Open—Chuck Hendricks
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Now concerning the things whereof he wrote unto me, Evidently the the Saints at Corinth had written to the apostle questions regarding married life. It is good for a man not to touch a woman. And verse 7 For I would that all men were even as I myself.
Verse 8. The end of the verse. It is good for them if they abide.
Even as IA verse 26. I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress.
I say that it is good for a man so to be he's talking about.
Virgins, verse 37. Nevertheless he that standeth steadfast in his heart, having no necessity.
No need for married life, but hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in his heart, that he will keep his virginity. Thought doeth well.
So then he that I have to read this in a better translation to get the thought he that.
Marius doeth well, but he that maryth not doeth better.
He's clearly setting before us in this chapter.
That.
There is something superior to the married life.
And that is to remain unmarried. And he gives the reason that one might attend upon the Lord without distraction. Marriage brings problems.
It brings difficulties. It brings that which causes us to go out after the things of the world. He says that in verse.
32 I would have you without carefulness. I would have you without all the cares that come upon us when we have children and we go through married life. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord. How he may please the Lord. But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please not himself but his wife. And you'll notice that all the way through this chapter. And that's what I have before me.
It's not self love, it's not the gratification of fleshly lust, but it's the ministry in love to your partner to another. So he that is married it says careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. Verse 34. There is a difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.
But she that is married careth for the things of the world. How she may please her husband. And when we enter into marriage, we don't enter into it with the thought of pleasing ourselves. That would be a very worldly motive. But the marriage tie brings complications and it brings associations which cause us to go out after the things of the world that we might please our mate, our wife or our husband.
That's perfectly legitimate. It's allowed. It's it's not.
He says in verse 28, If thou Mary, thou hast not sinned, and if a Virgin Mary she hath not sinned. Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh, and I would spare you So there is a path that is higher even than the normal marriage path, and he clearly talks about that. But when he does talk about the married life, he talks about.
He views it from the Christian perspective, just exactly the opposite that it's viewed by the world.
In fact, the the whole viewpoint of the world in connection with this kind of thing is carnal and bestial and not of God at all. Now let's just look at those first verses we we can't refer you if you're a young married couple or contemplated contemplating marriage to a more beautiful formula for happiness in the married life.
Then we have in First Corinthians 7 and I would recommend to all of us who are married and young, contemplating marriage to read and to reread and to reread First Corinthians 7 over and over again and put it into practice.
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It's so simple and it's the formula for happiness in marriage.
There are spiritual needs, there are Solish needs and there are bodily needs, and this is what he talks about in the first part of the chapter. There's nothing wrong with those needs, there's nothing wrong with those desires, but they have to be channeled in the right channel.
And fulfilled in the marriage relationship. They're of God, They're God-given and therefore they are proper. He starts out in verse one. It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and every woman have her own husband. He recognizes that there are these natural drives in man, that if they are not fulfilled.
In marriage they will result in.
Being fulfilled in the relation in a relationship outside of marriage, and that's called fornication, which is sin. And so he says let every man have his own life and every woman have her own husband. Now here we come to the instruction.
The marriage relationship Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence, and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The whole Christian viewpoint, the viewpoint of love is love serves, love always seeks the good of its object.
If I'm a husband, I'm to love my wife. I'm to consider her. I'm to meet her needs, whether they're spiritual or soulish or physical, and to meet her needs and she's to meet my needs. And we're not to be out there to gratify our own needs, but we are to be in the attitude of love, seeking the good and the blessing and the fulfillment of the one we love. That's the way of love.
And if we had this before us, if every married couple, if the wife would always be looking to please her husband in every way and hear their hear. The apostle who was unmarried, but writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives the most wonderful counsel for happiness in the marriage relationship. Let the husband render to the wife do benevolence.
And likewise the wife to the husband. Verse 4. The wife hath not power of her own body and not talking about the spirit here the soul. He's talking about the body now and he says the wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband.
She belongs to him, and likewise the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. And if we put that into practice, there is so much that begins, so much trouble in families, so much trouble in Christian marriages, that it begins where this isn't practiced.
This is not carried out. We're not looking to see the need in in the other, the one that we are attached to for life and to fulfill that need to meet that need, whether it's a physical need or whether it's a spiritual need. Here he's talking about the physical need and he says I don't have power of my own body as a husband, but it's to be for my dear wife and vice versa.
And he says defrauding not one the other. Don't deprive one, don't deprive the other of that proper marital relationship if there's a need there. The the and the attitude of love. The whole world system about us is self love, self seeking, self gratification, doing it to please myself. The whole scene of lust out there is just for that.
What's in it for me? But the Christian perspective is what's in it for her or what's in it for him. The one that I love, the one that I'm united to. I want to please him. I want to please her.
What a change, What a difference that makes. I'm not in it for I'm not in the marriage relationship for what I can get out of it, but what I can give to the one that I have taken to be my wife or the one I've taken to be my husband. It's the way of love.
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And if you if you just carry that thought all the way through the 7th of First Corinthians, all the way through the Bible, the New Testament, it's the way of Christ. The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, not to be served, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom. For many, love seeketh not her own love, is always going out, always serving, always giving of itself to others.
And if you practice that dear wife and you practice that dear husband, there's going to be a happy relationship and the enemy will be defeated at the very point where he gets his thin edge of the wedge in to many of our families and split them in two.
Defraud ye not one the other, except it. Be with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency, your inability to contain yourself. There are these natural drives, and when two people are married, it means that they don't have the gift of celibacy. They're not able to live apart from that.
And so the Lord has brought them to seek a mate that's perfectly proper and owned of God. But that relationship is not entered into with the thought of now I can fulfill and gratify.
My desires it's entered into with the thought of satisfying and gratifying the needs and the desires of the one I love. So he says, I speak this in the way of permission, not of commandment, And he goes on.
And he talks about we'll just read the next few verses I would that all men were even as I myself he was without. He was unmarried. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner and another after that.
I say therefore to the unmarried and widows. It is good for them if they abide, even as I. To remain unmarried, he points out in this chapter, is to free one the South of the difficulties that.
Are brought upon us when we we get into marriage, have families, sickness comes in, trials, come in all kinds of problems that we are all acquainted with.
And he says I would have you without distraction, but only some are given that gift. And if you don't have that gift, it's perfectly proper to marry.
So he says in verse 9, If they cannot contain, they're not given the gift of celibacy. Let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with lust. Better to marry than to burn. And unto the married I command, yet not I but the Lord, let not the wife depart from her husband.
In Malachi 2, the Lord has many complaints against the remnant that had returned in the days of Ezra Nehemiah, and one of the things that He says to them, He says that you've dealt treacherously with the wife of your youth and with the wife of your covenant.
They had dealt treacherously with Jehovah, they had dealt treacherously, They had broken faith with their brother, and they had dealt treacherously with their wives.
They put some of them away. And so he says, The Lord hateth putting away, the Lord hateth putting away. And here he says unto the married I command not I, but the Lord, let not the wife depart from her husband. But if she depart, or if she have departed, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband, and let not the husband put away his wife. Clear instruction, Marriage is for.
A lifetime until death do us part. And God says I hate putting away, I hate divorce. There's only one condition that he allows it and that is fornication in the gospels. And then he goes on in this chapter to treat of another special case. It says in verse 11 if she depart here, we're talking about two married 2 Christians married to one another. Let her remain unmarried.
Or be reconciled to her husband, and let not the husband put away his wife. So if if there is a separation that has come into those who are Christians, he says in that separated position they are to remain unmarried or be reconciled. Those are the two options that they have, but not to obtain a divorce. And then he says in verse 12 to the rest speak I not the Lord, if any brother hath a wife, that believeth not.
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And she'd be pleased to dwell with him. Let him not put her away. That's just the opposite of what you get in Ezra.
Where they they found that they and Nehemiah, where they had married strange wives, and they had to put the strange wives away under the law, and they had to put the children away as being unclean. But here in Christianity if two people are married, and then they hear the gospel, and one of them embraces it and gets saved, and the other one is not saved, now the unsaved says to the saved partner, you've changed.
You're not the man I married. You don't love the things of the world like you used to, and you're the one that's changed. I haven't changed. And the unsaved wife says I'm not going to continue with you. If she says she will continue with him, then the instruction to him is.
Let him remain with her. He doesn't have to put her away, as was the case under the law, but any under grace. He didn't have to put her away, he was to remain with her. But what if she says I won't stay with you? Well, it says in verse 12, If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not he be pleased to dwell with her. Let her not leave him.
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife.
And the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband. Else were your children unclean?
In Ezra's day the children were unclean. The the the heathen wife was unclean, had to be put away. And they did it. They carried out that instruction. And then in Malachi day they were putting away their Jewish wives and marrying heathen wives. The very thing that they had acted faithfully in in in the days of Nehemiah, they now had reversed that they had fallen into such a low state Well.
He says now they're holy, your children are holy. In Christianity it's different if just one of the partners of the marriage relationship is saved, that children are holy, and the the the saved one doesn't have to put the unsaved one away. But what if the unsaved 1 The unbeliever departs verse 15. If the unbelieving depart, let him depart, let him or her depart. A brother or a sister is not under ******* in such cases.
But God hath called us to peace. So in that case.
For the gospel reaches a couple that were married in both of them unsaved, and one of them gets saved and the other one, the unsaved partner leaves and says, I can't live with you any longer. You're not the man, you're not the woman I married and they leave. The word is to the believer, let it. Let them depart. You can't retain them.
You're not under ******* in such cases if they had to remain with them.
They had to continue considering themselves married to that person. What a ******* that would be. It would be a constant life.
Of conflict of the saved one, the one who is light in the Lord, married to the unsaved one, the one who is darkness. The one who has the mind of the Spirit, And going after the things of the Spirit yoke to the one that has nothing but the mind of the flesh, and desiring the things of the flesh.
So the Spirit of God says you're not in *******. In such cases, let them go. You're not in ******* you're free. And that's an exceptional case, not taken up in the Gospels. But here the Apostle Paul takes it up under the direction of the Holy Spirit to give guidance in that special case where the gospel has been received by one of the partners and they have become a child of God.
And the other one refuses to continue with them. He doesn't lay upon the believer.
An insuperable burden of *******. But the word is let them depart. You're not in ******* in such cases. Well, at the end of the chapter, verse 39, the apostle says the wife is bound by the law as long as her husband live it. But if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be to be married to whom she will.
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Only in the Lord. So death breaks the bond, and when the bond is broken, she's at liberty to be married to whom she will only in the Lord. Now I take that in the same way with.
Verse 15 A brother or sister.
Is not in ******* in such cases. Not in *******. Not bound as it reads in the new translation, is the, is the.
Bond is broken, and there's liberty then to be married to another. But God's thought in marriage is the giving of oneself to his partner, as there is a need.
In the partner and to meet that need, it's the way of love. It's just the opposite of the way of self gratification, the way of the flesh, the way of self. It's always looking out, whether it's in a bodily way or a soulless way or a spiritual way, always looking out for the blessing of your wife or your husband. That's basically.
What I wanted to bring before us and I would strongly encourage all young married couples to read and to put into practice 1St Corinthians 7 and you will have.
I believe a happy life, a life of giving, a life of giving, of yourself for the good and blessing of your partner.
For the enduring.
Of that union which is to set forth Christ.
And the church.