walk again, and they fall again. That's the picture of the Christian life. But we need to walk by the Spirit. And just as there's parents and siblings to help one in the Christian walk, we're to have the body of Christ in our lives. Fellowship, we don't live in isolation. We need the help of others around us. Brothers and sisters, we're instruments in the Redeemer's hands in the lives of our brothers and sisters to encourage, to warn, to correct, to help bring them up to maturity, to encourage them to walk in the faith. That's what we're to do. C.S. Lewis calls this practice the proper habits of the soul. Interesting. Final antidote for lust is marriage itself. It's marriage itself. And it's a beautiful thing. Younger boys and girls, you should see in your parents what love is, what marriage is all about. Hopefully they're modeling that for you. It is supposed to be a picture of Christ in his church. So marriage is the next topic that is addressed from an aspect. Jesus goes in to talk about adultery and calling it out as wrong. But he goes further than that. He said, as adultery happens, then divorce is soon to follow. But God's will was never for divorce. Today, you can get a divorce for just about any reason. Irreconcilable differences. This is nothing new. Before Jesus, there was two rabbis. Shammai was one, he was a conservative. Hillel was liberal. Shammai said, no, there's only one exception. The exception clause, it's shown in Deuteronomy 24. It's for sexual immorality. Hillel said, nah, it can be anything. Literally, if you don't like the meal that your wife makes for you, if they're not a compatible partner, if you view another More attractive than your wife, you can leave the one for the other. We think that's preposterous, but that's what happens today. People will go from one marriage to another. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That is not God's model. If you give a man an inch, he'll want a mile. More liberty to sin, but God says, I hate divorce. You won't find that language in the ESV. But again, I would direct you to the NASB and actually to the Hebrew that's in that. The word Shane means hate, literally. So in Malachi 2.16, God says, I hate divorce. but there is an exception clause for it, but that is not what is intended. Marriage was meant for life. The exception was for the innocent party, not the guilty party, the innocent party, if there is one. Let me take a step back here for just a moment because there may be some of you who have experienced divorce. Know people in your family that have been divorced or are going through it right now. Jesus is just telling you what the word of God says with regards to marriage and the intention of it. It was to be a representation of Christ and his church. That it is a lifetime commitment. But for those who have been through divorce, we need to understand that the teaching of scripture is also one of reconciliation and forgiveness. that these things have happened in the past and we can be forgiven from them. We can repent of them and move forward. We don't live in the past. Not what God has forgiven us of. We move forward. We just need to understand what marriage represents and God's intent for it. D.A. Carson says that, love in this day and age has become a mixture of physical desire and vague sentimentality. Marriage has become a provisional sexual union to be terminated when love dissolves. Doesn't mean much anymore. How different God's view of marriage is. It's a commitment, it's a covenant, It's something D.A. Carson says is for the tough-minded, for two people who are willing to work things out regardless of what has taken place. I want to come back to that idea of forgiveness, where repentance takes place, where mercy takes place, and forgiveness, the three vows. Dave Harvey, in chapter six of his book, puts this out, and you're welcome to get it and read that book. I'm just gonna summarize briefly here. He brings up a couple that he knows. That couple, you wouldn't think, had any problems. They both had careers. But it wasn't long before the desires of their hearts became different. They became more competitive between each other. start pursuing their own desires in life, their own careers, their own wants. Their dislikes and likes became more important and they begin to grow apart. The husband begins to be flirtatious. He's running through his head all the shortcomings of his wife. His wife begins to notice that there's a change in her husband. And when she brings something up, he says, oh, you're lucky to have me. I provide you this, I provide you that. All of a sudden he's arrogant, prideful in the things that he contributes to her, but it's all about him. It isn't long before he falls into an adulterous relationship. He testifies after the fact in the book. He had no idea it was gonna happen. But before you know it, he is neck deep in it, not knee deep, neck deep. And the Holy Spirit convicts him. And before he goes to his wife, he goes to God. He goes to God. And he makes this comment. He said, I abandoned all previous religious confidence and threw myself on God's mercy. As much as I desired my wife's forgiveness and restoration of the marriage, I knew my greatest need was for God's forgiveness. My heartfelt confession occurred one lonely night. I said, God, even if my wife chooses to pursue divorce, which I know she has every biblical right to do, I know I have no right to this marriage. All I've ever deserved was your wrath. Forgive me for my adultery in heart and in action against you and her based only on your son's shed blood. I accept him and his work and whatever discipline you require to change my heart. That is repentance. To make the story short, he goes to his wife. He confesses that. The first valve is turned. Repentance has taken place. That first valve is done by the sinner. The one who has done the offense. The next two come from the one that has been sinned against. And the first valve is mercy. Saying, I release you of that action. Harvey had set this up by talking about the parable of the talents that occurs in Matthew 18, and how one slave owned 10,000 talents, which are the lifetime of pay. And how his repentance knew and he deserved a lifetime of judgment. But she turns that valve of mercy. and releases him of that act. But the next valve is forgiveness. The wife confesses, it took time before I could confess to forgive him. It didn't just happen tritely. Hey, I confess I had this affair. Oh, that's okay. How many times do you do that between spouses? You treat confession, repentance, forgiveness, Trifully, let me remind you that even the little ones are an offense against a holy, infinite God. So it takes her time. You know what she has to wrestle with? Her own sin. She talks about periods of darkness. She sees God's light and provision on sometimes in sustaining her and on the other time, she is enraged. She's in the darkness. Sometimes she's depressed. She just wants to get away, go away, give up. But the Spirit keeps her there. And here's the end of the story. She does forgive. But she takes forgiveness, some may think, a step further. But it's really not a step further. Because I want you to think about Jesus' forgiveness on the cross. He forgives our sins, past, present, and future. But it's not forgive and have us just go our way. It's forgive and embrace. He pulls us to himself. He reunites us. The wife in this story knows that forgiveness is not enough. She needs to be reunited with her husband that has repented. And she does. But it doesn't happen overnight. Their testimony to this day is it took years to rebuild their marriage. It is stronger today than it's ever been. And year after year, day after day, month after month, it gets stronger. Brothers and sisters, We have a temptation each and every day of our lives. We need to practice open transparency with our spouses of potential lusts in our lives and other temptations to be able to bring those forward and repent of those, but repent to God and our spouse. Turn that first valve. And then the other one has to turn the next vow for mercy. And then the next vow, the forgiveness. It may take time on some of these. But brothers and sisters, because we are born again, because we have the Spirit, because we are empowered, we are enabled to do this. You may want to bring a brother or sister in on some things. And that's okay. You may want to contact an elder to help you out in some of these. Take whatever resources you feel necessary to complete the task. because we are to be reunited with our Savior and our spouse. That's the teaching here. The danger is to let it all fall apart. The danger is destruction. Let us not be ones who do that. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we do thank you for This word today, I pray that's an encouragement to us. We can see the negative of the command and the warning of it. Let us take it seriously. But Father, do grant us a double portion of your grace and your mercy. Let us see our spouses in a new light. For young people here, let them have the mindset of God, that marriage is a lifelong commitment that represents you, Lord Jesus, and your church. and that you give us the strength, the perseverance, and the power to live a life of righteous fidelity for you as a witness to the world. In Christ's name we pray, amen.