Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the truth from your word. Lord, I pray that it would be helping us today. Lord, that it would be anointing those areas in our lives where perhaps we have had abrasions from life, disappointments and hopes, Lord, or even expectations for the future. Lord, we are so thankful that your word is so good and does all of those things. Lord, we are thankful for not only your word, but for the institution of marriage.

We recognize that there are people who will never open up a Bible of their own accord, but they will see happily married couples going into their second, third, fourth decade together and wonder what is different about that. And Lord, for us to be able to live in such a way that we can show Christ is such an honor and such a wonderful thing no matter how that happens. But Lord, what a special place in your plan and in our lives is the relationship between a man and a woman, a husband and a wife, as a representative of Christ and the church. Lord, I pray that we would never take that for granted, and that we would honor you by honoring our spouses, that we would love you by loving our spouses. Lord, we would proclaim Christ by living together the way you would have us in the bond of unity, in peace, and looking forward to the day when you will not only make the disappointments go away, the problems go away, the sin nature go away, but you will make all things new.

And we look forward to that and we thank you that you've given us our marriages as a way to be disciples of Christ. We pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen. Right, my passage that I have is from 1 Peter and the, so if you want to be working there, if you have your Bible with you, 1 Peter 3.7, a passage that's already been alluded to twice so far, and I'm thankful for that. And I've got to say I'm thankful for coming to a marriage conference where there is biblical teaching rather than pop psychology. So much of what is out there, so much of when you have people who come to you in crisis as a couple, so much of the struggle is working your way through the weeds of pop psychology first.

The things that they've tried to do that is from a completely wrong foundation. And before I go on to say the things that I want to say from God's Word myself. I want to highly recommend to you Scott's book. Now, last time I was up in front of a bunch of people with Scott with a book table next to me. I said, if you want this book and can't afford it, I will buy it for you.

Now evidently someone else has already taken that burden from me. But honestly, what I love about this book is it is a book on marriage from a pastor's perspective, not a Christian counselor's perspective. And I'm not nothing against Christian counselors. And if they're biblical Christian counselors, I'm all for them. But a pastor approaches things differently.

A counselor tends to say, what's wrong? Let's deal with that. A pastor tends to say, what saith the Lord? And moves from there. And that is a book that does that.

And I really can't recommend it highly enough. So there's that. I'm sure all the rest of the books are fabulous, but that one there on the end, and I will, I will pay for it if you can't afford it. I don't mind doing that. It's worth it to me.

And I don't even say you have to read it. Okay? So there's grace because here's the thing. Here's what I've noticed. I buy Lots of books I don't read.

But you know what happens? Sometimes life happens, and then you go to your bookshelf and say, you know what, I've had this book for like five, six years, and I've always meant to read it. And the Lord, especially if it's filled with scripture, uses that to just hit you right where you need it. So there's that, that's my endorsement there. Why do people get married?

I wanted to start with that question. Because I think a lot of people have the wrong ideas. And even the people who have the right ideas have the right ideas, but they're in the wrong order. OK? Why do people get married?

And this is a question that Christians are not the only ones asking themselves. In 2019, Pew Research did a survey of people and they asked, why do people get married? And perhaps unsurprisingly, the number one reason for getting married was love. Now I wonder how many of the people that said love even really know what that means, right? Because we know love is exemplified by Christ sacrificing himself and giving everything for those he loved in order to open an avenue for our love to come back towards him.

I think most people when they think love, they think that little gushy feeling they get when the dopamine factor in their brain hits the soft spot in their heart and they kind of melt because, you know, that other person is so dreamy and whatever. And I won't go into that in detail, but that's not love. The second, and these are in order of priorities, in order of response, is secure companionship. Which is, I guess, love just less gushy, I'm guessing, what they're thinking is kind of that thing that once the chemical side of love has stabilized that thing that good marriages have left. And I don't know, even within non-Christian circles, how many people want a bad marriage?

You know, I mean, people want love. They want good companionship. And security in companionship. And boy, we live in a world where people are asking a lot of really strange questions. I mean, Scott was already mentioning whether I'm a boy or a girl is like an odd question for people to be asking themselves or both or neither.

You know, I mean, That's a strange world we live in, but there are people that are, why should we get married? We are living in this world in every way married except in name. Very, very common for people. Many of the people that we run into in the world and sometimes in the church, their questions of why would I get married are completely different than the people that are raised under kind of a biblical guidance on how to do this whole process. And so for them, secure companionship is important because so many people have companionship but it's not secure.

People are like, we're going to do everything with each other but we don't know whether that person is even going to be there tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year. And they see marriage as a way of increasing that, making that longer. Sadly, however, for many, not much longer. But of course, for the Christian view of marriage, marriage is till death do us part. And so certainly that is part of what a Christian looks for.

The third most important thing that people find in getting married is financial stability. The fourth is a stable place to have and raise children. And I think this is interesting. This is, they're asking everybody. I mean, these are the responses that are there.

There were a handful of other responses that were like the under 2% responses, but these four were the main ones. The question I ask myself is, are these good reasons for marriage? Do people Want love and does marriage Create a place for love. I would say that is a good thing and a proper thing for marriage to do for people is it a place for secure companionship I would say It should be you know if you've got one person you can count on to have your six, it should be your spouse. Is it a place for financial stability?

Well, I'm not so sure about that since I'm a pastor, but I think there is a relationship there and I think a good relationship there. You're caring not just for yourself, you're caring for a group. And you have to think forward more. You have to be more savvy financially. You have to be more financially planning.

And I actually think that's A good thing. One of the major reasons why people come with problems in their marriage is because their finances are a disaster and it's causing 10 kinds of stress in their life. Very, very common. And then the fourth, children. Well, we have 10, so you know I'm all about children, and I've heard from others in this room that there's other children that have many, many children also.

And what a great thing about marriage, that it is a place to raise the next generation for the things that are important to you. And of course for the Christian, that's Christ, among other things. And so those are all good. But what was, at least to me, conspicuously missing from the list, though not surprisingly, is the glory of God. I wonder if anybody in the 3, 500 people that they surveyed even had the glory of God cross their mind.

I wonder how many Christians were part of that group who did not even have the glory of God cross their mind. My talk that I want to give from 1 Peter 3.7 is to try to help us understand why marriages are critical for the glory of God. Whether you're married, if you're married and you've been married a long time, that relationship that you have with your spouse, that stable, loving, long-term relationship should be something that you use for the glory of God. Maybe you've got several kids at home. You are in the middle of the child raising years and it is crazy all the things that are going on.

You're coming to this marriage retreat because you're like, I just want to spend a little time just with my spouse because otherwise I don't see her much amongst all the children. What you're doing ought to be for the glory of God. Maybe you're early in the process and you're just married or you've had maybe one child and you're looking, you're like, I wanna start early and I wanna cement this thing down so that the road before me is a good marriage. I want you to do what you do now in your marriage for the glory of God. And let's say you're a young person.

Do we have any unmarried people in this audience? Not married, raise your hand. You probably would like to have a good marriage. A good marriage will be a marriage to the glory of God. And by the way, and maybe everybody that's unmarried here already has a perspective possible someone in their heads and so they're already kind of starting down that route but perhaps you don't have any perspective someone's in your head and if your parents you might have people in there your kids who don't have a perspective someone in in your head How do you find that right person?

Here's what the world says. Is there love? Is it a secure companionship? Will you have financial stability? Will they make a good mother or a good father?

You know what? Like I already said, I'm all for all of those things. But here's what really matters. Is it for the glory of God? When you're not married yet, your number one question about the person you're looking at as a possibility is, do they draw me closer to Jesus, or do they drive me farther away?

And when I speak to young people about preparing your heart for marriage, that's the main thing I want them to know. Because so many people are like, I just feel more goosy around this person than anyone I've ever felt goozy around before And I and I'm like, you know what? When it comes between goozy and Jesus, I don't care about your goozy Because what you need to do now is the same thing you need to do as a believer your whole life is choose Jesus and follow him. And so 1 Peter 3 has all these great words that I could talk about and have in some ways been alluded to already about how husbands and wives should be. You have the gentle quiet spirit phrase which is such a great one for the ladies.

First Peter 3 7, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. I mean, you've got this whole thing is how kind of the marching orders for couples. It's in some ways parallel to Ephesians 5 where Paul gives very important words to the husbands, the wives, the fathers, the parents, the children. But in this, Peter tells us why. And that's right in the middle of verse 7, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life.

And here's what I want to do is I want to have you think about eternity. And I realize that's a thing for someone to do in a marriage conversation. Like I don't know if I've ever heard of any marriage comforts. What I want to do in my talk is have you think about eternity. Because most people, wait, wait, why would I think about eternity?

Eternity has nothing to do with marriage? Right. We know that because Jesus said there's no marriage or giving in marriage in heaven. So whatever Benefits you find in marriage whatever hardships you find in marriage they're blissfully gone by the time you're translated into glory. So who cares?

I would suggest that that attitude is part of what is wrong with America and the church in America today is we are thinking about the glorious now. And we are so concerned about the glorious now that we're doing a lot of really stupid things now. Because it might be a slight benefit in the immediate future because we don't really care about the ultimate future. Many people when they get married, when they try to process their life with their spouse, when they try to improve their marriage, they want a solution now. Your solution may not be now.

Your stubborn husband and nagging wife may be stubborn and nagging till the day you die. And God allowed that person, I would even say, put that person in your life. And my question is, why? Why? And the answer is, to make you more like Jesus.

And so as we think about eternity, and that's what Peter does for us here, we pull eternity back into the present. He says we should do these things, gentle quiet spirit, loving understanding for the wife, loving understanding for the husband, because of eternity. Because they are heirs with you of the grace of life. And so I just want to talk about three important ideas, three Reasons why we should do all the other things that other people are going to talk about today to make your marriage better Number one is because together You are realizing if you're believers together. You are realizing a spiritual inheritance.

You are realizing a spiritual inheritance. Most of you know what an inheritance is, right? Some of you may have expectations of inheritance someday. If you're a believer, you have an expectation of an inheritance someday, right? God's Word tells us that God is going to give us certain things because we're His children.

We have that as an inheritance. 1 Peter 1 verses 3 and 4. Peter writes, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance. An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading kept in heaven for you.

If you're a believer, you have a great hope for the future, no matter how hard the moment looks. But here's the beauty of our spiritual inheritance. We know that we will get it all someday, and God in His grace gives part of it to us today. In fact, we are like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. I hope you all know that story well enough to not have to go through it.

But the prodigal son goes off, lives badly, comes back home. Father throws a feast and the older brother throws a fit. And then the father has to go out to get him. He's just close enough to hear the party going on inside the house. But he's not close enough to be part of the party.

He's one of those stubborn pouty men that feel like circumstances are pushing him ways that he doesn't want to go. And this is something that we don't usually make a deal about. Mostly the deal we make about when we talk about that story is, are you tired of eating pig slop? You know, that's usually what we say, but for the one that is home, the message is the inheritance is already yours. Everything here is yours.

Celebrate with us that your brother has returned home. This young man is Living at home under the family roof eating the family food Taking care of the family animals and he says to his dad you didn't even give me a little goat to eat with my friends and His dad says it's all yours We have an inheritance And if you're married to a believer, so do they. And we are living in the family house, surrounding by God's bounty of good things. And we need to enjoy and appreciate that. And by the way, this co-heirs of God's grace of life should remind us that ultimately what we have in Christ is not because of how special we are but because of how special Christ is.

We were adopted into this family not because we had so much good going for us, but because Jesus had so much good going for us. And Sometimes when we think about a good marriage, we think, you know, what I want is I want my wife to be an amazing woman because that will help me be an amazing man. And the wife may be thinking, I want my husband to be an amazing man because that will help me to be an amazing woman. I can't tell you how many times I've had and I always dislike it when one person from the couple comes for counseling. I don't know if you guys have experienced this, but if you do much counseling, this is one of the things that happen.

They sit down across from you in a room and they say, I want to tell you everything that's wrong with my spouse and I want you to tell me how I can make them the spouse I always wanted to have so that I could be the Christian that God wants me to be. And I think Here's the first thing you need to know. Our love for our spouse should be like the love of Jesus for the church. And remember what Jesus said as he was going to the cross as he prayed in the garden. He said, let this cup pass from me.

And I think that's his humanity saying, we don't like hard things. You know, I think that's legitimate. That's what Jesus was saying. We don't like hard things. We don't like painful things.

We don't like disappointing things. We don't like spiritually, physically, emotionally difficult things, and Jesus was on the cusp of all of that. But he prayed to the Father, nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. And I wonder how many marriages would be incredibly benefited if that single spouse that feels like the other just doesn't care said, you know what? I'm gonna take up my cross and follow him.

And it may not go the way I want it to go, but it's not about that. It's not about the emotional love, the secure companionship, the financial stability, or the children. It's about the glory of God. And this is me following Jesus well. The other thing I want to remind you while we're under inheritance is, inheritances always leave some doubt until someone dies.

And here's the beauty of our inheritance in Christ, is Christ has already died for our inheritance. It has been sealed by his blood. Hebrews chapter 9 talks about this, verses 15 through 17. He sealed the covenant for us. This is our inheritance.

And so what we do for him, this is what we look forward to. We are heirs of the grace of life together. Second, a marriage, if it is the way it ought to be, should be something where we exhibit our exhibition of God's grace. We should use our marriages as a way to show God's grace for God's glory. And let me just say, there's four possible types of marriage relationships in this room.

I'm going to leave aside the unmarried for a second. Number one, both of you love the Lord, desire to serve the Lord, and you're hoping to pick up some tidbits from this that will help you do those things that you're already doing. And I say to you, bless you, keep doing it and make yourself available to others who are struggling in their marriage as an example of what it looks like for the glory of God. The second person. Is the the second couple is the couple where you, the one that's hearing my voice right now, is the one who's trying, but Your spouse is not.

You care about spiritual things, and your spouse does not. Obviously, I'm hoping we have a room full of number one type couples. But honestly, there may be some of two and three, which would, depending on which person you are, if you're the eager one, you're taking notes, you're looking at me, you're nodding your head, your eyebrows are raised slightly, you know, all those things, you're probably that person. And if you look next to you and your spouse is looking on the phone to see what sports are going on. You know, that may be the other thing.

But there's, you know, you have, as the one who has the desire to give grace to Jesus, with a spouse who does not, you have avenues of showing God's grace and glory that the couple that is both trying does not have. That's the weird thing, isn't it? And you think, well, how could that be? Here's my answer. I don't know.

God tells us all things work together for good to those who love Him, who are called according to His glory. And you're like, Pastor, I don't get it. I don't either but here's what I know God gets it and That's enough for me. I Don't know why God gave you if you are this person a spiritual dud But I can tell you this that you can give glory to God in it. And here's how I know.

Jesus was given a bunch of spiritual duds. He picked them out knowing what he was getting. And he not only picked Peter, he picked Thomas. He not only picked Thomas, he picked Judas Iscariot. Why would he pick Judas Iscariot?

For the glory of God. Because when Judas came up to Jesus and kissed him, He betrayed Jesus in an intimate, horrific way that would, one, fulfill Scripture, and two, be a comfort and encouragement to anybody who's been totally stabbed in the back by someone they love desperately. So that's God's grace for you. Now what if you're the spiritual dud? What if you just got off your phone seeing what your 3, 000 friends on Facebook have had to say about your latest post about your children being perfect And you're just now listening and you heard the word spiritual duds and you thought to yourself dear me.

He might be talking to me Here's how the spiritual dud gives glory to God they repent and get serious about Jesus Christ. And when we are going through hard times or we are at the early part of our discipleship, we are so encouraged by those people that have gone through some of the things that we have gone through and Christ has gloriously, magnificently changed them. Now let's say neither of you want to be here. I might say, why are you here? But I actually know the answer.

That's the beauty of Scripture. You're here because God wanted you to be here. Because God had a purpose for you to be here and perhaps these next two minutes will be the whole purpose for you being here. When you see two people, when you see one person following the Lord, as a pastor you have hope. If it's the husband, you have hope.

If it's the wife, you have hope. You feel sorry for them, you pray for them, but you have hope. But if you see a couple coming to the church where neither of them cares, they're both duds, it's really easy to despair. To just say, you know what, I've seen this before. They come, they go.

The seed is sown, the birds come and pick the seed off, and it's like nothing ever happened. For a couple Who's in a dysfunctional marriage because of their sinful habits who have never put Jesus in charge of their life To suddenly realize Because we love each other and we want something better for ourselves. We are going to pursue Jesus like nobody's business. We are really going to put him first. You will be a blessing and a benefit for people around you that you can't believe.

What an exciting thing it is to see. I mean, if God, if there's rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents, how much more for two? And what a wonderful place for that to be, for people to say, you know, we've both been messing up. We've both not been doing this right. We've both been at loggerheads.

We've both been putting ourselves, our sinful passions, our desires first, and we're going to do this, not put the other person first, which is actually not bad for your marriage, but to put Jesus first and then the other person and then myself, what a wonderful transformative thing that would be. There, I'm guessing, is probably no one here that fits that category, but if you and your spouse are at home in your living room this evening asking Scott's questions of whether you're stubborn or nagging and you're like, you know what, actually we're just a complete mess. Here's what my recommendation to you is. Get off your lazy boy and onto your knees and pray that God would save your soul through Jesus Christ. Because if you don't care, I mean you really don't care about your marriage, You don't care about putting Christ first in your marriage.

There's something desperately wrong. And so any situation can be at work for God's grace. And the other thing that I just wanna say real quick is, let's say you get a tip, maybe something Scott says, one of his 10 points is drove to home and you're like, there it is, or you were listening to Scott LaPierre and you're like, you know, I realize now I'm just I'm really I am a nagging wife or a, you know, stubborn silent husband or whatever whatever the thing is and and you want to get that right. Let's say you do get that right. Again, we need to remember that we get it right for the glory of God.

In 2 Corinthians 9-8, it says, God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound to every good work." Whether that's getting on your knees before God and repenting, or it's taking a couple little tweaks so that a wonderful marriage becomes an even better marriage. That's God's grace. And He has more than enough grace for every situation. He's got more than enough grace for everything that you're dealing with. He has more than enough grace for everything that I'm dealing with.

He has more than enough grace for all of us and all of our things that we're dealing with. In Philippians 2.13, it says, is God who works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure. The end of 1 Peter 3, 7, it says, do these things so that your prayers may not be hindered. Husbands, are you praying for your wife? Are you praying for yourself?

Are you praying for your wife that she will be a godly woman that gives God glory? Are you praying for yourself that you'll be a godly man that gives him glory? Because if you go to God and say, Lord, I'd like you to stop making my wife such a nag, He may not do it. And for good reason. Because that's not what He wants from you.

Or if you go to the Lord and say, Lord, I'd like you to make my husband a spiritual leader, he may not do it. Because it's your husband's lack of spiritual leadership that may be the tool that God is using to press you onto your knees before Him. And when He does, it's His glory. We need to be praying that we are right before Christ and If you seek first the things of heaven, God takes care of the rest. And then lastly, we are living eternal life.

It says here, since there are errors with you to the grace of life. I love the phrase eternal life, everlasting life. I think sometimes Christians have a strange dichotomy in their life where they say there's the now time and then there's the heaven time. There's the things that we deal with now and then the things that we deal with in heaven and instead of preparing ourselves for heaven, we just wait. We just passively wait for God to finally fix the problem.

Eternal life begins when we turn our lives over to the Lord Jesus Christ. When God came in Christ, He came as life and life eternal. Jesus called himself the living water. In fact, while he's talking to the woman at the well, a person who's a complex, problematic marriage, non-marriage relationship. And I would imagine if this woman at the well had come, had somehow wandered into a marriage, things that are said about how to be a better husband, how to be a better wife would completely not apply to her because she's living with someone she's not married to and whether through death or misbehavior had squandered several marriages on the way.

Nagging and stubbornness, sorry Scott, are not her problem, ultimately. Ultimately her problem is she keeps coming to the well and every day she needs another drink and all it does is get her through the next several hours. Ultimately, what she needs is living water. And if you're a believer, you've already drunk that water. That's yours.

That's you. Jesus says to the woman at the well, whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." As we look at all the nuts and bolts of having great marriages, I'm all for the bolts. Husbands sometime in the next week, if you randomly buy your wife a bouquet of flowers, I'm like, good for you. You know, if you're in a tense relational conversational situation and husbands, you say, you know what, let's just stop and pray for a second rather than just keep drilling down on this difference of opinion. If things are going really well And you decide to add something like praying together regularly as a couple or something.

One of those things that are just, this is what good marriages, this is what people who have good marriages do. I'm all for it. It. But ultimately, the proper nuts and bolts come from the proper relationship with God. That the relationship that we have with Christ will lead to doing the right things.

And if you're a husband here today, and you say, you know what, I'm going to buy flowers for my wife, But you don't love her like Christ loves the church. You're just buying flowers because you've got a bad thing going and you want a better thing to go. Or a wife who says, you know, when I realize I'm drilling down on what he doesn't do around here. And I'm just going to stop suddenly in mid-sentence. Like why is it you never?

I'm sorry honey. I was just nagging you just now, wasn't I? Guys like, I don't want to talk about it. If you put those things into place but you don't get the heart of it right, it'll fail. We see this with kids all the time.

Kids are just human beings that you can see through their skin a little better, where their parents make them tow the nuts and bolts line. And they dot the I's and cross the T's and do the thing and as soon as they have freedom, They go off the rails. And there are spouses that are trying to dot the I's and cross the T's and have the good marriage and they keep coming back to marriage retreats and they like going to a church where there are healthy marriages that are showing what it looks like and they're trying to follow in those footsteps. And that's not bad. Just like well-behaved kids is not bad.

But if it's not a relationship with the Lord, a vibrant, living water relationship with Jesus Christ, it is hypocrisy. It is irrelevant, and it is setting them up not to give glory to Christ, but to bring reproach on the name of Christ. There may be some in this room that are this close, this close, to throwing reproach on the name of Jesus Christ. As you and your spouse call yourselves Christians, go to church, go to seminars, do these things and yet haven't really believed it. The solution is not to try harder.

The solution is not to do more things that show compassion, care, grace to your spouse. The solution is to get right with God, to get right with Christ, to embrace His love for us, to embrace His grace for us, to embrace His life for us. And in the end, whether our marriage is a feast of the Lord or a cross, We bring glory to him because we will follow him no matter what in Sickness and in health whether richer or poorer till death Not do us part but create us to be like Him when we see Him as He is. That's what marriage is picturing. And that's what I would pray for us.

And then when you do, the result is prayers that are not hindered. You'll spend more time praying together, And you'll spend less time doing the things that create unforgiving, bitter, prayer-stopping attitudes. I hope that each one of you comes out of this saying to yourself, I want my relationship with my spouse to be more like Christ, the way Christ wants it to be. And here's the difference. I want my talk to help you come across, not so you'll be more happy.

That's the trap. That's the trap. So that Christ would get more glory. Let's pray, Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Lord, We're thankful for all the great things that are in your word and this opportunity that we have today to hear from your word.

And Lord, I pray that you would speak through each each one of us, to each one of us, through those of us who are speaking. Lord, I pray as people converse with one another during this lunch hour that your grace would be permeating and moving throughout this room, that we would be an encouragement to one another. And Lord, especially in those relationships that we have with spouses, Lord, that your fingers of grace would be all over them. And Lord, that we would see them as not an opportunity to please ourselves, not an opportunity to get what we want, but an opportunity to please you and an opportunity for you to get what you want. I pray this for my marriage.

I pray it for each marriage in this room. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.