Sermon Brief
Date Written: June 13, 2014
Date Preached: June 15, 2014
Where Preached: OPBC (AM)
Sermon Details:
Series Title: A Series in 1 Corinthians
Sermon Title: Marriage: A Vision of God’s Love
[and how we should approach it!]
Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 [ESV]
TEXT:
Essence of the Text: Paul challenged believers in Corinth to bring glory to God regardless of their marital status.
Essence of the Sermon: We are challenged to glorify God thru our lives regardless of our marital status.
Main Question(s) of the Sermon: Do you have to be married to please God? Should you avoid marriage so you will stay pure? Just what is Paul teaching in this passage?
Applicable Objective of the Sermon: The hearers will know:
Paul is teaching that marriage was created and is still blessed by God -- Marriage is NOT a stumbling block to serving God!
Paul is also sharing that if you are NOT married that too will be blessed by God and your “singleness” should NEVER be a stumbling block for your service to Him!
Finally we find Paul sharing that the Love of God is revealed THRU a God honorring marriage!
Introduction:
In this chapter Paul addressed issues the church hadd written him & asked him about.
The church had asked him questions OR they had made statements about their beliefs that Paul had to either affirm or admonish and correct.
They asked about marriage (ch7) food sacrificed to idols (ch8-11:1), public worship (11:2-14:40) the resurrection (ch15) and the offering to the church in Jerusalem (ch16:1-4)
This mornning we will be lookking at the section where Paul addressed God—honored marriage. There was some teaching that led many in Corinth to rush to judgment and make poor decisions when it came to marriage.
In this section Paul discounts this teaching and encourages the believers to NOT be in a hurry or rush any changes to their marital situation… it didn’t matter if they were married OR not-- Paul’s comments would apply!
I believe we can look at Paul’s balanced approach here between the very liberal excess of extreme sexual freedoms that some were teaching to the ultaa-conservative or monk-like abandonment of any form of physical relationships taught by others.
There were those who taught ANYTHING physcial goes b/c God is not worried about the physical. Then there was a group whose focus and goals were in favor of total celibacy & abstinence from any form of physical contact.
In his answer Paul teaches that both positions were off base! In these verses Paul reveals much about marriage & how God views the marriage relationship & also how it relates to our relationship to Him:
God’s Desire for the Marriage Relationship (v1-5)
1Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” “…matters about which you wrote…” & “sexual relations”
As we have already learned, there were many in the church at Corinth who were being led to believe that it was ok to quench their God given/God driven desire for intimacy thru sexual promoscuity. These teachings had led to many people living lives that were not an appropriate witnesses for the Lord.
BUT there was another group that had reacted in the totally opposite direction. Apparently they had written to Paul to ask the question, “Is ANY form of sexual relations appropriate for the believer?”
Greek – hopp-toh-mye - literally to set fire to or to attach oneself to…a physical touch leading to an intimate burning desire.
This group’s focus & goals were in favor of total celibacy & abstinence from any form of sexual contact. In his answer Paul implies their position to be a bit of an over-reaction!
He offers a short but clear answer in v2 revealing that neither marriage NOR the intimate relationship within the marriage is wrong, but it is blessed by God.
2But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. “sexual immorality” Greek – por-nayah – represents sexual misconduct activity outside of a God Approved Marriage. Paul describes a God Approved Marriage from Gen 2:24; a marriage of one man, one wife… and a life of faithfulness in their relationship!
He continues his answer in v3-4 by sharing some details about this very intimate relationship between husband and wife…
3The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
Now Paul uses this opportunity to explain the intimacy & surrender that comes with the married relationship. He is basically revealing that it is a relationship where YOU seek to meet the needs and desires of your spouse… NOT yourself!
In other words, husbands when you get married it is your responsibility to put yourself in the background… your desires, your needs, your wants… and you must focus on the need, desires and wants of your wife!
Likewise the wife must do the same thing… put yourself in the background… all your desires, needs & wants and you are to focus on your husband’s desires, needs & wants!
I want us to understand that Paul’s approach here comes from a relational focus and to illustrate his point, Paul is using the most intimate act of the marriage relationship.
However, when we look at the context of this passage we can readily see that the sexual part of the marriage relationship is NOT truly the entire focus of Paul’s argument BUT that just the illustration to elighten us all about the entire marriage relationship.
In other words, what Paul is saying is that our focus in this mariage relationship is to be a laser focus ON our spouse! Zeroed in and focused on them alone… and it cannot be on what we want or desire.
Now if we see this from a spiritual perspective. We know that the relationship we have in Christ is compared to a marriage… the church is called the bride of Christ.
As believers, we are in a spiritually intimate relationship with Christ! So, this means that when we enter into that relationship with Christ that our focus must NO longer be upon ourselves and our desires!
BUT since we are married to Christ and in that marriage to Christ OUR lives belong to Him! Our focus must be solely upon Him!
But preacher, how can totally committing to my spouse help me with my walk with God? Well Paul’s premise here is that when we give God our entire focus, he is going to provide all we need in ALL our relationships! Look at v5
5Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Paul illustrates his point be sharing that those who are married MUST be totally sold out in their attitude toward their spouse!
This is because if you are NOT totally sold out & focused on them & their needs & desires-- then you will become distracted & they can also become distracted & then you both begin to seek your own way, and your own desires! This self-focus can & will leads you AWAY from a devout relationship with your spouse!
Look what Paul says in v5a, “…do NOT deprive one another…” in other words don’t lose your focus on each other. Don’t lose sight of your responsibility to meet your spouse’s needs.
Again, the illustration Paul uses here is about sexual intimacy within the marriage relationship, but we can see clearly that this principle applies to ALL areas of our relationship!
These teachers were advocating either total depravity and anything goes OR they were preaching TOTAL celibacy even within the marriage relationship! However, Paul says that is NOT what should be happening.
Paul does not discount extended periods of ‘fasting’ from that phyiscal relationship within the marriage BUT he does not advocate total celibacy within the marriage relationship.
He does make a suggestion of periods of celibacy within the marriage relationship… a time agreed upon by BOTH spouses! This is a time where there is a more intimate focus on their relationship with God!
We find Paul saying that the intimacy God had planned for the marriage relationship is to be keep pure… that pure relationship helps to keep Satan from dragging us down into the muck and mire… keep it pure so you can serve as He has called you to serve!
When we look at the context of this passage we can see that Paul’s view on marriage and the sexual intimacy of the marriage relationship was NOT his main focal point here, but that he was focusing in on the entire marital relationship.
Paul then begins to teach about our relationship with Christ and how it must ALSO be laser focused…let’s look at v6-9:
God’s Desire for Our Service Relationship to Him [to be FOCUSED] (v6-9)
Paul was NOT against marriage, but Paul did believe that a person could live this life without the intimacy of the marriage relationship. He even encourages it to those who are not married to consider staying single and focused on God!
Now, I want us to understand that what Paul is saying here is from his heart and from his perspective. He also makes it clear that this is not a godly commandment but merely his perspective of how one can serve God more proficiently and effectively! Look what he says…
6Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. 7I wish that all were as I myself am...
Paul wishes that ALL were as he was, single and celibate and focusing his life on serving God and advancing the Kingdom. Paul believed his laser like focus was because he did not have the ‘distraction’ of another in his life. Allowing him to focus ALL of who he was on Christ!
This did not mean that Paul believed another relationship was wrong, but that he believed he could serve better by making the choice to stay free of any relationship in the flesh.
However, he understood that we were NOT all wired like he was… we all do not possess the same personalities and gifts. He says in v6b & 7:
But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. 8To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.
Now here what we see is Paul’s opinion on what HE believes to be the best approach to serving God. He believes that being single with NO distractions is best! We need to understand that Paul was a man of prayer and deeply in tune with God, so his opinion is one we should take very seriously!
However, he qualifies this belief with an acknowledgment that ALL of us have gifts from God and those gifts makes us unique and different! Meaning that he understood not everyone could live life as he had chosen to live it…
In other words… what Paul is saying is that there are some who can live without the physical intimacy of the marriage relationship and be spiritually focused on Christ alone, like him… Paul makes the suggestion that the unmarried and the widows should consider living like this…
This was NOT Paul taking a shot at marriage OR did he want those IN a marriage relationship to ditch their marriage and take to the life he has chosen… actually it was quite the contrary…
9But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
The celibate life and a life of singleness carries with it great focus and the ability to remained focused on God’s plan and purpose and not be distracted by the temptation of the flesh.
Paul is saying here that if your singleness & celibacy become a distraction, then you should marry to take that distraction away… it is better to marry and have the distraction of a God honored relationship than to be weighed down with the burden of passion and temptation that leads to sin!
Now we MUST understand Paul is NOT saying that married people have no self control, but this is a reference to the focus we have in life. There are some who have a laser focus on their walk with God and they do not allow anything to distract them from that walk.
There are others who are distracted by certain things and when it comes to burning with passion, Paul says to marry so that you won’t burn with passion, but that your marriage will remove that distraction and allow you to serve God where He desires you to serve!
The point Paul is making here is that sexual sin tempts ALL of us to some extent, but that some are able to withstand that temptation and others the mere temptation of sexual sin is a stumbling block!
So, what Paul is saying here is that if physical/sexual temptation is going to cause you to sin, then marry and don’t allow your passions to drive or determine your actions…
Paul wanted us to know and understand that our service to Christ was paramount… that all we do and how we live must be tied to how we serve Christ!
Paul then goes from those who are NOT married BACK to those who are married and he addresses the divorce issue. But I want us to see how Paul takes what is an ugly thing and reveals how beautiful it can be if we seek to serve God first over our own wants and desires!
God’s Desire to Reveal His Love thru the Marriage Relationship (v10-16)
One thing I want us to take notice of here is that Paul is teaching the SAME thing Jesus taught in Matthew ch5 & ch19. He says in v10-11:
10To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord):
Now we know that Paul starts off offering his own perspective on marriage, but here I want us to see that what he is about to say is NOT his opinion, but that it is a teaching of the Lord!
Paul says, I charge you… but he qualifies it by saying, “not I, but the Lord” meaning that people I am telling you this but this doesn’t come from me, but it comes directly from the teaching of our Lord… Paul is merely reminding these believers of that teaching and pointing out what Jesus taught! He tells them that:
…the wife should not separate from her husband 11(but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.
When we understand the context of what Paul is saying here. We find him using 2 separate terms here in these verses but BOTH words represent a divorce or the ending of a marriage.
In v10 Paul says that the wife should not ‘separate’ or ‘leave’ her husband. The word he uses is Khor-id-zoh which is a word that means to separate or divide OR to depart from… basically a picture of a woman making the decision to no longer live with the man she has married and so she separates herself from the situation, effectively ending the marriage.
Now in the 1st century women did not have the same legal rights as men and it could be that Paul used this word because a woman could walk away or separate herself from her marriage but she had no power to legal end the marriage…
In v11 Paul uses another term for the man, he uses the Greek term ah-feh-ay-mee which is a term that means divorce or to send away. In most cases in the Bible the Greek word app-oh-loo-oh is used for divorce, which means to send away. However the term Paul uses was a more legal term… a legal maneuver that gave the man his freedom instead of just send her away, he forced her out!
From any perspective tho’ both word result in the same action and that is the permanent and legal end to the marriage. We can see that the man’s version of divorce is more legally binding but that Paul viewed the woman’s ability to leave the marriage as just as damaging to the union.
I say this but in v13 it seems Paul to indicate a woman could divorce her husband. But when the woman took the initative to leave… there was a different outlook on things by society!
According to Scripture and Jesus’ teaching in Matt 19, there is only one way a person can be free from their marriage. That is infidelity by the spouse. Jesus taught that if that happened they were free to leave the marriage.
Now Jewish law had allowed for divorce and it had been established by Moses, but as Jesus taught, it was established because of the hardness of the people’s hearts & their unwilling obedience to God’s covenant for marriage.
Here Paul is saying that NEITHER the husband NOR the wife should leave the marriage, BUT if they do leave, then that means they should NOT to marry again.
Paul is calling these believers (and all believers) to live the life he was living… and that is a life TOTALLY focused on God! A life without physical distraction…
Now, after Paul dealth with the believers who were currently IN a marriage… He begins to deal with the believers who were in a marriage with an unbeliever. This was fairly common in Corinth as SO many of the church had come out of a pagan lifestyle and NOT all spouses chose to follow their spouse in becoming a believer.
Paul began to deal with the believers who were saved & their spouse who was NOT saved. The implication here was that an extremely radical teaching had been going thru the church in Corinth… they seemed to be teaching that the saved spouse should leave the unbelieving spouse because it somehow would defile them… BUT Paul disagrees…
12To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. 13If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him.
This passage reveals that Paul does not have any direct teaching from Jesus to reference for his advice… BUT is relying on his direct sense of God’s leading in his life!
This is NOT a direct command from the Lord, and Paul teaches that believers should NOT leaving their unbelieving spouse…there were some who were teaching that for a saved person to have marital relations with an unsaved person that it would make them unclean and defile them as believers.
Paul advocate just the opposite… in fact he says that the believing spouse would bring God’s favor to the marriage…
Paul’s advises that the believer BE the witness of Christ’s love in the relationship! To stay with their spouse and love them, basically to show a love that could only be attributed to Christ!
We do things that God is not pleased with and can you imagine if God’s love was ANYTHING like ours, He would simply throw up his hands and walk away… he would more than likely give us a paper of divorce… but He does NOT do this, He sticks with us!
Here Paul is calling on the believer to allow Christ to reflect in their lives by staying with their unbelieving husbands and wives and Paul goes on to give a logical reasoning FOR this advice!
14For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
Paul was speaking to the witness of the believer TO the unbelieving spouse… When we as believers LOVE like this it represents how Christ loves us and it gives the unbelieving spouse a picture of God’s love for them!
So many people reject God simply because they don’t believe God really would save them… they feel their lives have been FAR to messed up and filled with sin for God to have anything to do with them, so they just ‘give up’ on God.
A believing spouse revealing the LOVE of God in their marriage to their unbelieving spouse is a TREMENDOUS witness and Paul believes it is a manner in which these unbelieving spouses can and will come to Christ and be saved! Look what he says:
14For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband.
We are called to be witnesses for Christ… a witness TO the world OF His love, mercy, grace and forgiveness… we are called to be a witness of the salvation He has brought into our OWN lives!
If we live this out in front of our unsaved, unbelieving spouses… we are being obedient to God AND we may be able to win our spouse to Christ!
But NOT only does our witness extend to our spouses but to the children of our marriage as well. Paul says:
Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
There are blessings that follow those who serve the Lord and those blessings are NOT experienced in a vacuum. The blessing from the Lord upon those who believe also fall upon the family of that one who follows the Lord!
This means the spouse as well as the children. HOWEVER, we MUST understand that what Paul is speaking of here when he says that the unbelieving family member is made holy because of the believing family member… that does NOT mean salvation!
What it means is that the family [because of the saved family member] enjoys the moral and spiritual impact of the life of the saved family member… the family is set apart because of the one who is saved… set apart in a very special place as an object of God’s devotion to His children.
But often when one spouse receives Christ and places their full trust and faith in Christ and their allegience is pledged to Christ… it can cause disruption within the family and often times it can cause the other spouse to leave the marriage!
15But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace.
Here the teaching is clear… that if a believer tries to make the marriage work with an unbeliever and the unbelieving spouse leaves… then Paul is saying that they cannot be held accountable to their unbelieving spouses actions and that are free from the marriage.
Again this is yet another picture of salvation and Christ’s love for His creation. Christ calls all to salvation but there will be some who simply cannot submit to His lordship and they will turn and walk away.
God is NOT going to chase them down and twist their arms to be saved or obedient to Him, but instead He allows our free will to make a choice… we can turn and leave and He will NOT chase us down… as much as it would hurt him for us to turn our backs on Him… He would not do anything to force our love for him.
So if you are married and your unbelieving spouse chooses to walk away from the relationship, you are free to remarry. But you need to seek reconciliation before letting go…
God seeks reconciliation with us all and even draws us with His H.S. but he is NOT going to twist our arms to become a part of His kingdom.
16For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
Paul mentions in this last verse as to why he does NOT advocate leaving your non-believing spouse… You just may be the one to lead him or her to Christ! You never know what your witness is doing to the world around you!
God’s view of marriage is a direct parallel view of His salvation for all humanity… we must be focused in our walk with Him and we cannot allow distractions to take away from our walk with Him.
GIVE invitation for believers…does your relationship with your spouse reflect your relationship with God?
GIVE invitation for non-believers…what are you seeking today? Is what you seek filling your heart? Or do you find yourself constantly searching for the next thing to satisify your soul?
