The more things change, the more they stay the same. You know that saying? Isn't that true? We live in a day of incredible change. Just constantly, uh, technology and culture shifts, things are changing all around us. And yet, we still deal with some of the same issues that we've dealt with for generations at the heart of it all. Many of you can look at your life, see all the changes over the course of your life, you look at all the changes throughout the course of history. And yet, some of the problems we deal with today are the same problems that they dealt with generations ago. I thought about that. The last few weeks, as we've been moving through the book of Malachi. Here's a book in God's word, the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, written by the prophet Malachi, the message that God delivered to the people in his day. It was 2500 years ago. 25 years ago. And yet every week when we dive into the next passage, it seems like it rings just as true today. that we're still dealing with those issues. Just so we think that things are problems that we're facing today are unique to us. We realize, no, this has always been the case. Malachi lived in a broken world as we do today. And Malachi, addressed people whose hearts were prone to grow cold as ours are, hearts that were prone to wander from the Lord as we are today. And he spoke a message from the Spirit of God who still speaks today. And God still has a message today. And so we look at this topic, it's going to be before us. So we're going to dive in here. We're going to see it deals for the most part with the topic, the subject of divorce. And we think that's unique in our day, and certainly divorce is very rampant today, very common today. I was thinking about this passage and thinking that probably everyone in this room, almost everyone in this room, has been impacted on some personal level by divorce. Maybe you're like me, my parents divorced when I was 5 years old, so I grew up being raised by a single mom. So I saw very firsthand throughout the whole course of my life. The impact of that on my life as a kid whose parents divorced. Maybe you've been divorced, and you've walked through that, maybe your children have gone through this or another family member. It's a very common thing in our day. In fact, I was getting my haircut one time, and the lady cutting my hair, told me she'd cut my hair several times. We kind of developed a friendship. She told me she was getting divorced. And I knew she had 2 young girls at home. I think they were kind of middle school, elementary school age at the time. And I said, how are your girls dealing with this? She goes, you know, what's weird? She said, they said they finally feel normal. She said, all their friends, parents are divorced. And we told them we get divorced. They felt like finally they fit in. That's how common it had become in our culture. But it's not new. It was happening 2500 years ago, and it's been addressed here. And so this is a message. I think that we all can learn from today. Whether you're single or you're married. I think there's something for you today. We're going to look at what is going on in Malachi's day. What was the issue happening there? And then we're going to bridge the gap and say, what are we to do with this? What do we learn from this? So primarily you're going to see there were 2 problems that were happening here. First of all, we're going to see it in verse 11 when we get there of chapter 2 of Malachi, verse 11, that they had married daughters of foreign gods. He was condemning them for having married daughters of foreign gods. What's going on there? What does it mean to marry the daughter of a foreign god? What's the problem with that? And then verse 14, He's going to address the fact that they were divorcing the wives of their youth. What's going on there? And what does God have to say about that? I think the passage today is going to give us some real critical guidance on 2 of the most important and life impacting questions you will ever face. I want to be so bold as to say this will be the most important sermon you'll ever hear, but I would say this. The principles of this passage might be some of the most important principles you will ever need to know. The most important thing in your life is whether or not you will trust in and follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Nothing will change your life more than that, knowing that Jesus dialed the cross for you. He rose from the dead and through Christ alone, we can be at peace with God, have our sins forgiving. That will impact the whole rest of your life, and all of eternity for you. After that question. The probably the biggest question that will impact you in your life, if you're single is, should I marry this person? Should I marry this person? Your life will be impacted more by the decision of who you marry than anything else other than your decision to follow Jesus. And if you are married, the most important question you will ever face. And many in this room have faced it. And I bet some in this room are facing even today, should I leave this person? Should I leave this person? Your decisions about who you marry and your commitment in your marriage will impact the course of your life, more than anything else, other than your decision to follow Jesus. And so I think it's very helpful that we grab onto this. Everyone in this room is either single or married. If you're single, there are going to be some great principles for you to consider about as you think about your future. If you are you have children or single people you care about. This will help you as you encourage them and challenge them. If you're married. I think this is going to help us if you care about people who are married. This will help you help them. And so I think there's something for everyone. Let's jump in. What was the problem in Malachi's day? Pastor Reston read the passage for us. Let's go in here and break it down. Let's look at verse 10. Let me just go and put on the screen. Here's the 1st problem, 2 problems, and then we're going to see some application at the end. First problem is this. They violated their covenant with God by intermarrying with pagan women. They violated the covenant of the habit of God by intermarring with pagan women. Look at verse 10. Verse 10 says, have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? Earlier in chapter one, they were mistreating the altar with the sacrifices they were bringing. He said, you have profaned the altar with your sacrifices. Now he says, you're you're profaning the altar by the way you're treating each other. And he said, how can you do that? Don't we all have the same creator? Don't we all have the same father? Should that not compel us to treat each other better than we are treating each other? Children of the same father should treat each other better, is what he's going to say. And their actions were profaning or desecrating their covenant with God by the way they were interacting with their wives. And so we see here, just as a side note, but we see this principle many times, I want to call it out again, that your horizontal relationship with other people impacts your vertical relationship with God. Your relation with God is a personal commitment, but it's not a private commitment. When you make a personal commitment to follow Jesus, that then affects all of your relationships. And so what he's saying here, you cannot compartmentalize your life. You cannot say, I'm going to treat my wife this way, and then I'm going to bring something to the altar and treat God this way. He said, your relationship in your family is connected to your relationship with God and your worship of God. So he dives into it. verse 11. Judah has been faithless. That word's going to appear 5 times in this passage. You've been faithless. And an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem, for Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign God. So their actions were a faithless abomination that had profaned the sanctuary. What does that mean to be faithless? The word faithless here means a betrayal. You've betrayed your relationship with God. And you have profaned, profane means to rob something of its worth or to treat something as meaningless. You're treating God as if he means nothing to you. And you have betrayed your relationship with him by marrying daughters of foreign gods. And what's going on here? They were living in a land. The Jewish people made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis. I'm going to make a great nation from you. I'm gonna give you a promised land, and then I'm gonna bless the whole world through you. And so the covenant has come true in part. There's a nation that's descended for Abraham. They're now living in the land. They've gotten kicked out of the land for their unfaithfulness, and God has just let them back into the land. You can go back to previous sermons in this series to get all the detail on that as we gave you some background the 1st 2 weeks. But now they're back in the land, and they're marrying women who, from other nations outside of the Jewish line. Now, what's the problem with marrying someone as a Jewish person? What's the problem with marrying someone who's not Jewish? Here's very clear. The problem here is not ethnic or racial or cultural, it's spiritual. It's not a matter of race or ethnicity, it's a matter of purity. It's not about the origin of the woman you've married. It's about the idolatry, it's leading them into. He does not say, look at the verse very closely. He does not say, you married a woman from a foreign land. But he said you married the daughter of a foreign god. See, God's not upset with them for marrying outside of their race or outside of their nationality. What God is saying, you have married a woman who serves another God. That's the problem. And because she serves another God. When you marry her, she's going to want you to serve her God. And so you're going to leave your God to serve her God. He doesn't care what language you speak, who your ancestors are, what color your skin is. He said, she's not worshiping me. That's the problem. It's violated the covenant. Before they went into the land, Deuteronomy chapter 7, God said this, I'm going to bring you into the land, you're going to take possession of the land. And then he says this in Deuteronomy 7.3. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. And we've seen this throughout the Old Testament. When a Jewish follower of Yahweh would fall in love with a woman who worshiped another God, it would lead to idolatry. It happened to Solomon. First Kings 11, says, now Solomon loved many foreign women. And then that's 1st Kings 11, one. First Kings 11, 3 said, and his wives turned away his heart. Solomon ran after foreign women, and he didn't just fall in love with foreign women. He fell in love with their foreign gods, and it turned his heart away from God. So he says, you have married people who are worshiping pagan gods and it's led to spiritual compromise in your life. So verse 12, he says, may the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob. Any descendants of the man who does this. who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts. Now I want you to connect this here. He said, May the Lord cut off anyone who will marry the woman of a foreign god, the daughter of a foreign god, and then bring me their offering to the altar. You see that in verse 12? He said, there's a hypocrisy here where you try to compartmentalize, you're trying to come to the altar while there's unfaithfulness in your life outside of here. So God judges what we do in his house. We call this God's house by what we do outside of here. Some people will feel like I got to act different when I'm in this building. One time a guy cussed in front of me, he goes, oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't cuss in church. Oh, that doesn't matter. What are you? You, of course, you get a cuss. your address doesn't matter, is we think I got to act somewhere inside these walls, and then I can go out there and live however we want. said, that's the problem. You've committed this sin, but you still want to bring stuff to the altar. He said, you want to be faithful to God, you need to be faithful in every area of your life, including in your home. Faithfulness to God means to be faithful in our homes. They violate their covenant by chasing after these foreign idols. Second thing they did. They experienced the judgment of God because they had divorced the wives of their youth. God was bringing judgment on them in part because not only were they marrying these foreign wives, they were leaving their current wives to do so. Verse 11, verse 13. This is the 2nd thing you do. You cover the Lord's altar with tears by weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. Let's stop there. He's going to get into it in a minute what's going on here. The 2nd thing is they're leaving their wives. But here he says, you're coming to the altar. Look at verse 13, and you're crying and you're weeping and you're groaning. Why? Because the Lord no longer accepts your offering with favor. Here's what's happening. They're bringing an offering to the Lord, and God wasn't blessing them. Hey, God, help me out financially. Help me with this problem. Here's an offering. Now help me out. God doesn't help him out. They come back to the altar crying, God, I gave you an offering, you still, you didn't answer me. You didn't show me favor. And he said, the problem is, you're trying to bring something to the altar, but you're not living the way God wants you to live. You want to live in rebellion. They want to live in rebellion, and then want God to bless them. And what he's saying is you're weeping and you're wailing, it will achieve nothing because the sin you're not dealing with the sin in your life. You should be mourning over your sin instead of your mourning over God not blessing you. And we do the same thing, don't we? Now, be carefully, I don't want to say there's like a quid pro quo, like, okay, God, I'll serve you. Now you bless me. That's not the way it works. Because here's the reality. Thankfully, I have had times in my life where I have not been obedient to God and he showed me favor anyway. You ever had that happen? Where he said, God is way better than to me than he should be. He is blessing me more than he should be blessing me. Sometimes by God's grace. We live this way and we still get his blessing. At the same time, you can be faithful to God and he's still not answer your prayer. So if you ever said, let me, I'm going to pray for this, and then I'm going to do something for God, now he's going to answer my prayer because I did this for him. That's not the way it works. What he's calling out, though, is the hypocrisy of living the way you want to live in total rebellion and then being upset because God's not doing something for you. He said, why would you expect? I had a conversation with someone one time that I knew showed very little interest in spiritual things. I invited him to church, not much, just always too busy, all much too, always too much going on, kind of lived for himself, did what he wanted, regardless of what God would want for his life. And then one day was complaining about God not answering a prayer that he was praying. And he said, I don't know why God isn't listening to me. Why isn't he listening to me? And I thought, he probably says the same thing about you. Why isn't he listening to me? And so the next time you say, God, why aren't you listening to me? Stop and think. I wonder if God would say, yeah, that's a good question. Why aren't you listening to me? That's what they wanted to do. We're going to live our wives, our lives the way. We want to live our lives. And then, oh God, why won't you help me? Why won't you bless me? He said, this is how it works. He's telling the people here. Now he gets into the problem, verse 14. They say, why does he not? Remember the format here? We've pointed out as we walked through this. It's a bunch of questions back and forth. That's kind of how this book is structured. So here comes another question. Why doesn't he answer us? So I'll tell you why, because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife, by covenant. Why doesn't he show us favor? Because you're unfaithful to him. How have we been unfaithful to him? You were leaving the wife of your youth. See, these men were not only marrying pagan wives, they were leaving their 1st wife to make room for the new wife. And I thought about this phrase, why wife of your youth? What does that phrase mean? Why not just you're leaving your wife? What is the wife of your youth? A study. There's a couple options put forward. One is, they were perhaps divorcing their aging wives in favor of younger women. This wife from my youth has gotten old now. I like to trade her in. That's what they're doing here. I think it's a 2nd option. I think he's pointing out the faithfulness up to this point. Your wife has been faithful to you from your youth. Why leave her now? Why leave her now? You've come so far. Why leave now? During COVID, we were cleaning up our basement, going through old boxes. You know, you have those boxes, you throw some stuff in it, and you move, and you throw it in the corner of the basement, I'll deal with it later. Like, we got to see what's in these boxes. A lot of them are old pictures, old photographs, and we're going through those, and something hit me. I was at all those old pictures of Carrie and I from, we've been married 31 years now, and all those pictures from our early days, and when our kids were little, holidays and birthday parties and pumpkin patch visits and Christmas tree farms and all those pictures together, and thinking about all the difficult times in those years of our marriage. And I just thought I just said to the Lord, Lord, thank you for not letting me screw this up. I can't imagine those pictures today. I know some of you have those, and I'm sorry that you've had to go through that of looking back on those old pictures, the wife of your youth that is in the picture today. Don't, I think he's saying, don't, guys, don't mess this up now. We, we, uh, can't imagine that. When Mark kids would date people, we'd go on trips or do something and we'd always put the boy on the outside. And I say, now you stand over here because you may not be here next year and I want to crop you because I want this picture without you in it. And so I put the boy out here and then we could just, and there's the family outing. And now the boy's right in the middle. And the daughter-in-law's, the daughters-in-law are right in the middle. You don't crop them out. They're in this picture now. Don't don't protect your marriage. Don't come to a day where you look back at those old pictures with the wife of your youth and know that you mess this up. He's saying, don't leave the wife of your youth. The Lord was a witness, he said. He was there when you made your covenant. That three-way commitment between you and your wife and me, God says, we made a covenant that day. For the believer, a marriage is not just a legal contract. It's a spiritual covenant you make before God. One of my fears when I do a wedding is that I would not get the license mailed into the county. I've heard a pastor one time who put it in the inside pocket of his suit coat, and then didn't wear that suit for a while, and months later, discovered he never turned in their marriage license to the county. I go straight to the mailbox as quick as I can. I'd hate, but here's the thing. If I lose your license, you don't get to go, ooh, cool. I guess I'm off the hook. No, this was not about a thing that got filed with the county. It was about a covenant you made before God when you stood before him and made this commitment between God and your spouse, this spiritual covenant you entered into. Verse 15. He did not make, did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union, and what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. For the man who does not love his wife, but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit and do not be faithless. He lays out here 4 problems with divorce in verses 15 and 16. Number one, he says, when you divorce your wife, you're severing what God put together. Did he not make them one? He asks in verse 15. This isn't a matter of you going your way and she goes her way and we agree to disagree. You've severed something. That God made one. Genesis 224, the very beginning. A man shall leave his father and his mother hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Jesus in Matthew 19 says, so they shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two, but one flesh, what God has joined together, let man not separate. Us filling out a marriage license this week. I get 2 weeks ago. So nervous when I do that. Ive done 100s of these, but I want to make sure I get all the boxes filled in the right way. I read the instructions that the courthouse gives the bride and groom, and they give me the license, and it said something caught my attention last week. I was doing it for Caleb and Gretchen's wedding. It said, under no circumstances, should you fill this out with erasable ink. As a good reminder. Don't put erasable ink. Don't fill this thing out and then want to go back later and erase something on this thing that we, oh, so much more is the covenant we've made. This is not an erasable covenant that we make with one another. The 2 have been made one. Second, he said, when you divorce, you're abandoning the covenant you made with God. He said, you did this with a portion of the spirit in your union. God was there with you. In a marriage, a man and a woman become one flesh, and God is witness to that. has brought that together. I almost grieved when I hear of somebody divorcing, particularly grieved if I know I did the wedding. And I think how much more it grieves the heart of God, that he brought together a thing that we've decided to separate. Third, you're jeopardizing his purpose for your life. What is the one God seeking? God, the offspring. What's he saying here? The goal of this partnership is to produce godly offspring. The point is to have godly children from your union, divorcing divorcing your covenant wife and marrying an idolatrous woman, puts this mission in jeopardy for sure. When both parents love and follow Jesus, it creates the best environment for the spiritual flourishing of their children. Now, does God still bless 100%? Are there godly children from divorced parents? Absolutely. But his design was a man who loves Jesus, marries a woman who loves Jesus. They put Jesus at the center of that union, and it points their children to him. This was the design. This was the desire. And then finally, he says, when you do this, you're harming each other. Now there's some discrepancies in verse 16, if you read that, some translations read, God hates divorce. And some translations read, the man who divorces his wife hates his wife, something like that. It's the language is a little difficult. You can talk to Blake Hearson, one of our pastors, who's a Hebrew professor. He can tell you why that's hard to translate. and go into that today. But it doesn't really affect the point of the passage. He's either saying, God hates it when you divorce your wife because it harms her, or when you divorce your wife, you hate her because you harm her. is essentially the options here. I think the latter is probably in the context, how this was intended, but that no way, in no way lightens their softens God's view of divorce. The seriousness of divorce is clearly here. It harms your spouse. People will proclaim, what will claim it was mutual and the best interest, and everybody was better off. The reality is divorce does incredible damage and leaves brokenness in its wake. We should never, we should always grieve it. And I know there are circumstances in the Bible. We won't go into those today. Time doesn't allow us to dive into every element. I know, there's circumstances where God permits divorce, with unfaithfulness or abandonment. I know that your situation is unique, and I couldn't possibly begin to understand how your situation got to the point that led to divorce in your life. I just want to say, it always grieves the heart of God that it got there. It's always harmful in the end, that it got there. I don't know what happens to people, to get them to this point. So I can't imagine what they've gone through, but it always breaks my heart when people celebrate their divorce. You ever see that on social media? The divorce is final. Yay. It breaks the heart of God. When the union he's brought together, dissolves. It will never be. You can always work through what you're going through. I know there are a lot of circumstances. I can't begin to know those, so please, I understand how complicated and difficult this is. But just know, God says, this is a union I'm bringing together. It's not a contract you can get a lawyer to break. It's a covenant you made before me, those to be for the rest of your life. So he says, therefore, verses 15, 16 twice, guard yourselves, guard the faithfulness of your marriage. Watch yourself carefully. Don't let your guard down. Oh, what do we do with this? Three things that we can draw application to our lives. Number one, believers are to view marriage as a spiritual covenant. a spiritual, we have to view this differently. It's not the same way that your unbelieving friends view this. It can be a contract, you can, I don't know, I don't think you got any traction, but I heard of a politician one time that wanted to do, have expiration dates on marriage licenses to clean up the court system when people get divorced. You don't need to get a divorce, just let it expire. And then we don't have to go through all this stuff. That's a terrible idea. But that's the way some of the world looks at this. This is a covenant, a covenant, spiritual covenant that you're entering into as God as your witness for the rest of your life. So what does that mean for single people? For single people, I want to encourage you, make no compromise when seeking a spouse. If you're single, make no compromise in this area. If you're raising children, impress this upon them. What God is saying is, when you marry someone who is a daughter of a foreign God, there is a high likelihood you will compromise and follow their foreign God. So you ask the question, does it matter? If I'm a follower of Jesus, does it matter whether or not I marry someone who's a follower of Jesus? I would ask the question, it depends on how seriously you take your faith. And if your relation with Jesus is important to you, then this should be important to you. I was the drive for Uber sometimes now is a little hobby. Years ago, I drove for a car service, pre-Uber, town car, taking people to the airport and stuff, and, and, uh, couples in the back, a guy and a girl in the back seat, there, she's married, he's single. They're doctors, they're in town for a conference. She begins to talk about his dating life, and she wants to set him up with a friend. So she's asking, what do you look for? What do you like? What's your type? And then she says, you're Jewish, right? He said, yeah, I'm Jewish. Like, yeah. She said, does she need to be Jewish? He said, not really. And then he said this. I don't care what she believes as long as she doesn't believe it too strongly. See, if that's your attitude, then marry whoever you want. If your faith doesn't matter that much to you, then the faith of your spouse won't matter much to you. But if you love Jesus, marry someone who loves Jesus. How do you do that? You've heard me say it before. You date people who love Jesus. Remember? This is the deep Pastor Matt inside. I've dropped this on you many times. You marry the last person you date. Wow. That's what happens, right? You date, date, date, and you marry someone. You want to marry someone who loves Jesus, you date people who love Jesus, and you don't compromise, and you wait patiently for God to bring this person in your life. Because you can marry someone who doesn't share things in common. Carrie and I have a lot of things we don't share in common. We travel, we drive places I want to podcast on or talk radio. She wants some 80s band with synthesizers and melts my brain sometimes. Seriously, we've been married 31 years of a happy happy marriage. We will do road trips with AirPods in our ears sometimes. I just need a break from your music. I need a break from your sports talk, and we just drive down the road. Happy as could be. with our AirPod in. But you can't go through live, happy as can be if the most important thing in your life doesn't align, and that's your faith in Jesus Christ. And so make a commitment to date people who love Jesus. Here's a picture of my daughter. She's not here today. It's more fun to talk about her when she's here. I don't know if you can see that from there. It's a picture of us on our boat. She's wearing a hat that says eat beef. Kansas Livestock Association. So that hat says. You know, what's funny about that hat. My daughter for most of her life was a vegetarian. For a few weeks, she was a vegan until that got too hard. Then she was a vegetarian who only ate Chick-fil-A, and then a vegetarian hardcore for a few years. And now she's marrying a hat that says, eat beef. She also lived in a loft in the city market. Wanted to live the urban life. In January, she'll move to a ranch in the middle of nowhere, Kansas. Now, why would a girl living in a, why would a vegetarian in a loft wear a hat that says eat beef and move to Western Kansas? Because the guy in the picture? Because the guy in the picture is a cattle rancher. And she fell in love with a cattle rancher. And that mean you're going to eat beef. And you're going to move to Kansas. You see girls, listen. Guys, too, the guy you fall in love with can change everything about your future. Be careful who you fall in love with. because it will change everything. Don't give your heart to someone who is not fully devoted to the same things you're fully devoted to. If you have children raise your children. to seek a spouse who loves Jesus. And if you're married to an unbeliever, continue to be patient and prayerful and model what it means to live a Christian life before your unbelieving partner, praying, that God will bring them to faith in Christ, be patient, trust God's timeline for your life. Married people, guard the marriage covenant you made with your spouse. Guard the marriage covenant. I know there's all sorts of messy situations in life, all kinds of circumstances, but just know today, I want you to hear this. If you're married, never allow yourself to justify this or to consider this, seek faithfulness to the covenant that you've made before God. I had a lady call me one time, she was telling me the circumstances of her marriage, and wondered if she should leave her husband, and I listened and prayerfully thought how to respond. And I said, this is such a tough situation. There's so much going on here. But I just want to encourage you to stay with him and to work this out and to be faithful to this covenant. I saw like relief come over her face. She breathed an audible kind of sigh of relief. And she said I was waiting for one person to tell me that. My mom thinks I should leave him. My friend thinks I should leave him. The lady who cuts my hair says, I should leave him. I wanted one person to say, figure this out and make it work. Let me be that voice to you if you're struggling today. Don't leave the wife of your youth. Don't leave the husband of your youth. If you're struggling today, do whatever it takes. Invest in your marriage, talk to somebody, talk to accounts, talk to a friend, check the box on your connect card. I wanna talk to a pastor. Let us walk with you through what you're going through. And then let me also challenge you to choose door number three. What does that mean? choose door number three. I think that Christians who are struggling in their marriage, hear a sermon like this and you think you have 2 options. I can divorce my husband or my wife, I think that that's wrong. So door number two, I'll just stay in this miserable marriage because that's what God wants me to do. I think there are a lot of Christians who feel like those are their 2 choices. I want to suggest you today there's a 3rd door that by the grace of God, and by the power of his spirit helping you, you can have a marriage that is happy and full of joy and fulfilling and Christ honoring in every way. Don't feel like you have 2 options you have to pick between. The time is up to talk about what that looks like to pick door 3 other than you need to talk to someone and say, I want door 3 in my marriage. I want a marriage that's holy and happy as well as we serve Jesus together. So now what? Single people, what would it look like for you to be uncompromisingly committed to honoring God with this area of your life? To say, I'm going to wait and date people who are fully committed to Jesus. This week was the 33rd anniversary of my 1st date with Carrie. Called her up, she lived with her parents. I called on a rotary phone. Half of this room doesn't even know what that means. And I asked her to go to dinner and she had the phone. She was with her friend and her friend and said, who was that? So the youth pastor, is we on a date? That's weird. And she said, you said yes. She said, yeah, it was a free meal. It was a free meal. She took an invitation to get a free meal, and she's been stuck with me for 33 years. Girls be very careful. About that free meal. you say yes to this week. Be uncompromisingly committed. to patiently wait on the Lord, and then married people, do whatever it takes, to guard the faithfulness of your marriage. I've shared this before. Let me share it again. You have to play offense and defense. Games will be played today. They'll interview the coach. What's the key to victory? to play well on offense, play well on defense. That's the key to your marriage. Defense. What are the boundaries in your marriage that you won't cross? Your relationships with other people, your interaction with people of the opposite sex, the things that you'll view, the things that you'll, rabbit holes, you'll allow yourself to go down, what are the boundaries you will set. I want to guard, he says twice, guard the faithfulness of my marriage. and then offense. How am I invested in my marriage? not just about defense, about how am I pursuing my spouse? How am I loving my spouse? How am I serving my spouse? How am I dating my spouse? Do all you can with all your heart to guard the faithfulness of this covenant before God. And if you're struggling, just know God is gracious. A lot of times the problems in our marriage are the result of our sin. I think it's a good place to start. The best way you fix your marriage is by starting with saying, I am the problem. It's the problem that I need to address. God is gracious. Jesus died for you. And his mercy extends to whatever has happened in your marriage. And Jesus rose from the dead. And the same power that rose Jesus from the dead is at work in your marriage. And because of his grace, because his power. You can have a marriage that honors him and glorifies him. Let me pray for you. Father. Lift up everyone in this room for the single person who is struggling. They're afraid of a future that may be lonely. They're impatient. They're tired of waiting and they're lonely. God, would you just, by your mercy, your grace today, encourage them to be faithful to wait, to be uncompromising, be committed to this area of their life. For the person who's struggling today, their marriage, God, would you convict them? of their sin that's causing the problem? Will you give them the grace that's necessary to forgive the sins of their spouse? Will you give them the courage to seek out the help that they need? Will you help them to choose door number 3 in their marriage? Father, for those who have been divorced, to still suffer with the grief of that, give them comfort, show them your mercy. For those who feel convicted by their actions, would you, uh, Show them your forgiveness and your love. Would you help us as a church, to rally around each other, to help the singles in our church in this season, to walk with married couples, to help each other, strengthen our marriage, to stand with those whose marriages are in jeopardy. And let us bring you honor and glory in this area of our life and all that we do is a church family. We pray for your help in Jesus' name. Amen.