I invite you to turn in the Bible this morning, continuing our study in Mark's Gospel to Mark chapter 10. Mark chapter 10, second book of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, and we will be considering this particular section here where Jesus is tested on the issue of divorce. The first 12 verses. Before I begin, let me say just a few things. It is a challenging subject to preach today. I know that some of you have been through a divorce. I know that some of you have had this and been through these struggles. It is not my intention in this sermon to blast everyone who's been divorced. I promise you. This is not the intention of this text. I know what's happened with these texts. I know how they have been used and abused. And that is not the unpardonable sin. But it certainly, if you talk to anyone, and I've had more people say this to me who have been divorced. Pastor, you have to be really strong on marriage today because you don't want anyone to go through this. You don't want to go through what we've faced. We don't want anyone to have to go through that. It is an awful, awful hardship in life and it's something no one wants to go through. And everyone I've talked to who's been through it expresses that to me. So you'll understand why we have to be hard today not hard but strong on the position that marriage is for life when a couple comes forward and comes to me for marital counseling i make sure they understand you understand you're saying that this is for life that you're making a commitment before god for for better or for worse you're saying that in front of him and that's something we have to as christians be this be strong about that kind of commitment because it's god's will for us and it's his design from the beginning so this is a mark chapter 10 beginning uh at verse 1 this morning and he left there and went to the region of judea and beyond the jordan and crowds gathered to him again and again as was his custom he taught them and pharisees came up and in order to test him asked is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife he answered them what did moses command you they said moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away jesus said to them because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment but from the beginning of creation god made them male and female therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh so they are no longer two but one flesh what therefore god has joined together let not man separate and in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter and he said to them whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her and if she divorces her husband and marries another she commits adultery there is the reading of god's word this morning well there was always the struggle in israel's history of them of not living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the lord in fact it got so bad in jeremiah's day that people began running around and it's it's a remarkable verse uh that jeremiah records that the people began saying about the lord's ways and the lord's commands this is useless. God's will profits us nothing. So we will walk according to our own plan and we will, everyone, obey the dictates of his evil heart. That's a recorded scripture of what they were saying about God's will. It's useless. It profits us nothing. Why? Why did they get to that point how did they get to that point by the time you get to the last book of the bible by the time you get to malachi um israel is saying about even the lord's worship that it had wearied them they found no excitement in it no joy in it it was a weary to come and do what he had commanded in worship isn't that something isn't that sad that the people of god could get to a place where they say it's not enough for us it's wearisome to us the lord would come along in malachi and return the charge no no no you've wearied me with your words says the lord in what way have we wearied you in that you say everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the lord you've turned everything around and you now call good evil. You're tolerant about everything and you call evil good. One of the ways in which they did this in the book of Malachi is shocking. Malachi says in the midst of that, this, you have dealt treacherously with the wife of your youth. She is your companion and your wife by covenant did he not make you one for the lord god of israel says thus says the lord i hate divorce the old testament was very clear on god's position on divorce but israel's long history of now practicing and calling what was good evil and evil good had led them to the place of despising all of God's institutions. Not only worship, but even the marriage institution. And the long disregard of marriage institution and its purity as God had intended it from the beginning was having catastrophic consequences in the community. Now I raise this because by the time we get to the New Testament, divorce had become in Israel an accepted cultural norm. The scriptures were buried, and we've looked at this in our study of Mark's gospel. The scriptures were buried under years of tradition that had then made this become an acceptable and tolerable practice in Israel. So common in Israel, nobody thought anything wrong with it. Isn't that something that you could have a statement? I mean, think about how humans are. Think about how we work with the sin problem. You could have a statement in the Old Testament that says God hates divorce and your traditions could bury it so that you get to a place where you don't even take that seriously anymore. Sound familiar? Where the religious leaders had normalized it and made it acceptable culturally. Now all of this to say, this becomes the issue, one of the issues that Jesus has to address in his ministry. We're going to look at the reasons for this and how Jesus addressed the issue of divorce and remarriage. But it should go without saying that we're living in the very same cultural scenario, the very same day, the very same struggle of calling evil good and good evil. And things now, what is evil has become so normalized and accepted culturally, the believer finds himself backed into a corner with no way out on this stuff. I know that. I feel that constantly. You feel backed in, you feel marginalized, you feel like just a few people who believe this anymore, how do you answer a society that has now normalized what is evil? How do you answer people, even so-called religious people or people in the church who have now basically taught that this is okay or stay away from it and never say it's wrong? Well, when the very foundations of society are removed as God has defined them. We find ourselves in a very hard predicament, not at times knowing how best to answer and in ways that are most helpful for people. And as you'll notice here, Jesus is going to address this particular issue by essentially saying, God is the author of marriage. It's a divine institution. You never ordained it. You never made it. Man has no right to tamper with and the sad consequences of what you're seeing play out in society are the result of you choosing to disregard a divine and something institution that God put in place to be a blessing to you. That's something that is the sort of basic, simple answer to this as we look at this, but we'll go a little bit further. I want to spend some time this morning understanding why this issue came up. I believe that's really important. Why did this particular issue come up at this particular point in Jesus' ministry? I want us to look for a minute here at the wisdom that Jesus uses to answer this. I believe it's immensely helpful for our day. And that we have a way forward of not condemning, but offering people gospel hope. That's the goal with this. Gospel hope and help. The passage here could be broken into three sections. as I see what's happening here, you'll notice first that there's a test and then a correction and then third, an emphasis on commitment that Jesus makes. A test, a correction, and an emphasis on commitment. And just if you struggle ever following with the sermons and where I'm going, the best way is to have your Bibles open and to see that in any given sermon, I'm working through the course of the passage so you see that it's leading to the conclusion of what the author intended. In verse 1, we're given some detail that is helpful to understanding this, that Jesus has come back into the region of Judea by the other side of the Jordan. That's very important. Multitudes have gathered again to him. We are talking thousands. They have gathered around him as was from the beginning of Mark he has had this we know his purpose was when the multitudes gathered around him he had one single great purpose and it was to preach the gospel to them this is what he's doing he's preaching gospel Mark told us that's why he came forth he wanted to make known the good news to these people he wanted them to understand why he came he wanted them to know what he was going to do so he continues this practice now as he's standing there we read that the pharisees worked their way up in there and they hit him with a challenge they ask a question that is clearly meant to test him now i think it's important before we go there to see the connection with what came before this i love to do this it mark is telling a great story all the way through last week jesus we looked at had been dealing with the real problem in his disciples of making the ministry and the kingdom about them and jesus of course held up a little child in his midst and said listen you need to receive a little child when you receive a little child then you show that you're receiving me and then he went to the small works they were in they were all focused on the great works and jesus of course went on then to give a teaching on hell why did he give the teaching on hell in that context because he was preventing his disciples from a ministry being about them that would take people away from jesus false teachers false prophets all the history of false ideas have come from people who have the single great goal of giving the attention to them having people follow them and not jesus and Jesus says that would be better if a millstone, your life were ended right now and a millstone were dropped around your neck and you were dropped in the middle of the ocean. Hell will be really hot for people in ministry who are taking people away from me. That's the simple message we got. Here come these guys. See it? Here they come. He's training his disciples. He just warned about false teachers he just warned about false prophets here they come here's what they do they're trying to take the multitudes away from jesus that's the link that's the connection multitudes are standing in front of him and here we are with this great test this great test that they have for him What did they do? Here it is. They come to Jesus and they throw a question. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? A little random, isn't it? He's preaching the gospel and this is what he gets. Now, I don't take that as some harmless question. You don't either. They're targeted. They have one goal. The goal is to totally repudiate and humiliate Jesus and wreck his influence among the people. That's how these sections tie together. These are those that would be better if a millstone were put around their neck. I want you to notice here why that reference to where they are is so important. Guess where they're back in? Judea. That's Herod's region. You'll remember, and this is important, that now that Jesus has come back into Herod's region, this was the very thing that got John the Baptist's head put on a platter. Remember? They're thinking about this. We know what happened to John. Maybe we could pull this off with Jesus. Remember that John was killed because Herod had divorced his wife and then had went and married his brother Philip's wife and John spoke openly against it, confronted Herod and Herod in a stupid oath had John's head cut off. Now that's one reason why we see what the Pharisees are doing here, but I don't believe that's it. Totally. There's another reason. Divorce had become a normalized, acceptable cultural practice in Israel. The famous Rabbi Hillel taught that you could divorce your wife for any reason. One, speaking against your mother-in-law. Many of you would be divorced, I'm sure. If you showed your ankles. The Talmud specifically said that a man can divorce a woman because she spoiled his dinner. Boy, that just doesn't go over in 2016, does it? Because he finds another woman more attractive. And the woman's consent to the divorce was not even required. People commonly practice this. It happened all the time. The leaders were practicing it. It's a real interesting moment for Jesus, isn't it? It's a real interesting moment because now he's cast. Now think about this for a minute. Now he is cast into a cultural situation where tradition has buried the Word of God. And now a practice hated by God, a loophole has been found, and everyone's good with it. Everyone's good with it. For you notice that they're basing it on something out of Leviticus. They said that Moses permitted people to write a certificate of divorce. In other words, divorce papers were everywhere in Israel. You just hand the papers. You could have papers for any reason. you just hand the papers it's over so jesus now gets tested with this one before we look at how he answers i want you all to think about the particular tactic of the pharisees here just for a moment tactics are important what were they doing to him you can learn a lot about how the devil works uh in in in the lord's kingdom what he's doing paul would say were not ignorant of his devices the devil is constantly working and doing many different things to cause problems they attacked jesus remember these are children of the devil jesus says that in john 8 that these pharisees were children of the devil they were running around attacking jesus in many ways they criticized him constantly for breaking the tradition of the elders they criticized him for hanging around with all the tax collectors and the sinners They tried to catch him all the time with mistakes according to their interpretation of the law. Fine interpretations, but this one's different. This one's really crafty. Think about this. Divorce is being practiced everywhere. If they could back Jesus into a corner and paint Jesus as some rigid, strict traditionalist, if they could pitch him as being ultra-rigid, conservative beyond what is reasonable, with a practice that no one holds to anymore and no one believes anymore, they'll kill it. They'll kill the following quick. see it most people standing there had been divorced so look at the big picture here it's so helpful for today if the devil can turn a society against god's norms with strange interpretations even in the church and all the ideas of tolerance and can't be critical of anything prevail if he could do that and think we're in post-modernism today and then use unregenerate people to attack those with conviction so that they are appeared as too strict, too narrow, too hard-lined. They will kill the progress of that ministry. It's a tactic. It's been one of the devil's greatest tactics to drum up disgruntled people who hear something nobody else believes and that which is so far against God's norm that it has become enshrined into the practices and laws of a society, those people will drop that person or practice like an old hat. Think about it. His message. What a tactic. You've struggled with it. How many of you have struggled with what is perceived to be rigid and strict? It's adult peer pressure, by the way. It's not just for our kid. And you see what they're doing to him. This guy flips tables over worship. Remember that? He went in to this temple and flipped over a table condemning our worship as of the devil. This guy takes it all too seriously. Many people, like the days of Malachi, begin to think this is useless. What profit is there in being like this? That's the lie Satan wants many people to believe. Where does that lead someone? Well, they're always boundary pushing. You boundary push, you always got to challenge the limits, you got to loosen this up, you got to end up in a form of religion then, and the consequence of that is you get a halfway house form of religion where you can keep sin and still look religious. This is so common, it's so helpful to point out that this goes on. oh, this is too rigid. This stuff kills Christianity. That disconnects the next generation. We need to tame our Christianity. It's got to be more user-friendly. It's got to be softer. This is one of the devil's constant tactics that we have to be aware of. People like this are always trying, and this is where you see it in the Pharisees, are always trying to find an excuse not to deal with the real issues of repentance and faith in Jesus and they come up as he's preaching the gospel, hitting them with a sideline issue. He sees it. What they want from him is just to say this. No! We got him. Can't do it. We got him. Black and white. It's how it is. Don't question me. He can drive away many of those people from those crowds with that approach. That's the easy way, of course. That's what the devil wants. When people can then just write it off and not have to listen. Too hard-lined. Jesus, of course, is much wiser than that, isn't he? Jesus knows exactly what to do and exactly how to handle this stuff. He's just brilliant. He's going to force them to deal with their position in light of the Scriptures, which is what he always does. That's how he answers this stuff. They come at him asking about the lawfulness of divorce. Can we divorce our wives? And where does Jesus go? Well, he starts with the first place he knows they went to justify their behavior. And that was Leviticus. So he goes there and he says, what did Moses command you? Notice this. They said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and dismiss her. Now notice they don't go to the reason why Moses did that. Jesus says Moses did that because of the hardness of your hearts, which is a sweeping indictment, by the way, because he didn't say the hardness of Israel's hearts back then. He included them. He did that because of the hardness of your hearts. He applied the same problem back then to them. What had happened? Well, the Old Testament prophets cried out against this because the men of Israel, this is all over the Old Testament, the men of Israel were dumping their Hebrew wives and marrying foreign women. This was so bad by the men, they were treating their wives terribly. They were harsh, and think of the curse that I read this morning. Your desire will be over your husband. but he shall rule over you. It's the reciprocal sort of response of abuse. They were harsh, and so hard were they that Moses had to do something to put this all in check. The reality was marriage would have been done away with in Israel because as the men were moving on to other women without any documentation, these women were left stranded. They had no defense. They had no defense. They were no longer, they had no defense that she was no longer married as they've moved on. They had no proof. They were just left in the dust. So one of the reasons that Moses had to do this was because the people's hearts were so hard, the men's hearts were so hard from being abused like this, that God had to put, through Moses, something in place which shows, it's really remarkable to think about, to protect women. It's sad, isn't it? The allowance was made to protect women from ruthless men. This was all over the Old Testament. Moreover, in those days, Nehemiah, I saw the men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod. Didn't they have their own wives? I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one or the other peoples and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. I rebuked them, called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair. One pastor said, what a new pastoral approach, huh? I'm very tame. I don't pull out anyone's hair. So what if Moses had said, you know, so Moses here goes on and says, listen, his intention in this was to stop this and say, if you divorce, you better think about it because I'm going to level a consequence on this. You never get her back. That was the consequence of Leviticus 24. You never get your wife back if you do this. How many stories have you heard of men who have wrecked their marriages and then running around later after doing all their fill of fun and everything that they want to do, after they've severely wrecked their life, they come back and say, I would have never done that. advice they give don't do it well this provision was the restraint to get people to take marriage seriously that was the intention but notice that the pharisees are boundary pushers that that's what these guys do they're boundary pushing and they're always pushing the limits and notice what they do they want to nail jesus over strictness they want to nail jesus over being too narrow And so they use the Bible to find a loophole to make a concession to sin and trample the light that is among them. Happens all the time. Multitudes are there. Most of them who have been divorced, they're all standing there. They're waiting now for Jesus' answer. What a moment, isn't it? Nothing's different. Certificate of divorce, common. Divorce papers, common in Israel. How do you handle this? That's the million-dollar question in our day. How do you handle it today when the marriage institution is thrown under the bus? We're soon to live in a time where everyone agrees divorce is permissible, but now we've entered a time where men can marry men and women can marry women. How do you answer that? How do you live in that? When you know they're going to persecute you and you know they're going to marginalize you. Meet Jesus. After exposing how they got to their position, after exposing their loophole, he goes back to creation. And notice that he says, from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. Quoting Genesis, In those first chapters in 1 and 2, he then cites, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. I hope you see how immensely important this is. today. Run through the thought with me for a minute. God created a man and a woman at creation. He had in view when he made them that there would be a beautiful, intimate union between them, demonstrating love, demonstrating true love. He even took Eve from the rib of Adam with the intention of making them to be one, to be married, that he would join them one man and one woman he created to be made one in a union made and created by him. And this was always to be so. And as they had children through this union, those children would then leave and as one man and one woman, they would be joined together in marriage and be one flesh together. It's so beautiful. It was good. It was right. It was God intending it to be the ultimate source. I read at a wedding all the time of happiness to us. At creation, Jesus is saying, what you're not realizing, dear Pharisees, is that the divine architect, not only of man and woman, but the divine architect performed the first wedding ceremony. Setting it and making clear what this is. It's divine. It's a divine institution. So that here's the punch to it all. It's before them. God himself made the union. The conclusion is therefore what God has joined together, making himself making and uniting them. Man has no prerogative ever to break. He was never given that. he didn't make it, he didn't create this, he doesn't define his reality. If I were going to find a place in Scripture to go, doesn't this work? Who is this that obscures my plans? With words without knowledge, using all your words without any knowledge. Brace yourself like a man, and I'll question you, and you shall answer me. This is Job, by the way. Where were you when I laid the foundation, earth's foundation? Tell me if you understand who marked off its dimensions. Surely you know. Who stretched a masering line across it? Or on what were its footings set? Or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb? When I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness? When I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place. When I said, This far you may come and know further. Here is where your proud waves halt. Surely you know, for you were already born. You've lived so many years. See what he's doing? He's mocking. God mocks and God laughs at false ideas. Translate, were you there when I made marriage? Did you set the limits of that, that man may go outside of? Did you determine that? Did I not set the limit on that, at creation? Did I not bound that together? Did I not bring together man and woman to be one, created to be one? Did I not form that union? Where were you? Where were you? Talk about an area, fitting the whole theme of Mark, where this is not about us. Talk about an area in life where this is not about you. Anytime anyone runs into this, it's always about, well, I don't like this, and I don't love, I, I, I, I, I, I. In other words, it was never yours to destroy. It was never from the beginning yours to dissolve. It was never you who designed this, you're not God. There's another reason he went to creation, though. The very thing that they're doing to him, trying to back him into a corner as strict and oppressive and hard-lined, wanting to make your lives hard, wanting you to believe the lie that God is just out to make you trapped, that's the lie that Satan brought into the garden. Satan came in and said, Eve, he's holding you way back, man. Woman, God is restrictive. God is strict. God doesn't want your happiness. You're not happy in your situation. You've got to get out of it. Did God really say? If you disregard His will, your eyes are going to be wide open. You're going to be free. You're going to be able to go do whatever you want. You're going to see good and evil. You're going to really live. The lie was God's ways are hard. He's keeping you from freedom. He's keeping you from happiness. He's putting limits on you. You don't have to live by that. And what happened? the great divorce the great divorce see a sermon like this would be easy for me to hit all the non-divorce people make them feel really good right the true divorce happened in the bible when the alienation from god happened in the garden when adam and eve went running and hid from him because they had broken his will and that covenant and now our culture has tried to normalize the uniting of man and woman and men and men and women and women, continuing the defiance that originated right from Genesis 3 when they disregarded the very law of God Himself. That's what we're in. And I don't need to make a case for all the sadness and sorrow that has happened. God established from creation something beautiful. We decided not to accept it. The question is then, is it lawful for man to separate from the law of God? That's the question. And to become his own lawmaker? That's the question. Is it lawful for us to listen to Satan and find a way out from our union with him? And all this sadness has brought us the misery that we know today, the sad consequences that just keep playing out of a society crumbling. And the reason the society is crumbling is because the family has crumbled. Because marriages have crumbled. And look at the children. Happiness is not, this is such an important message too for our day. Happiness is not achieved apart from God's will and design. It'll never be achieved. That's what we're going to have to help people to see. They're going to be broken. They're going to be miserable. Playing God Wrecking your gender and trying to make yourself something He didn't. All this stuff. Tampering with the marriage institution rips apart God's will and design, rips apart society, and brings about upon our own heads the greatest amount of sorrow and emptiness you can ever imagine. And we just keep going with it. And as we continue to pick up the broken pieces of our children, all the sadness of the destruction of the family, and all the statistics seem to get worse and worse, And in this way, if you're not reconciled to God, you may be seeing the same problems in your family because you haven't led your own children to him. In all our misery, we say, Lord, your ways have wearied us. That was Malachi. And the Lord says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not letting you do that. Your ways have wearied me in that you say whoever does evil is good in the sight of the Lord. It's not about being strict. Don't listen to the devil. It's about what God has put in place for your own well-being and ability to function together so what God has joined together, let not man separate. The disciples are so moved by this, they come up to Jesus. This is a big issue for them because the culture has so normalized it. They want to talk about this and they say, listen, do you really mean that? Are you really that serious about marriage? You'll notice that there. Jesus says, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. You'll know Matthew gives an exception clause to that, but Mark doesn't. Why? Because he wanted the punch of it to be felt. Marriage is a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman, and a divorce is a breaking up of the union God made. When one goes out and marries another, it's adultery he says and when that's so practiced in a society you see why he says it immediately we want to say when we hear this you're thinking about so and so don't do that immediately when we hear this well is that forgivable let it be felt without all the questions that surround it that's what we need yes the lord is merciful yes the lord gives fresh starts we know that i don't need to go into all that that that wrecks the intention of what he's doing here when we do that to these passages it's not a comprehensive treatment on all the what-ifs it has one major punch that should all be felt by all of us god intended your marriages to be for life period and i would suggest suggest that the lack of the church's clear teaching on this basic point has opened the door of tolerance to everything else we're facing in society today we can be blamed for a lot of this we can be blamed for a lot of this we have not taught the people this and we've compromised the disciples understood it that way you know what they said in Matthew well if that's the case it's better not to marry well that's not right but they understood what he was saying it underscores what Jesus said God made this to be for life if we're going to do this we better take it really seriously that's what they understood with his teaching. That's what they got from his teaching. All of his creatures are bound to him. But how much more today, and I close with this, how much more should Christians understand this? Marriage is not a Christian institution. Marriage is a common institution. But marriage that takes place between Christians takes on a redeemed character, doesn't it? So how much more should Christians understand the big picture of all this? Christians should understand a little bit more about what their marriages are really talking about and expressing. Who is standing in front of them? The bridegroom, and in perfect sacrificial love, he has come to lay down his life for his bride to get her back, to redeem her, to make her beautiful, to enjoy her. He loved his bride with a relentless love. You see this. The world doesn't see this, but you see this with redeemed eyes. The greater story in the mystery of God's will that this is expressing to us, our unions, it is designed to show off and display among the covenant people of god the love of christ and his body the church his bride and so all the more christians understand the witness of our marriages the importance of our marriages our marriages are telling a greater story of the love of christ for his church a love that is unbreakable a love that cannot be shattered a love that knows no divorce or separation a love of which it is declared greater love has no one than this than that a man lay down his life for his friends that's how much i loved my wife that's how much i give myself for my wife and that's why he's serious about it imagine if he weren't all of our lack of seriousness about it doesn't reflect the savior's seriousness about it because it's a serious demonstration of his love for you what a tragedy divorce is when it's led to our mess and then we see a savior who's so long suffering to come and restore and heal these broken relationships that would in turn now affect how we love one another. You see how ugly it is when we don't believe him? Look at the Pharisees. Unbelief is disgusting. Look what it does. We all become Pharisees trying to do whatever we can to find a way out to rule our lives by our own wills and create our own ways of happiness and look at your lives when you do that look at your children when you do that you bring sorrow sadness there's a way that seems right to man but the end path is death and jesus today just declared to you his love he wants you all to know that he loves you and he's not breaking up the relationship he just won't do it aren't you glad he's not divorcing you and he offers you something so more come to him treasure him believe in him his love his gospel his peace his wonderful sacrificial love will truly satisfy your soul and your life and then you'll go out and love your spouse the way you should let's pray heavenly father it's a big subject and i'm sure father in weakness. I have not done justice to this at all. Forgive what failings were made here today and what areas were not addressed that should have been addressed. And yet we come to you as messes. We know that. From the pastor to everyone here, we have no strength in and of ourselves to fulfill this design. We don't claim to. In fact, we all say today we've been very selfish in our marriages and it's been all about us i i'll say that forgive us for this and yet you come in the scriptures after redeeming us and restoring us and setting us on the rock and lifting us back up and say in the state that we are now let us go forward and bring glory to your name wherever we are right now today and that encourages us greatly for you don't hold our sins against us of the past but You move us forward to the future. Thank You for Your love that is shown to us and demonstrated in the sacrifice of Your Son. May the Holy Spirit work powerfully in our marriages to take seriously this calling. Remove hypocrisy. Make us sincere. And may we always love Your will even when it's hard to speak and hard to say as You have given it to us in the Scriptures. Being willing to say it in love that we, Lord, would, if it be in Your kind providence again, might be a restoration of marriage in our society. That people who are so empty and trying all these alternate paths would come to their senses and like the prodigal far away would say, what am I doing? And return to the Father who runs to embrace and restore. Thank You, Father, for Your love. Thank You for the feast that awaits us. The marriage feast. of the Lamb and His bride. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.