Relationships that Honor God

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This week, I heard a story that really got to me. A man, it was a Christian podcast I was listening to, and a man who was a believer wrote in to the host asking him, saying, I need some advice, I need some help. His issue was he’s getting close to 50 and has never been married.

His dad died when he was young. His mother’s elderly and he takes care of her. If memory serves, he has a sister who’s disabled.

And so he spends a lot of time taking care of the two of them. And he talked about how he would love nothing more than to find a wife, settle down, raise a family. But it just hasn’t happened because when he thinks he’s getting close to that, He said that the women will invariably tell him, you know, I can’t deal with this, all this time that it takes you taking care of them.

You’re going to have to make a choice. It’s them or me. And his answer has always been, I’m going to take care of my family.

You know, ideally you want to find somebody who will come alongside you and go the same direction you’re headed. But he said, I feel like God’s placed in me this desire to have a wife and a family, and yet it just doesn’t seem to be panning out. What am I supposed to do here?

And my heart went out to the man who wrote the letter, and I was afraid just from past experience and hearing the way people address these issues that he was going to get some answer that’s always given. You know, just be still, just wait, just trust. God’s timing, we know all that’s true, but when you’re hurting like that, you need something a little, you need something a little, I don’t want to say more substantial, because faith is substantial, but you need something that reassures you that the sacrifices are worth it. And so what the host told him, and I think all of us could benefit from hearing it, was to tell him that as a Christian, To take on the responsibilities of a husband and a father is a call to lay down your life, is a call to sacrifice yourself and your good for somebody else.

And he said, that is exactly what you’re doing. You are laying down your life for what are essentially your children at this point. You’re taking care of your elderly mother, your disabled sister.

You are doing the things that a Christian husband and father would do. And he said, I can’t promise you that God is going to bring a woman to do that alongside you, but if there’s a part of you that is stirring over the desire to have that responsibility, understand God has given you that responsibility. And it made me think as I was driving about the roles that God has given me as a husband and a father, and that it really does echo Jesus’ call in the gospel for us to come and die, take up our cross and follow him.

When you’re a husband or a father, when you’re a wife or a mother, those responsibilities involve putting other people first. They involve serving, sometimes in ways that the flesh doesn’t want to serve. It’s like the example I use all the time when Charles says, do you want to take Abigail to the bathroom? No, I do not.

I’ll just be honest with you. I don’t. It’s a lot of work.

And sometimes if I think she’s in a good mood, I’ll say, no, I don’t want to. But ask me if I will, because that’s a different question. Yes, I will go take her.

Do I want to do fifth grade math every stinking night of the week? No, I do not. I’ve already done that.

Did that once already. Got the trophies to prove it. No.

I’ve already done that. I don’t want to do it, but I will because my daughter needs me. You know, do I want to do these things?

In our flesh, we don’t always want to do these things, but we’re called to serve. In whatever relationships we’re in, we are called to serve. If we’re Christians, we’re called to serve.

And that’s where I want us to look at in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 this morning. Now, ordinarily, I’m just going to let you know up front, I’m not going to have you stand this morning. Ordinarily, as we read through the scriptures together, I would have you stand, but we’re going to do the whole chapter this morning.

And I’m going to break it down piece by piece, and so I don’t want you up and down and up and down. Some of you, myself included, have only so many bends left that the knees will do. So I don’t want anybody needing knee replacement when we’re done here today.

Just remain seated, but turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. I want to go through this a little bit at a time and unpack some of what Paul’s talking about, and then come back and apply the principles to all of us because he deals with married couples, he deals with singles, he deals with widows, he deals with slaves and owners, and he deals with all these things that don’t necessarily apply to everyone’s situation today, but the principles still inform us about how God wants us to live. Now, if you’re new with us, if you’re a guest, I’m going to give you the disclaimer I’ve given every week.

I felt like the Lord was leading me to preach through 1 Corinthians, and so that’s what we’re doing. If you’re walking in and hear some of the things that we’re talking about, like a few weeks ago, there was a man having an affair with his stepmother. You might walk into the church and think, what have I gotten myself into?

What’s going on here that he feels the need to address this? There’s nothing going on here that I know about. We’re addressing it because it’s in God’s Word.

It may be unusual in that I’ve not necessarily heard these texts preached or these topics, but that tells me it’s all the more necessary. So we’re going to cover these topics and knowing that there are children, especially, first of all, I’m uptight, okay? I’m just going to get that out of the way.

But on top of that, knowing that there are children in the room, including some of mine, I’m going to deal with this as tactfully as possible. But 1 Corinthians chapter 7, let’s look at the first few verses here. Paul has been talking about the way we ought to live as Christians, talking to the Corinthians who were in the midst of a very pagan culture that they had been saved out of, but in some cases were having trouble leaving some of the baggage of that pagan culture behind.

So he says in verse 1 here, Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband.

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

But I say this by way of concession, not of command. These are the instructions he gives in the first six verses here to married couples. By the way, I didn’t want to divide this up and take several weeks to get through it.

I asked Rodney what he thought. Is it crazy to try to do 40 verses all at once? He said, no, that’s what I’d do with that chapter.

I still wasn’t 100% sure, so I looked to see how did John MacArthur break it up. He preached the whole chapter. And I thought if Rodney Campbell and John MacArthur and I agree, we’re probably on the right track.

So we’re not going to go into tremendous detail on any of this today, but I do want to hit the highlights. Here he gives some practical instructions to married couples. And the reason why I think he does this, number one, he says in verse one that he’s answering a question in answer to what they had written him.

But remember the fact that Paul was dealing with people who were coming from a pagan culture that was obsessed with sexual activity and anything goes. A lot like our own culture today. And so he had written to this church and to other churches about abstaining from immorality.

He’s also writing from the perspective of a Jewish man whose culture said, you did not marry and father children, there was something wrong with you. And people from these different cultures that he’s dealing with would frequently misunderstand Paul’s writings and his teaching on the subject to the point that around the year 200, somebody wrote a work of fiction called the Acts of Paul and Thecla that supposedly recorded this story that Paul taught that you should be absolutely celibate, even if you were married.

And this young noble woman named Thecla, because of that, because she became a Christian under Paul’s preaching, had broken her engagement to a young nobleman who was upset, and then they tried to execute Paul and Thecla, and it just became a whole big ordeal. Now, this writing was tremendously popular, even though the churches from the very beginning recognized that it was fake. It was not true, and the teaching in it wasn’t even biblical. But the fact that this writing became so popular gives us some insight into the fact that people just completely misunderstood what Paul was writing. And they’d go to one extreme over here and say, well, we have freedom in Christ, and God created sexual activity, so whatever we want to do is fine.

Or they’d go off to the other side and say, well, no, we’re supposed to be morally pure and chaste, and so there’s nothing that we can do. And Paul here is trying to thread the needle. And he’s saying, in contrast to what his culture that he grew up in taught, if you remain single and remain celibate, there’s nothing wrong with you.

As a matter of fact, God may have called you into that, as he goes on later in chapter 7 to deal with. He may have called you into that for a purpose so that you are unentangled in your ability to serve the Lord. But he also says if you’re married, there’s nothing wrong with that either, and there’s nothing wrong with relations as a married couple.

As a matter of fact, he warns them against, oh goodness, this is uncomfortable for me to talk about. He warns them against extended periods of celibacy within marriage because he says there’s too much temptation that rises. And the talk about not depriving each other, this can be misinterpreted as an attitude of you owe me in marriage when really it’s supposed to be an attitude of I owe you.

It’s about serving one another. And this just happens to be the area where he’s talking about it now, but he talks about this in all of his teaching on marriage, throughout all of his letters. In Ephesians, he talks about this.

Talks about the need to serve one another and put one another first. In everything we do, not just in what he’s talking about here. This is one example as he’s answering a question. But in marriage, we are supposed to serve one another.

If my wife needs me to get up and take Abigail to the bathroom, Just because I want to sit there with my feet up, you know what, I need to serve her, and I need to go and take care of that. So he gives these instructions to the couples that deal with sexual activity, and really it’s dealing with the idea of serving one another and putting one another first. But then we come to verse 7, verses 7, 8, and 9, and he’s dealing with single people and widows. He says, yet I wish that all men were even as I am myself.

However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner and another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Paul says, Paul here is not, throughout this chapter, he is not saying it’s morally superior to remain single. He’s not drawing a moral distinction between married people and single people. He’s drawing a practical distinction from his own experience.

Paul is saying, I know from experience that I have this freedom to go and do ministry. I have this freedom to serve. I have this freedom to preach the gospel that I would not necessarily have if I was married with a bunch of kids.

And he’s right. Number one, we know he’s right because it’s in here. So it’s automatically right.

But I also know it’s right from experience because sometimes there’s a lot of work in juggling the demands of ministry with I have a wife and five children to take care of. And that leads to a lot of times I don’t feel like I do either of these things very well, despite my best efforts. I don’t regret that for a moment.

It’s just a challenge to deal with and work through. But Paul’s saying, I understand. And I wish more people were like I am, where he says you stay single, in order to serve more freely.

But he says, I understand not everybody’s been gifted in that way, or wired in that way. Not everybody’s been given that gift. And he says to the single people and to the widows, he said, it’s not wrong for you to remain unattached like I am, if you can.

If you can and you can honor the Lord in that, then do that. But if you find that that’s too much of a burden to bear, then get married. Because the teaching of Scripture all throughout, from Genesis on straight to the maps, is that God designed marriage to be the union of a man and a woman, And he designed sexual activity to take place solely within that union and nowhere else.

And so he says, if you’re tempted to dishonor God by your behavior, then it’s better for you to marry, and it’s better for you to deal with those entanglements of marriage and family than for you to do something that disrespects God’s design. Then we come to verses 10 through 16, and he gives instructions to the married people. Again, but to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband.

But if she leaves, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband, and that the husband should not divorce his wife. But to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away.

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. For otherwise, your children are unclean, but now they are holy. Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave.

The brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?

So there was the concern here, especially coming from a pagan culture, that you might have somebody who comes to Christ as an adult and they’re already married, and now you have a Christian married to a pagan. Not necessarily an ideal situation. It’s one that the Scriptures don’t encourage us to enter into.

But if that’s where we find ourselves, that you have a believing spouse and a non-believing spouse, and their question is, what do I do? Do I leave this pagan man and go find somebody else? He says, no. He says, you continue to live out the gospel in front of them because you don’t know the impact that that’s going to have on them.

If your husband, if your unbelieving husband is happy to stay married to you in spite of your newfound Christian faith, then do that. And the same for the men. Don’t divorce your wife just because she’s not a believer yet.

If she’s happy to stay with you, then stay married to her and live out the gospel in front of her. Show by example what it means to follow Jesus Christ. You don’t know what impact that’s going to have. On the other side though, he says, if you come to Christ, and your pagan spouse says, no, I’m not putting up with this, I’m not dealing with this, and they leave you for the sake of the gospel because they don’t want anything to do with Jesus, he says, that’s not your fault, and you’re not under bondage, you don’t have to beat yourself up over not being able to fix that, that was their decision.

Now this is not to, even that exception there is not to paint, is not to treat divorce like a light issue, but it is to give some grace to believers who otherwise might feel that they’ve let the Lord down because they couldn’t hold this together. And so he gives these instructions because the goal here is to represent Jesus Christ, is to represent Jesus Christ in our marriage, in our family, in all the things that we do. And that’s where we have to understand too where the Bible’s coming from when it deals with issues of raising children, of being married, of divorce, of all of these things.

It’s dealing with the idea of representing Christ well. The Bible is not a self-help manual. The Bible is not here primarily so that we can have a fulfilling life. The Bible explains to us how to glorify God in the things that we say and do, in the way that we live.

Now, if we seek to glorify God in the way we live, in our relationships, then there is going to be the added benefit that it’s going to help us. Maybe not immediately, maybe not in the way that we thought it would, but it will help us. So the Bible’s intention is not, Paul’s intention here is not, here let me show you the five tips to be a better husband.

Paul’s intention here is saying, let me show you how to glorify Jesus Christ in your marriage, but that will make me a better husband. You see the distinction there? Paul’s instructions up to this point in verses 1 through 16, they show us that it’s necessary for Christians to lay down their lives in service.

Because so much of what the world teaches, and I’m sorry, Jack, I got things out of order up there. So much of what the world teaches is that whatever makes us happy is what we need to pursue. More lives have been destroyed over the mantra, follow your heart, than just about anything else.

Do not follow your heart. The Bible says your heart is deceitful. Your feelings will lie to you.

Instead, in Scripture, we’re taught to lead our hearts and follow Jesus. But as Christians, it’s not about what seems good right now, what seems like it’ll work, what do I feel like I want or need. We’re called in all of our relationships to lay down our lives in service.

You want to be a better husband? Start serving Jesus and serving your wife. You want to be a better wife?

Start serving Jesus and start serving your husband. You want to be a better parent? Start serving Jesus and your kids.

By the way, that doesn’t mean giving them everything that they want. Me giving them ice cream for breakfast every day is not serving them. Well, they might think it is, but it’s not serving them well.

But as Christians, we lay down our lives in service. I think of the example I read about of a Catholic leader in Jerusalem. And we can debate theology another time.

I read what he did and what he said, and I thought, despite our massive theological differences, I can’t think of a better illustration of this principle. That there’s one of the Catholic leaders in Jerusalem who has offered himself to be taken in exchange for the children who are being held hostage by Hamas. He said, I will come into your custody if you’ll release them.

And I thought, what an incredible picture of laying down your life in service of someone else. As Christians, that’s the kind of thing we’re called to do. And not even just in big dramatic gestures like that, but day by day in little ways, laying down our lives for other people, and most importantly, laying down our lives for our king, we’re called to serve.

And that’s Paul’s message to a very selfish, very desire-centered culture. What I want and what I feel. That’s his message to them, and we’re not so different from them.

Our primary concern we see in the next few verses should be to use the circumstances of our lives for the glory of God. We’re going to pick back up in verse 17 here. Paul says, As only as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each, in this manner let him walk.

And so I direct in all the churches. He’s talking about whether he’s gifted them for singleness or for marriage. He says, however God has gifted you, whatever he’s given you to do, do that.

So if God’s called you to be a married man, be the best married man you can be for the glory of God. If God’s called you to be a single man, be the best single man you can be for the glory of God. Was any man called when he was already circumcised?

He is not to become uncircumcised. I don’t even know how that would work. Has anyone been called in uncircumcision?

He is not to be circumcised. This was an issue because it was hard to reach certain cultures based on whether you were circumcised or were not. And yet Paul’s statement here is don’t make a big deal about it.

Serve as God’s called you to. Don’t worry about whether you’re Jewish or Gentile. Serve as God’s called you.

He says in verse 19, circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but what matters is the keeping of the commandments to God. He says this exterior stuff is not the important thing. What matters is the condition of our hearts and our obedience toward the Lord.

So whatever situation he’s called you in, whether he’s called you from a Jewish background or a Gentile background, you be the best Jewish follower of Jesus Christ you can be as the Holy Spirit empowers you. You be the most faithful Gentile follower of Jesus Christ as you can be as the Spirit empowers you. And the main thing is our surrender toward the Lord, our obedience toward Him.

Each man must remain in that condition in which he was called. And that put an end to a lot of the debates that were going on because they were arguing in the churches about these peripheral issues, whether they should be circumcised, whether they should eat certain things. And then they were ignoring much bigger issues.

He says in verse 21, were you called while a slave? Do not worry about it. But if you’re able to become free, rather do that.

I saw somebody throwing a hissy fit about this verse a while back. The Bible condones slavery. No, it doesn’t.

He’s not writing to Christians saying it’s fine if you go out and buy slaves. He’s writing to slaves who became Christians. And he said, if you can be free, go do that.

Obviously, that’s preferable. But if not, don’t worry about it. Serve the Lord even in your bondage.

Use that situation to glorify God. I don’t know of anybody in here who’s enslaved this morning, but we all have circumstances we’d rather not be in. Let’s not wait until we get to better circumstances to start serving the Lord.

Take the circumstances you’re in and use them for God’s glory today and watch what He does. For He, verse 22, For He who was called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise, He who was called while free is Christ’s slave.

He says, If you’re a slave and became a Christian, you’re free in the Lord, even if outwardly you’re still a slave. And if you were free when you came to Christ, even if outwardly you’re free, inwardly you’re a slave to Christ. And as trying as our circumstances may be, he’s pointing us to the fact that there’s a deeper spiritual reality going on here of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ that trumps everything else. You were bought with a price.

Do not become slaves of men. We belong to him. If we’re going to be concerned with serving anybody, if we’re going to be concerned with submission to anybody, it’s supposed to be Him because He’s the one who paid for us.

Jesus Christ shed His blood and died on the cross to pay for our sins in full, and He purchased us. And if you’re a Christian, you belong to Him. Brethren, each one is to remain with God in that condition in which He was called.

So our primary concern is to use the circumstances of our lives to the glory of God. As I’ve already alluded to, each of us deals with circumstances and situations we’d just rather not be in. And sometimes, sometimes I’m really bad about thinking, Lord, if I could just get out of this situation, if I could just not have to deal with this anymore, then I could really serve you.

That’s backwards. Serve him now in the situation I’m in. And then if he changes that circumstance, use that circumstance to glorify him too.

But Paul wrote about how he had dealt with freedom and slavery. He dealt with abundance and, I just lost the word, nothingness. He dealt with times that he had a lot and dealt with times that he had nothing.

Use all of those circumstances to glorify God. And he’s telling us whether slave or free, whether rich or poor, serve the Lord in the circumstances you’re in. And when we start to look for ways to use the circumstances of our lives as tools to the Lord’s glory, it changes our perspective about those circumstances.

And it changes our usefulness in the kingdom. And then we come back to verse 25. Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy.

When he says not from the Lord, he’s not saying this is not scripture, this is not inspired. We know from Paul’s other letters that he had visions, direct visions of Jesus Christ, that for years Jesus taught him one-on-one before he ever even sat down with the other apostles. When he says, I have this from the Lord, or I don’t have this from the Lord, he’s talking about those visions.

But if it’s in 1 Corinthians, it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. So I want to be clear on what he’s talking about. This is not saying, oh, certain parts of 1 Corinthians are not inspired.

No, it’s all God’s Word. He’s just saying, this didn’t come to me in one of those visions. Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy.

I think then that this is good in view of the present distress, that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released.

Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you have not sinned.

And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Yet such will have trouble in this life, and I’m trying to spare you. He’s talking about a time of difficulty and a time of persecution that’s about to come upon the church.

And he’s saying, if the more you entangle yourself with other people and other things, the more difficult it’s going to get. But that’s practical advice and not saying that there’s something morally wrong with getting married. But I say this, brethren, the time has been shortened so that from now on, those who have wives should be as though they had none.

He’s not saying, get rid of your wife, all right? When he says it should be as those who have none, he’s saying, you should walk in the same freedom as those who were single, the freedom to minister and the freedom to serve, and those who weep as though they did not weep, and those who rejoice as though they did not rejoice, and those who buy as though they did not possess, and those who use the world as though they did not make full use of it, for the form of this world is passing away. And here in verse 32 is where he explains what he means by all of that.

I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. He’s not telling you, get rid of your wife.

She’s dead weight. Cut her loose. Okay?

He’s not talking about, put those kids out on the street. You’re better off without it. That’s not what he’s saying.

He’s telling believers, you do everything you can to be free to serve. He’s talking about disentangling from the world. Now, you and your wife can serve the Lord together.

You and your husband can serve the Lord together. and disentangle from the things of the world. You can do that with your family.

The primary point here is to disentangle ourselves from the world so that we have freedom to serve, freedom to serve him. But I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord.

But the one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his interests are divided. The woman who is unmarried and the virgin is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit. But one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

This I say for your own benefit, not to put a restraint upon you, but to promote what is appropriate and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord. But if any man thinks that he is acting unbecomingly toward his virgin daughter, if she has passed her youth, and if it must be so, let him do what he wishes. He does not sin, let her marry.

Now that sounds like it’s talking about let your daughter, Mary. If you’re in the New American Standard, you see that that word daughter there is in italics. That’s because they think that’s what it means.

This seems in context to be speaking more about the idea of engaged couples, saying if you can remain single, do it. But if it’s going to be too much of a strain, there’s nothing wrong here with marrying. He says it’s not a sin.

Verse 37, but he who stands firm in his heart, being under no constraint, but has authority over his own will and has decided this in his own heart, to keep his own virgin daughter, he will do well. So then both he who gives his own virgin daughter in marriage does well, and he who does not give her in marriage will do better. A wife is bound as long as her husband lives, but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes only in the Lord.

But in my opinion, she is happier if she remains as she is, and I think that I also have the Spirit of God. So that’s a lot of territory to cover this morning. A lot of ground to cover, and yet I felt like dividing it out into multiple messages would not, there wasn’t necessarily enough to do with each one of those.

He talks here about prioritizing our fr