Verse 32 says, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. So marriage is really a spiritual thing. Yes, you can get married at the courthouse. I'm not saying you can't do that. But marriage is a spiritual thing.
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Marriage should be a billboard. You and your spouse, if you are married, ought to be a walking billboard that depicts the relationship between Christ and the church. If you are not married, you should be looking for a billboard partner. Not just somebody that has looks.
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But, okay, okay, let me throw chemistry in there. Okay, we, chemistry, we had chemistry, you know, we just had a vibe. Chemistry is a cute way of saying lust, okay? That is what it is. Or from a man's perspective, chemistry is just lust. I don't know, from one's perspective, I can't speak, I don't know what that is. But this is not according to God's design.
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And if that's all you've got, when the looks change, when the lust dies down, when they lose their job, when they XYZ and the chemistry fades, what are you left with? Incompatible differences. Okay. We don't say that for two weeks. No, no, I'm sorry. Irreconcilable differences. That's the term. Irreconcilable. Get me right, Donovan. Irreconcilable differences. That's what you're going to have, because you don't have mission at the core. You don't have Christ. You don't have God's intention and his design at the core.
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So the family is the place where we live out the gospel first. What is the gospel? The gospel is the good news that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, allowing us to be in a relationship with God the father, even though we're sinners. He cleanses us from that, cleanses us from our unrighteousness, and we can now have a relationship with the holy God.
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But the good news is also that in God's design for the family, he also situated this thing in such a way that if our family is messed up, it can be fixed by the gospel. If your family is messed up, you can fix it through the gospel.
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No, you weren't. God knew exactly where you were going to be born into, who you were going to be born into, and God did not make a mistake in that. He might have placed you there in order to begin to redeem what has been lost in your family and to be that crucial link that brings righteousness on down the line.
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Because Medea cannot fix the level of dysfunction in our families. Only Jesus can. And only the word of God can.
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Colossians 3, verse 12, Paul, the apostle Paul, wrote about two -thirds of the New Testament, writes this about relationships. He says, so is those who have been chosen by God, holy and beloved. Who are that? Those are believers. Those are followers of Jesus Christ. Those are people who have responded favorably to the gospel. He says this, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.
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Here's the problem, my brothers and sisters. We live in a world that is deviating from God's design and God's intention. And we have all participated in this ourselves. Every one of us. I am willing to say, let me not say everyone. Let me say, 98 .5 % of us have participated in the deviation from God's design.
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Deviating from God's intention has a fallout that has a ripple type effect. First, it has effect on family, then it has effect on church, then it has effect on the greater community. You want to build up the community? Start with building up your family. You don't need grants. You don't need a social program. You don't need work on your family.
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When we get off track spiritually, everything else follows. Now, we don't see the deviation spiritually, but we see the fallout with our eyes in families and communities. We see that on down the road.
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Strong, vibrant communities have healthy families in it. When you want to see a strong, vibrant community, you will see healthy families in it. Now, different family structures can be made workable. Let me say it again. Different family structures can be made workable. We can work that with the help of the Holy Ghost. And by the grace of God, we can make any family structure workable. But there is one structure that produces the best outcomes.
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There is one structure that produces the best outcomes. And when I say the best outcomes, I'm talking about the expansion of the faith. The sanctification of marriage, the discipleship of children, a light in the community. There is one structure that produces the best outcomes. This structure, according to the Bible, is one man marries one woman. One man, one woman, together for life.
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One man, let me say it again. It's tight. Boy, I feel the oxygen being pulled out the room. One man and one woman, they get married and then they consummate the marriage after they say I do with a ring on the finger. You don't have a ring, but after they have joined together covenantly in marriage, then they consummate the marriage. Then they have children. And then Jesus is at the center of the marriage. And then Jesus is at the center of the discipleship relationship that should be taking place between the parents and the children.
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But as a whole, when you look across a whole community, a whole ethnicity, a whole people group, if you keep playing in God's face, by and large, people will not thrive. By and large, you will see decline in that community. And the mission of God is weakened in that people group.
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So getting the biblical formula out of order means you go from a 2 % chance of poverty to a 30 % chance of poverty. That's 2 out of every 100 versus 30 out of every 100 just for getting the sequence out of order.
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But our society, we poke holes in God's design. Marriage between one man and one woman, come on, God, it's 2025. What you talking about? So we say, marriage don't have to be between one man and one woman. It can be whatever we want it to be. Our society now says, well, let's act like we're married. We'll do all the married things, but we just won't have the commitment of marriage. Somebody said playing house.
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How do I know we just plan in God's face? Because we're bringing children into the world outside of marriage at alarming rates. Can I just talk about the African American community for one second? Second, it is now up over 70 % of our children are being raised in single -parent homes. Seventy percent. Seven out of ten of our children are being raised in single -parent homes. Does that not alarm anybody? When God's design, if we were following God's design, that would be the exception, not the rule.
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Solomon started off good. Solomon was a king. Y 'all remember we started off in 1 Kings 30 minutes ago? Solomon was a good man, a godly man, Jarvis, a good man, godly man, and a wise man, and a rich man. Ooh, this brother had some money. Go read the book of Ecclesiastes. The brother had some cash. Remember Zacchaeus last week, if you were here? He was rich. Solomon was on another level from Zacchaeus. Yeah, Solomon was him. That's how you get 700 wives. A regular man don't get 700 wives. You can love all the foreign women you want, but you ain't going to have 700. He was him. He started off good. He didn't start off with 700 wives. He was good. But here's the deal. He started straying spiritually. And then the foolishness followed. Because foolishness always follows a heart that becomes folly towards God. The foolishness follows.
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The family, if we're going to improve the home, it starts in the heart. It doesn't start with getting a better job with better benefits. It starts with the heart.
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So people kill me. All the time people say, well, why in the Old Testament, you know, did God let men marry all these women? He didn't. That was never his design. He just allowed people to indulge in their foolishness just like he allows us to. And then he allowed them to deal with the consequences of their foolishness just like he will allow you to.
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But all of this can be fixed through discipleship in the home. In the home. Discipleship matters.
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What is discipleship? Helping our, the people in our homes become more and more like Jesus. Now, what does that mean? That means we begin to delight in the Lord and he begins to change the desires of our hearts. The more we delight in the Lord, the more he changes the desires of our hearts.
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Because our hearts are first influenced by the home. Discipleship has to happen in the home. But we think we're smarter than God. Yes, we do. We think we're smarter than God.
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My brother and sister's sin has a much far -reaching impact than that. There was a tsunami a couple years ago, and it started with an earthquake somewhere, like over in Japan or something. Do you know that that earthquake produced a tsunami wave that hit California? From the area of Japan, traveled some 3 ,000 miles, one wave, and hit a country that it didn't even originate in. Traveling up to 500 miles an hour under the water. People didn't even know what was happening. And that's what sin does. When we say, God, I'm just going to do what feels good to me, what makes sense in my mind in the moment, not your word, a tsunami could be brewing in your life. And unless you do something to stop it, when it reaches the surface, it is going to wreak havoc. That will take you a long time to fix, if you can ever fix it.
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Part of the downfall of any community is thinking that we have outsmarted God and have found a better way. The fallout is kids don't see healthy marriages modeled because this country has the highest rate of single -parent homes in the world. And there's one community that skews that number more than any other community. Kids see conflict and divorce, then they don't even want to get married. Why? We have one of the top five divorce rates in all of the world. So kids don't want to get married because it's what they see.
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Solomon is straight away from God's design because of the desires of his heart. And the good news today is the desires of your heart and my heart can be changed. So if you're here today and you don't have a relationship with Jesus, just know your heart can be changed. Your whole life can be changed through a relationship with Jesus. That's the starting point. If you don't have a relationship with Jesus, you can start that today. By surrendering your life to Jesus as Lord and Savior.
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If you keep coming, the word of God is going to pin you down and hold you for three seconds. It just will. Because the word of God always wins. Because God is all wise. He's always right.
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Let me give your way a shot. It starts with your heart first. You've got to have a heart that wants to do right. That wants to do the God -honoring thing. You have to have a heart.
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