WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.520 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.520 --> 00:00:40.720 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.600 Mahler. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:43.920 And I'm still Woe. 00:00:44.800 --> 00:00:48.800 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be concluding our three-part series 00:00:48.800 --> 00:00:51.440 on the topic of love in Scripture. 00:00:51.440 --> 00:00:55.040 As we mentioned the last couple weeks, this episode is not going 00:00:55.040 --> 00:00:55.840 to be for kids. 00:00:55.840 --> 00:00:58.240 There will be some things that are going to be explicit. 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:02.240 So parents definitely listen first and yeah, maybe save this for some 00:01:02.240 --> 00:01:03.920 future day for your kids. 00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:07.120 I apologize for last week for not having the episode. 00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:09.600 We had a couple things come up and weren't able to record 00:01:09.600 --> 00:01:10.320 in time. 00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:13.280 Just to let you all know, the next two weeks we're going 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:14.480 to be taking off. 00:01:14.480 --> 00:01:16.880 We have a couple things to take care of personally, so we 00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:17.840 won't be around for that. 00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:21.120 So we'll be back three weeks from this week. 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:23.360 No updates yet on the coins. 00:01:23.360 --> 00:01:27.360 I apologize that that is not moving faster than we had hoped. 00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:29.200 The vendor is a little backed up. 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:32.000 Corey was saying that there's actually some hand painting that they have 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.880 to do on each of them, and that's probably slowing it down 00:01:34.880 --> 00:01:36.960 a little bit, but they're gonna be gorgeous. 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:39.840 We will get a notice out to everyone as soon as those 00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:43.440 things are available on Telegram, on Twitter, and on Gab. 00:01:43.440 --> 00:01:46.080 And hopefully, you know, it'd be nice if we had some news 00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:48.640 before we get back next week, but we'll keep you posted. 00:01:48.640 --> 00:01:51.120 Thank you to everyone for your patience on that. 00:01:51.120 --> 00:01:55.600 On the subject of marriage, upfront, Corey and I need to acknowledge 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:57.440 something that's obvious. 00:01:57.440 --> 00:01:58.880 Neither one of us is married. 00:01:58.880 --> 00:02:02.160 So if you get really angry that two unmarried guys would be 00:02:02.160 --> 00:02:03.520 talking about marriage, that's fine. 00:02:03.520 --> 00:02:04.560 Just turn it off. 00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:07.600 In addition to me not being married, I am also divorced. 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:10.320 I was married for ten years and I'm not married anymore. 00:02:10.320 --> 00:02:12.800 So that's you know a double strike if you want to say 00:02:12.800 --> 00:02:14.800 this guy's an idiot shouldn't be talking about marriage. 00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:15.280 That's fine. 00:02:15.360 --> 00:02:16.880 Not gonna try to change your mind. 00:02:16.880 --> 00:02:18.160 I can tell you this. 00:02:18.160 --> 00:02:20.720 This episode is not going to be giving marriage advice. 00:02:20.720 --> 00:02:23.200 We're not gonna be talking about here's how to have a happy 00:02:23.200 --> 00:02:26.080 marriage. I can tell you how to have a marriage wither and 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:27.680 die. I'm an expert in that. 00:02:27.680 --> 00:02:30.720 I we're not gonna get into that today, but you know we 00:02:30.720 --> 00:02:33.760 do know things, but we're not going to be the guys who 00:02:33.760 --> 00:02:36.880 are giving advice out of our lane because it's there's no point. 00:02:36.880 --> 00:02:41.120 There's plenty to talk about from scripture and from what's in the 00:02:41.120 --> 00:02:43.680 world for us to address today. 00:02:43.680 --> 00:02:46.320 As I said in the last couple weeks, there's also gonna be 00:02:46.320 --> 00:02:48.800 some things that we say today that some women are gonna be 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:50.080 uncomfortable with. 00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:53.280 That's the third apology in this preamble. 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:56.480 We're going to be graphic in some places about some of the 00:02:56.480 --> 00:02:59.200 things that we say in a way that I know for a 00:02:59.200 --> 00:03:02.320 fact is going to make some girls uncomfortable. 00:03:02.320 --> 00:03:06.080 The intention is not to either be prurient or to be edgy 00:03:06.160 --> 00:03:10.720 or to say something that's like weird sex stuff, not remotely the 00:03:10.720 --> 00:03:13.680 point. The reason that we're going to go into some of those 00:03:13.680 --> 00:03:18.160 places is it is inherent to the very subject of marriage itself. 00:03:18.160 --> 00:03:21.440 And so we're going to talk about the specifics because as we 00:03:21.440 --> 00:03:23.600 go through some of the passages and go through some of these 00:03:23.600 --> 00:03:27.440 subjects today, a lot of euphemisms are present in scripture. 00:03:27.440 --> 00:03:29.360 Some are not very euphemistic, frankly. 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:32.880 we kind of gloss over some of the language that God uses 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:36.960 and pretends that it's flowery when it's actually very graphic. 00:03:36.960 --> 00:03:40.240 But it's in a specific way the girls in particular are very 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:41.440 uncomfortable with. 00:03:41.520 --> 00:03:42.640 Know that from experience. 00:03:42.880 --> 00:03:46.160 It just makes some girls uncomfortable where guys like, well, yeah, that's 00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:46.960 how it works. 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:48.800 So we're not trying to be weird. 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:51.520 We're not trying to do anything trans aggressive. 00:03:51.840 --> 00:03:55.200 We're just trying to be frank about the subject. 00:03:55.200 --> 00:03:58.240 And a key part of it is sexual nature. 00:03:58.240 --> 00:04:02.080 And so we're going to talk about that in terms that don't 00:04:02.080 --> 00:04:05.520 bypass the reality, the frank reality. 00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:08.960 Because one of the things that's happened, historically in theology, you know, 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:11.920 obviously you want to be able to talk about scripture without getting 00:04:11.920 --> 00:04:13.840 gross or getting prurient. 00:04:13.840 --> 00:04:16.320 You want to be able to talk about God's things in a 00:04:16.320 --> 00:04:17.680 way that's godly. 00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:20.320 And we certainly seek to do that as well. 00:04:20.320 --> 00:04:24.400 And so things like euphemisms and metaphors are very valuable. 00:04:24.400 --> 00:04:27.520 It's important to be able to talk about the subject without going 00:04:27.760 --> 00:04:31.280 there. And when someone says going there knowingly, you know exactly what 00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:33.520 they're talking about when no one has to say it. 00:04:33.520 --> 00:04:38.160 So you can allude to something without it getting weird. 00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:42.080 The problem is that in our modern society where nobody lives on 00:04:42.080 --> 00:04:45.840 a farm anymore No one's around animals. 00:04:45.840 --> 00:04:51.600 Really, apart from being exposed to something grotesque like pornography, you're not 00:04:51.600 --> 00:04:55.280 going to see the intercourse unless you're a participant. 00:04:55.280 --> 00:04:58.800 And that's the way it's supposed to be, except for we've been 00:04:58.800 --> 00:05:00.160 separated from nature. 00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:02.720 In nature, you know, some of the examples we're gonna give are 00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:04.080 of shepherds. 00:05:04.080 --> 00:05:07.600 They were frank about these things because they were around livestock. 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:12.000 Everyone understood that when a male couples with a female, certain things 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:15.760 happen. And you can say certain things happen knowingly, and everyone knows 00:05:15.760 --> 00:05:16.720 what you mean. 00:05:16.720 --> 00:05:21.760 The problem is that the fact that the conversation around marriage proper 00:05:21.760 --> 00:05:25.600 has been has been so far divorced euphemistically from some of the 00:05:25.600 --> 00:05:29.120 key elements is that today a lot of people have really reverted 00:05:29.120 --> 00:05:31.600 back to the Gnosticism of the first century. 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:35.840 When we did the Gnosticism episode, we deliberately avoided a lot of 00:05:35.840 --> 00:05:38.880 the weird sex stuff because we don't want to have a bunch 00:05:38.880 --> 00:05:40.080 of weird sex episodes. 00:05:40.080 --> 00:05:42.080 Unfortunately this is gonna have to be the kind of the weird 00:05:42.080 --> 00:05:42.880 sex episode. 00:05:42.880 --> 00:05:44.560 And it's not us doing weird stuff. 00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:49.040 It's just when you talk about these things, there's certain things that 00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:50.000 are on the table. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.960 So in the early Gnostic cults, one of the things that you'll 00:05:52.960 --> 00:05:56.880 see Paul and some of the other authors arguing against is very 00:05:56.880 --> 00:06:01.920 clearly that there were anti-sex cults and there were rabid sex cults 00:06:01.920 --> 00:06:05.280 simultaneously at the same time as early Christianity. 00:06:05.280 --> 00:06:06.720 And the problem was twofold. 00:06:06.720 --> 00:06:10.000 On one hand, you had those who were not behaving in remotely 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:12.880 Christian manner as it related to sexuality. 00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:15.200 On the other hand, you had those who were going down the 00:06:15.200 --> 00:06:19.280 Gnostic path of denying the flesh entirely, saying that you know the 00:06:19.280 --> 00:06:21.600 body's nothing, and so either you can do whatever you want with 00:06:21.600 --> 00:06:24.320 it or you shouldn't do anything, complete denial. 00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:26.400 And one of the things that happened in some of the Gnostic 00:06:26.400 --> 00:06:29.040 cults was that they denied sex It's part of the reason they 00:06:29.040 --> 00:06:33.280 went away, is that they weren't having kids and spreading their Gnostic 00:06:33.280 --> 00:06:35.360 beliefs to newer generations. 00:06:35.360 --> 00:06:39.440 It kind of petered out for that reason, but in scripture itself, 00:06:39.440 --> 00:06:41.360 we see arguments against people. 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:44.800 Paul himself argues against people are saying we shouldn't have sex at 00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:46.480 all. He's like, No, you should. 00:06:46.480 --> 00:06:49.600 And he talks about celibacy proper. 00:06:49.600 --> 00:06:49.920 But 00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:55.280 one of the problems that we see again today is that especially 00:06:55.280 --> 00:06:57.840 online with a lot of younger guys that are trying to be 00:06:57.840 --> 00:07:02.640 trad, trying to be faithful, trying to be good Christians, a lot 00:07:02.640 --> 00:07:09.040 of what influences our thought around marriage and sexuality is frankly either 00:07:09.040 --> 00:07:14.320 Gnostic or monastic in its roots, not necessarily in its form, but 00:07:14.320 --> 00:07:19.680 there's the yeah some of the early church fathers were kinda anti-sex. 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:24.080 They basically saw it as a a necessary evil and not as 00:07:24.080 --> 00:07:25.680 a blessing from God. 00:07:25.680 --> 00:07:28.720 And so when some of the younger guys today look back to 00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:31.600 see what was said early on in the church, some of what's 00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:32.640 said was bad. 00:07:32.640 --> 00:07:36.400 Some of what said is what bore out its fruit as the 00:07:36.400 --> 00:07:41.680 monastic system, which turned into homosexual brothels for both men and women. 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:45.280 By 1000 AD, within Rome itself you had men like St. 00:07:45.280 --> 00:07:50.400 Peter Damien cursing all the sodomites everywhere inside the church because the 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:55.120 convents and the monasteries were filled with homosexuals overwhelmingly. 00:07:55.120 --> 00:07:56.640 This is a thousand years ago. 00:07:56.640 --> 00:07:58.160 Protestantism didn't do that. 00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:02.000 It was the monastic vows, it was the so-called vows of celibacy, 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:04.960 which are at odds with our created nature. 00:08:04.960 --> 00:08:07.920 And so as today we're trying to look at how do we 00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:11.360 behave in a Christian manner with these things, it's difficult. 00:08:11.600 --> 00:08:14.880 You're not going to find a consistent voice from inside the church 00:08:14.880 --> 00:08:15.680 about these things. 00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:17.920 And so what we talk about today is going to point back 00:08:17.920 --> 00:08:22.400 to scripture and talk about here's how we divide one thing from 00:08:22.400 --> 00:08:24.560 another. But one of the things that's going to come up over 00:08:24.560 --> 00:08:27.600 and over in this episode is imagine you have you know a 00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:30.080 couple things on the table and you want to put them in 00:08:30.080 --> 00:08:33.040 the same bucket on the table, and we're gonna say actually these 00:08:33.040 --> 00:08:34.640 belong in two separate buckets. 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:37.600 They look like they're the same, but when you clearly distinguish one 00:08:38.320 --> 00:08:40.640 part from another, they're clearly different. 00:08:40.640 --> 00:08:42.960 And there are other things that maybe you would divide in two 00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:46.160 separate buckets and we're going to point out and say actually there's 00:08:46.080 --> 00:08:49.200 a common thread between them where they should be in the same 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:53.680 bucket. So a lot of what's happened whenever we have conversations around 00:08:53.680 --> 00:08:57.760 things that are unusual and what people have heard before, it's really 00:08:57.760 --> 00:08:59.840 just making those kinds of distinctions. 00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:02.960 One thing looks like a certain category, and when you look at 00:09:02.960 --> 00:09:06.960 it with the proper definition, in our case the scriptural definition, it 00:09:06.960 --> 00:09:08.800 actually needs to go in a different bucket. 00:09:08.800 --> 00:09:11.520 And so what we're going to say today about marriage and about 00:09:11.520 --> 00:09:15.760 sexuality in these various passages you were treating is not anything weird. 00:09:15.760 --> 00:09:16.880 It's not anything novel. 00:09:17.200 --> 00:09:20.880 It's just showing that there's actually complete harmony in all the different 00:09:20.880 --> 00:09:26.480 places where we're talking about how we are to be married, how 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:31.040 we are married, what the assaults of Satan's world are on marriage 00:09:31.040 --> 00:09:34.080 itself, and then what it looks like when we either obey or 00:09:34.080 --> 00:09:38.000 disobey God as it relates to what this blessing is that we've 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:38.720 been given. 00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:40.960 Because it's ultimately a blessing from God. 00:09:41.280 --> 00:09:46.800 The marriage, the love of marriage, eros, lust in some forms, you 00:09:46.800 --> 00:09:49.600 know, there's a properly ordered lust and a disordered lust. 00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:52.240 And we'll talk about that because generally that's something that has a 00:09:52.240 --> 00:09:53.680 very negative connotation. 00:09:53.680 --> 00:09:55.600 That's another thing that goes back to the very early church. 00:09:55.600 --> 00:09:58.720 There's some, not all, but there are some who are very much 00:09:58.720 --> 00:10:03.440 in sort of the semi-Gnostic view that anything physical was gross and 00:10:03.440 --> 00:10:06.640 carnal and that was inherently bad. 00:10:06.640 --> 00:10:08.320 We have the opposite view. 00:10:08.480 --> 00:10:10.880 But at the same time, it has to be properly ordered. 00:10:10.880 --> 00:10:14.960 There's a lot of these seemingly fiddly distinctions, but when you get 00:10:14.960 --> 00:10:18.480 them all sort of sorted out neatly and put them arranged correctly 00:10:18.480 --> 00:10:20.400 on the table, it's all gonna make sense. 00:10:20.400 --> 00:10:22.480 So by the time we get to the end of this, hopefully 00:10:22.560 --> 00:10:25.440 you'll see that all the various passages we're going to highlight in 00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:29.440 scripture, all they're talking about different aspects of the same thing, they're 00:10:29.440 --> 00:10:33.120 all actually unified by the same underlying premise. 00:10:33.360 --> 00:10:33.520 So 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:39.200 this episode is the third one in our series on love. 00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:44.400 And specifically there is one term, one form, one kind of love 00:10:44.880 --> 00:10:49.680 that is distinct, that is unique to this episode because in effect 00:10:49.760 --> 00:10:51.040 it is marriage. 00:10:51.040 --> 00:10:52.400 And that is eros. 00:10:52.400 --> 00:10:53.680 That is sexual love. 00:10:53.680 --> 00:10:55.600 Now marriage of course is more than that. 00:10:55.600 --> 00:10:57.600 It's a more it's that emotional love. 00:10:57.600 --> 00:11:02.480 It can turn into delectio, the intellectual love, it is storge because 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:06.160 obviously there's familial love involved, and it is agape because there is 00:11:06.160 --> 00:11:08.080 that self sacrificing love. 00:11:08.080 --> 00:11:13.840 But what distinguishes from all other relationships the marriage relationship with regard 00:11:13.840 --> 00:11:19.360 to love is Eros, because that is the only relationship in which 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:21.840 that can properly be present. 00:11:21.840 --> 00:11:26.720 If you have Eros present in any other relationship, that is disordered. 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:31.520 You should not have that anywhere else except within the bounds of 00:11:31.520 --> 00:11:37.840 marriage. And to focus on that term for a minute, we'll focus 00:11:37.840 --> 00:11:40.800 on it more throughout the episode, of course, but I want to 00:11:40.800 --> 00:11:44.320 distinguish that term from a number of other terms. 00:11:44.320 --> 00:11:48.480 Because one of the ways that we deal in euphemism in modern 00:11:48.480 --> 00:11:52.960 discussions and historically as well, is that we conflate things that are 00:11:52.960 --> 00:11:57.680 not really the same or we use a portion of something to 00:11:57.680 --> 00:12:00.720 refer to the whole. 00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:04.800 Marriage and wedding are not the same term. 00:12:05.440 --> 00:12:07.280 The wedding is the ceremony. 00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:08.800 The wedding is what you do in church. 00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:10.960 You should do it in church anyway. 00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:14.640 Most modern couples don't, but you should. 00:12:14.640 --> 00:12:18.720 Marriage does not happen in church unless you are a Satanist who 00:12:18.720 --> 00:12:22.080 has broken into the church at night in order to desecrate it. 00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:26.080 Marriage happens in the marriage bed. 00:12:26.080 --> 00:12:30.160 We were a little more frank about this historically, to some degree. 00:12:30.160 --> 00:12:33.680 Because in some cultures, and this actually probably happened to Martin Luther 00:12:33.680 --> 00:12:38.160 himself when he married his wife, they used to literally throw you 00:12:38.160 --> 00:12:41.600 into bed after the wedding ceremony was done. 00:12:41.600 --> 00:12:43.120 Because you weren't married yet. 00:12:43.120 --> 00:12:46.560 So they threw you into bed so you could be married, so 00:12:46.560 --> 00:12:50.560 you could actually do what was necessary to be married to your 00:12:50.560 --> 00:12:56.160 wife. Because again, the marriage does not happen in the church. 00:12:56.160 --> 00:12:59.600 The wedding, the ceremony happens in the church. 00:12:59.600 --> 00:13:02.480 But we tend to conflate these things when we're discussing them because 00:13:02.480 --> 00:13:06.720 we don't want to discuss the actual physical process of marrying a 00:13:06.720 --> 00:13:10.800 woman, partly because of modesty and partly because it makes people uncomfortable. 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:14.400 And as Woe said in his introduction, there's nothing wrong with using 00:13:14.400 --> 00:13:19.520 euphemism. But it does become a problem when you lose the ability 00:13:19.520 --> 00:13:23.360 to understand what you are referencing, what you are implying By the 00:13:23.360 --> 00:13:24.960 use of that euphemism. 00:13:24.960 --> 00:13:28.560 If you take the euphemism to be the thing itself, then the 00:13:28.560 --> 00:13:31.440 euphemism is destructive, it is no longer helpful. 00:13:31.440 --> 00:13:36.480 And so it's important to understand the underlying nature of marriage, and 00:13:36.480 --> 00:13:41.040 not just think when you think marriage, the ceremony in a church. 00:13:41.040 --> 00:13:43.920 That is a marriage ceremony you could call it, but it is 00:13:43.920 --> 00:13:44.720 a wedding. 00:13:44.720 --> 00:13:48.400 It's important to distinguish these terms, so I would recommend saying wedding 00:13:48.400 --> 00:13:52.240 for the ceremony, marriage for the actual thing. 00:13:52.240 --> 00:13:55.920 Now, of course, the marriage relationship is more than the act of 00:13:55.920 --> 00:13:59.520 sex. But it's not less than that. 00:13:59.520 --> 00:14:05.360 Because what distinguishes your wife from other women out of the world, 00:14:05.360 --> 00:14:08.560 if you have a friendship with a woman, she's not your wife 00:14:08.560 --> 00:14:10.480 because you have a friendship with her. 00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:13.520 You may have a long standing friendship with a woman, and you 00:14:13.520 --> 00:14:16.160 may have these other elements, these other kinds of love may be 00:14:16.160 --> 00:14:16.960 present there. 00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:19.680 Now you have to be careful not to let that edge into 00:14:19.680 --> 00:14:25.520 something that's inappropriate, but what distinguishes that relationship from a wife is 00:14:25.520 --> 00:14:27.920 Eros, it's sex. 00:14:27.920 --> 00:14:31.200 Because your wife is the woman with whom you have sex. 00:14:31.200 --> 00:14:36.400 And it is the sexual act itself that creates the marriage, because 00:14:36.400 --> 00:14:38.000 it is the marriage. 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:41.360 That is the one flesh union, to use the term that is 00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:44.400 so often used in scripture. 00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:48.240 And we have to recognize this, because if we keep using the 00:14:48.240 --> 00:14:53.280 euphemisms and just slowly lose an understanding of what is actually going 00:14:53.280 --> 00:14:57.040 on and what the actual thing is, we wind up with all 00:14:57.040 --> 00:15:00.720 these various perversions that we see in modern society. 00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:04.240 And so for instance, you have those will argue for homosexual marriage 00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:07.840 or sodomite marriage, whatever term you want to use for that particular 00:15:07.840 --> 00:15:09.680 form of degeneracy. 00:15:09.680 --> 00:15:10.640 It's not marriage. 00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:16.160 It cannot be marriage, because the nature of marriage is a man 00:15:16.160 --> 00:15:18.800 having sex with a woman. 00:15:18.800 --> 00:15:20.880 That is what marriage is. 00:15:20.880 --> 00:15:23.440 And we'll get more into that later for those who find that 00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:26.800 uncomfortable, who don't like that definition because of some of the things 00:15:26.800 --> 00:15:28.480 that it implies. 00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:32.720 Well that's spoken to in scripture, we will get to those verses. 00:15:32.720 --> 00:15:35.920 But that is the fundamental nature of the thing. 00:15:35.920 --> 00:15:37.360 It is the core of the thing. 00:15:37.360 --> 00:15:40.960 Yes, again, there are other parts to it, because of course you 00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:42.880 start a family with this person. 00:15:42.880 --> 00:15:45.440 Obviously only why you can start a family. 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:48.960 But you keep a home with this person, you love this person, 00:15:48.960 --> 00:15:53.600 there's more to the relationship, but you can't remove this central part 00:15:53.600 --> 00:15:57.440 of it without destroying the nature of the thing. 00:15:57.440 --> 00:16:01.680 The same as we discuss with other forms of love. 00:16:01.680 --> 00:16:06.400 If something about it becomes degenerate to the point where it is 00:16:06.400 --> 00:16:09.200 no longer that love, it isn't even right to call it by 00:16:09.200 --> 00:16:10.640 the name anymore. 00:16:10.640 --> 00:16:14.640 You can't remove the essence of a thing and still call it 00:16:14.640 --> 00:16:15.840 that thing. 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:17.600 Without of course being subversive. 00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:20.480 You can be subversive and do that, but you're wrong. 00:16:20.480 --> 00:16:22.400 A Christian should not do that. 00:16:22.400 --> 00:16:26.320 The essence of the thing must remain for it to remain that 00:16:26.320 --> 00:16:30.560 thing. And so the sexual relationship between a husband and a wife 00:16:30.560 --> 00:16:33.120 is a necessary part of the marriage. 00:16:33.120 --> 00:16:35.680 It must remain. 00:16:35.680 --> 00:16:38.640 And for some that will make them uncomfortable because they may think 00:16:38.640 --> 00:16:42.640 that there's something dirty about sex or something untoward. 00:16:42.640 --> 00:16:45.040 Scripture does not speak of it in those terms. 00:16:45.040 --> 00:16:47.520 You can point to the fact that the Song of Solomon exists 00:16:47.520 --> 00:16:48.080 in Scripture. 00:16:48.080 --> 00:16:51.120 We won't go over that particular book in this episode, to the 00:16:51.120 --> 00:16:54.880 surprise perhaps of some, but that isn't the focus of the episode. 00:16:54.880 --> 00:16:58.640 But go ahead and read through it. 00:16:58.640 --> 00:17:01.840 What is said in that book is not said by a god 00:17:01.840 --> 00:17:02.880 who hates sex 00:17:04.560 --> 00:17:04.800 And 00:17:06.560 --> 00:17:10.080 the modern focus on celibacy, as well, was mentioning from some of 00:17:10.080 --> 00:17:12.960 those who want to appear as if they are trad 00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:17.360 is just fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons, but one of 00:17:17.360 --> 00:17:17.840 the flaws 00:17:18.880 --> 00:17:22.160 flows from a hatred of pleasure. 00:17:22.160 --> 00:17:26.320 Some of those who have decided they want to be a particularly 00:17:26.320 --> 00:17:31.280 traditional or trad Christian Think that stoicism is the way to go. 00:17:31.280 --> 00:17:34.800 Even if they don't call it by that name, they're really adopting 00:17:34.800 --> 00:17:39.200 those beliefs, sort of an indifference to the reality, to the tangible 00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:41.120 things of life. 00:17:41.120 --> 00:17:43.040 God didn't create us to be 00:17:44.320 --> 00:17:48.640 removed from nature, to stand back and above it, to ignore the 00:17:48.640 --> 00:17:50.720 physical reality. 00:17:50.720 --> 00:17:54.560 Look at what is praised in Scripture as part of the good 00:17:54.560 --> 00:17:59.280 life, the daily readings just finished up the Book of Ecclesiastes, and 00:17:59.280 --> 00:18:02.640 one of the things in Ecclesiastes repeated in more than one place, 00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:05.360 is basically eat, drink, and be merry. 00:18:05.360 --> 00:18:07.040 That's physical pleasure. 00:18:07.040 --> 00:18:08.640 And so is sex. 00:18:08.640 --> 00:18:13.360 God created these things for men to enjoy. 00:18:13.360 --> 00:18:16.240 He didn't create them as a temptation for you. 00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:19.440 He didn't create them in order to see if you could resist 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:23.760 them. Yes, they are supposed to be enjoyed in an ordered and 00:18:23.760 --> 00:18:24.800 proper fashion. 00:18:24.800 --> 00:18:26.560 You aren't supposed to drink to excess. 00:18:26.560 --> 00:18:28.320 You aren't supposed to eat to excess. 00:18:28.320 --> 00:18:30.880 You aren't supposed to have sex with women who are not your 00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:37.280 wife. However, these things, in their proper place, at their proper time, 00:18:37.280 --> 00:18:40.560 are to be enjoyed, and that is part of the Christian life, 00:18:40.560 --> 00:18:43.920 because you are supposed to enjoy the good things of God. 00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:47.280 He has given these things to humanity. 00:18:47.280 --> 00:18:48.880 You are not a good Christian. 00:18:48.880 --> 00:18:51.360 You're not better than everyone else. 00:18:51.360 --> 00:18:54.240 If you decide you're not going to enjoy the good things of 00:18:54.240 --> 00:18:56.880 God. If God gives you a blessing and you say, No, God, 00:18:56.880 --> 00:18:58.160 I couldn't possibly enjoy that. 00:18:58.320 --> 00:19:02.240 You are actually insulting your creator by telling him the things that 00:19:02.240 --> 00:19:05.680 he created for good, that he created for your enjoyment. 00:19:05.680 --> 00:19:09.520 Well though those aren't good, I I couldn't possibly do that. 00:19:09.520 --> 00:19:13.200 You are attempting to be holier than God, and any time you 00:19:13.200 --> 00:19:15.360 try to do that, you're sinning. 00:19:15.360 --> 00:19:18.320 You're not going to succeed, because obviously you can't be more holy 00:19:18.320 --> 00:19:21.280 than God, but you're also sinning in the attempt. 00:19:21.280 --> 00:19:25.600 So avoiding pleasure, avoiding the good things in life does not make 00:19:25.600 --> 00:19:27.200 you a better Christian. 00:19:27.200 --> 00:19:32.640 Exercising self control, recognizing these things have limitations, they have a proper 00:19:32.640 --> 00:19:35.760 time and place and form and all of that. 00:19:35.760 --> 00:19:40.960 Recognizing the nature of the thing is important, but completely eschewing the 00:19:40.960 --> 00:19:44.480 thing does not make you a better Christian. 00:19:44.480 --> 00:19:47.600 It makes you perhaps a Stoic, and the Stoics were certainly not 00:19:47.600 --> 00:19:50.800 Christian. And so this modern tendency to think that you have to 00:19:50.800 --> 00:19:55.520 be a celibate to be a good Christian is wrong. 00:19:55.520 --> 00:19:58.800 And I want to take the opportunity to reiterate what we have 00:19:58.800 --> 00:20:03.520 said elsewhere, and at other times, Twitter and other places. 00:20:03.520 --> 00:20:09.040 Celibacy is a particular gift that is given to very few men. 00:20:09.040 --> 00:20:12.640 If you have it, you have no doubt that you have it. 00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:15.280 It is not a gift that you can acquire. 00:20:15.280 --> 00:20:18.240 It is not a gift that you can exercise if you don't 00:20:18.160 --> 00:20:18.800 have it. 00:20:18.800 --> 00:20:23.360 It is not something that you can simply exert enough self control 00:20:24.320 --> 00:20:27.520 and pretend that you have this gift and act as if you 00:20:27.520 --> 00:20:28.800 actually have it. 00:20:28.800 --> 00:20:30.880 That's what the monks try to do. 00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:32.400 That's what the nuns try to do. 00:20:32.400 --> 00:20:37.840 And we historically see what happens when you have particular organizations, when 00:20:37.840 --> 00:20:43.280 you have individuals who pursue that path, horrible sins. 00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:48.000 Horrible disgusting things, of which those who wrote the Book of Concord, 00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:51.920 for instance, didn't even want to list them or be explicit about 00:20:51.920 --> 00:20:54.080 them, they heavily implied them. 00:20:54.080 --> 00:20:57.200 But you have, as well mentioned, men like Peter Damien condemning the 00:20:57.200 --> 00:20:58.880 rampant sodomy. 00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:02.000 That is what happens when you try to ignore the reality of 00:21:02.000 --> 00:21:05.280 how you were created by God. 00:21:05.280 --> 00:21:11.040 If you are celibate, you will have zero temptation with regard to 00:21:11.040 --> 00:21:12.480 the opposite sex. 00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:14.560 With regard to sex whatsoever. 00:21:14.560 --> 00:21:16.560 That will simply not exist for you. 00:21:16.560 --> 00:21:18.800 That is what it means to be celibate. 00:21:18.800 --> 00:21:21.680 If God gives you the gift of celibacy, it means that you 00:21:22.240 --> 00:21:24.000 are actually asexual. 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:27.680 Those are the only asexuals in all of human history, those to 00:21:27.680 --> 00:21:30.560 whom God has given the gift of celibacy. 00:21:30.880 --> 00:21:34.720 If you see a naked woman and you enjoy that, you're not 00:21:34.720 --> 00:21:37.600 celibate. Period. 00:21:37.600 --> 00:21:43.040 You cannot acquire the gift by exercising self control, denying yourself or 00:21:43.040 --> 00:21:44.800 whatever it happens to be. 00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:49.440 Instead, you should pursue the things that God has given you. 00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:53.360 Scripture is very clear, because of the temptation to sexual immorality, let 00:21:53.360 --> 00:21:56.560 each man have his own wife and each wife her own husband. 00:21:56.560 --> 00:21:58.800 That is the solution to the problem. 00:21:58.800 --> 00:22:03.040 In our fallen state we have a disordered eros, it is not 00:22:03.040 --> 00:22:05.920 expressed solely toward the spouse. 00:22:05.920 --> 00:22:06.240 In 00:22:07.120 --> 00:22:11.920 our prefallen state, so Adam and Eve, and also once we are 00:22:11.920 --> 00:22:16.720 restored in the new creation, you will not have that temptation. 00:22:16.720 --> 00:22:20.720 You won't be tempted to think about another man's wife in a 00:22:20.720 --> 00:22:22.000 sexual way. 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:25.280 You will have no temptation with regard to that. 00:22:25.280 --> 00:22:30.720 In our fallen state, the temptations exist, and so marriage is part 00:22:30.720 --> 00:22:32.320 of the cure for that. 00:22:32.320 --> 00:22:34.480 In fact, marriage is the only cure for that. 00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:37.280 Yes, you still have to have self control. 00:22:37.280 --> 00:22:41.280 But the libido is supposed to be exercised within the bonds of 00:22:41.280 --> 00:22:44.000 marriage. And nowhere else. 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:48.880 That is the only solution for that temptation God gave the medicine 00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:51.680 for the sickness. 00:22:52.000 --> 00:22:57.040 Looking for some other solution, looking for some other cure, is wicked. 00:22:57.040 --> 00:23:00.080 Because you're telling God this thing that you created to solve this 00:23:00.080 --> 00:23:03.280 problem, and then explicitly told us in scripture that it's the solution 00:23:03.280 --> 00:23:06.080 for the problem, that's not good enough for me, I'll find my 00:23:06.080 --> 00:23:08.560 own. I'll find a better one. 00:23:08.560 --> 00:23:12.080 That is a sinful disposition, and that is exactly what we see 00:23:12.080 --> 00:23:14.960 among monks and nuns, and that is why they are so strongly 00:23:14.960 --> 00:23:20.080 condemned by basically every Christian tradition, with a couple of exceptions, and 00:23:20.080 --> 00:23:23.920 I know that some who are listening, and are Roman Catholic or 00:23:23.920 --> 00:23:26.720 perhaps Eastern Orthodox are going to hear that and think that we're 00:23:26.720 --> 00:23:31.440 insane. Read through Scripture. 00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:35.040 Look at the verses that deal with marriage, the deal with sexual 00:23:35.040 --> 00:23:39.040 morality, the deal with temptation, and look at what they actually say, 00:23:39.040 --> 00:23:43.200 and see if anywhere in those verses you can find a justification 00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:49.120 for hiding yourself away and simply trying to will those desires away, 00:23:49.120 --> 00:23:50.800 simply trying to ignore it. 00:23:50.800 --> 00:23:52.160 It isn't there. 00:23:52.160 --> 00:23:56.800 Because what God says is marriage is the solution. 00:23:56.800 --> 00:24:00.400 Marriage is the medicine for that temptation. 00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:03.600 In fact, locking yourself away is probably one of the worst things 00:24:03.600 --> 00:24:04.560 you can do. 00:24:04.560 --> 00:24:09.040 And quite frankly, we see historically what happens when men do that. 00:24:09.040 --> 00:24:13.280 When women do that, far worse sins than they would be committing 00:24:13.280 --> 00:24:20.640 otherwise. But you have to understand the fundamental nature of the thing, 00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:24.480 the reason for the thing, why God created the thing, how it 00:24:24.480 --> 00:24:32.320 interacts with these other relationships, with human life, quite frankly. 00:24:32.320 --> 00:24:34.960 And if you don't do that, if you don't understand the nature 00:24:34.960 --> 00:24:39.040 of the thing, you wind up with these crazy ideas with regard 00:24:39.040 --> 00:24:43.360 to well no marriage is just a contract, or I can avoid 00:24:43.360 --> 00:24:47.360 sexual temptation by locking myself in a monastery, or any of these 00:24:47.360 --> 00:24:51.440 other perverted solutions that aren't solutions at all. 00:24:51.440 --> 00:24:56.240 They are a degenerate, a perverse, a subversive form of the thing 00:24:56.240 --> 00:25:00.400 itself, and so by destroying the essence, they cease to be the 00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:06.400 thing. And so at foundation, the baseline, the fundamental thing that you 00:25:06.400 --> 00:25:10.400 have to understand with regard to marriage, it does not take place 00:25:10.400 --> 00:25:11.280 in the church. 00:25:11.280 --> 00:25:12.640 That's the wedding. 00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:15.280 The marriage takes place afterward. 00:25:15.600 --> 00:25:18.400 The language we used to use for this made it somewhat more 00:25:18.400 --> 00:25:21.120 obvious. A man takes a wife. 00:25:21.120 --> 00:25:23.600 A woman is given away. 00:25:23.600 --> 00:25:27.840 That's a euphemism, but it's pretty clear what it means. 00:25:27.840 --> 00:25:31.840 Because marriage is when a man penetrates a woman and then ejaculates 00:25:31.840 --> 00:25:34.720 inside her, to be entirely blunt. 00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:36.080 That is the marriage. 00:25:36.080 --> 00:25:38.640 You are married to your wife after you take her on the 00:25:38.640 --> 00:25:42.320 wedding night, not after you say I do at the altar. 00:25:43.120 --> 00:25:48.400 And when we use terms like medicine and temptation, it is not 00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:52.560 with the view that sexual desire itself is perverted. 00:25:52.560 --> 00:25:54.320 The entire point is that sexual desire is 00:25:55.200 --> 00:26:00.240 from God, and then our sinful nature has done damage to it. 00:26:00.240 --> 00:26:03.840 So let's take a look in Genesis 2 at how God created 00:26:03.840 --> 00:26:08.400 us, because the marriage, the union of man and woman as one 00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:13.280 flesh is the only relationship in the universe, the only relationship in 00:26:13.280 --> 00:26:16.240 civilization that predates the fall. 00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:19.520 We don't have any example of government or anything else inside the 00:26:19.520 --> 00:26:24.160 garden. The only interrelationship that we have between one human being and 00:26:24.160 --> 00:26:29.120 another human being is between Adam and Eve as a married couple. 00:26:29.120 --> 00:26:30.400 So how did that happen? 00:26:30.400 --> 00:26:33.600 You know, one of the things that you'll sometimes hear people ask 00:26:33.600 --> 00:26:36.560 is: well, who married Adam and Eve? 00:26:36.560 --> 00:26:38.320 Because obviously there was no pastor there. 00:26:38.320 --> 00:26:39.280 There was no church. 00:26:39.280 --> 00:26:40.160 So how did it happen? 00:26:40.160 --> 00:26:41.120 Was it a real marriage? 00:26:41.120 --> 00:26:45.280 Like did God officiate a wedding ceremony and then that made them 00:26:45.280 --> 00:26:48.880 married? So we're gonna read now from Genesis two. 00:26:48.880 --> 00:26:52.000 Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man 00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:53.040 should be alone. 00:26:53.040 --> 00:26:55.280 I will make him a helper fit for him. 00:26:55.280 --> 00:26:57.840 Now out of the ground the Lord had formed every beast of 00:26:57.840 --> 00:27:00.240 the field, and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to 00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:02.880 the man, to see what he would call them. 00:27:02.880 --> 00:27:06.160 And whatever the man called every living creature that was its name. 00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:08.960 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of 00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:11.360 the heavens, and to every beast of the field. 00:27:11.360 --> 00:27:14.320 But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him, 00:27:14.320 --> 00:27:17.120 so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the 00:27:17.120 --> 00:27:19.600 man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and 00:27:19.600 --> 00:27:22.800 closed up its place with flesh, and the rib that the Lord 00:27:22.800 --> 00:27:25.520 God had taken from the man he made into a woman, and 00:27:25.520 --> 00:27:27.200 brought her to the man. 00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:30.320 Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones 00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:33.600 and flesh of my flesh she shall be called woman because she 00:27:33.600 --> 00:27:35.520 was taken out of man. 00:27:35.520 --> 00:27:39.600 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and hold fast 00:27:39.600 --> 00:27:42.960 to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 00:27:42.960 --> 00:27:46.080 And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not 00:27:46.080 --> 00:27:50.960 ashamed. This passage at the end where it says the a man 00:27:50.960 --> 00:27:54.160 shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife 00:27:54.320 --> 00:27:57.680 in the King James it says cleave unto his wife, which is 00:27:57.680 --> 00:27:59.920 probably the only reason that that word sticks around. 00:27:59.920 --> 00:28:02.400 I think somebody on Twitter said that earlier today and they're exactly 00:28:02.400 --> 00:28:04.800 right The word cleave is interesting. 00:28:04.800 --> 00:28:08.640 It means two completely opposite things depending on context. 00:28:08.640 --> 00:28:11.280 One of those weird English things. 00:28:11.280 --> 00:28:15.920 What we see here is an allusion to them being married. 00:28:15.920 --> 00:28:18.000 Because look, Adam spends all day. 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:19.680 This is the last day of creation. 00:28:19.680 --> 00:28:21.520 He spends all day naming all the animals. 00:28:21.520 --> 00:28:22.720 He's kind of tired. 00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:25.040 None of them are fit to be his helper. 00:28:25.040 --> 00:28:29.040 And so God puts him to sleep, performs surgery on him, creates 00:28:29.040 --> 00:28:30.320 woman from man. 00:28:30.640 --> 00:28:33.280 He wakes up and he says at last, this is bone of 00:28:33.280 --> 00:28:34.800 my bones and flesh my flesh. 00:28:34.800 --> 00:28:37.280 I think it was funny, like after the end of one day 00:28:37.280 --> 00:28:40.480 of work, just doing what God said, he's seemed kind of tired. 00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:42.000 He's like, at last, here she is. 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:43.440 And he was happy to see her. 00:28:43.440 --> 00:28:47.440 And then it expressly says the one flesh union, and then says, 00:28:47.440 --> 00:28:49.920 and a man and his wife were both naked and were not 00:28:49.920 --> 00:28:54.480 ashamed. Now scripture doesn't explicitly say that they had sex in the 00:28:54.480 --> 00:28:59.280 garden. Personally, I think that they did because I think that it's 00:28:59.280 --> 00:29:02.960 the only natural consequence of the situation. 00:29:02.960 --> 00:29:04.800 We don't know for sure, maybe I'm wrong. 00:29:04.800 --> 00:29:06.160 There's no timeline given. 00:29:06.160 --> 00:29:08.800 We don't know how long they were hanging out. 00:29:08.800 --> 00:29:12.960 They were at least hanging out together long enough that Eve had 00:29:12.960 --> 00:29:14.960 been catechized by Adam. 00:29:14.960 --> 00:29:18.240 Because if you look at how Eve interacts with the serpent, when 00:29:18.240 --> 00:29:21.920 Eve says that God told us not to even look at it, 00:29:21.920 --> 00:29:24.240 not to touch it. 00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:26.640 It wasn't exactly what God had said to Adam. 00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:30.080 God gave the command related to that to Adam before Eve was 00:29:30.080 --> 00:29:33.120 created. So Adam was the first priest. 00:29:33.120 --> 00:29:36.560 He was the first leader of the church who catechized Eve and 00:29:36.560 --> 00:29:37.200 told her. 00:29:37.200 --> 00:29:40.480 And we're not told if he went beyond what we're told that 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:41.520 God said or whatever. 00:29:41.520 --> 00:29:42.480 It's not important. 00:29:42.480 --> 00:29:45.600 God gave the command to Adam, then he created Eve. 00:29:45.600 --> 00:29:48.000 Adam catechized Eve. 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:49.760 So a period of time passed. 00:29:49.760 --> 00:29:52.800 What we do know is that this is chapter two, after the 00:29:52.800 --> 00:29:57.440 fall, in chapter four, the very first verse says, Now Adam knew 00:29:57.440 --> 00:30:01.200 Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain. 00:30:01.200 --> 00:30:07.120 So there's sex, there's an and conjunction, and then there's conception. 00:30:07.120 --> 00:30:10.480 So we know that the first man was not conceived in the 00:30:10.480 --> 00:30:12.800 garden, but that doesn't mean that they didn't have sex. 00:30:13.280 --> 00:30:18.400 the whole reason for this talk and focusing on specifically the physical 00:30:18.400 --> 00:30:23.760 act is that it will answer the question, how are they married? 00:30:23.760 --> 00:30:27.040 Because if there's no pastor in the garden or no judge in 00:30:27.040 --> 00:30:30.880 the garden to pronounce the man and wife according to our notion 00:30:30.880 --> 00:30:34.160 of a modern wedding ceremony, how do we know if they're married? 00:30:34.160 --> 00:30:36.560 When you look at how scripture talks about it, it never talks 00:30:36.560 --> 00:30:37.440 about those things. 00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:41.440 It talks about public recognition, which is Corey said is vital. 00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:45.680 It is absolutely vital that there is a public recognition ahead of 00:30:45.680 --> 00:30:48.960 time, for the sake of good order, that this man and this 00:30:48.960 --> 00:30:50.560 woman are to be married. 00:30:50.560 --> 00:30:52.240 They're to be husband and wife. 00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:55.280 And so when in the future you see them holding hands or 00:30:55.280 --> 00:30:59.360 kissing, you know, girls are very good at picking up on signs 00:30:59.360 --> 00:31:03.280 about which two people have what we call sexual tension or sexual 00:31:03.280 --> 00:31:07.600 chemistry. And which two people are actually doing it. 00:31:07.600 --> 00:31:10.320 Girls are really good at picking up on that stuff and subtle 00:31:10.320 --> 00:31:16.000 physical cues, facial expressions, little things that most guys are generally oblivious 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:18.720 to. But you can tell. 00:31:19.280 --> 00:31:20.880 important thing is that 00:31:21.760 --> 00:31:26.320 Adam was given Eve as his helper, and part of being his 00:31:26.320 --> 00:31:28.240 helper was conceiving. 00:31:28.240 --> 00:31:31.600 You know, the fact that the gift of sex is tied to 00:31:31.600 --> 00:31:35.680 the gift of procreation is how God has filled the entire world. 00:31:35.680 --> 00:31:40.320 When he said f be fruitful and multiply, it didn't need to 00:31:40.320 --> 00:31:42.320 be a stick sort of command. 00:31:42.320 --> 00:31:44.880 It wasn't like, oh, this is gonna be miserable, you gotta do 00:31:44.880 --> 00:31:45.760 it anyway. 00:31:45.760 --> 00:31:49.440 The way that God designed our bodies and designed our desire for 00:31:49.440 --> 00:31:53.600 each other was such that even if and when man forgot about 00:31:53.600 --> 00:31:59.200 God, wanted to disobey God, the natural activity related to how we 00:31:59.200 --> 00:32:02.160 are created was going to continue to produce people. 00:32:02.160 --> 00:32:06.640 Even where God had been forgotten, the command is still baked into 00:32:06.640 --> 00:32:08.080 us. It's natural. 00:32:08.080 --> 00:32:11.360 The desire itself is not sinful per se, it is only the 00:32:11.360 --> 00:32:18.560 disordered desire made manifest in adultery, in uh fornication, in desires 00:32:18.560 --> 00:32:21.200 outside of the union, that it becomes bad. 00:32:21.200 --> 00:32:23.680 And then you have the things that are contrary to nature we'll 00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:28.240 get into later that are an open assault on the procreative nature 00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:31.200 of the gift of marriage itself. 00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:34.240 But right from the beginning we have God saying there's a one 00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:36.960 flesh union, and that is the essence of marriage. 00:32:36.960 --> 00:32:39.360 As Corey said, there's a tremendous amount to it. 00:32:39.360 --> 00:32:42.880 We are not not trying to be reductive about marriage and turn 00:32:42.880 --> 00:32:44.320 it just into a sex thing. 00:32:44.320 --> 00:32:45.120 We don't believe that. 00:32:45.120 --> 00:32:49.280 Scripture doesn't say that there's a tremendous amount about the married life 00:32:49.280 --> 00:32:50.000 that has nothing to do 00:32:51.040 --> 00:32:52.000 with sex. 00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:53.520 We're not trying to reframe it. 00:32:53.520 --> 00:32:55.600 I know some will want to hear that and get mad at 00:32:55.600 --> 00:32:58.160 it, not remotely what's happening. 00:32:58.160 --> 00:33:01.200 We're making this specific point because it's a point that's not usually 00:33:01.520 --> 00:33:06.880 made that's essential in the scriptural treatment of the subject itself. 00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:10.720 When you look at the word that's used in the original Greek 00:33:10.720 --> 00:33:16.000 there in Genesis, it says he will hold fast to his wife. 00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:20.800 And the word in Greek is proskolao or kola. 00:33:20.800 --> 00:33:22.800 It's two different forms of the same thing. 00:33:22.800 --> 00:33:26.160 It basically means to glue to, to cleave to, to join, or 00:33:26.160 --> 00:33:31.120 unite. And I think this is an interesting word that's used because 00:33:31.120 --> 00:33:35.360 it gives us a few different senses of what's going on. 00:33:35.360 --> 00:33:38.400 You know, when you say to cling to, well, today in English, 00:33:38.400 --> 00:33:41.040 clingy sounds needy, it sounds negative. 00:33:41.040 --> 00:33:43.200 You say that a man is clingy, that's gross. 00:33:43.200 --> 00:33:44.800 Like it's just that's a bad thing. 00:33:44.800 --> 00:33:45.760 You don't want that. 00:33:45.760 --> 00:33:46.960 A girl can be clingy. 00:33:46.960 --> 00:33:50.320 It's more to her nature, but it's still kind of off-putting. 00:33:50.320 --> 00:33:52.320 If a guy is clingy, it's a death knell. 00:33:52.320 --> 00:33:54.800 He's blown out of the water. 00:33:54.800 --> 00:33:58.320 But the desire to hold to, to hold fast to one's wife 00:33:58.480 --> 00:34:00.000 is completely natural. 00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:03.360 And so to say that a man will hold fast to his 00:34:03.360 --> 00:34:05.600 wife is quite literal. 00:34:05.600 --> 00:34:11.120 It's a quite direct description of part of the marital relationship. 00:34:11.120 --> 00:34:15.040 It's also metaphorical, because to say hold fast to or to cleave 00:34:15.040 --> 00:34:19.760 unto, we know that that's also a euphemism for they shall become 00:34:19.760 --> 00:34:23.120 one flesh, which which is the other half of the sentence. 00:34:23.120 --> 00:34:27.280 To hold fast to a woman, particularly Adam, holding fast to his 00:34:27.280 --> 00:34:30.880 naked wife Eve, the most beautiful woman ever in history, because she 00:34:30.880 --> 00:34:31.920 was completely perfect. 00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:33.600 She had no genetic decay. 00:34:33.600 --> 00:34:37.040 All the things that make us weird and and slightly ugly by 00:34:37.040 --> 00:34:41.040 comparison are because our genes have become distorted over time. 00:34:41.040 --> 00:34:43.440 So you get things like asymmetry. 00:34:43.440 --> 00:34:47.280 Those deviations from perfection are the result of the fall. 00:34:47.280 --> 00:34:48.160 She had none of that. 00:34:48.160 --> 00:34:48.960 She was perfect. 00:34:48.960 --> 00:34:50.320 And they didn't know they were naked. 00:34:50.320 --> 00:34:51.440 They were just, they were happy. 00:34:51.440 --> 00:34:52.960 They were completely innocent. 00:34:52.960 --> 00:34:56.800 It was a sort of blissful innocence that has been robbed of 00:34:56.800 --> 00:34:59.840 us by their sin and by our sin and by the sinful 00:34:59.840 --> 00:35:04.720 world that we're in, that to even talk about these things in 00:35:04.720 --> 00:35:08.000 a sense it almost becomes dirty just in the speaking. 00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:10.240 And that's why we're we're sensitive to the fact that we're tackling 00:35:10.160 --> 00:35:13.680 tackling this subject because we're not trying to talk dirty about this 00:35:13.680 --> 00:35:15.440 stuff. We're really not. 00:35:15.440 --> 00:35:18.000 But we have to talk the way scripture talks. 00:35:18.000 --> 00:35:22.320 And so there's stuff in there that is very clearly and directly 00:35:22.320 --> 00:35:24.480 about this physical union. 00:35:24.800 --> 00:35:27.520 And as we as we said, there's a great deal more to 00:35:27.520 --> 00:35:29.760 marriage. We're going to get to some of those things. 00:35:29.760 --> 00:35:34.560 But the key misconceptions and the key misconceptions not only in people's 00:35:34.560 --> 00:35:38.560 minds, but the things that Satan is exploiting in the world today 00:35:38.560 --> 00:35:42.800 as an attack against those misconceptions are reorienting 00:35:43.920 --> 00:35:48.320 the one flesh union that is a good and godly desire. 00:35:48.320 --> 00:35:51.920 A man should look at his wife with what can be called 00:35:51.920 --> 00:35:55.920 lust. There may be other ways to phrase that, but some lust 00:35:55.920 --> 00:35:57.520 is certainly absolutely evil. 00:35:57.520 --> 00:36:00.240 I think typically when that term is used, it's usually in a 00:36:00.240 --> 00:36:01.520 negative context. 00:36:01.520 --> 00:36:04.560 But a man should look at his wife with desire. 00:36:04.560 --> 00:36:05.760 He's supposed to. 00:36:05.760 --> 00:36:09.680 That's for a man, that is the basis for physical arousal. 00:36:09.680 --> 00:36:12.640 If a man doesn't look at his wife and be filled with 00:36:12.640 --> 00:36:14.560 desire, they can't have sex. 00:36:14.560 --> 00:36:16.480 That's how God made us. 00:36:16.480 --> 00:36:19.600 So there's no sin in the context of marriage for all those 00:36:19.600 --> 00:36:20.800 things to take place. 00:36:20.800 --> 00:36:24.080 And we don't normally talk about it because it's not polite, but 00:36:24.080 --> 00:36:24.960 it's just there. 00:36:24.960 --> 00:36:26.640 It's just part of creation. 00:36:26.640 --> 00:36:30.400 It's something that I think maybe most people don't know this, but 00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:33.440 humans are one of the few mammals that don't have a penis 00:36:33.440 --> 00:36:38.240 bone. In most of the mammal kingdom, the act of getting an 00:36:38.240 --> 00:36:40.480 erection is more mechanical. 00:36:40.480 --> 00:36:44.640 There's literally a bone that moves into the sheath and then the 00:36:44.640 --> 00:36:49.040 penis enlarges and gorges in part from blood, but the bone is 00:36:49.040 --> 00:36:50.160 doing most of the work. 00:36:50.160 --> 00:36:51.680 Humans don't have that. 00:36:51.680 --> 00:36:56.800 All of our manifest desire is internal the internal, it's spiritual and 00:36:56.800 --> 00:36:57.600 it's mental. 00:36:57.600 --> 00:37:00.960 In many cases it's visual as well as physical. 00:37:00.960 --> 00:37:02.560 It's a reaction. 00:37:02.560 --> 00:37:05.200 And so that's one of the problems when you try to say 00:37:05.200 --> 00:37:08.080 that, well, desire is always bad and this is all terrible. 00:37:08.080 --> 00:37:10.320 Well that's not how God made us. 00:37:10.320 --> 00:37:15.680 God didn't make us to resist physical desire for the other. 00:37:15.680 --> 00:37:18.880 He made it to be complete in the marital union where no 00:37:18.880 --> 00:37:21.840 one would ever be talking about these things in terms outside of 00:37:21.840 --> 00:37:25.840 marriage. I think that's one of the things that's unfortunately everyone is 00:37:25.840 --> 00:37:29.040 burdened with today is that there's so much conversation in the world 00:37:29.040 --> 00:37:33.360 that has absolutely no respect for scripture, just open rebellion against God 00:37:33.760 --> 00:37:37.680 will discuss these things in ways that are entirely oriented around what's 00:37:37.680 --> 00:37:45.840 basically self-idolatry, around gratifying personal desires for personal pleasure without 00:37:45.840 --> 00:37:50.240 any notion that this is how God made us in the marital 00:37:50.240 --> 00:37:57.520 bond and ultimately for the purpose of procreation, not exclusively, because obviously 00:37:57.680 --> 00:38:01.600 in any normal married relationship, you're going to have sex many more 00:38:01.600 --> 00:38:03.360 times than you're going to have kids. 00:38:03.360 --> 00:38:05.840 That doesn't mean that you've had sex too many times. 00:38:05.840 --> 00:38:07.040 It doesn't mean that it's failed. 00:38:07.040 --> 00:38:08.880 It just means that that's just how it works. 00:38:08.880 --> 00:38:12.320 And there's some people who don't have the gift of fertility. 00:38:12.320 --> 00:38:14.160 It's again due to the fall. 00:38:14.160 --> 00:38:16.720 It's simply not possible for them to have kids. 00:38:16.720 --> 00:38:20.400 But that's a deviation from the created order. 00:38:20.400 --> 00:38:24.000 For everyone else, you're going to have sex many times in your 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:26.640 married life, and you're going to have as many As many kids 00:38:26.640 --> 00:38:27.840 as God blesses you with. 00:38:27.840 --> 00:38:30.320 Maybe it's gonna be one or two, maybe it's gonna be fifteen. 00:38:30.320 --> 00:38:31.440 It's up to God. 00:38:31.440 --> 00:38:34.080 And as long as we don't interfere with that, that's what we 00:38:34.080 --> 00:38:39.200 get. But the math simply bears out that the pleasure of the 00:38:39.200 --> 00:38:43.840 union is part of the blessing of marriage unto itself. 00:38:43.840 --> 00:38:45.680 And when Paul talks about 00:38:46.640 --> 00:38:51.200 the necessity and the blessing of man and woman being united in 00:38:51.200 --> 00:38:54.640 marriage for the sake of satisfying these desires so that they don't 00:38:54.800 --> 00:38:59.520 end up in sexual disorder desire. 00:38:59.520 --> 00:39:02.960 It's not in terms of procreation. 00:39:02.960 --> 00:39:08.000 It's also that's always there because apart from modern science breaking the 00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:13.840 connection between intercourse and conception, you get it when God gives it 00:39:13.840 --> 00:39:14.240 to you. 00:39:14.240 --> 00:39:16.320 Today we completely disconnected the two. 00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:19.120 You can have all of the pleasure you want and have none 00:39:19.120 --> 00:39:21.200 of the kids, have none of the burden if that's what you 00:39:21.200 --> 00:39:24.320 want. That's a complete breakage of creation. 00:39:24.320 --> 00:39:26.720 It's something that was not envisioned in creation. 00:39:26.720 --> 00:39:30.720 It's an attack on what was done in the garden. 00:39:31.360 --> 00:39:34.000 it's an attack on how God created us. 00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:37.280 And it's one of the first steps to the sort of idolatry 00:39:37.440 --> 00:39:39.680 that we see playing out in some of the other parts of 00:39:39.680 --> 00:39:43.680 scripture. We'll get to particularly in Romans 1, where the idolatry of 00:39:43.680 --> 00:39:48.480 the flesh of treating these sexual desires as the end unto themselves 00:39:48.720 --> 00:39:50.800 always leads to absolute evil. 00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:52.880 And so that's why we're kind of I'm repeating over and over 00:39:52.880 --> 00:39:55.600 again. We're not trying to be that, because that's evil. 00:39:55.600 --> 00:39:59.680 Scripture makes clear that the idolatry of sex is evil. 00:39:59.680 --> 00:40:03.760 What we're saying is that there's a very specific narrow location where 00:40:03.760 --> 00:40:07.200 sex is the genesis of the marriage and everything else that comes 00:40:07.200 --> 00:40:07.920 from it. 00:40:07.920 --> 00:40:11.360 It's often the case that we said, I think it was on 00:40:11.360 --> 00:40:15.440 the episode on the clockwork universe, we talked about microchimerism and how 00:40:15.440 --> 00:40:21.200 when a girl has multiple partners, it is deleterious because there's an 00:40:21.200 --> 00:40:25.600 accumulation of the other men inside her body in a way that 00:40:25.600 --> 00:40:27.360 can permanently change her. 00:40:27.360 --> 00:40:29.840 The flip side is true in a properly ordered marriage. 00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:34.000 So microchimerism is ultimately a blessing from God, but it has to 00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:36.000 be in a properly ordered marriage. 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:39.360 If you come together as a wife with your husband and he's 00:40:39.360 --> 00:40:43.280 the only man you've ever known, every time there's that accumulation of 00:40:43.280 --> 00:40:46.560 his foreign DNA, you become more a part of him. 00:40:46.560 --> 00:40:48.160 He becomes more a part of you. 00:40:48.160 --> 00:40:53.680 You become the one flesh Physically, you know, not only mechanically, not 00:40:53.680 --> 00:40:58.480 only spiritually, but actually biologically, the one flesh is actually occurring. 00:40:58.480 --> 00:41:01.520 It's an amazing and beautiful thing that God has created. 00:41:01.520 --> 00:41:04.240 And it's only when we start sinning and breaking all the rules 00:41:04.240 --> 00:41:08.320 that we damage these things often beyond repair. 00:41:08.400 --> 00:41:13.520 I think the term cleave is actually one of the better words 00:41:13.520 --> 00:41:18.400 in English, if only for this specific usage, because you can sort 00:41:18.400 --> 00:41:23.520 of see both aspects, or at least two of the aspects, of 00:41:23.520 --> 00:41:26.400 marriage in that one term. 00:41:26.880 --> 00:41:30.640 Because it kind of implies both in different ways with the two 00:41:30.640 --> 00:41:32.640 opposed meanings of the term. 00:41:32.640 --> 00:41:36.080 And so for instance, you have to cleave something in two, obviously 00:41:36.160 --> 00:41:40.240 is to split it in two, you go from one Piece of 00:41:40.240 --> 00:41:45.040 whatever to two pieces, which is the inverse of what you have 00:41:45.040 --> 00:41:47.840 with marriage, where you're taking two and making once. 00:41:48.000 --> 00:41:53.520 You have that implication of two, and then for marriage, it is 00:41:53.920 --> 00:41:57.200 the two coming together to become one, which is to cleave to, 00:41:57.200 --> 00:42:00.640 to stick to, to hold to your wife. 00:42:00.640 --> 00:42:03.600 So I kind of like the term with regard to how it 00:42:03.600 --> 00:42:05.360 can be used here, but yes, it is one of those weird 00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:09.280 quirks of English where you have an auto antonym. 00:42:09.280 --> 00:42:12.160 But to add a third term to the earlier list of terms 00:42:12.160 --> 00:42:15.280 that I want to carefully distinguish in this episode, and we've used 00:42:15.280 --> 00:42:20.480 it a number of times already, the term lust in English 00:42:21.360 --> 00:42:27.520 has largely lost its positive sense over however many centuries that took. 00:42:27.520 --> 00:42:30.720 Because the word just comes straight from German Lust. 00:42:30.720 --> 00:42:32.880 It's the same word, it's spelled the same, it's just the L 00:42:33.040 --> 00:42:36.000 as capital because that's what German does with nouns. 00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:41.360 But in German Lust does not mean lust as we have it 00:42:41.360 --> 00:42:45.280 in English, the negative connotation of some sort of overzealous 00:42:46.160 --> 00:42:50.080 really it's the wrong term there, but an improper sort of sexual 00:42:50.080 --> 00:42:53.840 desire is what we mean by lust, typically in English. 00:42:53.840 --> 00:42:56.960 It has been reduced to that negative sense, which is wrong, it 00:42:56.960 --> 00:42:57.760 shouldn't be. 00:42:57.760 --> 00:43:00.880 In German it has a more expensive meaning. 00:43:00.880 --> 00:43:04.640 It can mean delight or desire or appetite. 00:43:04.640 --> 00:43:06.560 So it can be good. 00:43:06.560 --> 00:43:07.920 It could be negative as well. 00:43:07.920 --> 00:43:10.800 Usually it's made into a compound for that. 00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:12.720 But it can mean good things. 00:43:12.720 --> 00:43:16.400 You can have a lust for life, which that one, incidentally, we 00:43:16.400 --> 00:43:17.520 maintain in English. 00:43:17.520 --> 00:43:19.840 To have a lust for life, a labenslust 00:43:20.720 --> 00:43:22.480 is still positive. 00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:26.560 We didn't attach the negative sense to that in English. 00:43:26.560 --> 00:43:32.560 And so the term is not wholly negative, because lust for one's 00:43:32.560 --> 00:43:36.800 wife is sexual desire for one's wife, which you should have. 00:43:36.800 --> 00:43:38.880 That's a good thing. 00:43:38.880 --> 00:43:41.360 This is one of those terms where we should not use it 00:43:41.360 --> 00:43:43.520 exclusively in one sense or the other. 00:43:43.520 --> 00:43:47.520 In some other episodes we recommended dropping a sense of a term 00:43:47.520 --> 00:43:51.360 because it conflates things and causes problems, but this is one of 00:43:51.360 --> 00:43:56.000 those terms we really need the fullness of the spectrum, the scope 00:43:56.000 --> 00:43:58.080 of the meaning. 00:43:58.080 --> 00:44:01.920 Because you can have a disordered lust, or you can have an 00:44:01.920 --> 00:44:05.520 ordered lust, you can have that sexual desire for your wife that 00:44:05.520 --> 00:44:09.600 is a good thing, so it's not wrongful if it is rightly 00:44:09.600 --> 00:44:14.880 ordered. So much of this is about rightly ordered, about doing things 00:44:14.880 --> 00:44:23.200 correctly. And so yes, you can marry your high school girlfriend. 00:44:23.200 --> 00:44:26.480 If you do that in bed, that's disordered. 00:44:26.480 --> 00:44:30.160 If you wait and you do that in a church and then 00:44:30.160 --> 00:44:33.840 you marry her in bed, well that's ordered. 00:44:33.840 --> 00:44:37.840 The order matters, not just in the sense of the order of 00:44:37.840 --> 00:44:42.080 operations, as it were, but also in the sense of doing things 00:44:42.080 --> 00:44:46.880 properly. And so as we've mentioned a number of times, marriage is 00:44:46.880 --> 00:44:49.200 more than the sexual act. 00:44:49.200 --> 00:44:54.000 An illustration for this to help some understand to grasp exactly what 00:44:54.000 --> 00:44:55.680 we're saying. 00:44:55.680 --> 00:44:59.760 The fundamental essence of camping is going out in the woods and 00:44:59.760 --> 00:45:01.840 staying there a while. 00:45:01.840 --> 00:45:02.640 That's it. 00:45:02.640 --> 00:45:04.160 That's the nature of camping. 00:45:04.160 --> 00:45:05.760 There's more to it than that, though. 00:45:05.760 --> 00:45:08.240 The same with marriage. 00:45:08.240 --> 00:45:13.200 The fundamental nature, the core essence of it, is that sexual relationship, 00:45:13.200 --> 00:45:14.240 but there's more to it. 00:45:14.240 --> 00:45:19.120 So for instance, with camping, if you just went out and sat 00:45:19.120 --> 00:45:22.480 in the woods for a while and stared at the trees, you've 00:45:22.480 --> 00:45:26.160 got most of the essence down of camping, but you are really 00:45:26.160 --> 00:45:27.040 missing some things. 00:45:27.040 --> 00:45:28.880 You don't have the fullness of the experience. 00:45:28.880 --> 00:45:32.720 You didn't bring a tent or a hammock or if you're not 00:45:32.720 --> 00:45:36.720 particularly bright, you didn't bring any food or water, you're missing some 00:45:36.720 --> 00:45:40.640 things. There are things you have to do to have the fullness 00:45:40.640 --> 00:45:41.840 of the thing. 00:45:41.840 --> 00:45:45.680 So you put on the clothing for hiking, you put on your 00:45:45.680 --> 00:45:46.800 hiking boots. 00:45:46.800 --> 00:45:49.520 You take the things you need to set up camp. 00:45:49.520 --> 00:45:52.480 You take whatever you need to have enough water or to boil 00:45:52.560 --> 00:45:54.480 or to somehow purify water. 00:45:54.480 --> 00:45:56.240 This long list of things. 00:45:56.240 --> 00:46:02.560 All of those together create the totality of That is camping. 00:46:02.560 --> 00:46:07.360 But if you don't have that central part, the central essence of 00:46:07.360 --> 00:46:10.000 the thing, which is going out in the woods and staying there 00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:12.400 a while, you don't have camping, even if you have all the 00:46:12.400 --> 00:46:13.120 other pieces. 00:46:13.120 --> 00:46:16.640 So if you have all of your camping gear, you're wearing all 00:46:16.640 --> 00:46:19.680 the clothing, you have the food and the water, everything set up, 00:46:19.680 --> 00:46:22.480 and you just go and stand in your driveway. 00:46:22.480 --> 00:46:23.760 You're not camping. 00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:25.520 No one would say that you're camping. 00:46:26.160 --> 00:46:28.240 The same is true with marriage. 00:46:28.240 --> 00:46:32.880 You can't remove that core of the sexual relationship and still have 00:46:32.880 --> 00:46:37.840 marriage. If you removed that, you may have friendship still, but it's 00:46:37.840 --> 00:46:41.520 not a marriage, at least assuming things are rightly ordered according to 00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:43.280 the other forms of love. 00:46:43.280 --> 00:46:46.560 There are many other relationships you can have, but it will not 00:46:46.560 --> 00:46:48.000 be marriage. 00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:51.120 The same as the camping example though, if all you have is 00:46:51.120 --> 00:46:52.720 the sex. 00:46:52.720 --> 00:46:55.920 You don't have the fullness of what marriage is supposed to be, 00:46:55.920 --> 00:46:56.960 because it's disordered. 00:46:56.960 --> 00:46:58.080 You're doing it wrong. 00:46:58.080 --> 00:47:02.800 It is possible to do these things incorrectly, improperly, in a disordered 00:47:02.800 --> 00:47:03.120 fashion. 00:47:04.240 --> 00:47:08.320 And so just because we're emphasizing the core nature of marriage in 00:47:08.320 --> 00:47:12.400 this episode, doesn't mean we're denying any of the other components, all 00:47:12.400 --> 00:47:15.760 of the other things that make for a good and proper marriage. 00:47:15.760 --> 00:47:21.120 The reason we're focusing on the core essence, the sexual aspect of 00:47:21.120 --> 00:47:26.880 marriage, is because our modern society has basically thrown that out the 00:47:26.880 --> 00:47:29.920 window. Sex is just something you do. 00:47:29.920 --> 00:47:32.160 And marriage is a contract. 00:47:32.160 --> 00:47:36.720 And you even hear Christians arguing at least the latter one, hopefully 00:47:36.720 --> 00:47:39.680 not arguing the former statement, but you hear them arguing that oh 00:47:39.680 --> 00:47:41.440 no, you you get married in church. 00:47:41.440 --> 00:47:42.800 I I certainly hope you don't. 00:47:43.120 --> 00:47:45.040 You shouldn't do that in church. 00:47:45.040 --> 00:47:46.960 That's not how you get married. 00:47:46.960 --> 00:47:49.440 That is the wedding, as I mentioned earlier. 00:47:49.440 --> 00:47:53.600 The marriage is something different, and you have to understand the actual 00:47:53.600 --> 00:47:56.160 nature of the thing, or it winds up being subverted 00:47:57.280 --> 00:48:00.800 This is one of those areas that has to be defended to 00:48:00.800 --> 00:48:01.520 the utmost. 00:48:01.520 --> 00:48:04.880 There is no piece of this that we can get wrong or 00:48:04.880 --> 00:48:07.120 we can allow other men to get wrong. 00:48:07.120 --> 00:48:10.240 And the reason for that is because this is so central to 00:48:10.240 --> 00:48:17.040 the nature of humanity and not just our nature but also obeying 00:48:17.040 --> 00:48:19.840 God, I'll get back to that in a minute here. 00:48:19.840 --> 00:48:23.280 But it is so central to our nature, so essential to who 00:48:23.760 --> 00:48:26.640 and what we are, that if we allow any bit of it 00:48:26.640 --> 00:48:30.960 to be subverted or taught incorrectly, that is an enormous opening for 00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:34.320 Satan, and Satan is always seeking to attack this. 00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:37.600 This is something where he has attacked it from the very beginning 00:48:37.760 --> 00:48:40.160 and he has not let up since. 00:48:40.160 --> 00:48:42.240 That alone should tell us something. 00:48:42.240 --> 00:48:46.240 Satan attacks where one of two things is true. 00:48:46.240 --> 00:48:47.200 He believes there's an opening 00:48:48.960 --> 00:48:52.080 or it is something of vital importance. 00:48:52.080 --> 00:48:53.520 This is both. 00:48:53.520 --> 00:48:56.640 It is of vital importance because again it is central to our 00:48:56.640 --> 00:49:00.640 nature and he believes there's an opening because we leave openings all 00:49:00.640 --> 00:49:01.520 the time. 00:49:01.520 --> 00:49:04.800 We leave openings as Christians because we do not teach correctly with 00:49:04.800 --> 00:49:10.000 regard to not just the essence of the thing biologically and naturally, 00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:11.040 but scripture. 00:49:11.040 --> 00:49:13.120 Scripture is very clear about this in some places. 00:49:13.280 --> 00:49:16.160 We'll read a passage from Genesis twenty nine in a minute here, 00:49:16.160 --> 00:49:19.120 more than a minute, but shortly. 00:49:19.120 --> 00:49:23.600 Scripture is not very subtle or even euphemistic in a number of 00:49:23.600 --> 00:49:26.480 places, and we just gloss over it, we glide by it, we 00:49:26.480 --> 00:49:28.720 don't pay any attention to the words. 00:49:28.720 --> 00:49:32.480 As we so often advocate, slow down and actually understand what you 00:49:32.480 --> 00:49:33.120 are reading. 00:49:33.120 --> 00:49:35.200 Pay attention to the words. 00:49:35.200 --> 00:49:38.000 Scripture is divinely inspired. 00:49:38.000 --> 00:49:39.440 God picked these words. 00:49:40.080 --> 00:49:41.440 They're important. 00:49:41.440 --> 00:49:45.120 Read what Scripture actually says. 00:49:45.120 --> 00:49:49.920 But to return to the issue that I mentioned just a couple 00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:56.000 minutes ago, there is some irony, perhaps, it's a sardonic, a dark 00:49:56.000 --> 00:50:02.640 sort of irony, but monks and nuns, and most modern couples, sort 00:50:02.640 --> 00:50:07.680 of commit the same sin in a different way. 00:50:07.680 --> 00:50:13.040 Because they are both violating essentially the only command God ever gave 00:50:13.040 --> 00:50:17.680 us that until modern times, not particularly modern in the case of 00:50:17.680 --> 00:50:23.280 monks and nuns, but relatively modern, until modern times, we all obeyed. 00:50:23.280 --> 00:50:27.360 The only reason we obeyed it is because it is natural for 00:50:27.360 --> 00:50:28.640 us to do so. 00:50:28.640 --> 00:50:33.040 But go forth and multiply is basically the one command God gave 00:50:33.040 --> 00:50:35.920 us that we have historically obeyed. 00:50:35.920 --> 00:50:38.800 Now we obeyed it because sex is fun. 00:50:38.800 --> 00:50:40.720 That's a large part of the reason. 00:50:40.720 --> 00:50:43.280 There were men who obeyed it because they were faithful and they 00:50:43.280 --> 00:50:47.280 were And they were doing so deliberately, but there's also the aspect 00:50:47.280 --> 00:50:52.800 that God built pleasure into the equation, and so it comes naturally. 00:50:52.800 --> 00:50:54.960 Monks and nuns don't do that. 00:50:54.960 --> 00:50:56.960 They don't go forth and multiply. 00:50:56.960 --> 00:50:59.440 They are not faithful to God's command. 00:50:59.440 --> 00:51:04.480 The same is true of modern couples who practice so-called birth control. 00:51:04.480 --> 00:51:08.640 It's the same kind of sin, achieved in a different way, and 00:51:08.640 --> 00:51:10.960 sometimes toward different ends. 00:51:10.960 --> 00:51:14.640 But there's a sort of dark irony there, in that we've created 00:51:14.640 --> 00:51:21.520 almost a modern, particularly perverse form of monasticism with birth control. 00:51:21.520 --> 00:51:24.400 There are many other problems with birth control, it's not the point 00:51:24.400 --> 00:51:25.120 of this episode. 00:51:25.120 --> 00:51:30.720 There are many negative consequences societally, biologically for women. 00:51:30.720 --> 00:51:32.000 It is a horrible thing. 00:51:32.000 --> 00:51:35.280 If any of the women we've mentioned this before, but if any 00:51:35.280 --> 00:51:39.280 of the women in your life are on hormonal birth control, get 00:51:39.280 --> 00:51:40.080 them to stop. 00:51:40.080 --> 00:51:41.840 Do whatever you can to get them to stop. 00:51:41.840 --> 00:51:43.600 It is a wicked invention. 00:51:43.600 --> 00:51:46.400 It is something that should be absolutely destroyed. 00:51:46.800 --> 00:51:50.720 One of the passages that Corey just mentioned in Genesis 29 is 00:51:50.720 --> 00:51:55.760 one that, as he said, we gloss over, but it has the 00:51:55.760 --> 00:51:59.760 same sort of inherent question that is asked of Genesis 2. 00:51:59.760 --> 00:52:03.520 When people ask, well, how did Adam and Eve get married? 00:52:03.520 --> 00:52:07.760 No one asks, How did Jacob marry Leah? 00:52:07.760 --> 00:52:10.800 And the reason that we're going to talk about Genesis 29 here 00:52:10.800 --> 00:52:16.800 is that this is explicit contrast between the modern notions of the 00:52:16.800 --> 00:52:22.480 wedding marriage and how scripture treats God's marriage. 00:52:22.480 --> 00:52:27.120 So Genesis reads: Then Jacob said to Laban, Give me my wife, 00:52:27.040 --> 00:52:30.000 that I may go into her, for my time is completed. 00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:32.880 So Laban gathered together all the people of the place and made 00:52:32.880 --> 00:52:33.680 a feast. 00:52:33.680 --> 00:52:36.880 But in the evening he took his daughter Leah, and brought her 00:52:36.880 --> 00:52:40.160 to Jacob, and he went into her, and in the morning, behold, 00:52:40.160 --> 00:52:43.600 it was Leah, and Jacob said to Laban, What is this you 00:52:43.600 --> 00:52:44.320 have done to me? 00:52:44.320 --> 00:52:46.800 Did I not serve with you for Rachel? 00:52:46.800 --> 00:52:48.560 Why then have you deceived me? 00:52:48.560 --> 00:52:51.520 Laban said it is not so done in our country to give 00:52:51.520 --> 00:52:53.120 the younger before the firstborn. 00:52:53.120 --> 00:52:56.240 Complete the week of this one, and then we will give you 00:52:56.240 --> 00:52:59.760 the other also in return for serving me another seven years. 00:52:59.760 --> 00:53:02.000 Jacob did so, and completed her week. 00:53:02.000 --> 00:53:05.440 Then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. 00:53:05.440 --> 00:53:09.680 So Jacob went into Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than 00:53:09.680 --> 00:53:13.280 Leah and served Laban for another seven years. 00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:19.840 So on paper, when you read what happened with Jacob and Leah, 00:53:20.560 --> 00:53:23.840 No one would say that Jacob was married to Leah. 00:53:23.840 --> 00:53:26.720 By all modern accounts, Jacob married Rachel. 00:53:26.720 --> 00:53:27.520 What do you have? 00:53:27.520 --> 00:53:28.800 You have a betrothal. 00:53:28.800 --> 00:53:32.400 Jacob said to Laban, even before the night of the wedding, give 00:53:32.400 --> 00:53:34.320 me my wife, that I may go into her. 00:53:34.640 --> 00:53:38.560 which incidentally is not euphemistic, is very direct. 00:53:38.560 --> 00:53:40.160 He says, Give me my wife. 00:53:40.160 --> 00:53:43.040 She had not yet been made his wife, but she had been 00:53:43.040 --> 00:53:44.640 betrothed to him for seven years. 00:53:44.640 --> 00:53:45.520 That was the deal. 00:53:45.520 --> 00:53:48.320 Work for Laban for seven years, you get the pretty daughter, the 00:53:48.320 --> 00:53:50.320 younger daughter. 00:53:50.320 --> 00:53:54.560 So Laban agrees, says okay, seven years have passed, we're gonna have 00:53:54.560 --> 00:53:55.840 the wedding feast. 00:53:55.840 --> 00:54:00.240 Gets everybody together, everyone's there for a big party for Jacob and 00:54:00.240 --> 00:54:04.080 Rachel. Every single person who showed up to that feast was there 00:54:04.080 --> 00:54:07.600 celebrating the wedding of Jacob and Rachel. 00:54:07.600 --> 00:54:12.640 And then in the dark, in secret, Laban and Leah conspire against 00:54:12.640 --> 00:54:14.480 Jacob, and what happens? 00:54:14.480 --> 00:54:16.400 Leah ends up in his bed. 00:54:16.400 --> 00:54:17.920 We're not told what happened to Rachel. 00:54:17.920 --> 00:54:20.560 You'd think that she would wonder why she wasn't in her own 00:54:20.560 --> 00:54:23.680 husband's bed on the night of their wedding. 00:54:23.680 --> 00:54:24.720 But what happens? 00:54:24.720 --> 00:54:27.600 He wakes up in the morning next to, we would say, his 00:54:27.600 --> 00:54:30.080 wife's sister, and it's not what he says at all. 00:54:30.080 --> 00:54:31.040 I've said this before. 00:54:31.040 --> 00:54:34.320 Jacob does not wake up next to Leah and say, Oh no, 00:54:34.320 --> 00:54:37.200 I slept with my wife's sister. 00:54:37.200 --> 00:54:40.400 Every modern reader would say, well, of course, Leah was not the 00:54:40.400 --> 00:54:41.280 one he married. 00:54:41.280 --> 00:54:43.600 He had the ceremony, he had the betrothal. 00:54:43.600 --> 00:54:46.480 Everything except for the sex was about Rachel. 00:54:46.480 --> 00:54:50.640 The only thing that was about Leia was the sex, which was 00:54:50.640 --> 00:54:55.360 not even consensual, you know, to forgive me for using that term. 00:54:55.360 --> 00:54:59.040 But Jacob had no intention of having sex with Leah. 00:54:59.040 --> 00:55:00.160 And yet he did. 00:55:00.160 --> 00:55:02.080 He was deceived in the dark. 00:55:02.080 --> 00:55:04.240 He had no idea it was coming until he woke up. 00:55:04.240 --> 00:55:08.640 Once the deed was done, the euphemism, he wakes up and he 00:55:08.640 --> 00:55:12.320 doesn't say, Why did you trick me into sleeping with my wife's 00:55:12.400 --> 00:55:15.600 sister? He says, in effect, why did you trick me into marrying 00:55:15.600 --> 00:55:17.040 the wrong woman? 00:55:17.040 --> 00:55:20.800 Now the modern reader has no possible explanation of what's going on. 00:55:20.800 --> 00:55:25.120 Genesis twenty nine makes no sense whatsoever if you disagree with what 00:55:25.120 --> 00:55:28.240 we're saying here today, which is precisely why we're saying it, because 00:55:28.240 --> 00:55:32.800 this is entirely consistent with the one flesh union described in Genesis 00:55:32.960 --> 00:55:35.840 2. God says the two will become one flesh. 00:55:35.840 --> 00:55:38.000 That's exactly what happened. 00:55:38.000 --> 00:55:40.720 And later on, we'll get into some New Testament passages that point 00:55:40.720 --> 00:55:42.240 back to the very same thing. 00:55:42.240 --> 00:55:46.080 The one flesh union is the essence of the marriage, it's the 00:55:46.080 --> 00:55:47.280 genesis of the marriage. 00:55:47.280 --> 00:55:50.160 It's not the whole thing, but it's the beginning of it. 00:55:50.160 --> 00:55:52.320 In its absence, there's no marriage. 00:55:52.320 --> 00:55:55.360 He was not married to Rachel for another week. 00:55:55.360 --> 00:55:57.920 He had one exclusive week where he had to have sex with 00:55:57.920 --> 00:56:01.600 the ugly sister, which he did because he was obligated to. 00:56:01.600 --> 00:56:06.240 And then he also married Rachel, incidentally, polygony. 00:56:06.400 --> 00:56:09.440 Not gonna really deal with that today, but and no point has 00:56:09.600 --> 00:56:13.040 ever said that Jacob sinned in this arrangement. 00:56:13.040 --> 00:56:15.680 He married both of them because he had sex with both of 00:56:15.680 --> 00:56:18.160 them. And he didn't even agree to marry the first one, but 00:56:18.160 --> 00:56:19.280 there's no out. 00:56:19.280 --> 00:56:21.440 We point to this because it's so stark. 00:56:21.440 --> 00:56:24.080 Like if you're just reading it and not paying attention, you would 00:56:24.240 --> 00:56:27.680 you would naturally think, Wow, Laban is a complete scumbag to do 00:56:27.680 --> 00:56:29.040 this to his own blood. 00:56:29.040 --> 00:56:33.360 Someone he'd welcome, someone he's exploited for tremendous personal profit. 00:56:33.360 --> 00:56:35.520 And then he marries off his ugly daughter. 00:56:35.520 --> 00:56:37.200 And then he marries off the pretty one. 00:56:37.200 --> 00:56:38.560 So he's off the hook. 00:56:38.560 --> 00:56:39.920 His fatherly duties are done. 00:56:39.920 --> 00:56:41.360 He got rid of both his daughters. 00:56:41.360 --> 00:56:45.120 He got fourteen years of labor from an incredibly gifted worker. 00:56:45.120 --> 00:56:46.480 Like what a deal for him. 00:56:46.480 --> 00:56:48.240 He was a scumbag. 00:56:48.560 --> 00:56:52.080 Jacob, unfortunately for him and unfortunately for Leah, going on to read 00:56:52.080 --> 00:56:55.920 it, it made me very sad to read how much Jacob hated 00:56:55.920 --> 00:56:57.680 Leah because he'd been tricked. 00:56:57.680 --> 00:57:02.160 And she repeatedly, God blessed her with sons, and each time she 00:57:02.160 --> 00:57:05.760 was given a son, she thought maybe this time he'll love me. 00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:09.040 Like it's a horrible story for everyone involved. 00:57:09.040 --> 00:57:12.880 But it was still a marriage because of the sex, because they 00:57:12.880 --> 00:57:16.720 slept together, because they had the one flesh union. 00:57:18.320 --> 00:57:23.280 Just as an important side note here, what Woe just said is 00:57:23.280 --> 00:57:27.600 worth emphasizing, the week here is a literal week. 00:57:27.600 --> 00:57:30.400 It is not representing the seven years. 00:57:30.400 --> 00:57:33.440 I have read and heard some exegetes try to say he had 00:57:33.440 --> 00:57:36.640 to work another seven years and then got Rachel. 00:57:36.640 --> 00:57:38.000 That's not what happened. 00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:39.520 The wedding feasting and 00:57:40.560 --> 00:57:45.600 celebrating lasted for a week, and then he received Rachel, and then 00:57:45.600 --> 00:57:49.040 worked another seven years, but he didn't have to wait seven years 00:57:49.040 --> 00:57:52.640 for her, just a side note to correct some exegetes who get 00:57:52.640 --> 00:57:57.280 that one wrong try to take week as being a metaphor representing 00:57:57.280 --> 00:57:58.080 the seven years. 00:57:58.080 --> 00:58:01.680 It is not in this case. 00:58:01.680 --> 00:58:07.120 Related to this example here, where we see the fact that Jacob 00:58:07.120 --> 00:58:08.800 married Leia. 00:58:08.800 --> 00:58:12.400 Despite not having the intent to do so the physical act was 00:58:12.400 --> 00:58:17.520 sufficient. There's an ex opera operato in play here. 00:58:17.520 --> 00:58:22.720 There's a similar example given in the New Testament with regard to 00:58:22.720 --> 00:58:29.760 prostitutes. Paul says do not become one flesh with a prostitute. 00:58:29.760 --> 00:58:31.680 No one who visits a prostitute 00:58:32.720 --> 00:58:36.640 thinks that he is marrying the prostitute. 00:58:36.640 --> 00:58:39.120 But that's what Scripture says. 00:58:39.120 --> 00:58:43.440 Because Scripture says that he becomes one flesh, and everywhere else we 00:58:43.440 --> 00:58:49.200 read of the one flesh union, the one flesh union is marriage. 00:58:49.200 --> 00:58:52.400 And the reason for that is as we have been saying repeatedly 00:58:52.400 --> 00:58:58.080 in this episode, having sex with a woman is marrying her. 00:58:57.760 --> 00:59:01.840 and so the only thing that you do with a prostitute is 00:59:01.840 --> 00:59:03.280 have sex with her. 00:59:03.280 --> 00:59:06.080 You are marrying her. 00:59:06.080 --> 00:59:08.160 That is one of the reasons 00:59:09.360 --> 00:59:13.920 that fornication is so heinous. 00:59:13.920 --> 00:59:17.280 This is difficult, of course, for many modern ears to hear because 00:59:17.280 --> 00:59:22.560 undoubtedly even many listening to this episode have engaged in fornication, have 00:59:22.560 --> 00:59:28.160 engaged in sexual immorality, and you have to deal with the fact 00:59:28.160 --> 00:59:32.240 that you were married after a fashion to every woman with whom 00:59:32.240 --> 00:59:34.400 you had sex. 00:59:34.400 --> 00:59:38.080 That That may be deeply uncomfortable, but it is the reality. 00:59:38.080 --> 00:59:41.280 Part of the reason that is uncomfortable because this is one of 00:59:41.280 --> 00:59:45.120 those instances where there is no fix. 00:59:45.120 --> 00:59:48.480 If you have sex with a woman who is not your wife, 00:59:48.480 --> 00:59:52.480 and then you do not marry her, compounding your sin, there is 00:59:52.480 --> 00:59:53.840 no fix. 00:59:53.840 --> 00:59:56.080 What you have done defiled her. 00:59:56.080 --> 00:59:57.600 Scripture is very clear about that. 00:59:57.600 --> 00:59:59.760 It speaks of that in a number of places. 00:59:59.760 --> 01:00:04.400 Incidentally, Scripture says that it's worse to have sex with a woman 01:00:04.480 --> 01:00:07.520 than she goes to another man and then to take her back, 01:00:07.520 --> 01:00:12.240 although obviously marriage and adultery play into that differently, it's a little 01:00:12.240 --> 01:00:13.360 more complicated. 01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:16.080 But Scripture speaks of a woman who has done that as being 01:00:16.080 --> 01:00:18.160 a defiled field. 01:00:18.160 --> 01:00:23.120 If you are a man and you have fornicated with women, you 01:00:23.120 --> 01:00:26.400 have defiled the wives of other men. 01:00:26.400 --> 01:00:27.760 That is what you've actually done. 01:00:27.760 --> 01:00:29.840 You've actually committed adultery. 01:00:29.840 --> 01:00:31.120 It's not fornication. 01:00:31.120 --> 01:00:37.200 We call it fornication because we're distinguishing different kinds of sexual morality. 01:00:37.200 --> 01:00:41.920 Ultimately, they are all adultery because what you are doing is having 01:00:41.920 --> 01:00:45.600 sex with another man's wife, or at least a woman who should 01:00:45.600 --> 01:00:47.680 be another man's wife. 01:00:47.680 --> 01:00:52.400 It may be that she has been wife to many men. 01:00:52.400 --> 01:00:56.720 But the reality is that any time you have sex with a 01:00:56.720 --> 01:01:00.640 woman, you are forming that one flesh union. 01:01:00.640 --> 01:01:04.400 Now in the case of a prostitute or any other woman to 01:01:04.400 --> 01:01:08.160 whom you are not married, it is disordered in a fundamental fashion, 01:01:08.160 --> 01:01:12.240 and it is sinful, and you should not be doing that. 01:01:12.240 --> 01:01:15.680 But it doesn't change the nature of the act, it doesn't change 01:01:15.680 --> 01:01:17.760 the essence of the thing. 01:01:17.760 --> 01:01:22.960 And again, that is the reason that these sins are so heinous, 01:01:22.960 --> 01:01:29.120 because the consequences of these sins cannot be undone in this life. 01:01:29.120 --> 01:01:33.760 A woman cannot go back and undo having sex with however many 01:01:33.760 --> 01:01:37.440 men she had sex with before she married her husband. 01:01:37.440 --> 01:01:41.680 You as a man cannot go back and undefile the women with 01:01:41.680 --> 01:01:45.680 whom you had sex who were not yours. 01:01:46.240 --> 01:01:52.880 There are sins that have very real temporal consequences that cannot be 01:01:52.880 --> 01:01:55.760 addressed, cannot be solved in this life. 01:01:55.760 --> 01:01:57.440 You cannot make them better. 01:01:57.440 --> 01:02:01.040 Now in the case of say it's your high school girlfriend and 01:02:01.040 --> 01:02:03.920 you sleep with her, if you marry her, you are doing the 01:02:03.920 --> 01:02:08.400 best thing that you can do with regard to your past sin. 01:02:08.400 --> 01:02:09.600 Which is what you should do. 01:02:09.600 --> 01:02:13.680 That's what scripture recommends, in fact. 01:02:13.680 --> 01:02:18.080 But if that woman has moved on to her next boyfriend, or 01:02:18.080 --> 01:02:22.480 another man, whatever it happens to be, that window is closed. 01:02:22.480 --> 01:02:23.360 There is no fixing it. 01:02:24.000 --> 01:02:25.920 Your sin is your sin. 01:02:25.920 --> 01:02:28.800 Yes it is a forgiven sin. 01:02:28.800 --> 01:02:31.040 Yes Christ's blood covers it. 01:02:31.040 --> 01:02:34.160 But the consequences cannot be undone in this life. 01:02:34.160 --> 01:02:37.760 It is one of the reasons that Satan Satan so focuses on 01:02:37.760 --> 01:02:42.560 sexual sin and why Satan wants society to tell young people, no, 01:02:42.560 --> 01:02:46.640 no, no, you need to spend your formative years and for women 01:02:46.720 --> 01:02:49.680 your most fertile years at college and you need to be free 01:02:49.680 --> 01:02:54.240 and experiment and because Satan knows that if you just engage in 01:02:54.240 --> 01:02:59.280 that lifestyle, all that damage accumulates and cannot be undone. 01:02:59.280 --> 01:03:02.560 And for many that damage is going to lead them away from 01:03:02.560 --> 01:03:08.160 God. Even if they aren't saying, Oh, my sin is so bad 01:03:08.160 --> 01:03:12.160 that I can't possibly be forgiven, even if they aren't making that 01:03:12.160 --> 01:03:16.080 theological error, because many of them aren't, they are going to be 01:03:16.080 --> 01:03:19.600 so entrenched in that sinful lifestyle that they will just continue to 01:03:19.600 --> 01:03:22.560 get worse and worse and worse. 01:03:22.560 --> 01:03:26.960 Because sexual sin is one of those sins that compounds. 01:03:26.960 --> 01:03:28.720 It doesn't get better over time. 01:03:28.960 --> 01:03:34.400 If you are engaging in sexual degeneracy, what you do tomorrow is 01:03:34.400 --> 01:03:37.120 going to be worse than what you did yesterday. 01:03:37.120 --> 01:03:39.440 Because it just keeps getting worse. 01:03:39.440 --> 01:03:43.520 It is one of those sins where every time you engage in 01:03:43.520 --> 01:03:49.600 it, you're basically desensitizing yourself to what you did previously. 01:03:49.600 --> 01:03:51.120 And that's no longer enough. 01:03:51.120 --> 01:03:54.080 And of course, there's a lot of biology and psychology and neuroscience 01:03:54.080 --> 01:03:55.600 here, but we don't need to get into that for as this 01:03:56.080 --> 01:04:00.160 episode, those technical aspects are not the point. 01:04:00.160 --> 01:04:04.560 The point is that the sin is searing your conscience. 01:04:04.560 --> 01:04:08.560 And so as you continue to engage in those sins, you will 01:04:08.560 --> 01:04:09.760 engage in worse sins. 01:04:09.760 --> 01:04:13.520 You will start to engage in things, say, ten, twenty years down 01:04:13.520 --> 01:04:14.960 the line, however long it takes. 01:04:14.960 --> 01:04:19.520 Perhaps it's faster in some cases, or slower in others. 01:04:19.520 --> 01:04:22.000 You'll get to the point where you are doing things that you 01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:26.480 would have never even thought of doing when you started down that 01:04:26.480 --> 01:04:28.800 road. And Satan knows that. 01:04:28.800 --> 01:04:31.040 Satan has been doing this a long time. 01:04:31.040 --> 01:04:33.440 He knows that if he can just get you to engage in 01:04:33.440 --> 01:04:38.800 this relatively minor sin, this thing that seems totally harmless, having sex 01:04:38.800 --> 01:04:42.240 with your high school girlfriend, everyone else is, why shouldn't you? 01:04:42.240 --> 01:04:43.680 Small matter. 01:04:43.680 --> 01:04:48.720 He knows that ultimately, his goal is to have that woman so 01:04:48.720 --> 01:04:53.360 destroyed after she's slept with a string of two, three, four dozen 01:04:53.360 --> 01:04:57.200 men over the course of high school, college, graduate school, however many 01:04:57.200 --> 01:05:02.320 years, his goal is to destroy her utterly and to have you 01:05:02.320 --> 01:05:03.680 participate in it. 01:05:03.680 --> 01:05:07.600 And I'm, of course, speaking directly to the men on this specific 01:05:07.600 --> 01:05:12.880 issue. Satan is not dumb. 01:05:13.760 --> 01:05:17.760 He knows what he can achieve and how he can achieve it. 01:05:17.760 --> 01:05:20.720 That is the reason we want to get these issues, to get 01:05:20.720 --> 01:05:23.440 these matters absolutely correct. 01:05:23.440 --> 01:05:27.440 Not to leave them at euphemism or to leave them implied or 01:05:27.440 --> 01:05:29.840 just to say, well, you know 01:05:30.720 --> 01:05:34.000 No, we don't get to ignore the details on this. 01:05:34.000 --> 01:05:37.120 Because every little thing matters, because if we leave an opening for 01:05:37.120 --> 01:05:42.400 Satan, he will take full advantage, and Scripture speaks about these things 01:05:42.400 --> 01:05:44.960 in the strongest of terms. 01:05:44.960 --> 01:05:49.280 This is not an area where God whispers, as some like to 01:05:49.280 --> 01:05:52.160 try to say about certain sins. 01:05:52.160 --> 01:05:55.040 God is blunt about this. 01:05:55.040 --> 01:05:59.520 God condemns sexual sin from the beginning of Scripture all the way 01:05:59.520 --> 01:06:04.000 to the end of Scripture, and he condemns it in extremely harsh 01:06:04.000 --> 01:06:09.920 terms. God calls sexual sin, certain kinds at least, an abomination. 01:06:09.920 --> 01:06:14.160 Not an abomination for you, not an abomination for the ancient Israelites, 01:06:14.160 --> 01:06:18.560 an abomination unto God, something that he hates to the point that 01:06:18.560 --> 01:06:22.640 he will see it utterly wiped out from the earth. 01:06:22.640 --> 01:06:26.000 He will destroy all of those who participate in it and all 01:06:26.000 --> 01:06:28.320 of those who tolerate it. 01:06:28.320 --> 01:06:30.320 These are not minor matters. 01:06:30.320 --> 01:06:33.200 You have to get the nature of the thing correct, and you 01:06:33.200 --> 01:06:36.000 have to get the perversions of the thing correct because you have 01:06:36.000 --> 01:06:39.680 to understand what you have to avoid. 01:06:39.680 --> 01:06:44.640 And so when it comes to sexual sin, There is only one 01:06:44.960 --> 01:06:50.800 acceptable form of the expression of human eros, and that is sex 01:06:50.880 --> 01:06:53.120 between a man and his wife. 01:06:53.120 --> 01:06:58.800 Period. Nothing else is acceptable under that category. 01:06:58.800 --> 01:07:03.120 Everything else is degenerate to the point where it is no longer 01:07:03.360 --> 01:07:09.600 Eros. There is only one possible tiny exception here, and that is 01:07:09.680 --> 01:07:12.560 if you have sex with a woman before you are married to 01:07:12.560 --> 01:07:15.840 her, that may very well still be Eros, if you follow it 01:07:15.840 --> 01:07:18.160 up by doing what is right. 01:07:18.160 --> 01:07:24.080 It is still a perverse example, you have still degraded the institution, 01:07:24.080 --> 01:07:28.640 you have done it wrong, it was disordered, but you can make 01:07:28.640 --> 01:07:33.920 it good as it were, because there is that opportunity there. 01:07:33.920 --> 01:07:36.000 But that's a limited window. 01:07:36.000 --> 01:07:39.040 Because of course we know what happens if you move on to 01:07:39.040 --> 01:07:42.160 your next girlfriend and she moves on to her next boyfriend. 01:07:42.160 --> 01:07:44.560 The sin compounds, the sin gets worse. 01:07:44.560 --> 01:07:48.560 The things in which you engage get more and more perverse over 01:07:48.560 --> 01:07:48.880 time 01:07:51.200 --> 01:07:56.000 so as we're working through this downward spiral beginning in Genesis 2 01:07:56.240 --> 01:08:00.800 where the original marriage was given to us as an example. 01:08:00.800 --> 01:08:05.120 And then we see a marriage in Genesis 29 with Jacob and 01:08:05.120 --> 01:08:09.120 Leah that was not it wasn't even really disordered. 01:08:09.120 --> 01:08:11.840 It was simply it was trickery. 01:08:12.000 --> 01:08:15.920 Leah was a willing participant, the father was a willing participant, which 01:08:15.920 --> 01:08:16.720 is important. 01:08:16.720 --> 01:08:20.800 A father to be explicit, is a participant in every marriage, just 01:08:20.800 --> 01:08:23.840 as God the Father was a participant in the first marriage by 01:08:23.840 --> 01:08:25.920 giving Eve to Adam. 01:08:25.920 --> 01:08:26.560 Laban gave 01:08:27.440 --> 01:08:30.000 Leah to Jacob. 01:08:30.000 --> 01:08:33.120 The problem is that Jacob was the victim there because he didn't 01:08:33.040 --> 01:08:36.080 know. He inadvertently slept with the ugly sister. 01:08:36.080 --> 01:08:40.400 Cost him another seven years of work to get the pretty one. 01:08:40.400 --> 01:08:43.600 And then what we see in 1 Corinthians 6 with the prostitute, 01:08:43.600 --> 01:08:45.760 I want to read this again because it's so crucial, because it 01:08:45.760 --> 01:08:50.880 ties directly to those previous two examples, quite literally. 01:08:50.880 --> 01:08:54.560 Paul writes: Do you not know that your bodies are members of 01:08:54.560 --> 01:08:58.560 Christ? Shall I then take the member of Christ and make them 01:08:58.560 --> 01:09:00.160 members of a prostitute? 01:09:00.160 --> 01:09:03.200 Never or do you not know that he who is joined to 01:09:03.200 --> 01:09:07.520 a prostitute becomes one body with her, for as it is written, 01:09:07.520 --> 01:09:09.920 the two will become one flesh. 01:09:09.920 --> 01:09:13.440 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with 01:09:13.440 --> 01:09:18.000 him. So, as Cory said, you have the one flesh union with 01:09:18.000 --> 01:09:18.960 a prostitute 01:09:20.240 --> 01:09:24.000 that's disordered by its very nature. 01:09:24.000 --> 01:09:26.640 It's not disordered in that it's contrary to nature. 01:09:26.640 --> 01:09:28.480 It was it was a man and a woman. 01:09:28.480 --> 01:09:30.880 He was aroused, he was attracted to her, he he went to 01:09:30.880 --> 01:09:33.920 her and paid her for her sex. 01:09:33.920 --> 01:09:39.280 That's degenerate in the sense that it's completely unacceptable structurally, but it 01:09:39.280 --> 01:09:41.760 wasn't per se contrary to nature. 01:09:41.760 --> 01:09:45.440 But it's a far greater departure than what we have with Jay. 01:09:45.760 --> 01:09:48.000 and Leah, where he was simply tricked. 01:09:48.000 --> 01:09:51.360 Here the man is going to a prostitute, knowing exactly what he's 01:09:51.360 --> 01:09:55.920 doing. He's defiling her, as Corey laid out very well. 01:09:55.920 --> 01:09:58.960 The problem is that we get further and further away from the 01:09:58.960 --> 01:10:03.920 original one-flesh union of the garden, as of course that becomes unfixable. 01:10:03.920 --> 01:10:06.160 There's no way to put this back together. 01:10:06.160 --> 01:10:09.520 There's no way if you've had sex with a prostitute to make 01:10:09.520 --> 01:10:11.440 that a legitimate marriage. 01:10:11.440 --> 01:10:15.840 So when we say that that is a marriage, it's in horror. 01:10:15.840 --> 01:10:18.320 It's in it's in absolute despair and agony. 01:10:18.560 --> 01:10:22.400 it's a sort of rending of clothing type situation that you see 01:10:22.400 --> 01:10:26.560 in the in Middle Eastern cultures of the Bible, you're looking at 01:10:26.560 --> 01:10:28.160 something that's an abomination. 01:10:28.160 --> 01:10:29.360 You can't fix it. 01:10:29.360 --> 01:10:30.800 You can be forgiven for it. 01:10:30.800 --> 01:10:32.400 You can't fix it. 01:10:32.400 --> 01:10:34.160 And so I want to be clear about that. 01:10:34.160 --> 01:10:38.160 We're not saying that, oh well there's you're married to someone you 01:10:38.160 --> 01:10:39.040 didn't even know it. 01:10:39.040 --> 01:10:42.480 We're saying that you've done something horrible and you've broken something that 01:10:42.480 --> 01:10:43.680 can't be fixed. 01:10:43.680 --> 01:10:46.480 Stop breaking things, stop defiling. 01:10:46.480 --> 01:10:48.560 That's the fundamental message here. 01:10:48.560 --> 01:10:52.400 Again, by pointing explicitly to these things in the terms of the 01:10:52.400 --> 01:10:55.920 one flesh union is to illustrate the horror that we've all left 01:10:55.920 --> 01:10:57.200 in our wakes. 01:10:57.200 --> 01:11:00.080 Sexual sin is one of the most common sins in the world. 01:11:00.080 --> 01:11:02.800 It's probably nearly as common as the slander episode. 01:11:02.800 --> 01:11:06.320 Virtually everyone listening is physically guilty. 01:11:06.320 --> 01:11:10.480 And those who are not physically guilty mostly would have if you've 01:11:10.480 --> 01:11:11.520 been able to. 01:11:11.520 --> 01:11:13.200 That's one of the problems with this. 01:11:13.200 --> 01:11:17.200 In Matthew 5 and 6, when Jesus is giving the sermon, he 01:11:17.200 --> 01:11:20.240 talks about how these are sins that begin in the heart and 01:11:20.240 --> 01:11:22.400 then they manifest in the flesh. 01:11:22.400 --> 01:11:26.240 The distinction here is that we're only talking about the flesh, because 01:11:26.240 --> 01:11:30.240 it is the one flesh union that makes or breaks whether or 01:11:30.240 --> 01:11:34.240 not you have a godly marriage or you have some abomination of 01:11:34.240 --> 01:11:37.680 a false union that can't be fixed, it can't be repaired. 01:11:37.680 --> 01:11:41.440 And it's a shameful thing that will continue to bear damage damage 01:11:41.440 --> 01:11:42.720 in this life. 01:11:42.720 --> 01:11:47.200 Which is again, as Corey said, we always reiterate, doesn't mean you're 01:11:47.200 --> 01:11:48.240 not forgiven. 01:11:48.240 --> 01:11:51.760 Jesus went up on the cross knowing we were going to do 01:11:51.760 --> 01:11:53.120 all this crap. 01:11:53.120 --> 01:11:55.280 He died for it, knowing that we were going to do it. 01:11:55.440 --> 01:11:56.480 That's why he died. 01:11:56.480 --> 01:11:58.720 He was crucified for these sins. 01:11:58.720 --> 01:12:01.040 They're forgiven on the cross. 01:12:01.040 --> 01:12:02.960 So why do we keep doing them? 01:12:02.960 --> 01:12:06.480 Why do we keep nailing Christ to the cross with these wicked 01:12:06.640 --> 01:12:11.040 counterappetites, they're at odds with what God says. 01:12:11.040 --> 01:12:15.120 As we move on to into Romans 1, the beginning of this 01:12:15.120 --> 01:12:21.120 epistle is just a litany of the examples of the complete departure 01:12:21.600 --> 01:12:25.760 of the sexual desires to the very negative form of lust, the 01:12:25.760 --> 01:12:31.280 typical form today, where frankly, it's not even really sexual anymore. 01:12:31.280 --> 01:12:33.680 In the episode, I think it was on a young man's life, 01:12:33.680 --> 01:12:37.840 we talked about at some length about ordered versus disordered desires, talking 01:12:37.840 --> 01:12:41.520 about what is today called heterosexual, where if a man desires a 01:12:41.520 --> 01:12:45.680 woman and she's not his wife, that is disordered according to their 01:12:46.080 --> 01:12:49.680 relationship, but is not disordered according to nature. 01:12:49.680 --> 01:12:52.640 Much of what's in Romans 1 is talking about things that are 01:12:52.640 --> 01:12:55.440 fundamentally disordered according to nature. 01:12:55.440 --> 01:12:57.600 They're contrary to nature. 01:12:57.600 --> 01:13:01.120 And the thing that I realized I said in that episode, I 01:13:01.120 --> 01:13:04.240 think again, I think it was a young man's life. 01:13:04.240 --> 01:13:06.800 We called that sexual as well because that's really the way it's 01:13:06.800 --> 01:13:07.520 framed today. 01:13:07.520 --> 01:13:11.440 I think honestly it's probably better not to call those sexual sins 01:13:11.440 --> 01:13:14.800 at all for this one specific distinctive reason. 01:13:14.800 --> 01:13:17.200 As I said earlier, we're talking about things on a table. 01:13:17.200 --> 01:13:20.160 We're trying to separate them into the right buckets so they don't 01:13:20.080 --> 01:13:22.000 get confused. 01:13:22.000 --> 01:13:26.480 When you talk about sins of a sexual nature that are contrary 01:13:26.480 --> 01:13:28.800 to nature itself. 01:13:28.800 --> 01:13:33.200 To even call them sexual is in a way a denial of 01:13:33.440 --> 01:13:36.560 the root and the essence of sex. 01:13:36.560 --> 01:13:42.000 Because properly ordered the sexual desire between a man and a woman 01:13:42.000 --> 01:13:45.280 in marriage is fundamentally procreative. 01:13:45.280 --> 01:13:48.160 Even as we said earlier, not every act is going to result 01:13:48.160 --> 01:13:48.880 in children. 01:13:48.880 --> 01:13:50.000 That's up to God. 01:13:50.000 --> 01:13:53.280 It's not intended to bind conscience as oh we we did something 01:13:53.280 --> 01:13:55.200 and didn't create a baby did we sin? 01:13:55.200 --> 01:13:56.320 Absolutely not. 01:13:56.320 --> 01:13:59.360 What a man and a woman will do together naturally without any 01:13:59.360 --> 01:14:03.920 external wicked forces is going to be part of the blessing of 01:14:03.920 --> 01:14:08.240 sexuality as proper human godly sexuality. 01:14:08.240 --> 01:14:11.920 When we get into Romans 1, we're looking at the things that 01:14:11.920 --> 01:14:14.240 we're seeing on TV and online today. 01:14:14.240 --> 01:14:17.920 Things that are so utterly contrary to nature that I think it's 01:14:17.920 --> 01:14:20.000 frankly an affront to call them sexual. 01:14:20.000 --> 01:14:22.400 Yes, it does involve genitalia. 01:14:22.400 --> 01:14:27.680 Yes it does in some cases involve some type of sexual gratification. 01:14:27.680 --> 01:14:31.280 But frankly, as soon as someone goes down this path where they 01:14:31.280 --> 01:14:37.920 have separated what is being called sexual from the proper godly garden 01:14:38.160 --> 01:14:42.160 union of one flesh man and woman, it very quickly ceases to 01:14:42.160 --> 01:14:46.000 even have anything remotely resembling it. 01:14:46.000 --> 01:14:49.520 This is something that we saw last year when the LCMS published 01:14:49.520 --> 01:14:55.200 The Wicked Large Catechism with the bastardizations from Matt Harrison, where they 01:14:55.200 --> 01:15:01.920 put raping children and orgies and sodomy in the same breath as 01:15:01.920 --> 01:15:06.160 fornication, as as though those were all sexual preferences. 01:15:06.240 --> 01:15:08.160 That's why I'm speaking against it today. 01:15:08.160 --> 01:15:11.520 Because I think it's actually an error to say that a disordered 01:15:11.520 --> 01:15:14.320 desire for someone who's not your wife if you're a man, or 01:15:14.320 --> 01:15:17.920 not for your husband if you're a woman, is disordered according to 01:15:17.920 --> 01:15:20.320 good order, but it's not disordered according to nature. 01:15:20.320 --> 01:15:22.080 That's a point we made before. 01:15:22.080 --> 01:15:25.280 I think it's really important to say that if it's in contradiction 01:15:25.280 --> 01:15:29.840 to nature, I think we should probably stop calling it sexual. 01:15:29.840 --> 01:15:33.600 I think when you look at the so-called fake six-color rainbow flag, 01:15:33.600 --> 01:15:37.600 Satan's flag, the bastardization of the rainbow. 01:15:37.600 --> 01:15:39.280 None of that's sexual. 01:15:39.280 --> 01:15:42.320 All of those things are deviations that are contrary to nature. 01:15:42.320 --> 01:15:45.120 They're contrary to everything that's God's given us. 01:15:45.120 --> 01:15:49.360 And so in Romans 1, as those are delineated, just note that 01:15:49.360 --> 01:15:54.240 in this passage, it begins and ends with idolatry, which is fundamentally 01:15:54.240 --> 01:15:57.680 what's going on with everything that we're seeing today that's contrary to 01:15:57.680 --> 01:15:59.120 natural sex. 01:16:00.400 --> 01:16:04.640 We've said before, and it's a crucial point: every sin that you 01:16:04.640 --> 01:16:08.240 or I will ever commit is at its root idolatry. 01:16:08.240 --> 01:16:11.840 In order for me to sin against God, I first have to 01:16:11.840 --> 01:16:16.000 either ignore what I should have known God was going to desire 01:16:16.000 --> 01:16:19.920 through ignorance or malice, or I know anyway, and I do it 01:16:19.920 --> 01:16:22.000 because I want to make myself God. 01:16:22.000 --> 01:16:23.920 That is idolatry. 01:16:23.920 --> 01:16:25.840 That is a violation of the first commandment. 01:16:25.840 --> 01:16:29.200 That's the root of every single sin I've ever committed or you've 01:16:29.200 --> 01:16:30.080 ever committed. 01:16:30.080 --> 01:16:31.600 Either ignorance or malice. 01:16:31.600 --> 01:16:34.640 I don't care what God said, I'm gonna do my own thing. 01:16:34.640 --> 01:16:39.600 It's important because it's the reason that God put the first commandment 01:16:39.600 --> 01:16:43.120 first. The only way to sin is to violate the first commandment. 01:16:43.120 --> 01:16:45.520 And then you're going to violate some or more of the rest 01:16:45.760 --> 01:16:47.760 along the way down the path. 01:16:47.760 --> 01:16:51.920 And it's only God continuously reeling us back in through forgiveness and 01:16:51.920 --> 01:16:56.000 sanctification, that we're not lost again. 01:16:56.000 --> 01:16:58.720 When we look at Romans 1 and we look at how it 01:16:58.720 --> 01:17:02.400 begins in idolatry and then ends in idolatry, what we see is 01:17:02.400 --> 01:17:06.640 that the sexual sins, the so-called sexual sins that we see today 01:17:06.640 --> 01:17:10.960 in the rainbow parades, as we're recording this, this is the obscenely 01:17:11.120 --> 01:17:16.640 named Pride Month, an entire month of this garbage filling the airwaves, 01:17:16.640 --> 01:17:20.640 propagandizing everyone, it's all fundamentally rebellion against God. 01:17:20.640 --> 01:17:23.840 And although there's a sexual tenor to it, as we see in 01:17:23.840 --> 01:17:27.840 Romans 1 in this passage, it's really self-worship. 01:17:27.840 --> 01:17:31.840 Everything that you see all these people doing, it is self-worship and 01:17:31.840 --> 01:17:33.840 not simply for gratification. 01:17:33.840 --> 01:17:37.360 It's open rebellion against God in the sort of way that we 01:17:37.360 --> 01:17:41.040 saw 2,000 years ago in Rome and Greece, that we saw four 01:17:41.040 --> 01:17:44.080 or five thousand years ago before the flood. 01:17:44.080 --> 01:17:48.640 Open abject rebellion against everything that God has ever commanded, saying, I'm 01:17:48.640 --> 01:17:51.840 gonna do whatever I want, just giving God the finger. 01:17:51.840 --> 01:17:53.120 What's he gonna do? 01:17:53.120 --> 01:17:56.080 Well, Romans one talks a little bit about some of the things 01:17:56.080 --> 01:17:59.360 he does in this life, and we certainly know what's coming in 01:17:59.360 --> 01:18:02.240 the life to come for those who engage in these sins. 01:18:03.280 --> 01:18:03.440 And 01:18:03.440 --> 01:18:08.640 so to read the passage from Romans one that lists many of 01:18:08.640 --> 01:18:11.200 these sins. 01:18:11.200 --> 01:18:14.880 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness 01:18:14.880 --> 01:18:19.920 and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, for 01:18:19.920 --> 01:18:23.040 what can be known about God is plain to them, because God 01:18:23.040 --> 01:18:27.200 has shown it to them, for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal 01:18:27.200 --> 01:18:31.760 power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation 01:18:31.760 --> 01:18:35.120 of the world, in the things that have been made, so they 01:18:35.120 --> 01:18:38.800 are without excuse, for although they knew God, they did not honor 01:18:38.880 --> 01:18:43.040 him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile 01:18:43.040 --> 01:18:47.120 in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be 01:18:47.120 --> 01:18:51.440 wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God 01:18:51.440 --> 01:18:56.560 for images resembling mortal man, and birds and animals and creeping things. 01:18:56.560 --> 01:18:59.680 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to 01:18:59.680 --> 01:19:04.160 impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because because they 01:19:04.160 --> 01:19:08.320 exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served 01:19:08.320 --> 01:19:12.800 the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever Amen. 01:19:12.800 --> 01:19:17.280 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. 01:19:17.280 --> 01:19:21.360 For their women exchange natural relations for those that are contrary to 01:19:21.360 --> 01:19:25.520 nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women, and 01:19:25.520 --> 01:19:29.920 were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with 01:19:29.920 --> 01:19:34.000 men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. 01:19:34.000 --> 01:19:37.600 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave 01:19:37.600 --> 01:19:40.640 them up to a debased mind, to do what ought not to 01:19:40.640 --> 01:19:41.520 be done. 01:19:41.520 --> 01:19:46.560 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, they 01:19:46.560 --> 01:19:52.400 are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, they are gossips, slanderers, 01:19:52.400 --> 01:19:58.720 haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 01:19:58.720 --> 01:20:04.080 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, though they know God's righteous decree that those 01:20:04.080 --> 01:20:07.040 who practice such things deserve to die. 01:20:07.040 --> 01:20:10.960 They not only do them, but give approval to those who practice 01:20:10.960 --> 01:20:13.760 them. This list is essentially 01:20:15.040 --> 01:20:20.720 things that are contrary to nature when it comes to if we 01:20:20.720 --> 01:20:24.720 use the umbrella term sexual sin, if we don't use the umbrella 01:20:24.720 --> 01:20:28.720 term that's actually part of the problem in this when dealing, not 01:20:28.720 --> 01:20:32.640 just in English, but really in any language of which I'm aware, 01:20:32.640 --> 01:20:37.360 we use sex or sexual as an umbrella term basically for anything 01:20:37.360 --> 01:20:41.440 that even tangentially involves the genitalia. 01:20:41.440 --> 01:20:43.280 But it's not really. 01:20:43.280 --> 01:20:47.840 As Wo was saying, sex is a specific thing, and these perversions 01:20:47.840 --> 01:20:50.960 of it are perverted and degenerate to the point where they are 01:20:50.960 --> 01:20:53.840 no longer the thing because they have lost the essence of the 01:20:53.840 --> 01:20:55.360 thing, as we keep saying. 01:20:55.360 --> 01:20:58.560 If you lose the essence of the thing, you no longer have 01:20:58.560 --> 01:21:04.080 the thing, even if you keep some of the miscellaneous tangential stuff. 01:21:04.080 --> 01:21:09.120 And so there's a distinction between a sort of sin that would 01:21:09.120 --> 01:21:14.480 be in agreement with nature we've used impactum cum natura or you 01:21:14.480 --> 01:21:18.160 could use secundum naturum in Latin. 01:21:18.160 --> 01:21:21.360 And then there is sin that is contra naturum, there's sin that 01:21:21.360 --> 01:21:23.200 is contrary to nature. 01:21:23.200 --> 01:21:24.560 Those are worse sins. 01:21:24.880 --> 01:21:30.160 Those are the sorts of sins that are celebrated by our wicked 01:21:30.160 --> 01:21:33.280 culture in the month of June. 01:21:33.280 --> 01:21:37.920 Men engaging in what are wrongly called sexual acts with other men 01:21:39.840 --> 01:21:43.360 are engaging in sins that are contrary to nature. 01:21:43.360 --> 01:21:47.440 They are above and beyond mere fornication. 01:21:47.440 --> 01:21:50.080 Because fornication is sinful, very obviously. 01:21:50.080 --> 01:21:52.000 We've been very clear about that. 01:21:52.000 --> 01:21:55.040 But it is a sin that is in agreement with nature. 01:21:55.040 --> 01:21:58.880 It is not contrary to nature, because it is not contrary to 01:21:58.880 --> 01:22:02.640 the nature of a man to desire a beautiful woman. 01:22:02.640 --> 01:22:05.040 That is in agreement with his nature. 01:22:05.040 --> 01:22:06.880 You are acting in accord with nature. 01:22:06.880 --> 01:22:11.520 Yes, it is your fallen nature, because the object of that desire 01:22:11.520 --> 01:22:13.120 is the wrong object. 01:22:13.120 --> 01:22:15.520 So it is disordered. 01:22:15.520 --> 01:22:21.520 There is no sort of thing that would be ordered homosexual desire. 01:22:21.520 --> 01:22:27.440 It is inherently disordered, it is inherently wicked, it cannot be sanctified, 01:22:27.440 --> 01:22:31.360 it cannot be rightly ordered, and so it is contrary to nature. 01:22:31.360 --> 01:22:33.360 It is a worse sort of sin. 01:22:33.360 --> 01:22:36.800 And that is what our culture celebrates, not just in the month 01:22:36.800 --> 01:22:38.880 of June, but day in and day out. 01:22:38.880 --> 01:22:42.240 We just happen to be inundated with it in the month of 01:22:42.240 --> 01:22:48.880 June. But you can see here this progression, this downward spiral, this 01:22:48.880 --> 01:22:53.200 degeneration that comes along with sexual sin. 01:22:53.200 --> 01:22:55.360 It gets worse over time. 01:22:55.360 --> 01:23:02.640 A culture that tolerates sodomy will eventually wind up tolerating pederasty, 01:23:02.640 --> 01:23:08.240 pedophilia, bestiality, everything else on down the line, because there is no 01:23:08.240 --> 01:23:12.320 floor when it comes to sexual so called sin. 01:23:12.320 --> 01:23:15.040 It can always get worse. 01:23:15.040 --> 01:23:18.000 That is the case with a number of different sins, not all 01:23:18.000 --> 01:23:19.360 sins, but many sins. 01:23:19.360 --> 01:23:20.640 They get worse over time. 01:23:20.640 --> 01:23:21.760 There is no floor. 01:23:21.920 --> 01:23:25.040 It is particularly true in this case. 01:23:25.040 --> 01:23:29.280 Because the only thing that stops those who engage in these wicked 01:23:29.280 --> 01:23:33.280 acts short of repentance which is very rare in these so called 01:23:33.280 --> 01:23:37.360 communities, but short of repentance, the only thing that stops them is 01:23:37.360 --> 01:23:42.960 death. Now God says the proper punishment for this is capital punishment 01:23:43.040 --> 01:23:46.160 is death, and it's not just temporal death that is meant here. 01:23:46.160 --> 01:23:50.960 Because of course a godly prince would deal with these individuals to 01:23:50.960 --> 01:23:54.320 stop this sin taking place in his realm. 01:23:54.320 --> 01:23:56.960 But this also speaks of eternal death. 01:23:56.960 --> 01:24:00.080 Because God is going to cast those who participate in these things 01:24:00.080 --> 01:24:03.280 and do not repent not repent into eternal fire. 01:24:03.280 --> 01:24:08.000 The punishment for being a sodomite, the punishment for being a pedophile, 01:24:08.000 --> 01:24:12.080 the punishment for being any of these other forms of degenerate wickedness 01:24:12.400 --> 01:24:14.880 is eternal death. 01:24:14.880 --> 01:24:18.960 It is the fires of hell that are not quenched. 01:24:18.960 --> 01:24:22.480 It is eternal suffering, and that is what awaits those who fall 01:24:22.480 --> 01:24:27.680 into any of these categories enumerated here in Romans one. 01:24:27.680 --> 01:24:31.600 God is not being subtle with regard to these sins, and God 01:24:31.600 --> 01:24:34.960 is not whispering with regard to the punishment that awaits those who 01:24:34.960 --> 01:24:37.040 engage in this wickedness. 01:24:37.040 --> 01:24:41.200 And as Christians we should speak the truth as God speaks it. 01:24:41.200 --> 01:24:43.280 We shouldn't dance around the subject. 01:24:43.280 --> 01:24:45.280 We shouldn't refuse to speak of these things. 01:24:45.280 --> 01:24:47.680 We're not saying that you have to be immodest. 01:24:47.680 --> 01:24:49.680 We're not saying you have to be as blunt as we are 01:24:49.680 --> 01:24:50.960 being in this episode. 01:24:50.960 --> 01:24:55.360 Because that's not always necessary for what you're attempting to achieve. 01:24:55.360 --> 01:24:57.920 You have to employ wisdom, as we keep saying. 01:24:57.920 --> 01:25:00.240 Wisdom is unavoidable. 01:25:00.240 --> 01:25:02.000 It's part of being alive. 01:25:02.000 --> 01:25:04.960 It is certainly part of the Christian life. 01:25:04.960 --> 01:25:07.680 But we have to speak the truth on these matters. 01:25:07.680 --> 01:25:10.880 We can't sweep them under the rug, we can't just use euphemisms 01:25:10.880 --> 01:25:14.000 to the point where we deny that any of this is sin. 01:25:14.000 --> 01:25:16.560 And so it's just it's your choice. 01:25:16.560 --> 01:25:18.480 They live that way, I'll live this way. 01:25:18.480 --> 01:25:19.760 As long as it doesn't affect me. 01:25:19.760 --> 01:25:22.560 What they do in their bedroom is no business of mine. 01:25:22.560 --> 01:25:23.520 Those are all lies. 01:25:23.520 --> 01:25:25.920 Those are all direct from the mouth of hell. 01:25:25.920 --> 01:25:28.720 Those are from Satan. 01:25:28.720 --> 01:25:32.080 Because what your neighbor does does affect you. 01:25:32.080 --> 01:25:36.960 And not only that, but God punishes wicked nations. 01:25:36.960 --> 01:25:40.160 God does not just punish wicked individuals. 01:25:40.160 --> 01:25:44.960 A nation that tolerates these sins will eventually be punished by God. 01:25:44.960 --> 01:25:49.440 Now in some cases the punishment is inherent, as is very clear 01:25:49.440 --> 01:25:55.920 from this passage, sodomites are punished by the behavior itself. 01:25:55.920 --> 01:26:00.000 Homosexual men do not tend to live very long. 01:26:00.000 --> 01:26:04.240 The only reason that we have homosexual men today who are in 01:26:04.240 --> 01:26:09.440 their fifties or sixties, still relatively rare, you will note, is because 01:26:09.440 --> 01:26:16.560 of the heroic and extremely expensive medical interventions that keep them alive. 01:26:16.560 --> 01:26:22.000 Because the consequences of that so-called lifestyle are disease and early death. 01:26:22.000 --> 01:26:25.760 And that's not even to say anything about the drug abuse and 01:26:25.760 --> 01:26:29.920 the alcohol abuse and the despair and the psychological problems and suicide 01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:31.520 and all of the other things. 01:26:31.520 --> 01:26:38.400 Even if you leave those aside, the purely biological mechanical consequences of 01:26:38.400 --> 01:26:43.600 that behavior are destructive to the point where men who engage in 01:26:43.600 --> 01:26:45.680 it die young. 01:26:45.680 --> 01:26:48.320 Because the consequences, as God says, 01:26:49.280 --> 01:26:52.400 are found in the bodies of those men who engage in this 01:26:52.400 --> 01:26:57.920 wickedness. Sometimes the punishment comes along naturally with the sin. 01:26:57.920 --> 01:27:00.400 Another case of that would be birth control. 01:27:00.400 --> 01:27:03.600 Well, you gave you get engaged in birth control, that's sinful. 01:27:03.600 --> 01:27:05.920 God doesn't give you children. 01:27:05.920 --> 01:27:07.440 That's the punishment. 01:27:07.440 --> 01:27:10.880 The punishment comes along with the sin in some cases. 01:27:11.360 --> 01:27:14.560 And one of the most wicked things that came from Harrison's large 01:27:15.040 --> 01:27:20.480 cataclysm last year was the explicit claim that even if someone were 01:27:20.480 --> 01:27:24.400 a so called repentant Christian, they would still be burdened with these 01:27:24.400 --> 01:27:26.000 wicked appetites. 01:27:26.000 --> 01:27:28.400 That's absolutely false. 01:27:28.400 --> 01:27:33.040 The naturally ordered appetite has, as Corey said at the beginning, the 01:27:33.040 --> 01:27:35.600 medicine of marriage. 01:27:35.600 --> 01:27:40.880 The resolution for the properly ordered appetite is to constrain it to 01:27:40.880 --> 01:27:44.240 the proper order, to constrain it to marriage, which is between a 01:27:44.240 --> 01:27:45.440 man and a woman. 01:27:45.440 --> 01:27:50.240 Any other sort of desire is inherently wicked. 01:27:50.240 --> 01:27:53.360 It's inherently an attack against God Himself. 01:27:53.360 --> 01:27:56.800 That cannot be sanctified, that can only be removed. 01:27:56.800 --> 01:27:59.920 And God does promise to remove all such things. 01:27:59.920 --> 01:28:03.440 When you go through the list at the end of Romans 1, 01:28:03.440 --> 01:28:09.360 and you have unrighteousness, evil, covetous m l malice, gossip, slander. 01:28:09.360 --> 01:28:14.720 The notion that exclusive of all that list, only sexual desires would 01:28:14.720 --> 01:28:17.680 be incurable is itself blasphemous. 01:28:17.680 --> 01:28:20.560 To say, well, I want to I want to disobey my parents, 01:28:20.560 --> 01:28:23.040 I want to be a gossip, I want to be malicious, but 01:28:23.040 --> 01:28:25.680 I'm not gonna act on it, so it's okay. 01:28:25.680 --> 01:28:29.280 Seriously? No Christians ever talk that way. 01:28:29.280 --> 01:28:33.200 When we are in Christ and we have a sanctified heart, God 01:28:33.200 --> 01:28:37.280 is continuously removing this evil from our hearts and taking it away 01:28:37.280 --> 01:28:37.760 from us. 01:28:37.760 --> 01:28:39.360 And it does get better. 01:28:39.360 --> 01:28:44.080 It's entirely possible for someone to have engaged or if to have 01:28:44.080 --> 01:28:48.160 desired these things that are profoundly wicked and disordered to come to 01:28:48.160 --> 01:28:49.520 Christ to repent. 01:28:49.520 --> 01:28:54.400 But their repentance will involve sanctification, which contrary to what the LCMS 01:28:54.400 --> 01:28:59.040 now teaches, does involve the removal of those desires because they're against 01:28:59.040 --> 01:29:02.640 God. You cannot be in God and have a desire that is 01:29:02.640 --> 01:29:05.440 contrary to nature itself. 01:29:05.760 --> 01:29:07.520 I hope we're making this clear. 01:29:07.520 --> 01:29:11.600 The narrow confines of marriage, of the one flesh union, even for 01:29:11.600 --> 01:29:13.840 those who are outside of it because they do not have a 01:29:13.840 --> 01:29:18.480 husband or wife, only those desires which are properly ordered according to 01:29:18.480 --> 01:29:24.000 creation are even licit, and then they're limited to the marriage bed. 01:29:24.000 --> 01:29:28.880 Everything else is rebellion against God, heterosexual or anything else. 01:29:28.880 --> 01:29:31.680 The whole spectrum of things that we've just said is not really 01:29:31.680 --> 01:29:32.880 sexualities at all. 01:29:32.880 --> 01:29:36.800 The idea of sexuality is a modern term to basically 01:29:37.760 --> 01:29:41.840 in the world sanctify things that are open rebellion against God. 01:29:41.840 --> 01:29:44.800 I think it's very interesting that Romans 1, you know, this is 01:29:44.800 --> 01:29:47.760 the very most important book in some ways in the entire New 01:29:47.920 --> 01:29:51.440 Testament, in the sense that it lays everything out. 01:29:51.440 --> 01:29:55.200 It covers virtually everything that we've ever talked about on Stone Choir. 01:29:55.200 --> 01:29:58.080 The very first chapter is Paul dealing with this. 01:29:58.080 --> 01:30:01.600 He has some very nice greetings and then he lays into him, 01:30:01.600 --> 01:30:04.960 talks about end of the world types of debauchery. 01:30:04.960 --> 01:30:08.320 And when we look on TV and we look online today, we 01:30:08.320 --> 01:30:11.520 see that sort of debauchery and we see it accelerating. 01:30:11.520 --> 01:30:15.680 And we see churches and pastors doing what God says deserves the 01:30:15.680 --> 01:30:19.840 death penalty, to give approval to those who practice them, and make 01:30:19.840 --> 01:30:23.680 known mistake, even condemning it morally while saying, Well, that's really sad 01:30:23.760 --> 01:30:26.080 and Jesus doesn't want you to do that. 01:30:26.080 --> 01:30:29.920 When you categorize things like raping children along with looking at a 01:30:29.920 --> 01:30:32.400 girl in a bikini, that is approval. 01:30:32.400 --> 01:30:34.320 That is saying the thing that you are doing is one of 01:30:34.320 --> 01:30:37.040 the most wicked things that shouldn't even be imaginable. 01:30:37.040 --> 01:30:40.160 To put that in the same category as something that is according 01:30:40.160 --> 01:30:44.560 to nature, it's simply disordered because it's not confined. 01:30:44.560 --> 01:30:45.840 Is approval. 01:30:45.840 --> 01:30:49.840 It's closing a window that should never include both of those things. 01:30:49.840 --> 01:30:51.920 They go in two separate buckets. 01:30:51.920 --> 01:30:57.520 Both are sin, both are damnable, but the distinction, if someone doesn't 01:30:57.520 --> 01:31:00.560 get it, they're just flat out evil. 01:31:00.800 --> 01:31:04.960 Next thing that we want to cover is the subject of divorce. 01:31:04.960 --> 01:31:09.440 This is something that the Pharisees repeatedly went after Jesus for trying 01:31:09.840 --> 01:31:10.960 to trip him up. 01:31:10.960 --> 01:31:13.520 I want to read from Matthew nineteen. 01:31:13.520 --> 01:31:17.440 Because once again, Jesus points back to Genesis 2. 01:31:17.440 --> 01:31:20.720 The Pharisees came up to him and tested him by saying, Is 01:31:20.720 --> 01:31:23.440 it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? 01:31:23.440 --> 01:31:27.360 Jesus answered, Have you not read that he who created them from 01:31:27.360 --> 01:31:31.680 the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man 01:31:31.680 --> 01:31:34.400 shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, 01:31:34.400 --> 01:31:36.960 and the two shall become one flesh? 01:31:36.960 --> 01:31:39.840 So they are no longer two but one flesh. 01:31:39.840 --> 01:31:44.240 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. 01:31:44.240 --> 01:31:47.680 They said to him, Why then did Moses command one to give 01:31:47.680 --> 01:31:50.480 a certificate of divorce and to send her away? 01:31:50.480 --> 01:31:54.240 He said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed 01:31:54.240 --> 01:31:57.520 you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not 01:31:57.520 --> 01:32:02.400 so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for 01:32:02.400 --> 01:32:07.520 sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery. 01:32:07.520 --> 01:32:10.400 Now, when a lot of people read this, they think that Jesus 01:32:10.400 --> 01:32:14.560 is being set in opposition to Moses, And I think the fundamental 01:32:14.560 --> 01:32:19.120 error is one again in not correctly identifying what marriage is. 01:32:19.120 --> 01:32:23.040 Because when you understand what marriage is, you then understand what divorce 01:32:23.040 --> 01:32:28.080 is. To misread Matthew 19 and to think that Jesus is disagreeing 01:32:28.080 --> 01:32:32.960 with Moses requires that you believe the modern belief that marriages occur 01:32:32.960 --> 01:32:36.320 in church, that a marriage and a wedding are the same thing. 01:32:36.320 --> 01:32:37.600 That's not the case. 01:32:37.600 --> 01:32:42.400 A wedding is a formal public acknowledgement of what occurs in the 01:32:42.400 --> 01:32:44.000 marriage bed. 01:32:44.000 --> 01:32:50.400 Therefore, a divorce is a formal public acknowledgement of what has happened 01:32:50.400 --> 01:32:51.840 in the bed. 01:32:51.840 --> 01:32:56.560 In other words, a marriage always occurs in bed, a divorce always 01:32:56.560 --> 01:32:57.520 occurs in bed. 01:32:57.520 --> 01:32:59.840 And that's exactly what Jesus is saying here. 01:32:59.840 --> 01:33:04.800 Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another, commits 01:33:04.800 --> 01:33:08.640 adultery. Now, if a man is married to a woman and she 01:33:08.640 --> 01:33:12.800 commits adultery and then he marries another woman, why is he not 01:33:12.800 --> 01:33:14.080 committing adultery? 01:33:14.080 --> 01:33:16.000 Is it because he has paperwork? 01:33:16.000 --> 01:33:19.360 Is it because of some legal technicality that he has a form 01:33:19.520 --> 01:33:21.600 that says well it's not adultery now? 01:33:21.600 --> 01:33:25.760 No. His wife broke the one flesh union. 01:33:25.760 --> 01:33:30.240 When the man's wife committed adultery, she became another man's wife. 01:33:30.240 --> 01:33:32.640 He said He ceased to be married. 01:33:32.640 --> 01:33:37.280 The one flesh union ends the same way it begins in bed. 01:33:37.280 --> 01:33:40.240 And this is why what Jesus says here is exactly the same 01:33:40.240 --> 01:33:42.640 thing that Moses said in principle. 01:33:42.640 --> 01:33:44.080 Moses went further. 01:33:44.080 --> 01:33:48.160 The Jews of that day were asking to divorce wives for bad 01:33:48.160 --> 01:33:49.120 cooking and stuff. 01:33:49.120 --> 01:33:49.920 It was crap. 01:33:49.920 --> 01:33:52.640 And as Jesus said, it was because of their hardness of heart. 01:33:52.640 --> 01:33:54.720 It's because they were unbelievers. 01:33:55.120 --> 01:33:59.920 But the distinction of where is adultery, Jesus is clear that the 01:34:00.080 --> 01:34:04.160 line for adultery is the same in Genesis two as it is 01:34:04.160 --> 01:34:07.840 in Genesis twenty nine as is Matthew nineteen. 01:34:07.840 --> 01:34:09.120 The only way that you get divorced 01:34:10.000 --> 01:34:12.720 is when there's unfaithfulness physically. 01:34:12.720 --> 01:34:15.120 And again, this is a clear distinction that needs to be made 01:34:15.200 --> 01:34:18.800 because I've I've heard some folks say that they have in their 01:34:18.800 --> 01:34:23.440 churches seen people claim and get divorced and they believe that they 01:34:23.440 --> 01:34:28.560 got divorced on biblical grounds based on the consumption of pornography or 01:34:28.560 --> 01:34:33.040 something, where there was no physical adultery, there was no fornication. 01:34:33.040 --> 01:34:36.080 In other words, it's usually going to be the husband. 01:34:36.080 --> 01:34:37.840 Anymore, not necessarily. 01:34:37.840 --> 01:34:40.000 For the sake of argument, in the in the examples that were 01:34:40.080 --> 01:34:44.240 given, it was a husband who was sinning with pornography in his 01:34:44.240 --> 01:34:44.960 own home. 01:34:44.960 --> 01:34:46.320 His wife found out. 01:34:46.320 --> 01:34:47.920 She said, Hey, that's adultery. 01:34:47.920 --> 01:34:48.880 Adultery's in the Bible. 01:34:49.360 --> 01:34:51.680 We're not married anymore, and she divorced him. 01:34:51.680 --> 01:34:53.680 That was an act of wickedness. 01:34:53.680 --> 01:34:56.880 Because when you look at what Jesus is talking about in the 01:34:56.880 --> 01:35:00.320 Sermon on the Mount, yes, it's absolutely adulterous in the heart. 01:35:00.320 --> 01:35:02.800 Pornography is wicked flat out. 01:35:02.800 --> 01:35:04.000 It should be illegal. 01:35:04.000 --> 01:35:06.800 Pornographers should be executed by the state. 01:35:06.800 --> 01:35:09.040 That was the the right and just thing. 01:35:09.040 --> 01:35:10.800 It should never have been made legal. 01:35:10.880 --> 01:35:14.720 The fact that Le Elon just made it permissible on X, is 01:35:14.640 --> 01:35:16.560 going to be a complete disaster. 01:35:16.560 --> 01:35:19.120 It's fundamentally wicked. 01:35:19.120 --> 01:35:22.640 It is not the same as breaking the one flesh union. 01:35:22.640 --> 01:35:24.560 The one flesh union is physical. 01:35:24.560 --> 01:35:28.000 As Corey said earlier, the union is a mystical union. 01:35:28.000 --> 01:35:32.640 There's an ex operato act that we don't even understand. 01:35:32.640 --> 01:35:34.240 We know it's true. 01:35:34.240 --> 01:35:35.360 God says it's true. 01:35:35.360 --> 01:35:36.640 We can observe it in the world. 01:35:36.640 --> 01:35:41.040 We can observe two people getting closer together when they have sex. 01:35:41.040 --> 01:35:44.800 Even if they don't have a proper marriage, it's typical for couples 01:35:44.800 --> 01:35:48.960 to fall in love when they're having sex, even when they're fornicating. 01:35:48.960 --> 01:35:51.520 Especially for girls, more so for girls than for men. 01:35:51.520 --> 01:35:53.840 But it is the natural consequence. 01:35:53.840 --> 01:35:56.560 The disorder thing is that they should be married first. 01:35:56.560 --> 01:35:59.440 They should be married, they should have a wedding ceremony, and then 01:35:59.440 --> 01:36:00.160 get married. 01:36:00.160 --> 01:36:02.320 But if you get married, then you have a wedding ceremony to 01:36:02.320 --> 01:36:05.600 legitimize it, it's gonna play out almost the same way. 01:36:05.760 --> 01:36:08.880 Doesn't make it right, but at least it makes it 01:36:10.080 --> 01:36:14.000 puts it back in the box as best you can. 01:36:14.000 --> 01:36:17.840 When Jesus talks about adultery, breaking marriage, this is what he means. 01:36:18.160 --> 01:36:23.600 It's only the one flesh union, the physical union, that is actual 01:36:23.600 --> 01:36:27.280 adultery. Now, I'm not trying to play games of actual. 01:36:27.280 --> 01:36:30.400 It's evil for someone in a marriage to look at someone outside 01:36:30.400 --> 01:36:31.680 of the marriage sexually. 01:36:31.680 --> 01:36:35.120 You shouldn't be desiring anyone other than your spouse. 01:36:35.120 --> 01:36:38.720 But that's not by itself grounds for divorce. 01:36:38.720 --> 01:36:41.520 It's a problem that everyone is dealing with today. 01:36:41.520 --> 01:36:42.720 It's rampant. 01:36:42.720 --> 01:36:44.160 Even among pastors, it's rampant. 01:36:44.160 --> 01:36:45.680 It's in the it's everywhere. 01:36:45.680 --> 01:36:49.280 Because as Corey said, what better way for Satan to get all 01:36:49.280 --> 01:36:49.840 of us? 01:36:49.840 --> 01:36:52.400 He gets everybody on the hook with the sort of appetite that 01:36:52.400 --> 01:36:56.720 we have naturally, and then takes it off in some ninety-degree angle 01:36:56.800 --> 01:37:00.480 until it ceases to be anything that could remotely be considered from 01:37:00.480 --> 01:37:06.000 God. It begins evil and it ends up evil and going perpendicular 01:37:06.000 --> 01:37:07.440 to nature itself. 01:37:07.440 --> 01:37:10.720 That's the contours of Satan's behavior. 01:37:10.720 --> 01:37:13.520 But the one flesh union is in behavior. 01:37:14.160 --> 01:37:16.320 It is a physical act. 01:37:16.320 --> 01:37:20.400 So when Jesus says, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality 01:37:20.480 --> 01:37:24.240 and marries another, commits adultery, it's because if you are in a 01:37:24.240 --> 01:37:28.960 marriage and your spouse has sex with someone else, the marriage itself 01:37:28.960 --> 01:37:29.920 is ended. 01:37:29.920 --> 01:37:32.080 Now, we need to be explicit here. 01:37:32.080 --> 01:37:34.800 That's not a get out of jail free card for you to 01:37:34.800 --> 01:37:36.400 say, oh great, I can get rid of her. 01:37:36.400 --> 01:37:39.360 I wanna I wanna trade up for a newer model anyway. 01:37:39.360 --> 01:37:41.120 That's evil too. 01:37:41.120 --> 01:37:45.760 Because in the circumstance where your spouse has committed adultery and has 01:37:45.760 --> 01:37:49.520 broken the one flesh union, it is always your option. 01:37:49.520 --> 01:37:51.600 It should be the preferable option. 01:37:51.600 --> 01:37:54.880 You should consider it at least at the beginning to be an 01:37:54.880 --> 01:38:00.880 obligation as a Christian, is to remedy that marriage. 01:38:00.880 --> 01:38:05.120 If one spouse has stepped outside of the marriage and has broken 01:38:05.120 --> 01:38:10.000 it by having sex with another, you can reform your marriage by 01:38:10.000 --> 01:38:13.360 getting back in bed together and remarrying. 01:38:13.360 --> 01:38:14.640 It doesn't fix it. 01:38:14.640 --> 01:38:15.760 It doesn't fix the adultery. 01:38:16.240 --> 01:38:18.320 You can never fix that adultery. 01:38:18.320 --> 01:38:23.120 But you can reunify as a married couple. 01:38:23.440 --> 01:38:28.480 So just because Jesus says it's permissible and it's acknowledging that it's 01:38:28.480 --> 01:38:33.360 happened. There may be a case where for in particular circumstances, if 01:38:33.360 --> 01:38:37.840 you find out that someone that your spouse has committed adultery physically 01:38:37.840 --> 01:38:42.880 with someone else, there may be permissible circumstances where you say, this 01:38:42.880 --> 01:38:44.720 is over, never again. 01:38:44.720 --> 01:38:45.840 We're divorced. 01:38:45.840 --> 01:38:46.720 It's finished. 01:38:46.720 --> 01:38:49.520 And then you get a legal acknowledgement for what has already occurred 01:38:49.520 --> 01:38:51.520 spiritually. But it's not automatic. 01:38:51.520 --> 01:38:52.880 It shouldn't be automatic. 01:38:52.880 --> 01:38:58.240 You should seek reconciliation because God did join you together. 01:38:58.240 --> 01:39:02.480 And to break that apart on a lark is evil. 01:39:02.800 --> 01:39:06.160 For you to have spent whatever portion of your lifetime together as 01:39:06.160 --> 01:39:09.680 man and wife and then just throw it away because of one 01:39:09.680 --> 01:39:16.720 wicked act or a series of wicked acts by itself hopefully isn't 01:39:16.640 --> 01:39:20.880 enough. Again, there's no possible way to analyze a given situation. 01:39:20.880 --> 01:39:24.320 I just make clear the fact that a in the circumstance of 01:39:24.320 --> 01:39:28.640 adultery you have the option to divorce does not make it automatic. 01:39:28.640 --> 01:39:31.120 And it's wicked for us to use that as a license. 01:39:31.120 --> 01:39:35.440 Nevertheless, when it is permissible and when it is a Christian divorce, 01:39:35.440 --> 01:39:38.800 this is the only case it's where the marriage already ended because 01:39:38.800 --> 01:39:41.360 the divorce occurred in bed. 01:39:42.640 --> 01:39:46.640 The next passage we'll be dealing with in this episode is from 01:39:46.640 --> 01:39:49.520 Ephesians five. 01:39:49.520 --> 01:39:52.960 Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the 01:39:52.960 --> 01:39:56.000 husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the 01:39:56.000 --> 01:39:59.600 head of the church his body, and is Himself its Savior. 01:39:59.920 --> 01:40:03.840 Now as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit 01:40:03.840 --> 01:40:05.840 in everything to their husbands. 01:40:05.840 --> 01:40:10.560 Husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church, and gave himself 01:40:10.560 --> 01:40:14.160 up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by 01:40:14.160 --> 01:40:17.280 the washing of water with the word, so that he might present 01:40:17.280 --> 01:40:21.440 the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any 01:40:21.440 --> 01:40:24.880 such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 01:40:24.880 --> 01:40:28.080 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own 01:40:28.080 --> 01:40:31.760 bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 01:40:31.760 --> 01:40:35.760 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes 01:40:35.760 --> 01:40:39.200 it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of 01:40:39.760 --> 01:40:40.720 his body. 01:40:40.720 --> 01:40:44.000 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast 01:40:44.000 --> 01:40:47.520 to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 01:40:47.520 --> 01:40:51.360 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to 01:40:51.360 --> 01:40:52.640 Christ in the church. 01:40:52.640 --> 01:40:56.480 How However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, 01:40:56.480 --> 01:41:01.040 and let the wife see that she respects her husband. 01:41:01.040 --> 01:41:05.360 This is one of those passages that to most modern ears it 01:41:05.360 --> 01:41:11.200 is going to be abrasive, to say the least, because it says 01:41:11.200 --> 01:41:16.320 bluntly that wives should submit in everything to their husbands, and everything 01:41:16.320 --> 01:41:21.920 about the modern world tells wives, tells women, that they are independent, 01:41:21.920 --> 01:41:24.320 that they can do whatever they want, that they don't have to 01:41:24.320 --> 01:41:26.160 listen to any man. 01:41:26.160 --> 01:41:29.520 And that is simply not what Scripture says, it is not what 01:41:29.520 --> 01:41:31.840 Christians believe. 01:41:31.840 --> 01:41:37.120 Girls submit to their fathers first, and then when they are transferred 01:41:37.120 --> 01:41:42.000 from their fathers to their husbands, they submit to their husbands, because 01:41:42.000 --> 01:41:44.960 the husband is the head of his wife. 01:41:44.960 --> 01:41:47.520 The same as Christ is the head of the church. 01:41:47.520 --> 01:41:50.560 The church does not get to make rules or do whatever she 01:41:50.560 --> 01:41:55.120 pleases. The church submits to Christ in all things, which is why 01:41:55.120 --> 01:41:58.960 the Word matters, because it is the Word of God. 01:41:58.960 --> 01:42:03.760 So everything in the Word must be obeyed by the Church, must 01:42:03.760 --> 01:42:05.600 be obeyed by all Christians. 01:42:05.600 --> 01:42:08.640 The Church does not get to make new doctrine, the Church does 01:42:08.640 --> 01:42:11.200 not get to make new theology. 01:42:11.200 --> 01:42:14.640 Wives do not get to go out and do whatever they please, 01:42:14.640 --> 01:42:17.600 they are to submit to their husbands. 01:42:17.600 --> 01:42:21.040 Now the husband is head of his wife, but that comes with 01:42:21.040 --> 01:42:22.000 certain duties. 01:42:22.000 --> 01:42:24.640 One of those is to love your wife. 01:42:24.640 --> 01:42:29.680 Husbands are explicitly commanded to love their wives as Christ loved the 01:42:29.680 --> 01:42:35.200 church. That is not in the sense of servant leadership so called 01:42:35.440 --> 01:42:39.920 that has become so popular in some modern evangelical circles, it is 01:42:39.920 --> 01:42:43.040 not the husband doing whatever the wife pleases. 01:42:43.040 --> 01:42:45.360 Because that isn't what Christ does. 01:42:45.360 --> 01:42:48.160 Christ doesn't do whatever the church pleases. 01:42:48.160 --> 01:42:51.200 Christ commands the church to do certain things. 01:42:51.200 --> 01:42:53.040 Christ teaches the Church. 01:42:53.040 --> 01:42:54.960 Christ cares for the Church. 01:42:54.960 --> 01:42:58.240 That is how a husband is supposed to show love for his 01:42:58.400 --> 01:43:03.040 wife and for his children, he does so by being the head. 01:43:03.040 --> 01:43:05.760 You are not the head if you are being led around by 01:43:05.760 --> 01:43:09.360 the nose, by your wife or by your children. 01:43:09.360 --> 01:43:12.240 Weak husbands are an abomination. 01:43:12.240 --> 01:43:16.320 They are They are a major part of the problem we have 01:43:16.320 --> 01:43:20.320 in the modern world, because it is weak husbands who allow their 01:43:20.320 --> 01:43:24.000 wives to run roughshod over them and do whatever they please, and 01:43:24.000 --> 01:43:28.000 then they become problems for other men as well, because their husbands 01:43:28.000 --> 01:43:30.560 are not dealing with them as they should, the same thing is 01:43:30.560 --> 01:43:32.640 true of unruly children. 01:43:32.640 --> 01:43:36.080 There are duties up and down the hierarchy in this. 01:43:36.080 --> 01:43:39.520 Husbands have a duty to lead, wives have a duty to submit. 01:43:39.520 --> 01:43:42.080 No one is off the hook as it were, no one is 01:43:42.080 --> 01:43:44.000 a tyrant in this. 01:43:44.000 --> 01:43:47.520 But the husband is in control, and he will give account for 01:43:47.520 --> 01:43:51.920 that. As a husband, one day you will stand before God, and 01:43:51.920 --> 01:43:55.600 you will give account for what you did with your wife, what 01:43:55.600 --> 01:43:59.440 you did with your children, and what you failed to do, because 01:43:59.440 --> 01:44:03.200 you have a position of authority given you by God, and that 01:44:03.200 --> 01:44:05.040 comes with certain duties. 01:44:05.040 --> 01:44:08.960 It is up to you to faithfully pursue and to faithfully fulfil 01:44:09.120 --> 01:44:10.240 that office. 01:44:10.240 --> 01:44:14.160 If you don't, you will answer to God for it. 01:44:14.160 --> 01:44:20.080 Every man should be very, very deeply concerned about that. 01:44:20.080 --> 01:44:22.560 That is one of the reasons that you should spend time in 01:44:22.560 --> 01:44:25.920 scripture. It's one of the reasons many of you listen to this 01:44:25.920 --> 01:44:29.760 podcast. Because you want to be a good Christian man, and part 01:44:29.760 --> 01:44:33.200 of being a good Christian man is how you interact with your 01:44:33.200 --> 01:44:36.480 wife and children, not just how you interact with other men and 01:44:36.480 --> 01:44:40.320 your society and your church and everything else outside the home. 01:44:40.320 --> 01:44:42.400 All of this starts in the home. 01:44:42.400 --> 01:44:46.160 You have to be a good husband and father first, because you 01:44:46.160 --> 01:44:50.160 cannot have a Christian country, you cannot have a Christian civilization or 01:44:50.160 --> 01:44:55.360 nation without Christian homes, and you cannot have a Christian home without 01:44:55.360 --> 01:44:57.040 Christian husbands. 01:44:57.680 --> 01:45:04.320 Another part of this passage is verse 32, which makes many exegetes 01:45:04.320 --> 01:45:07.920 uncomfortable. Some will simply ignore it, pass by it, which is what 01:45:08.560 --> 01:45:12.080 most Christians do when reading, but it says this mystery is profound, 01:45:12.080 --> 01:45:15.840 and I am saying that it refers to Christ in the church. 01:45:15.840 --> 01:45:22.080 We can exegete this partially, not fully, because this is a mystery. 01:45:22.080 --> 01:45:24.400 It says it explicitly, this is a mystery. 01:45:24.400 --> 01:45:28.800 Anytipture speaks of a mystery, it is something that we cannot understand 01:45:28.960 --> 01:45:31.840 fully. We cannot understand absolutely. 01:45:31.840 --> 01:45:34.640 We can't pick it apart into little pieces and analyze it and 01:45:34.640 --> 01:45:36.400 understand it top to bottom. 01:45:36.400 --> 01:45:37.520 The sacraments. 01:45:37.520 --> 01:45:40.000 That's what sacrament means, it's a mystery. 01:45:40.000 --> 01:45:42.320 We cannot fully understand them. 01:45:42.320 --> 01:45:46.320 This as well we cannot fully understand, but we can understand it 01:45:46.320 --> 01:45:47.840 to some degree. 01:45:47.840 --> 01:45:49.920 Because there's some typology here. 01:45:50.480 --> 01:45:54.000 The husband and the wife become one flesh. 01:45:54.000 --> 01:45:58.160 That is the one flesh union, there's no longer two, but one 01:45:58.160 --> 01:46:02.400 flesh. The same thing is true after a fashion is true typologically 01:46:03.200 --> 01:46:07.200 of the Church and Christ, because the church is called the mystical 01:46:07.200 --> 01:46:11.360 body of Christ, and every Christian is part of the body of 01:46:11.360 --> 01:46:15.920 Christ. So you see that same sort of union of the Church 01:46:15.920 --> 01:46:18.640 and Christ, of the Christian and Christ. 01:46:18.640 --> 01:46:20.320 There's a typology there. 01:46:20.320 --> 01:46:25.120 We can understand that, we can recognize it for what it is. 01:46:25.120 --> 01:46:29.920 But we don't want to go too far with regard to mysteries. 01:46:30.720 --> 01:46:34.880 That is where you end up with Gnostic cults and various other 01:46:34.880 --> 01:46:38.240 theological and doctrinal problems. 01:46:38.240 --> 01:46:41.120 When you want to take the things that God says this is 01:46:41.120 --> 01:46:45.120 a mystery and analyze them and think that you know I'm above 01:46:45.120 --> 01:46:49.200 mysteries. I personally can stare at this long enough that I'll understand 01:46:49.200 --> 01:46:50.080 it fully. 01:46:50.080 --> 01:46:54.160 When you work yourself into that position, when you yield to that 01:46:54.160 --> 01:46:58.400 sort of pride, you inevitably wind up with beliefs that are contrary 01:46:58.400 --> 01:47:00.720 to God that are contrary to Scripture. 01:47:00.720 --> 01:47:04.400 If God says something is a mystery, believe him that it's a 01:47:04.400 --> 01:47:08.240 mystery. To say it is a mystery means that you cannot fully 01:47:08.240 --> 01:47:09.200 understand it. 01:47:09.200 --> 01:47:14.160 So read it, believe it, understand it to the extent that God 01:47:14.160 --> 01:47:18.240 has given you to understand it, but be content with that 01:47:19.760 --> 01:47:23.040 One of the other things that's important about this passage and the 01:47:23.040 --> 01:47:27.920 the particular part that Corey just highlighted, the immediately previous verse is 01:47:27.920 --> 01:47:33.440 one that quotes Genesis, where again Jesus, Paul, God, Moses, everyone says 01:47:33.440 --> 01:47:34.480 the same thing. 01:47:34.480 --> 01:47:38.160 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast 01:47:38.160 --> 01:47:42.080 to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, with Paul 01:47:42.080 --> 01:47:45.200 says as the mystery referring to Christ in his church. 01:47:45.280 --> 01:47:49.120 One other place the same phrase shows up is in Deuteronomy ten 01:47:49.360 --> 01:47:51.760 twenty, specifically on God. 01:47:51.760 --> 01:47:55.040 You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him and 01:47:55.040 --> 01:47:58.560 hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. 01:47:58.560 --> 01:48:02.160 The exact same word in Greek is used hold fast to God 01:48:02.320 --> 01:48:05.120 as a husband holding fast to his wife. 01:48:05.120 --> 01:48:07.600 And as Paul says, this it's a mystery. 01:48:07.600 --> 01:48:11.760 There's a typology of marriage that is not explained. 01:48:11.760 --> 01:48:15.920 And we have a duty as Christian men to do two things. 01:48:15.920 --> 01:48:19.200 As Corey said, we shouldn't go beyond what's in scripture and there's 01:48:19.200 --> 01:48:22.880 certain things that when you read what is in scripture and it 01:48:22.880 --> 01:48:26.560 says very plainly this is a mystery, to try to reason it 01:48:26.560 --> 01:48:30.000 out is almost invariably going to lead to the worst sort of 01:48:30.000 --> 01:48:32.880 heresies. It's not revealed to us. 01:48:32.880 --> 01:48:36.560 Until such time as these mysteries are revealed, all we can do 01:48:36.560 --> 01:48:38.720 is take God as Word. 01:48:38.720 --> 01:48:43.760 It's doubly dangerous because what we're dealing with here specifically is sexual 01:48:43.760 --> 01:48:44.560 in nature. 01:48:44.560 --> 01:48:48.880 And going back to the very beginning of cults and false beliefs 01:48:48.960 --> 01:48:52.480 where Satan is messing with people's souls, he wants to do weird 01:48:52.480 --> 01:48:54.800 sex stuff to the church. 01:48:54.800 --> 01:48:58.400 And so there's this bait that's just sitting there for someone to 01:48:58.400 --> 01:49:02.640 say, oh, sex has something to do with our relationship with God. 01:49:02.640 --> 01:49:04.000 What do you do with that? 01:49:04.000 --> 01:49:07.440 All we can do is confess that it's there, not ignore it, 01:49:07.440 --> 01:49:09.600 and frankly probably just leave it alone. 01:49:09.600 --> 01:49:13.760 Because for two thousand years no one has put forward an explanation 01:49:13.760 --> 01:49:15.680 beyond what's in scripture. 01:49:15.680 --> 01:49:17.440 It should remain that way. 01:49:17.840 --> 01:49:20.800 The one reason I want to highlight this is that there's something 01:49:20.800 --> 01:49:24.160 we're not going to get into today, but particularly when you're looking 01:49:24.160 --> 01:49:29.040 in the Old Testament, very, very, very frequently, you will find that 01:49:29.040 --> 01:49:33.840 when God describes idolatry, he will describe it explicitly in terms of 01:49:33.840 --> 01:49:38.640 whoring. He will describe Israel as whoring after foreign gods. 01:49:38.640 --> 01:49:40.800 He describes it in sexual terms. 01:49:40.800 --> 01:49:47.280 God describes idolatry and unbelief in terms that are sexual in nature. 01:49:47.280 --> 01:49:49.440 It's the same thing that's going on. 01:49:49.440 --> 01:49:52.960 And again, we don't have an explanation beyond that, except for what 01:49:52.960 --> 01:49:54.400 Corey said earlier. 01:49:54.400 --> 01:49:55.760 Satan loves this. 01:49:55.760 --> 01:49:58.880 Satan will very frequently intermingle the two. 01:49:58.880 --> 01:50:03.680 In fact, some of the most wicked and depraved explicitly satanic acts 01:50:03.920 --> 01:50:07.440 were active worshipers of Satan. 01:50:07.440 --> 01:50:12.560 They will incorporate that sort of debauchery into their practices. 01:50:12.560 --> 01:50:14.000 They know what they're doing. 01:50:14.000 --> 01:50:18.240 They know that they're serving hell by doing this sort of profanation 01:50:18.240 --> 01:50:21.680 of religion and body at the same time. 01:50:21.680 --> 01:50:24.240 Christians can't go anywhere near it. 01:50:24.240 --> 01:50:26.960 But we also can't ignore that this is how God talks. 01:50:26.960 --> 01:50:31.840 So just understand that when we have the Christian relationship from God 01:50:31.840 --> 01:50:36.000 to us, from God to the church, there's a typological nature that 01:50:36.000 --> 01:50:40.560 involves the union of man and woman that is beyond understanding. 01:50:40.560 --> 01:50:43.680 When we die, God is gonna explain this stuff to us. 01:50:43.680 --> 01:50:46.160 It's something to look forward to. 01:50:46.160 --> 01:50:49.280 The crucial thing is that idolatry works the same way. 01:50:49.280 --> 01:50:53.760 When God says you're whoring after foreign gods, you're whoring after idols, 01:50:53.760 --> 01:50:55.120 take that seriously. 01:50:55.120 --> 01:50:59.840 That sort of desire for disobeying God, for doing things that are 01:50:59.840 --> 01:51:04.720 contrary to him for believing and worshiping fearing loving and trusting in 01:51:04.720 --> 01:51:11.360 things above God he calls that fornication spiritual fornication it's the same 01:51:11.360 --> 01:51:13.360 thing and we don't understand how. 01:51:13.360 --> 01:51:16.160 And so there's nothing more for us to say about it beyond 01:51:16.160 --> 01:51:20.080 that. Just acknowledge and understand that you will, once you recognize that 01:51:20.080 --> 01:51:23.200 pattern, you're going to find in places that you probably glossed over 01:51:23.200 --> 01:51:26.000 before because you thought it was some sort of metaphor. 01:51:26.000 --> 01:51:29.600 It is a metaphor, and it's a euphemism, sort of, but it's 01:51:29.600 --> 01:51:33.600 also revealing a spiritual truth that God doesn't explain further. 01:51:33.600 --> 01:51:34.720 That's fine. 01:51:34.720 --> 01:51:36.480 I don't want to make anyone curious. 01:51:36.480 --> 01:51:37.760 I'm not curious. 01:51:37.760 --> 01:51:42.080 If I were celibate truly, I might want to delve into this 01:51:42.400 --> 01:51:46.960 because it seems profound, but I think it's a bad impulse. 01:51:46.960 --> 01:51:49.520 And even if I did it, even if I did somehow figure 01:51:49.520 --> 01:51:52.000 it out, I would never ever tell anyone. 01:51:52.000 --> 01:51:55.520 Because the nature of this sort of thing is such that it's 01:51:55.520 --> 01:51:57.360 inherently going to be abused. 01:51:57.360 --> 01:52:01.520 We have fallen sinful human natures that take God's good gifts in 01:52:01.520 --> 01:52:05.360 these matters and turn them to the worst possible effects. 01:52:05.360 --> 01:52:08.880 So we've tried to treat this sensitively, but at the same time 01:52:08.960 --> 01:52:10.720 treating it directly because 01:52:11.680 --> 01:52:15.920 the essence of marriage, the essence of Eros, along with all the 01:52:15.920 --> 01:52:19.760 other things, I want to commend you for reading after this, go 01:52:19.760 --> 01:52:22.880 read all of Ephesians 5, because it kind of summarizes a lot 01:52:22.880 --> 01:52:26.560 of things that we covered and it gives a very positive emphasis 01:52:26.560 --> 01:52:28.240 on the married relationship. 01:52:28.240 --> 01:52:30.480 As we set the outset, this was not to be in a 01:52:30.480 --> 01:52:32.160 marital advice episode. 01:52:32.160 --> 01:52:35.120 We're not the guys to give you that, but we can tell 01:52:35.120 --> 01:52:36.640 you what scripture says about it. 01:52:36.640 --> 01:52:40.160 Any man who's reading scripture faithfully can do that. 01:52:40.160 --> 01:52:45.040 There's stuff that if the church were emphasizing it correctly, no one 01:52:45.040 --> 01:52:47.920 would be confused about things like so-called gay marriage. 01:52:47.920 --> 01:52:50.240 It's an omptological impossibility. 01:52:50.240 --> 01:52:52.960 It's quite literally an oxymoron. 01:52:52.960 --> 01:52:56.240 It's one and then a contrary thing to the first. 01:52:56.240 --> 01:52:57.840 There's There's no such thing. 01:52:57.840 --> 01:53:00.960 And yet even in the church today, it is common for people 01:53:00.960 --> 01:53:02.720 to say yeah, they support that. 01:53:02.720 --> 01:53:06.480 They support something that's an open attack on heaven itself inside the 01:53:06.480 --> 01:53:08.160 church. Never mind the world. 01:53:08.160 --> 01:53:10.640 People who say they're Christian say, Oh yeah, that's fine. 01:53:10.640 --> 01:53:14.480 The only way to get there is by centuries of us refusing 01:53:14.480 --> 01:53:18.000 to talk like this about the way that God revealed the true 01:53:18.000 --> 01:53:19.440 nature of marriage. 01:53:19.440 --> 01:53:22.720 It is the foundation of civilization, it is the foundation of the 01:53:22.720 --> 01:53:25.520 family. It's a foundation of the church. 01:53:25.520 --> 01:53:30.080 Everything begins with the father and the mother together producing offspring as 01:53:30.080 --> 01:53:32.480 God commanded and promised. 01:53:32.480 --> 01:53:34.720 Everything is downstream from that. 01:53:34.720 --> 01:53:37.440 And so when we fail to treat this with the love and 01:53:37.600 --> 01:53:42.640 respect that God commands, we get the world that we see today. 01:53:43.120 --> 01:53:43.280 As 01:53:43.280 --> 01:53:49.360 we've already said a couple times in this episode, marriage is the 01:53:49.920 --> 01:53:52.960 foundation of human civilization. 01:53:52.960 --> 01:53:55.360 Marriage is the beginning of our species. 01:53:55.360 --> 01:53:58.240 We see that in the garden with Adam and Eve. 01:53:58.240 --> 01:54:02.800 Without marriage, there is no future for humanity. 01:54:02.800 --> 01:54:07.920 Without marriage there is no family, without families, there is no nation. 01:54:07.920 --> 01:54:11.680 These matters are fundamental, and so we have to get them right 01:54:11.680 --> 01:54:16.240 as Christians, and that is why we have We have reiterated things 01:54:16.560 --> 01:54:20.240 a number of times in this episode. 01:54:20.240 --> 01:54:23.360 As I said earlier, you cannot get these things wrong, because if 01:54:23.360 --> 01:54:26.560 you get them wrong, you leave an opening for Satan. 01:54:26.560 --> 01:54:30.160 And you wind up where we are today and where we will 01:54:30.160 --> 01:54:33.200 be if we do not turn things around in the not too 01:54:33.200 --> 01:54:35.520 distant future, because it can always get worse. 01:54:35.520 --> 01:54:39.760 And we see that day after day our civilization is getting more 01:54:39.760 --> 01:54:41.200 and more degenerate. 01:54:41.200 --> 01:54:47.760 And As Christian men, specifically, we have to speak truthfully and at 01:54:47.760 --> 01:54:53.120 least for the foreseeable future to some degree bluntly about these matters. 01:54:53.120 --> 01:54:58.080 Because even Christians who may be good Christians otherwise get these things 01:54:58.080 --> 01:55:02.320 wrong because they were never taught simply to read and believe what 01:55:02.320 --> 01:55:06.640 scripture says about these matters, or even just to think about the 01:55:06.640 --> 01:55:10.880 basic biology of it, because these things are obvious both in Scripture 01:55:10.880 --> 01:55:13.360 and in nature, both of God's books. 01:55:13.360 --> 01:55:15.920 God was not subtle about this matter. 01:55:15.920 --> 01:55:21.200 It is only centuries of euphemism and avoiding the matter, and then 01:55:21.200 --> 01:55:26.160 intense decades of satanic corruption of our culture that has led to 01:55:26.160 --> 01:55:29.600 the outcome, led to the reality we see on the ground today, 01:55:29.600 --> 01:55:35.520 where men deny basic facts about this most fundamental aspect of human 01:55:35.520 --> 01:55:41.680 civilization and of simply being human. 01:55:41.680 --> 01:55:44.960 But to end on perhaps a more positive note than some of 01:55:44.960 --> 01:55:49.760 the heavier content content in this episode, I want to read from 01:55:49.760 --> 01:55:55.760 Proverbs 31 about an excellent wife, about a good wife, because here 01:55:55.840 --> 01:55:58.880 at the end of the episode, I want to be very clear 01:55:59.440 --> 01:56:03.600 we are praising marriage as highly as we possibly can. 01:56:03.600 --> 01:56:07.440 We are not denigrating marriage by speaking about it in blunt terms 01:56:07.440 --> 01:56:11.760 and focusing on the physical because that is what marriage is, but 01:56:11.760 --> 01:56:13.280 again, it's more than that. 01:56:13.280 --> 01:56:16.240 You just can't remove the essence and still have the thing. 01:56:16.240 --> 01:56:19.440 But from Proverbs, he who finds a wife finds a good thing 01:56:19.520 --> 01:56:22.640 and obtains favor from the Lord. 01:56:22.640 --> 01:56:24.400 Marriage is praised very highly 01:56:25.440 --> 01:56:28.160 from the beginning of Scripture to the end of Scripture. 01:56:28.160 --> 01:56:31.680 It is one of the greatest gifts of God. 01:56:31.680 --> 01:56:35.280 And I've mentioned this before, but I want to reiterate it here 01:56:36.640 --> 01:56:41.760 we sort of just pass idly by the narrative of the creation 01:56:41.760 --> 01:56:43.680 of woman in Scripture. 01:56:43.680 --> 01:56:46.800 We just read it and we keep going. 01:56:46.800 --> 01:56:50.240 I would recommend you go and read the first three chapters of 01:56:50.240 --> 01:56:56.000 Genesis. Adam walked with God in the garden, and yet God said 01:56:56.080 --> 01:56:59.040 it is not good for man to be alone. 01:56:59.040 --> 01:57:04.640 A man who walked with God spoke to God face to face, 01:57:04.640 --> 01:57:09.040 and yet God still said it was not good for him not 01:57:09.040 --> 01:57:11.040 to have a wife. 01:57:11.040 --> 01:57:14.880 That is how important that relationship is to God, that is how 01:57:14.880 --> 01:57:16.480 fundamental that relationship is. 01:57:16.880 --> 01:57:19.280 Is to being a human being. 01:57:19.280 --> 01:57:22.480 I'm not saying that some people don't have the gift of celibacy. 01:57:22.480 --> 01:57:24.800 Some tiny handful of men do. 01:57:24.800 --> 01:57:29.120 But for everyone else, this is of the utmost importance. 01:57:29.120 --> 01:57:33.280 It is something that should be a focus not just of Christians, 01:57:33.280 --> 01:57:36.960 not just of the church, but of society as a whole. 01:57:36.960 --> 01:57:41.520 The goal should be the establishing, the maintaining, and the shoring up 01:57:42.240 --> 01:57:46.960 of strong marriages, because without them we cannot have a civilization that 01:57:46.960 --> 01:57:50.160 is worthy of the name. 01:57:50.160 --> 01:57:53.840 And so to end the episode a reading from Proverbs thirty one 01:57:55.520 --> 01:57:57.920 An excellent wife who can find. 01:57:57.920 --> 01:58:00.400 She is far more precious than jewels. 01:58:00.400 --> 01:58:03.440 The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have 01:58:03.440 --> 01:58:04.960 no lack of gain. 01:58:04.960 --> 01:58:08.400 She does him good and not harm, all the days of her 01:58:08.400 --> 01:58:13.040 life. She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. 01:58:13.040 --> 01:58:16.240 She is like the ships of the merchant, she brings her food 01:58:16.240 --> 01:58:17.360 from afar. 01:58:17.360 --> 01:58:20.960 She rises while it is yet night, and provides food for her 01:58:20.960 --> 01:58:23.680 household, and portions for her maidens. 01:58:23.920 --> 01:58:27.040 She considers a field and buys it, with the fruit of her 01:58:27.040 --> 01:58:28.960 hands she plants a vineyard. 01:58:28.960 --> 01:58:33.120 She dresses herself with strength, and makes her arms strong. 01:58:33.120 --> 01:58:37.440 She perceives that her merchandise is profitable, her lamp does not go 01:58:37.440 --> 01:58:38.480 out at night. 01:58:38.480 --> 01:58:41.840 She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the 01:58:41.840 --> 01:58:46.000 spindle. opens her hand to the poor, and reaches out her hands 01:58:46.000 --> 01:58:49.840 to the needy She is not afraid of snow for her household, 01:58:49.840 --> 01:58:52.560 for all her household are clothed in scarlet. 01:58:52.560 --> 01:58:56.800 She makes bed coverings for herself her clothing is fine linen and 01:58:56.800 --> 01:59:00.400 purple. Her husband is known in the gates, when he sits among 01:59:00.400 --> 01:59:02.000 the elders of the land. 01:59:02.000 --> 01:59:04.400 She makes linen garments and sells them. 01:59:04.400 --> 01:59:06.560 She delivers sashes to the merchant. 01:59:06.560 --> 01:59:10.240 Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time 01:59:10.240 --> 01:59:11.040 to come. 01:59:11.040 --> 01:59:14.720 She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is 01:59:14.720 --> 01:59:15.840 on her tongue. 01:59:15.840 --> 01:59:18.880 She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not 01:59:18.880 --> 01:59:20.800 eat the bread of idleness. 01:59:20.800 --> 01:59:24.960 Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and 01:59:24.960 --> 01:59:25.760 he praises her. 01:59:26.320 --> 01:59:30.720 Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all. 01:59:30.720 --> 01:59:35.040 Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears 01:59:35.040 --> 01:59:36.960 the Lord is to be praised. 01:59:36.960 --> 01:59:40.000 Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works 01:59:40.000 --> 01:59:42.160 praise her in the gates.