Dr. Street is a professor of mine. Many of you know that I've gone back, I'm getting another master's degree in biblical counseling this time, and Dr. Street's actually the chair of that program out at masters in Los Angeles. And he's been a wonderful professor so far, and hopefully this will help me with some coming classes in the coming months.

Maybe this will give me some brownie points, I don't know if that'll actually work out. But he's a professor there, department of the chair, and chair for the graduate programs in biblical counseling at masters university and seminary in Santa Clarita, California. In addition to this, his ministry there at TMU, he serves as an elder and lay pastor there at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley.

He's a second generation pastor, giving more than 40 years to pastoral ministry. He planted a church called Clear Creek Chapel in Springboro, Ohio, where he built a strong counseling program there as well, and a training center, and he currently serves as the president of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, ACBC.

He's married to Janie, who we've gotten to know through correspondence with all the logistics for this conference, for 41 years, and they have four children and six grandchildren. So many of you are probably able to relate with that. Let me say this, he has a lot of things that he does.

He travels all around the country and teaches, and preaches, and shares in conferences and all around the world. But tonight, and tomorrow, and Sunday, he's all ours. Amen? He's all ours. So, brother, why don't you come on up? - It is a great pleasure to be here. I've been praying for this for a long time.

Now, I wanna share with you why it's so important for me to be here, because I still have three grandchildren that are visiting us from New Brunswick, Canada, at our home right now, and I left them, all right, to come to be with you. So that shows you. I didn't realize how good I was at spoiling until I became a grandfather.

I'm gifted at it, I'm really gifted at it. And I know some of you are wondering, "What is a guy that looks 25 years of age doing with six grandchildren?" But we do have six grandchildren, three of them are out there with my wife, and that's the reason why my wife's not here.

She would normally be here, but she's bidding farewell to those three kids and our daughter as they go back to Canada. That's where they live and serve, and serve in a great church there as well. It's a pleasure to be here at First Baptist, and I know there are a lot of other churches that are represented here, and so hopefully I'll get a chance to meet some of you and welcome you as well.

All right, in order to get all of our sessions started, let's begin with a word of prayer and then we're going to jump right in, okay? Gracious Father, we would be remiss if we did not ask the Holy Spirit to work in our lives tonight, and tomorrow, and Sunday.

We can explain what the Word of God says very carefully and clearly, but it really is up to the work and the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit to work in people's lives to transform them. And I would pray, dear Lord, I don't care how good a marriage is or how difficult it is, that the marriages will be changed for the better as a result of this weekend.

We're going to go to your Word. It is inspired, it is authoritative, it is superior to anything that man has to offer, and it is all-sufficient because it reflects the very character of its author, and that is an all-sufficient God. And I pray, Father, that as we look into the Word of God and the authority it has in our lives, that it will transform us and transform our marriages in order to be the type that would be honoring and pleasing to you.

This we pray in Christ's name, amen. If you have your Bible with you, if it's electronic version or a dead tree version, which is paper, all right, take your copy of the Word of God, and we want to go over to Romans chapter 12 to begin with, and I want to nail down a theme verse for this entire weekend.

This is something I want you to think about. Because when this weekend is over and somebody says to you, "Hey, what'd you do this weekend?" You can say, "You know, I went to a marriage conference." "Oh, you did? Well, what happened there?" "Well, I want you to be able to say that at that marriage conference, I learned how to hate more." I want you to be able to say that.

Romans chapter 12 verse 9, "Let love be genuine, abhor or hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good." "I went to a marriage conference this weekend, and I learned how to hate more." I'm absolutely convinced that in the day and age in which we live, we talk so much about love, we don't talk enough about hate.

We've got to learn to hate evil. And at the conclusion of this weekend, I want you to be able to look back upon everything that we've learned and say, "I've learned to hate those aspects of my life that are evil, that are sinful. The wrong attitudes I have, the wrong reactions I have, the wrong words that come out of my mouth, I've learned to hate those things because I want to cling to that which is good.

I want to love that which is good because I know that this pleases my Lord in heaven." And that's going to be our theme throughout the weekend. So when somebody says to you, "What did you do this weekend? I went to a marriage conference, and I learned how to hate more.

I learned how to hate my own sin more. That's what I learned to do this weekend." We don't do that enough. We coddle our sin. We feed our sin. No wonder we get into trouble when that happens. No wonder there's so much conflict that goes on in marriages because we've allowed these things to preexist for a long, long time.

Now, in order to set the foundation for everything that we want to do, this session tonight, we want to talk about God's design for marriage so that we're all on the same page. God's design for marriage. This is very important. Why do I say that it's important? Well, because there are a lot of different perspectives out there in the world as to what marriage is supposed to be.

And you begin to realize that there are a lot of marriages that are in trouble. Maybe you don't know it because they put on a good show on Sunday or around other people, but those marriages are nevertheless in trouble. I've been counseling marriages for over 45 years now. I understand this.

I've sat across the table from dozens upon dozens upon dozens of marriages that were in struggling, having difficulties, conflicts, seemingly conflicts that people would think could never be resolved, and yet God brings about a wonderful transformation in those marriages. You can do the same thing in your marriage. Well, what is the origin of problems in marriage?

Well, some of the origin is that many people marry for the wrong reason. They marry for the wrong reason. Some people marry because of promiscuity. They've been promiscuous prior to getting married, and they feel guilty over that, and they feel that this is what they've got to do. They need to get married in order to take care of their guilt.

Really that's a very poor reason to get married, and in fact, just because you have a little piece of paper that says that you're married doesn't mean that you now have the self-discipline in order to maintain that particular marriage because you didn't have the self-discipline prior to that to maintain your own purity.

Now you don't have the self-discipline, and you're going into marriage. Now we're in trouble. So some people marry because they've been promiscuous. Other people marry in order to compensate for faults. Sometimes they marry in order to run from perceived faults, faults that they think that are a part of their life.

Some people marry because they don't have a lot of money. Now you ever heard that saying that says if you marry for money, you end up earning every penny of it? You do. And so some people get married. They kind of grew up in sort of a poverty situation.

They marry somebody that has a little bit of money in order to compensate for that. That's why they get married. Other people marry in order to, well, they've been kind of shy, retiring all of their life, and they marry somebody gregarious. They marry somebody really outgoing. Life of the party.

I've always wanted to be around somebody that was like that. Life of the party. Exciting to be around. And two or three years into marriage, they're sitting there and they're looking at that life of the party person, and they're saying, "Is that person ever going to sit down and have a serious moment at all?" And that person who married that shy, retiring spouse looks at them and says, "Are they ever going to get out and do anything at all?

They're just going to sit there and read about life? Is that all they're going to do?" We notice that the people in marriage have not changed, but our perception of them have changed. That is, the things that drew us originally to our partners prior to marriage becomes their greatest weakness after marriage.

They haven't changed, but our perception of them have changed. How we view them have changed. Initially, that was very attractive. Now it's not attractive at all. In fact, it's turned into something that's repulsive. So some people marry in order to compensate for faults, in order to run from them.

Other people marry in order to realize an image. They've always dreamed, and I think, gentlemen, the ladies are way out in front of us here. By the age of six, they have their marriage planned, their wedding planned, all right? They know exactly what kind of dress they're going to wear.

They know exactly who's going to stand up with them. They know exactly what the colors are going to be, and guys don't even think about that until maybe 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25. "Oh, yeah, I may get married someday." But in order to realize an image.

I've always wanted to be married with a little white house, with a white picket fence, and the children playing so happily out front. I've always wanted to be like that. So we get married in order to realize that image, and that dream now turns into a horrid nightmare. So there are some people who marry to realize an image.

And then there are other people marry because it's a way to legitimize sex. Now, I think the guys are way out in front of the gals on this one. "I don't have to feel guilty anymore. We can do this all the time, and God says it's okay. This is all right." Well, they find out it just doesn't work out that way.

There's some people that get married in order to do that. Now, that's not an exhaustive list, and really when you think about it, it's really not marriage that's in trouble. It's really the people who are in marriage that's in trouble. Marriage is doing just fine. It's the people that are in it that has the problem.

There's been a failure to apply biblical principles in order to build a good marriage once married, and one of the things that I want to do if I don't get anything else accomplished this weekend is communicate to you the central, very clear biblical principles on what is it that God expects in order to have a good marriage.

And maybe find out that that's not the way that your marriage is really functioning, and this is where you have to turn all of your hate upon your sinful attitudes and actions in order for there to be real change. You've got to love that which is good, that is what God says is right for marriage.

So there are a lot of people who marry for the wrong reason, and we live in a culture and society today that is constantly attacking marriage. There are several ways, and this is not an exhaustive list either. For example, the whole playboy philosophy actually turns people into sex objects.

So that whole philosophy is attack upon God's institution of marriage. Gay and lesbian agendas are attack upon God's institution of marriage. God never intended any of that to be a part of this world. It is a very sinful, ungodly thing that undermines marriage today. You've got entertainment mediums, TV sitcoms, Internet, movies, radio, almost any time you hear marriage mentioned, it's mentioned in a negative way or it's mentioned in such a way that it doesn't resemble anything that God has communicated from the Bible, and even in some television sitcoms where you have a man and wife who are happily married, usually all the roles are really messed up and it's certainly not depicted the way that Scripture says it should be.

Materialism, the whole focus on things, buying things. I need to have a house, I need to have a cabin, I need to have a boat, I've got to have this and that and whatever basically elevates things above people, the whole societal emphasis upon materialism says things are more important than people, and I'm going to acquire as many things to myself as I can.

So materialism becomes an attack upon what God intended marriage to be, and then you've got all kinds of societal substitutes for marriage, like trial marriages, contract marriages, live-in lovers, people semi-married, prenuptial agreements, lat marriages, all of these are reconfiguring what God intended marriage to be. There's trial marriages. In other words, a lot of sociologists and psychologists are proposing that nationally we propose that people no longer get married for a lifetime, that should never be a part of their vows, they get married for a trial period of time, then at the end of that trial period of time, maybe two to five years, then the contract in that marriage ends and they decide whether or not they want to re-up the contract again.

So let's re-up the contract at the end of that particular period of time. So similarly, contract marriages may go a little bit longer, maybe we'll get married for 10 to 20 years, raise kids, and then the contract ends, our marriage is automatically over according to law courts, and the kids are already raised, they're out of the house, they're off to college, we can choose to re-up that particular contract if we want.

We have live-in lovers, people who are semi-married, prenuptial agreements is just an easy way to get out of marriage if things go sour, there shouldn't be any easy ways to get out of it, and prenuptial agreements basically elevates things above people anyhow. Now things are much more important than you are, so I want to maintain my things if we were ever in this marriage.

And then you've got lat marriages, this is really popular in San Francisco, where people are living apart together, they have two separate homes, once in a while they go to each other's home and spend the night with each other, but they have two separate lives, and on paper and legally they're married, and they get all kinds of tax benefits from that, but these are lat marriages where they live in two separate locations, and yet occasionally share sex together, but that's it, that's it, that's all there is.

Well, God never intended marriage to be anything like that, not even anything close to that, and so what has all this done? People marry for the wrong reason, the family is under attack in our society, almost everywhere you go, and the consequence is there's really a two-fold effect here, one is that a lot of young people today who want to get married are very unsure about marriage.

I live in a university and college environment, I see this all the time, and most of the young men and women at the Master's University are very committed Christians, but you can see it in their eyes, here we head up part of the graduate department in counseling, so we got couples walking in all the time, "Hey, we just got engaged, do you do premarital counseling here?" All of these things, you can see that far off look in their eyes, are we going to become one of those statistics?

We've heard about those statistics, and probably one or two of them, both of them, come out of homes that mom and dad divorced maybe several years before. They're afraid they're going to do that, but the other effect probably affects you as well. All that's going on here, a lot of people who are already married have lost hope.

"We just got to stick it out until we die, so on our tombstone they'll say, 'They made it! They didn't divorce!'" Is that exactly what God intended? That's not at all what God intended. Just to make it, just to make it through life, that is so shallow, and that's where we have a lot of marriages today that are 20 miles wide and a half inch deep.

That's not at all what God intended, and this is why I love ministering in the day and age in which we live. I think our day and age resembles the church, society, and culture of the first century more and more as time goes on. The church is growing up in the first century in a very hostile culture and environment.

We're growing up now more and more in a very hostile culture and environment. I mean, I love ministry in this kind of environment. Why? Because the church of Jesus Christ has lasting answers, and we've got to get busy proclaiming them. He has lasting answers, and we've got to get busy proclaiming them.

Now are you ready? Here we go. That's just my introduction. Okay? Here we go. So fasten your seatbelts and put your crash helmets on. Alright, what do we mean by all of this? Well, the first observation I want to make here is all the contemporary presuppositions in contrast to what God has designed out there, and when I say contemporary presuppositions, I'm talking about the way society views marriage today, the average American, the average person in Europe, in Latin America, the way they view marriage today is radically different than the way God intended marriage to be reviewed.

There are a lot of secular theories out there, and most of these views and presuppositions go back to these particular secular theories that marriage really is a result of man's planning and design. That man was the one who actually invented marriage. And I have to read, try to keep up with all the secular stuff that's out there in the area of sociology and psychology, and all the graduate level material that's produced out there, reading all of this material, and the theory goes something like this.

It's sort of an evolutionary caveman type of arrangement, that's how marriage got started. There were two guys in prehistoric times, we'll call one Bog and the other one Zog. Bog and Zog were two guys in prehistoric time. And one day, Bog ran into Zog, and Bog said, "Can't tell your woman from my woman." Zog said, "You're right, can't tell what we do." Bog says, "I know.

You take your woman to nearby cave, her children will follow her, and you can have a family." Zog said, "Oh, sounds good. What's family?" Bog, thanks for a little bit, says, "A family where two people agree to live together, maybe we call it marriage." Zog says, "Oh, marriage, like that term, marriage." So Zog goes over, grabs nearby woman by hair, drags her to nearby cave, all of her children follow her, and now we have marriage.

You'd say, "That is so stupid." But that is exactly, I mean, if you were to boil down all the complicated theories that are out there, and I read them, you boil them down, it boils down to that. That it was an arrangement that made society function a little bit better, especially in hunter-gatherer societies, but we live in a sophisticated world.

We really don't need the institution of family and marriage. Most of the responsibilities of institution of family and marriage have been taken up by other groups and other society, I mean, they've sort of been institutionalized by governments and so on. The family's supposed to protect you, well, we have police forces to protect you.

The family's supposed to provide good health for you, well, we have health institutions that provide good health for you. You really don't need these things anymore. These archaic arrangements where two people are getting married together and they have to vow a whole lifetime of agreement. So the implication is we don't accept that, and all of society, the United Nations, when you read their material on family, it doesn't have anything to do with what the Bible talks about in terms of family, just the opposite.

It's any two people living under the same roof for a particular period of time, so two hobos in a boxcar could be called family, all right? It doesn't matter. Whoever they are, whatever the arrangement, whatever society says is okay, that's exactly what marriage and family is. Now, we live and we work in this kind of a culture.

This is the very thing that has undermined what we think about marriage and is a cancer in relationship to our own individual marriages. Why do I say that? Well, because if man developed marriage, then man can redefine marriage anytime he wants. If man was the one who invented it, then he can destroy the concept of marriage anytime he wants.

If he's the one who did it, then he has the full right to be able to redefine marriage any way he wishes. Wow. So there we have, that's exactly what's going on in culture today. But I want you to know that man did not invent marriage. Bog and zog are both myths.

They're myths that come out of some kind of sociologist's idea of what marriage is supposed to be. The Bible says that God was the one who invented marriage. He's the one who invented it. Take your Bible now. Let's go back to Genesis chapter 1. We pick up in verse 26.

Now, follow this carefully. Genesis 1 and verse 26, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them." Now, I want you to notice something in verse 26, that there is a play here on singular and plural in this verse.

There's a play on singular and plural. "Let us," verse 26, plural, "make man," singular, "in our," plural, "image," singular, "after our," plural, "likeness," singular, "and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." Now, I want you to notice that there is a very significant play on singular, plural, singular, plural, singular, plural.

In other words, when it says, when God says, "Let us," this is the first time God is referred to in relationship to plurality. But in this particular case, what does that mean? Most theologians believe this is probably the first reference to the Trinity. We know in chapter 1 and verse 1, it talks about God and then it talks about the Spirit of God moving.

So there are two parts of the Trinity that are actually given to us here in Genesis chapter 1, "Let us." Now, it's not referring to the angels because the angels did not create, only God created. So it's not the angels, "Let us." So it's a reference to God and the plurality of God.

So there is a sense where God says, "Let us," in plurality, "make man," singularly, "in our," plural, "image," singular, "in our," plural, "likeness," singular. Now you get the idea. Now, I read a THM thesis on the Hebrew terminology behind likeness and image. That's really interesting. I'll boil it down.

So it went on for 250 pages, so I'm not going to present all that to you, but I'll boil it down for you. It's something like this. The guy who did it did a great job. He traced the Hebrew term back to Chaldean roots, and in the Chaldean roots of those words "image" and "likeness," the idea is this, that back during the earlier times around Abraham, they had terms like this, "image" and "likeness," that referred to obelisks.

Now, we don't know usually what these obelisks are, but in ancient times, they were vitally important because most people didn't read and write. So when a king went into a territory and he conquered a territory, he would set up an obelisk of himself there, and it was usually at the crossroads of the territory, so that everybody going through that territory would look at that obelisk and say, "That king rules here." All right?

Usually made out of stone or wood or whatever the case may be, and the implication here is that that king rules over this area. We know that because most people, only scribes, read or would write in those days. The average person did not do that, so they function on the basis of those images.

Well, God picks up these terms, translates them into Hebrew, and now God says this, "I'm going to make man in our image, in our likeness," and notice this, immediately as soon as he says this, he says, "Let them have dominion," right? So God creates man, places him in time and space on this little blue planet out in the middle of the universe so that all the hosts of heaven will know that he rules here.

He's the one who rules, because vitally connected, the image and likeness is the concept of dominion. Dominionship, all right? Vitally connected to image and likeness is the idea of dominionship and rule is the concept. This is really critical, especially when you consider the fact if Satan is alive and well, and certainly is in our world today, if he can destroy the concept of marriage in our society and culture today, then he has taken a mighty blow in the minds of everybody that's alive on earth after who God is.

Look at verse 27. He says, "So God created him in his own image," now it's singular, "in the image of God he created them," now it talks about the plurality, "with gender distinctiveness, he creates them male and female, he created them." Now here, this is really key, this is what God has done, and the point that I'm trying to make is if God created marriage, then he has answers for marriage when it gets into trouble, which really means there's hope for your marriage.

If God created marriage, then he has answers for marriage when it gets into trouble, which means there is hope for your marriage. If you're interested in doing things his way, things can begin to change immediately. This is really important. The marriage is given by God, and if God gave marriage, and he certainly did, that means he's got answers for marriage when it gets at its lowest point, when it really gets into trouble, he's got the answers for it.

That tells me several things. Then based upon Genesis 1:27, as well as Genesis 1:31, that celibacy was never intended to be the norm, it's not somehow more holy to be celibate. That's sold to us by Roman Catholicism, but that is not biblical Christianity. You're not more holy by being celibate.

That's not anything even close to that. God never intended that at all. It also tells me that marriage is not to be disparaged. That actually is a very holy, and it's an honorable state, and that sex and procreation is a part of marriage, that means that gender distinctiveness now is called, notice this in verse 31, not just good, but very good.

Now that's very significant because when you read through Genesis 1 at the end of each day where God creates literally the universe and everything we know around us, at the end of each day He calls it good, He calls it good, He calls it good, He calls it good, He calls it good, and He gets to the sixth day, and what does He say?

No, He says it's not good. It's not good. It's not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. I caught you, I know. Genesis 2.18, it's not good. It's the first time that God ever said anything was not good. It's not good that man be alone.

I will make a helper suitable for him. God creates Eve, then what does God say? It's very good. You're scared to answer now, I know. Yeah, yeah. Now it's very good. Eve now, listen to this, is the crowning point of creation. How about that? Oh, man. I got... There you go.

Listen to that, husbands. She's the crowning point. God doesn't say very good until she's created. She's created for Him. That's the idea. So this is really key. So going back to verse 31 again, "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning the sixth day." My good German friends would say, "Gut." That's exactly right.

This is very good, what God has done. And He doesn't say that until marriage has been established. Well, this tells me, furthermore, that marriage is not to compete with human options or human substitutes. God never intended marriage to compete with all kinds of substitutes. I think one of the biggest things, one of the biggest challenges of the Christian church is right around the corner.

In the 2020s, we're not far away from it, there are companies all over the world that are making these, are in the process of developing these, and this is going to be the biggest attack on marriage that we've ever seen, ever. It's right around the corner, and your kids are going to face it more than you have.

And that is, they are developing full, lifelike, robotic companions of the opposite sex. You can get anything that you want, any style you want, and guess what? They're never going to grow old. They're never going to have bad breath. They're never going to argue with you, unless you plan for them to argue with you.

They're always going to do everything that you want, the perfect companion forever. Is that going to, and they will be so humanly lifelike, that it'll be hard to tell whether or not they're a real person or not. They are that close, they're that close, but you will never, ever be able to be a true companion with a robot.

There's going to be a sense of getting something that we want in order to serve our lusts, but there's going to be a total lack of what God has intended in terms of companionship, and you'll see a little bit later why I'm saying that. Right around the corner, this is going to happen.

Not far. We're training all the guys at the Master Seminary to go out and pastor churches with that kind of threat in mind. That's around the corner. Those guys will have to, "I'll be dead in heaven, enjoying myself there," and they're going to have to deal with that, all right, in their ministries.

They're going to be sitting and people are going to be coming to their church and their robotic companions will be sitting right next to them. This is going to be a big attack upon God's institution of marriage. It's not far off. Marriage is not, never intended to compete with human options, human substitutes.

Marriage is to be a picture of Christ's relationship to His bride, the church, and it teaches an important spiritual reality about God's relationship with His people. This is the way God describes it back in the Old Testament, with the Old Testament Jewish, with the Israelites, with the New Testament church, God was the husband, Israel was supposed to be the bride.

In the New Testament, Christ is the groom and the church is supposed to be His bride. If Satan can destroy that image in destroying marriages that we have today, then people will have no concept of really what that means in the future. No concept of what God ever intended, and so you get this idea that there is a huge attack upon marriage today and it's going to get worse, it's not going to get any better.

What's the original purpose of marriage? Well, the original purpose of marriage was not to have children. That was something actually invented in the Middle Ages by the Pope and Roman Catholicism and it was because so many of the Roman Catholic boys were dying in the Crusades in order to get more children.

Genesis chapter 1 verse 28 says, "And God blessed them and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish in the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'" Now you understand here at this particular point, the "be fruitful and multiply" was a blessing.

That was a blessing. But what was the real purpose behind marriage? What was the real purpose? Well, in order to understand that, you've got to go to Genesis 2:18. The blessing of marriage was children, but the purpose of marriage, Genesis 2:18, "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone.

I will make a helper fit for him or suitable for him.'" In fact, the Hebrew terminology that's used there is the term, "I will make an ezer konigno for him." I used to call my wife my little ezer konigno. People thought I was saying evil things about her, but I wasn't.

It was a term of endearment, ezer konigno, a fitting and suitable helper, one ideally suited for him was the idea. An ezer konigno is the idea. God's purpose in this was companionship. It was not good that man was alone. And by the way, man is headed right back to that particular point, being alone.

Even though robotic partners are around the corner, man will be increasingly alone, increasingly alone. Man was alone, that was not good, companionship now becomes the main purpose of marriage. This is the way in which God designed marriage. And it's interesting that that is exactly the thing that goes out the window when marriage starts to get into trouble.

When there's division between a husband and a wife in a marital relationship, it's the companionship that goes out the window first. You don't feel like you're a companion to them, you're upset at them, you're angry at them. Well, we can see this in verses 19 through 21, so let's read down through here.

Genesis 2, let's start in verse 18 and we'll read down through verse 21. "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone.'" Now follow this. "And I will make him a helper suitable for him. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found an Acer Canigno for him, a fitting helper. So the Lord God caused deep sleep to fall upon man, and while he slept, he took one of the ribs and clothed up its place with flesh.

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. So Adam went to sleep single, woke up married." That's what happened to Adam. Now, why does he give us all this detail about these chronological events where he talks in verse 18 that there is no suitable helper for Adam at this point, and then Adam now is told to name all the beasts of the field and every bird of the heavens and whatever man called every living creature, that was its name?

That's very significant, which shows you the extreme intelligence of Adam. Because Adam, without any recording devices or anything, and God brings him all the animals on earth, and he's able to name every one of them and remember every single one of their names, and if he named them on the basis of the typical Semitic way in which a Semitic mind would work, he would name the animals on the basis of their most prominent characteristics.

So Mr. and Mrs. Elephant would be long-nosed gray creatures, and Mr. and Mrs. Skunk would be black and white stinky creatures, and so on and so on and so on. The most prominent characteristics of those animals now would become that was its name. So he names all the animals on the planet.

He has nothing to record them, so this is super, super intelligence to be able to do this. All the various kinds of animals that are there. This is an enormous task, and he's able to do this in one 24-hour period of time. He's able to do this that quickly.

But you notice this, verse 20 says, "He gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens, to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a suitable helper for him." Now why is that? Sandwiched between the end of verse 20 and the end of verse 18 is this naming the animals.

Why is this sandwiched in between? Because, listen carefully, because God wanted Adam to understand that even though the world was full of animals, Adam was still alone. The dog is not man's best friend. Even though the world was teeming with wildlife, there was no one, no creature to be a companion with Adam.

God didn't create for Adam a nice dog, He didn't create for Adam a golfing buddy or a fishing buddy. I know I've gone from preaching to meddling on that one. He didn't create a mother for Adam or children for Adam. He created a wife for Adam. That's very significant.

She was the only one who could bring companionship into his life. In a world that was teeming with life, Adam was alone. Existentially, he understood that. Personally, he understood that. He was alone. That's really key. So God gave him the first anesthesia in verse 21, caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, which shows you, by the way, there was pain prior to the fall.

It's just that pain now has multiplied. First anesthesia, put him to sleep, takes a rib, takes the rib that he had taken, forms the woman, and brings her to the man, and what does he do? He comes conscious again, "Wow, I'm married." He names her. That's what he has.

That's what he's been doing the whole first day. He says to her, now follow this, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Now, you kind of read over those words, but you shouldn't because the Hebrew words, the same Hebrew words are used one other time in the Bible, and it's used in 2 Samuel 5 verse 1, where the people of Israel are swearing their allegiance to David as the future king of Israel.

They say, "Bone of bones, flesh of flesh." In other words, what they were doing was they were swearing and vowing that David was going to be their future king. What is Adam doing here? Adam is saying to Eve, "Listen to this, bone of bones, flesh of flesh." In other words, this is the first marital vows.

He's swearing his allegiance to her, which is incredibly remarkable. Why? Because Eve didn't have any other competition. There were no other Eves running around. She was the only one. But even with her as the only one, he swears his allegiance. And at that particular time, prior to sin coming into the world, they were going to live forever.

So this was a forever vow. It was a forever vow. He swears his allegiance to her. That's what should have happened when you got married. You swear your allegiance to her. Nothing on this planet should ever break that allegiance. "Bone of bones, flesh of flesh. She shall be called," now we translate this in the English, woman.

The Hebrew term here is Isha. She shall be called Isha, and what does he do? He names her on the basis of her most common characteristic, because the core of the Hebrew word Isha is the word, "She shall be called soft." That's the idea. She shall be called softy, all right?

That's the idea. And I don't know whether he went up and poked her. Wow, soft compared to him, which is probably pretty hard and rugged. Men like soft, okay? But there are a lot of women today trying to be like men and not be soft, which denies their essential characteristics in terms of femininity.

"No, no, no, no. She shall be called softy because she was taken out of man." And then he says, this really is key, so you get this idea. So God creates this suitable helper, a fitting completer, someone who is ideally suited for him. The animals wouldn't do. God didn't create a father for Adam, a mother for Adam, a child for Adam, a sister for Adam.

A brother for Adam, a playmate for Adam, or even a golfing buddy or a hunting buddy for Adam. He created a wife for Adam. That's what He created because no one else would ever be able to fulfill that need of companionship. She was the one. She's the one who could do that.

That's really key. So, then, marriage now, in verse 24, Genesis 2, 24, is described by three key things, "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed." I want you to understand this, that marriage now is later on referred to, Proverbs 2:17, Malachi 2:14, as a covenant.

The Hebrew term there is barit, and it actually means to cut a covenant. That's the idea. Because back in ancient times, a covenant was set by taking an animal, where today, when we make an agreement with someone else, we sign papers. When you buy your house, you have to sign papers, you buy your car, you have to sign papers, you make an agreement, I'm going to pay this off, you sign papers.

Back in ancient times, they didn't have any paper signing, but they would take an animal, and publicly, they would put that animal in front, and they would cut that animal in half, and the two parties would walk between the two halves of that animal, basically saying to everybody that was watching this, "May God do to us what has been done to this animal if we were to ever break this covenant." So that covenant was sealed in blood.

This animal was butchered, the two parts of the animal was laid on either side, the two parties walked between the two parts of the animal, and everybody understood what that meant. It took that covenant to a new level. Blood had to be shed in order to seal that particular covenant.

This is exactly what God intended marriage to be. He intended it to be a barit, not burrito, that's Mexican, a barit, all right? That means a covenant, a sacred covenant. It was considered a sacred, unbreakable bond, a lasting lifetime commitment between two people. So it becomes a covenant, and it's manifested in verse 24 in three ways, three primary ways that this is manifested.

I want you to look at this carefully because this is really key. The first one, which really speaks to the essential unity of marriage, the first one is leaving. "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother." This is God's commentary on what has happened with Adam and Eve at this particular point.

This is what God has intended. So we're saying this, that from the very beginning, God intended the parent-child relationship to be temporary, not permanent. Did you hear me on this? Temporary. We raised all four of our kids to leave the home, not to stay, all right? And when the last one left, I started chasing Janie around the house, all right?

We raised them to leave the home. That's what should be happening, not to stay in the home. We get a lot of Christian homes today that are very child-centered, as if when the children leave, there's no purpose for mom and dad to stay together any longer. He's allowed that to happen.

She's allowed that to happen. I remember several years ago, while I was still a pastor in Ohio, we had a pastor's fellowship group of about 15 churches. We got together once a month, pastors and wives, it was called a grace fellowship group. One day we were sitting around at a luncheon and these pastors started sharing stories on how people in their congregations had been married 20, 25 years and all of a sudden they were announcing they were getting a divorce.

And we were all looking at each other saying, "What in the world is going on?" And so each one of the pastors who were sharing each one of those cases, we were asking them detailed questions about what was happening in the marriage and it came clear to everybody there that in every single case where there was a divorce occurring after 20, 25 years of marriage, they had homeschooled their kids.

Now I am not talking about, don't look at me evil here, because I homeschool my kids, so that was not the issue. But what the issue was is when you do that kind of thing and you center your entire life around the children, it's easy to build your marriage around that.

You can't do that. During the time that my wife and I still had children in the home, I would tell her, "Okay, this weekend we're going away. I'm stepping away from my responsibilities at church. It's just you and I going away for the weekend." "I can't. We've got so many things for the kids." "No, no.

We're going to go away." And now we look back on that as some of the best times of our marriage. Because what that does is, it's not wrong to homeschool your kids, I'm not saying that, so stop looking at me like you want to shoot me, all right? It's not wrong to do that.

What I'm saying is that it's very easy for a homeschooled family to have a child-centered home. Where the kids become the most important thing in the home, mom and dad's relationship is a distant second to that relationship. We have a lot of homes in America today that are very child-centered.

Very child-centered. And the moment the last kid leaves the home, then mom and dad look at each other and they shake hands and say, "Wow, we did a great job. Thanks for your help." And they go two different directions. That's what's going on. You cannot allow that to happen in your home.

The husband-wife relationship is intended to be the permanent relationship in that home. Children are to be reared to leave the home, not stay in the home, to leave the home. There was an old song years ago, maybe some of you know it. This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through.

All right. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. Well, I changed that song when my kids were little. This house is not your home, you're just a passing through. Your treasures are laid up with someone beyond the blue. Now I have three of our four kids are married.

We're trying to get the last one married, but there you go. It's the husband-wife relationship that's supposed to be the permanent relationship. That's what God intended. It's not the parent-child relationship. My wife was really good at saying to the family, like for example, I'd come home after a busy day at work, and one of the ways that she loved to demonstrate that, we would sit down for dinner, we would have prayer, and the first thing, she didn't let the kids touch anything on the table until dad was served, which was her way of saying, "He comes before you." Wow.

He comes before you. When we go out to go anywhere in the car, guess what? I didn't run out and open the car door for the kids. I went out and opened the car door for the wife, and once the wife was in the car, then I let them in.

I wanted them to see she came before them, year after year after year after year. When I see my one son who's married, I have two daughters that are married too, but I see my one son doing the same thing with his wife, I'm going, "This worked. I didn't have to teach him that.

All I had to do was just model it for him. That's all I had to do." Parent-child relationship's temporary. The husband-wife relationship is intended to be permanent. Second thing is cleaving. Cleaving. Now this is interesting. In other words, the whole basis of the husband-wife relationship and the whole foundation is not, now fasten your seat belts, put your crash helmets on, ready?

It's not romantic love. Somebody sucked all the oxygen out of the room. It's not. Hollywood has sold us a bill of fare on this thing, down through American, European culture has sold us a bill of fare on this. It's not romantic love. The foundation of a marital relationship has to do with a sincere commitment before God.

The Bible doesn't say leave and love. It doesn't say leave and be infatuated by. It doesn't say leave and enter into an intense romantic relationship with. It says leave and cleave. The Hebrew word there means to be glued together. Leave and be glued to, right? Now why is that so important?

Because it's only been relatively recent in history that you could choose who you're going to marry. Only the past couple hundred years has that happened, but a hundred years before that, mom and dad would usually choose who you had to marry, and guess what? You had to learn to love them.

You had to learn to love them. Whoever mom and dad chose, that's what I was going to marry. Because those choices are still made in different places around the world. Mom and dad would choose who a son or a daughter is going to marry when they're five years old.

Everybody knows it as they're growing up. You say, "Oh, that's so unromantic." Well, yeah, but I want to tell you that when the foundation of the entire marriage is based upon a cleaving commitment, when that's the case, that real intense romantic relationships grow out of that that's permanent. It's not based upon the vacillating feelings of human emotion.

Not based upon that. A guy marries a gal, I mean, she's just gorgeous, is exactly what he's always wanted to marry all of his life, and five years into marriage, he wakes up in the middle of the night, rolls over and her hair is all tangled, she doesn't have any makeup on, and she's there.

And all of a sudden he thinks, "Where did all the romance go?" And she wakes up in the middle of the night and there he is. And she's thinking, "What have I done? What have I married? This is horrible. My marriage is in trouble. All the feelings are gone." Well, that's because you've been sold this bill of goods.

It's not based upon feelings, it's based upon a sacred commitment that you make before God where you glue yourself to that person for good. That's what it means. Listen, when I do premarital counseling, I catch couples in this right at the beginning. I give them an assignment, all right?

So if I ever do premarital counseling for you, well, hopefully I won't because you're already married, but I give them an assignment early in premarital counseling. I say, "Okay, I want you to write out for me 20 reasons why you're marrying the person you're going to marry out of all the people on the planet.

Give me 20 reasons, I mean, you should be able to do that." And they look at me with starry eyes and go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I can do that. That's easy. That's easy to do." I go, "Okay." So they go off a week, they're gone a week, and they come back in and they present their list to me, and I start looking at their list, and they all start out the standard way.

"Well, you know, I'm marrying him, I'm marrying her because they are just... I've never been so excited. I've never had so much intense companionship with this person." And after all, that's what the Bible says. And he's just incredibly handsome, he makes me weak in the knees, and she's incredibly beautiful.

Oh, she's just gorgeous, and they're such godly people. I mean, we can talk into the wee hours of the morning. I mean, we can talk like this all the time. I've never been able to talk with anybody like this. And they go on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

I can feel myself starting to get sick a little bit and all this. So they're going on about this, and they're just beaming and, you know, and flowers are growing everywhere, and all this is going on. All right, and all this is happening in premarital counseling. And I look at them and then I get really serious and I say to them, "Wow, you know what?

On the basis of your list, I hate to tell you this, but your marriage is already in trouble and you're not even married yet." "How could you say that? This is my life, partner. You can't say that. You don't know anything about this." "Your marriage is in trouble." "Well, why do you think it's in trouble?" "Well, so let me ask you a question.

You're marrying him because he's very handsome. You can talk with him like nobody else. He's a really godly guy. He loves Jesus. You know, he gets along with your family really, really well." Let's say the day after you get married, you're on your honeymoon, you're in a horrible car accident.

His head goes through the front windshield of the car, the prefrontal cortex of his brain is caved in, his whole personality changes. He gets angry at God and denies Jesus, and now gets hateful. He is ugly now. He's defamed. Based upon the reasons why you're marrying him, your marriage is in deep trouble on day two.

It's in deep trouble." So about this particular point in the premarital counseling, they're sucking air. "Well, why should we be getting married?" I'm glad you asked that question. You're marrying them because you're giving your life to them regardless of what they bring to the table for a lifetime, regardless of what they bring to the table.

Now it's important that you get along. That's good. That's icing on the cake. That they love Jesus like you love Jesus. That's important too. That's icing on the cake too. That's really great. That has to be there. Otherwise, the marriage shouldn't take place. All of that's got to be there, but if you're marrying them for what they bring to the table and someday that's gone, then your entire reason for marrying them is gone.

The only altruistic reason to marry a person is I am giving my life to you to be your husband or your wife for the rest of my life. Regardless of what you bring to the table or take off the table, that's what I'm going to do. Now they're starting to sense the seriousness of marriage.

Now they're beginning to see it goes way beyond just merely that I feel really tingly every time I'm around them. It goes way beyond that. This has to do with cleaving, that the basis of their relationship is that they are gluing themselves to that other person for a lifetime.

No exceptions. They are gluing themselves to them. So it means welding together. That's the basis of the commitment. The last thing has to do with one flesh. Now this is much more than just the physical relationship in marriage. It involves that. It is the physical relationship in marriage, the sexual relationship in marriage is an expression of that marriage's companionship, but it goes way beyond that.

It means one in every sense of the word, like one in your philosophy of parenting. One in the way in which you use your money together because you're one. Your bank account should be one. This is how you, the very fact that you have to work through how you're going to spend that money.

The very fact you have to do that, you have to harmonize your values, make you one. That's really critical. One in every sense of the term. Spiritually you're one. You view what the Bible says the same way together. You view Jesus Christ and love Jesus Christ together. Spiritually you're one.

In all of these ways, you are weaving your life together. Now our culture hates this, but in the Bible it's very good. Have you ever seen an elderly couple that's been married several years? My wife and I are young ones, we've only been married 41 years, we're just young.

But I've had people in our church, my grandfather and my grandmother was married for 75 years. That's a long time. They even got a letter from President Reagan and they celebrated their 75th. Of course, he was 15 and she was 13 when they got married. They'd be locked up today.

But 75 years of marriage where they become so one, they've lived together so much, he starts a sentence, she finishes it. They have the same outlook on life. They even sound like they're talking the same way in everything that they do. The culture says, "Oh, you lose your individuality." Yes!

Yes, you do in the oneness of that relationship, and that's not bad. It's a good thing because now you truly understand what companionship is. You understand that. We don't have that concept today. That's a very sad thing. So the three basic components, the leaving, the cleaving, the becoming one flesh, and the fact that the purpose of marriage is companionship upon those kind of principles, those are the basics now.

We're going to build everything else tomorrow. You've been great tonight. So thank you. Let me close with a word of prayer and I'll turn it over to Pastor and he'll jump up here and give any kind of closing announcements that needs to take place here before you take off.

Gracious Father, we are so grateful for your love and care for us. We know that the Word of God was given and it is clarifying in all of its details, especially in regards to marriage. It was given by you so that we could have clarity in a very confused world.

I pray, Father, that you'll help us to gain a very solid biblical concept of what marriage is and then tomorrow as we talk about the husband's role in marriage, the wife's role, the importance of communication that complements that companionship, and then the marital union, which has to do with what does the Bible say about the sexual relationship in marriage.

I pray that you'll help us to understand these things from your perspective and correct the areas that are wrong. Help us, dear Lord, to learn to hate the things that are wrong, to hate how we have dealt with our marriage when it is violated what the Word of God has to say.

This we pray in Christ's name, Amen. Amen.