of God's Word. Our sermon text this morning is Judges chapter 3, verses 7 through 11. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and forgot the Lord their God and served Balaam and the groves. Therefore, the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushan Rishathayim, king of Mesopotamia. And the children of Israel served Chushan Rishathayim eight years. And when the children of the Lord cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel who delivered them, even Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. And the spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel and went out to war. And the Lord delivered Shushan Rishathayim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand, and his hand prevailed against Shushan Rishathayim. And the land had rest forty years, And often the oldest son of Kinez died. Let's pray. Almighty God, Heavenly Father, this is your word, and we pray that you would bless it. Open our hearts and our minds to hear what the Spirit would say to us today, Lord God, that we can walk in your ways. We ask in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated. In case anybody was wondering, yes, I did practice Chushan Rishathayim many, many, many times this week. That's quite a name. Well, we are back in the Book of Judges. A few months ago, when I was up here last time, I gave a sermon on the introduction, the second introduction to the Book of Judges, and we talked about In that sermon, some of the great heroes of the Bible and how sometimes that sort of falls flat on our ears. But these heroes of the Bible being the heroes of our family, our ancestors in the faith. They were spirit filled deliverers and like us, empowered to do the work God has called them to do. We also talked about the importance of not letting ourselves be disillusioned or disappointed with these regular heroes because of the prominence of the superhero in our day. You remember that. We want to be excited about the reality of true heroes, not lost in the fantasy world where you'll never be able to do the things that the superheroes do. You know, if we could be heroes, especially superheroes, we'd fly And we'd shoot sticky spider webs out of our wrists. Or, well, maybe not that. It's kind of disgusting. Actually, the Spider-Man thing, it was years ago when we watched that movie. I watched the movie for the first time. It was my son who noticed that Spider-Man was going all throughout the city, weaving in and out all over the place. And, you know, he spins a web, connects to that building and swings, and a web connects to that building. And it was, I think it was the end of the movie, it was all joy and everything, the enemy was defeated. And he's just flying through the town. And my son, again, this was quite a few years ago, so he was a lot younger. His response to that was, who's going to clean up all those spiderwebs? I thought, that's a really good point. Those things are like steel. And he's littered the city with them all. And I said, that's the part we don't see, right? About the superheroes, the damage that they cause. Anyway. But the heroes of the New Covenant, right? The heroes of the New Covenant have real gifts and real abilities and real weapons to use for the defeat of the enemy. But that is one of the things I do like about the whole superhero thing, is that each one has a unique special power. You know, you've got Spider-Man, you have Wolverine, has his titanium some kind of super titanium skeletal structure and he's got the blades that can retractable blades that come out that are impervious to anything and he heals super fast which is becoming increasingly more apparent to me that's something that i need is to be able to heal more quickly i'm not healing anymore i keep getting injured and and the injury just seems to stay with me i wish i had wolverine's power the hulk has super strength Some can fly, some have laser vision, but each one's got their own power they use to defeat the enemy. I think that's pretty neat. And that is similar to us. We each have gifts and abilities to develop and to use for the glory of God, to build his kingdom in our day. But again, our weapons are real. And in the same way, in our text today and throughout the book of Judges, God uses different judges to bring deliverance to Israel. Each judge is unique and has something to teach us about how God defeats his enemies. So what I decided to do is that this is going to be a sermon series. When I come up here, we're going to do a sermon series. on the Book of Judges, and we're going to go through each judge and talk about those things. What are those things? What are those weapons? What are those ways in which God brings deliverance using the real weapons that he uses? I want to review just a little bit some of the stuff we talked about last time and go over a little more closely the structure of the Book of Judges before we get into off. We touched on it last time. I want to be able to look at a little bit more closely. So if you have your sermon notes on the back of your sermon notes, the back page is the overall structure of the Book of Judges. So take a look at that for right now. We're going to go through this real quickly or hopefully real quickly. So you may remember last time we did talk about the fact that judges has two introductions, both of which highlight Israel's failures in the beginning of occupying the promise in the beginning of occupying the promised land. The first introduction acts as a transition from the book of Joshua to judges, and it kind of is kind of a conclusion, really, to Joshua and recounts each tribe's failure to completely conquer or completely drive out their little area of the promised land. And because of this, God is angry with Israel, and in that introduction, he says that the inhabitants of the land will then be a snare to Israel and thorns in their sides. Then the second introduction, is actually a proper introduction to now the book of Judges. And it gives us a clue as to what the next 450 years or so are going to look like for Israel. And there's going to be this repeating cycle of sin and deliverance. And that's in this second introduction. If you remember the cycle, it looks like this. Israel sins, rebellion, and God punishes them. Retribution. Then Israel will cry out for repentance. They'll cry out to God with repentance. God sends them a deliverer in the person of the judge. It's a restoration. And then lastly, God grants them rest and restores them. Seven times. Israel will go through this. Will go through this cycle. So after these two introductions, These seven cycles actually begin starting with Othniel. And again, the first introductions highlight the failures of Israel. And if you look at the very end there, there's two epilogues. The two epilogues also highlight Israel's failures. So it begins with failure and ends with failure. That's when we did the judge's Bible study. One of the first things we, in the Sunday school class, one of the first things we said is get ready to be depressed. It was a little bit tongue in cheek, but there is a lot of failure going on. But God does bring deliverance and there's things for us to learn. But there's a lot of failure and there's a lot of sad things going on. And in fact, in fact, this last account in the book of Judges is one of the most disturbing stories in the Bible. It's pretty awful. And that's how the book ends. In between these two accounts is this chiastic structure. The seven cycles are organized chiastically. And notice that Gideon is the center and the turning point of this chiasm. So a couple of things to note about this, which is going to relate to this overall theme, kind of set the stage for this series as we look at these various judges. The first thing is that before Gideon, all the judges are very, their accounts are very positive. There's overwhelming victories for Othniel Ehud and for Deborah. But after Gideon, While God still brings victory, each judge has major issues that end up clouding the scene a little bit. Also, before judges, all the cycles end with rest. There's this formula that says, and the land had rest. But after Gideon, rest is not mentioned again. Also, Before Gideon, there's no mention of any trouble with the judge wanting to exceed his bounds and become a king. But after Gideon, the issue of the judge wanting to become king is prominent. Okay, so Othniel is the first judge. He's A, and his corresponding judge is Samson. He's A prime. Now that's some space in the outline in case you want to write down how these things relate. Othniel and Samson in particular have quite a few things that relate to their counterpart, which is interesting. So Othniel marries a godly Israelite wife who urges him for good things that prosper him and Israel. Of course, most of us don't know a lot about Othniel. We're going to talk about him later. But we know about Samson, right? And Samson had nothing but problems with his marriage. He marries a Philistine wife, not an Israelite wife, who urges him, and she urges him, to betray his riddle. She urges him for bad things that end up with the death of his wife and father-in-law. His later relationships aren't marriages, but he has relationships with two more pagan women, one of whom is Delilah. She also urges him for negative things that end up leading to his capture and his eyes being put out. So you have this contrast between Othniel, who has a godly wife who urges for good things. And we're going to like I say, we'll talk about that in a minute. And Samson, whose wife, whose wife and other relationships, other women in his life, urge him for bad things. Othniel has a brave and godly father-in-law that blesses him. Samson has a cowardly father-in-law that betrays him. So with both of these judges, marriage plays a prominent role. Also, it's kind of interesting that another thing that may connect the two is that in the account of Samson, at one point he rips the gates off one of the Philistine cities and he carries them something like 40 miles to Hebron. And there's really no explanation for this in the text. But so we wonder why Hebron? Well, Hebron is where Othniel's wife lived. and probably where Othniel lived before he goes out and he conquers Debir, which is a city that's close by Hebron. So another possible connection there between Samson and Othniel. The next pair of judges, B is Ehud and B' is Jephthah. And in both accounts, in the one of Ehud and in the one of Jephthah, There's a transjordan king, so a king on the other side of the Jordan comes and oppresses Israel for 18 years. It's 18 years in Ehud and it's also 18 years in the account of Jephthah. Both judges highlight the issue of messages. Ehud has a message for the enemy king and so does Jephthah. Both judges battle and capture the fords of the Jordan. right around the same area of the of the riverbank, the fords of the Jordan. But there are some important differences, again, similar to what's going on with Othniel and Samson, Ehud and Jephthah. You have some very positive stuff with Ehud and some negative stuff with Jephthah. With Ehud, Ephraim, the tribe of Ephraim figures prominently to help Ehud destroy the Moabites. But in Jephthah's army, I'm sorry, in Jephthah's account, He ends up killing thousands of Ephraimites, people from the tribe, the battles against Ephraim. So now Israel is fighting and killing each other instead of killing the enemy. C in our outline is Deborah and Barak. is and C-prime is Abimelech. In both of these counts, you have a woman who figures prominently and who crushes the head of the enemy. J.L. crushes Sisera's skull while he's in her tent in Deborah's account. And Abimelech, his own head is crushed by a woman who throws down a piece of a millstone from a really from a high tower. Deborah's story includes much tribal cooperation. You have other tribes coming to their aid. And Abimelech is highlighting civil war. Again, Israel fighting against each other. And again, one note about Abimelech I mentioned last time is that really he's not a true judge. He's never called of God. God never raises him up. That phrase is never used to describe Abimelech. He doesn't judge Israel. And really, he sets himself up as king. In fact, it says in his account, chapter nine, verse 22, says that Abimelech reigned over Israel three years. So he's actually maybe Israel's first king, in a sense. And there's nothing positive about his story. But then you have Gideon now. So Gideon is the center. And with Gideon, he's the turning point. So he starts out great. God does raise him up. The spirit of the Lord is upon him. And he has great victory. He stops idolatry at the beginning of his encounter. And he's again, he has tribal cooperation and delivers Israel. But afterwards, he has trouble. He fights it. He, too, fights with Ephraim. And then the people want to make him king. And Gideon, if you remember from last time, he says, I'm not going to be your king. But then he names his son Abimelech, which means my father is king. Right. And then he ends up acting a whole lot like a king, takes a lot of wives. And the story ends up ending with idolatry. He makes an ephod and becomes a snare, it says, to Israel. OK. I wanted to do that real quickly, just at the beginning of this, so that we can have that sort of as our background, this kind of flow, this contrast So things turning out, things being fairly positive in these cycles and to eventually they're getting things getting more negative. Remember, that turning point is Gideon. So that's kind of our big picture. OK, so that's it there. Let's look at now Othniel. Go ahead. If you have your Bibles, let's go back now and maybe you're already open. Let's turn to chapter three and we're back on the regular outline here. Othniel, the Lion of God. Chapter 3, we'll read verses 5 and 6. Sort of the immediate context to what's going on. The children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. So this is the very end of that second introduction, and it sets the immediate stage for what's going on at the time of Othniel. And what's going on is that instead of driving the Canaanites out, they live with them. And not only did they live with them, they took their daughters to be their wives and gave their daughters away. So you have a summary here of the problem that Israel is going to have throughout their entire history and the reason then that God sells them into slavery. And the reason he does it is marriage. False marriages, though illegitimate marriages, they were not supposed to marry the inhabitants of the land. Joshua, before he died, warned them of what would happen if they did this. Joshua chapter 23. And I'll read this for you. Joshua is about ready to die. In 23 verses 10 and 13. He says, one man of you will chase a thousand. And the Lord, your God, he will fight for you as he has promised. This is how this is what the rest of the conquest is going to be like. He's saying one will chase a thousand. But take heed, therefore, unto yourselves that you love the Lord, your God, else if any of you do any wise, go back and cleave unto the remnants of the nations and even these that remain among you and shall make marriages with them and go into them and they unto you. for a certainty that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations before you, but they will be snares and traps to you and scourges in your sides and thorns in your eyes until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you. If they marry these people, they're going to die. They're going to get thorns in their eyes. They're going to be thorns in their eyes. It seems funny, at least to me anyway, it seemed funny to talk about marriage in this context. the conquering of lands, the rise and fall of nations, these big important issues marriage doesn't seem to fit. It's a personal issue. It's a private issue, or at least of secondary concern when you're talking about these big national issues. When we think about solving the world's problems, hunger, crime, warfare and terrorism, marriage doesn't usually come up in the conversation as a solution. But this is exactly, or as a reason anyway, a cause. But this is exactly what God is telling us here in Judges. Think about it. Abortion, homosexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, All of these things directly relate to the issue of marriage. My brother-in-law is a Riverside County Sheriff down in California, and he's done lots of different jobs. When he was on patrol, I remember asking him, you know, what do you do when you're on patrol? What kind of things do you run into? And I can't remember his exact numbers. I should have called him and asked. But something like, Well, I can't remember. I won't say a number. But most of the things he deals with is domestic violence. Most of the calls that he got called on were domestic violence issues. And if they weren't domestic violence, even if it was drugs or whatever, it was other stuff, it usually related in some way to guy-girl relationships. I remember thinking after getting off the phone with him or talking with him about this, that man, His whole night, he's dealing with the issue of marriage. And if there were godly marriages, he wouldn't have a job. That's what it seemed like. Marriage is important. It's foundational. The issue of marriage is of central importance, even to the rise and fall of nations. And to all of the issues, really, in our day. Marriage is everywhere. Every person in this room is either the fruit of a marriage, or should have been, right? God designed marriage to be the protective covenant environment of the sexual relationship. Now, some of us aren't a product of that. I'm not. So, there's always exceptions to these rules, but it should have been. Right? It should have been. Marriage is the only authorized place for sex. Marriage and sex go together. So, ideally, in God's economy, if there were no marriages, there would be no next generation. So marriage is important. That's how tightly they should be seen together. And marriage touches every person on the planet. Like life and death, it's foundational. Jay Adams in his book on marriage, I'm going to quote from him. He says, God designed marriage as the foundational element of all human society. Before there was a church, a school, a business, countries, God instituted marriage. Remember, Pastor Wilkins at family camp reminded us that the scriptures themselves start with marriage in Genesis and end with marriage in Revelation. Marriage is so important, a concept that God chooses it to express his relationship to the church. And also from this text, we see that who you marry is of utmost importance, who the Israelites married. caused the downfall of their nation over and over again. Now, I doubt whether Joe Israelite, when he was looking out, I doubt that and he's thinking about courting. I doubt that, you know, when he saw Susie Sweet Cheeks Canaanite, that he thought that the nation was going to die because of this. He saw her walking. Hey, this is somebody I want to marry. If I wasn't thinking that this had national consequences, but that's what happened. Right. And there we need to realize that there are people that are not options for us to marry. Paul warns us. And we've talked about this recently in family camp as well. But Paul warned us in first Corinthians six and seven that we marry in the Lord. Jim Jarrett, Jim Jordan. Also, I want to quote from him, he comments on these verses. He goes so far to say that intermarriage with non-Christians is one of the most destructive of all sins. It's placed here with idolatry as the summation of Israel's apostasy. Intermarriage guarantees the failure of the next generation. That's pretty strong language. But when you think about At least when you think about marriage, you need to think about the next generation. So for us, even if you marry in the Lord, there are things you may want to consider in marriage. Do you want your children to be baptized as infants? Do you want them to take communion? What kind of things are you going to celebrate? You aren't forbidden scripturally to marry somebody who thinks differently on these issues. You're authorized. But you at least should know, you need to ask the question beforehand, where do we stand on these issues? Are you going to celebrate Christmas? Right? So you have Joe Israelite and Susie Canaanite, right? What are they going to do? Are they going to celebrate the Passover? Or are they going to celebrate a Baal ritual? Well, at a minimum, whatever happened there, in those marriages, at a minimum, if you decide that we're going to be, you know, maybe we'll do both. You know, that's religious pluralism, right? And there's no pluralism with God. So religious pluralism leads to false worship. So, you know, the next generation then becomes folks that worship idols. It's important. And it touches us right where we live. And idolatry is exactly what ended up happening. In verse 7, we read, The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and forgot the Lord their God and served Balaam and the groves. So let's talk a little bit about then where these marriages, what kind of worship it led to. So Baal is the main object of worship in the land. He's the god of the storm or he's he can also be called the Thunder God. And his name, the word Baal simply means Lord or master. And interestingly enough, it can also mean husband. And he's the most important deity in the Canaanite religion. He is in control of fertility, not only human fertility, but the fertility of the land, everything that involves growth. Baal is in charge of it. And most of us, if you're at least, well, most of us probably have some idea of what fertility cults involve. If you have any inkling of that, you know that the worship of Baal was extremely sexually perverse, right? It was a fertility cult. And Baal worship causes trouble for Israel for almost its entire occupation of the land. There are periods of decline and revival, but the worship of the Baal causes a major point of stumbling for Israel until the captivity. One of the interesting points about the captivity is when Israel comes back, they never worship Baal again. There's other issues, right? But after the captivity, after that Baal, he probably knew all about it. He was born in Israel. He was an Israeli. And he ended up moving to America, moving to New York when he was eight or nine years old. And he was studying to be a rabbi before he decided that being a rock star would probably be more to his life. And she is a goddess. So it's Baal and Asherah. She's the mother goddess. We're in the Sunday school class. You may be getting antsy in your seats. No worries. We're not going to describe every detail of the depravity of this cult. We got into it a little bit more in the judges class. And it's pretty perverse stuff. But we do need to note a couple things. First of all, in the pantheon of the Canaanite religion, the main god, the father god, is this god named El. And the mother god is Asherah. That's those are the two main gods. Those are the first two gods. And then they have many children who, like other religions, they become the gods of rivers and the gods of death and the gods of the sun and all that kind of stuff. And one of them is Baal. He's the god of the storm. But at some point in this story, Baal ends up replacing El. El is pictured as this far-off god. He's not really involved in what's going on. He's kind of irrelevant. And Baal ends up casting him out and taking his place as the husband of Asherah. So Baal and Asherah then become the two main players in this fertility cult. And the worship, but they're also involved in worship that celebrates an illegitimate marriage and sexual perversity. So God is understandably angry with his people who have fallen so far. And again, we didn't talk about exactly how far, but you get the idea, right? They've fallen so far so fast that he sells them into the hands of Jushan Rishathayim. Therefore the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel and he sold them into the hands of King of Mesopotamia and the children of Israel served eight years. This phrase here, the anger of the Lord was hot is literally translated his nostrils burned. So, you know, I'm learning Hebrew right now and his his overall domination of the area. His name actually means king of double Chushan or king of double wickedness. He's the king of the land of the two rivers, which was probably the Tigers and Euphrates River, which rivers, which is why your translations are translations translated Mesopotamia, which means land of two rivers. So for eight years, this guy's dominating Israel. Israel is dominated by this foreign power and then they call out to God and God raises up a deliverer. He raises up Othniel. Let me read Othniel's account again. When the children of Israel, verse 9 and 10, when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer. He raised up a deliverer who delivered them. His name is Othniel. OK, let me read it word for word. And when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel who delivered them, even Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. And the spirit of the Lord came on him, and he judged Israel and went out to war. And the Lord delivered Shushan Rishathayim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand, and his hand prevailed against Shushan Rishathayim. So now we're at the restoration stage. of the cycle and God sends off the all whose name means the name of the all means Lion of God to deliver Israel and I like this is mentioned many times off the old. His victory is mentioned, it's repeated twice for emphasis, delivered into his hand, and his hand prevailed. And the English word prevailed does not really carry the spirit of the victory. There's a Hebrew word there, and it's a contraction, but basically it's ta'az. And ta'az means mighty, or overwhelming victory. It can also mean fierceness. Or, and we've been playing softball here, in softball terms, it's a blowout. Othniel's victory is a blowout. Othniel is pictured as being this overwhelming, dominant, victorious guy. He's awesome. He's beyond awesome. He's be awesome, right? And you don't get that if you just, you know, it's just a short little story, but this is the picture of this overwhelming, wonderful victory by Othniel. who, by the way, is from the tribe of Judah. Othniel happens to be from the tribe of Judah. Not originally, but he's absorbed into the tribe of Judah during the conquest. He and Caleb. He's from the family of Caleb. Caleb happens to be his father-in-law. It's also his uncle. We're not going to get into that. But anyway, Othniel is from the tribe of Judah, and he's filled with the spirit of the Lord. And if you remember from last time, this becomes characteristic of God's Deliverers, the Spirit of the Lord. This becomes characteristic of the Deliverers in the Book of Judges, and becomes particularly true of King David, who is also from the tribe of Judah. And all of these, these Spirit-filled Deliverers, are little pictures of the true Spirit-filled Deliverer, who is Jesus Christ, who also is from the tribe of Judah. and who also is the true lion of God, as it says in Revelations chapter five, verses four and five. And I'll read that to you. And I went much this is this is in Revelation. And I went much because no man was found worthy to open and read the book, neither to look thereon. And one of the elders said unto me, excuse me, one of the elders said, weep not. Behold, the line of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals thereof. Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah, and Othniel is a picture of Christ. And he overwhelmingly destroys the king of double wickedness. And then it says in verse 11, just when we're getting to this climax here, it says, And the land had rest 40 years, and Othniel, the son of Cain, has died. End of story. But really, that's not quite all there is to say about Othniel. There's one very important detail of Othniel's life that we can't overlook. And I mentioned it earlier when we talked about the structure of the Book of Judges. If we look a few verses earlier in Chapter 1, verses 11 through 15, we see that Othniel is married. So let me go ahead and read that. Chapter 1, verses 11 through 15. And from thence he went up, which this is It's Caleb. He went up against the inhabitants of Dabir, and the name of Dabir before was Kirjathsephir. And Caleb said, he that smites Kirjathsephir and taketh it, to him I will give Aksa, my daughter, to wife. And Ahchmiel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it, and he gave Aksa, his daughter, to wife. And it came to pass, When she came to him, when she she came to Othniel, that she moved him, she urged him to ask of her father a field. And she lighted from off her ass. And Caleb said unto her, what wilt thou? And she said, give me a blessing, for thou hast given me a Southland, which actually is translated. It's actually Southland is dry land or a desert land. You've given me a desert land. Give me springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs as well as the lower springs. This is a beautiful picture of Christ in the church and of the marriage relationship. The husband, Othniel, engages the enemy. He conquers. He defends. And his wife, by her diligent work, enlarges their borders, fills the dry land with life-giving and nurturing water. Othniel and Auxa are this picture of the victorious marriage. Quoting Jim Jordan again on these verses, he says, The family property of Auxa and Othniel becomes a miniature garden of Eden, fruitful and well-watered, and such is the promise to every faithful man and wife. And as I said earlier, this is also, of course, a wonderful picture, a witness against those illegitimate marriages the Israelites had made and against the perverse marriage of Baal and Asherah. Right at the beginning, we have those things described. You've often those victory. His marriage is a very important, very important part of that. And this is a picture of victory in general. This overwhelming victory of Othniel's described cannot be divorced, no pun intended, from his marriage. Marriage is a significant part of his victory here over the enemies of Israel. You might say it's his superpower or his weapon against this enemy. If you look I have a coloring page on the back for those of you looking at the coloring page for the kids. Actually, not just for the kids. Adults can color too. You're not prohibited. But that's the reason why we have Othniel here. We have a lion because his name is Lion of the tribe of Judah. And then you have his wife here. These are his weapons. Now, we also gave him a really big axe, which probably came in handy during the battle. But the axe is not the main idea, right? The axe is his marriage. His marriage is really the weapon that God used. And we should see marriage as a weapon as well. We don't often think of marriage that way. But God's weapons are different than our weapons, right? If you look at 2 Corinthians 10, verses 3, 4, and 5, says here, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God. So the pulling down of strongholds, the casting down of imaginations, and casting down every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. This is God's warfare, and marriage is on the front lines of that battle. The victory of Christ, and we've talked about, is ultimately pictured as a marriage, right? If you turn to Isaiah, I'm going to read some verses in Isaiah here. Isaiah chapter 61 and 62. There's bits and pieces here that are really interesting. Chapter 61 says here, The spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord have anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He has set me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of prison to them that are bound. Now, in Luke chapter four, Jesus reads these verses and says that this is fulfilled in me. Right. Jesus says this is a this is this scripture is talking about himself. It's talking about him. They've been fulfilled in his reading. And it talks about the restoration of the land. And then in chapter 62, and then there's all this judgment in 61. You know, I'm bringing for I love judgment, he says. And where does it say? Yeah, so there's there's judgment here in these in these sections, but mostly it's about the restoration of the land. And then in chapter 62, it says here that For Zion's sake, I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake, I will not rest until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness and salvation as a lamp. And Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory, and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name. Thou shalt also have a crown of glory by the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem. Thou shalt no more be termed forsaken, Neither shall thou land anymore be termed desolate, but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah, for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. Thy land shall be married. The spirit-filled deliverer has come to proclaim that the bridegroom is here, and the day of vengeance is in connection with this. Revelation 19 says, After these things, I heard a great voice and much people in heaven saying, Alleluia, salvation and glory and honor and power unto the Lord our God for the true and right for true and righteous are his judgments. For he has judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication and have avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again, they said, Alleluia, and her smoke rose up forever and ever. And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worship God. that sat on the throne, saying, Amen, Alleluia. And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great. And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thundering, saying, Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice and give honor to him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready, and to her it was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints. So blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And then we can go on and on, but next it talks about Jesus being on a white horse, coming and judging. Fierceness and wrath. And it says here, I've come to overthrow that the birds of the air can eat the flesh of kings. And I saw the kings of the earth and their armies, right, and they're all destroyed and they're slain and the fowls of the earth eat their flesh. So there's this connection here between the marriage supper of the lamb and then all this judgment goes forward. The enemies of God are defeated. Right. And then finally, in 21, when it's over, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea. And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Marriage is warfare against the enemies of God. It's one of the tools for the transformation of the world. How can we exercise dominion Right? The dominion mandate. How can we exercise dominion without marriage? It's impossible. It's an oxymoron. The dominion mandate is to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it. And as I said earlier, in God's economy, you cannot multiply without marriage. Marriage is a weapon of transformation. This means that your marriage is a weapon. Your marriage is a part of how God is going to defeat his enemies and reconcile the world to him. Your marriage is warfare, casting down strongholds and imaginations that set themselves up against God. And we need to see that getting married is not disconnected from impacting the culture around you. It is not selfish. It is not a break or a sidetrack from the real work of doing ministry. It is a significant force in bringing the culture to Christ. Now, for those of you who aren't married, most of you will be. You can think of your future marriage. Remember, Pastor Wilkins was talking about himself when he was in college. He had his little list, you know, of wives that were measuring up. And I can relate to that. I didn't have a list. Thank goodness. I wasn't quite that bad, but I still had You know, I still looked around and I was like, yes, no, yes, you know, yes, you know, that kind of thing. And I remember, you know, it hitting me. Well, sure, I want a wife. And what kind of wife do I want? But then it hit me. Am I ready to be a husband? What have I done to prepare myself for a wife? Right. So we can be doing that now. Single folks, people who are single who want to be married or probably are going to be married. You can take time now to prepare yourself to be a spouse. You can pray for your spouse. Now there are, and we talked about this too, there are those who God has called to be single and there are other weapons that you will use in serving the Lord. Marriage is not the only weapon that God uses, right? But the point of the sermon today is not to see marriage as disconnected from the warfare that God is using to transform the earth. Marriage is a part of God's arsenal. It's essential to his victory. Look for, again, those who are single. You might be in a position to help other marriages be strong. You can look for and pray for places to serve the body. But for those that are already married, do something this week to strengthen your marriages. I don't know if you've seen the movie Fireproof. I just saw it just recently and I thought it was really good. In my personal opinion, I thought it was the best of the three. And it's about marriage. It deals with the issue of marriage. And those of you that have seen it, you know, their marriage was pretty bad. It was non-existent, basically, and it was falling apart. And he engaged in this thing called the love dare. Now, I don't know everything that's going on in the love dare. But the things that they showed in the movie, there were things, there was something for 40 days, there was something each day that he needed to do to strengthen his marriage. It was a different thing each day. And the things that were there, I thought were really, really good. Things that I want to do. And I know there are some of you. This is available online, right? Fireproofyourmarriage.com. I know some of you are taking advantage of those resources. Again, I don't know how good all of that stuff is, but the stuff that I saw in the movie was really, really good. But the point is, is that We want to take time. I think we should take time this week. If you haven't done it, take time to strengthen your marriages. It's not selfish. It's not navel gazing, right? It's not being inwardly focused. It's actively advancing the kingdom of God. And we are in dire need of strong, godly marriages in the church. The witness of the modern church is pretty weak. here, right? So we should see the failure of the church's impact in the culture directly related to the issue of marriage. These are not disconnected issues, right? They're directly connected. We are more like, we being in the church, we are more like the Israelites and judges really than Othniel and Aksa. The divorce rate in the church rivals that of the general public. And the world around you is looking for answers. But apart from God, the answers are sad and impotent. I saw a recent article. It was a couple of months ago. It said a new study about the issue of marriage. New study. Children are now officially harmful to marriages. That's what it said. Now, children cause stress. Children take work. Children will expose weaknesses in your marriage. At a minimum level, your marriage is going to change once you have children. If you don't have children, when you have children, your marriage is going to change. But the world's answer is, yeah, I just don't have them. And then you'll have a strong marriage. Well, that's obviously false. It's a weak answer. And it's an impotent answer in the full sense of the word. There was another study that said smoking was harmful to marriages. Right? So smoking is harmful to everything nowadays. And there's a study now that if you smoke, it's harmful to your marriage too. The world is grasping at answers. And these are experts, right? The world is grasping at answers. But we know, right, the answer is found in Christ. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Wives, submit to your husbands as unto the Lord. Christian, if you are married, you have been given a great gift. great responsibility, and a great formidable weapon. We need to make sure, you make sure, we need to make sure, we know how to wield this weapon skillfully. Even for those who have been married for a while, there is still much to learn. It takes work and discipline and time and constant attention, which is why I want to focus on that this week. We should do something to strengthen marriages this week. You should be an expert soldier in this part of the battle. Husband, be an expert on your wife. Wife, be an expert on your husband. We should be experts on our children. And as we work together, as you work together with your spouse, as we work together as spouses, Our homes can be a miniature garden of Eden, a witness to the world of Christ and his reconciling work. God is working. And this is how he works. The message for us today, these are his weapons. We will not see lasting Christian reconstruction without godly marriages leading the way. So we need to pray for those pray for that. We need to work towards that. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of marriage. Thank you that your weapons are not like our weapons. We ask and pray that you would grant us in this church strong, godly marriages, strong, godly families. Give us wisdom to know how to go about and do this in our culture. We pray for the church. Lord, that you would strengthen the witness of the Church to the world, that our marriages would stand as a glorious witness of Christ.