First Corinthians, 7:1-7 Teaching concerning marriage

Okay, so today we're going to start a new chapter in 1 Corinthians. finished up Chapter 6 last week, but actually I thought in looking at what Chapter 7 is teaching, that we need to go back a little bit and review that. And then also, Chapter 7 sort of offers a chance to look ahead a little bit. So let's kind of look ahead a little bit to what remains of 1 Corinthians, and also we'll dive into the first five verses in Chapter 5.

And the whole Chapter 7 talks about marriage, And it's really a neat stuff. Actually, Mike, we were kind of talking, you know, Mike has done counseling for premarital counseling. I know Vern did. And we're actually looking at the verses in 1 Corinthians here. There's actually a lot to be said. about marriage.

And the Lord is interested in marriage. Don't forget, it's His idea, not man's idea. Man thinks, well, that's my idea. No, it's God's idea. He instituted it, it's His idea, and He has wonderful provisions for it and a wonderful message to tell us about His plans for marriage.

So, okay, with that in view here, let's just kind of brief the remainder of 2 Corinthians. Constable kind of picked up on this phrase, now concerning. That appears in a bunch of verses through the rest of the book. And he kind of points out that that kind of his introduction to the Corinthians wrote Paul questions or ask him questions and he's responding to those questions in many of these chapters he's responding and he uses the phrase now concerning. So actually let's just kind of go through the verse today uses that phrase now concerning the things about which you wrote you wrote it's good for a man not to touch a woman we're going to find out what that means what he was talking about there then toward the end of the chapter he talks about now concerning virgins or marriageable maidens And he talks about, he says this often, I have no command of the Lord, but I give you an opinion as one who by the mercies of the Lord is trustworthy.

And then later on in chapter 8 he talks about, now concerning the thing sacrifice to idols, there's a whole bunch on that. And it's interesting that there's some gaps in here that don't use that phraseology, especially between chapter 12 and chapter 16. There's just a ton of stuff in there. Chapter 12 talks about spiritual gifts. And then in between there, there's these wonderful things like there's a love chapter.

Boy, the love chapter you think about, the world uses the love chapter of scripture, their plaques that have those verses from the love chapter in there. And many unbelievers look at that and say, that's wonderful. And they don't realize that's talking about our Lord Jesus. Our Lord Jesus' love and His, and it only can truly be expressed when you know Him.

So there's a lot of cool stuff between 12 and 16. And then 16 says, now concerning the things for the collection for the saints. And then it kind of finishes up toward the end of the book, now concerning Apollos, our brother. He talks about kind of the end of the book.

So I just kind of point that out. I kind of like to have these little cues. If you look in your Bible, a little phraseology in that, now concerning, I hadn't noticed it, but Constable kind of picked up on that. So I wanted to share that. Okay, so now, let's look at today's outline. Actually, what I'm gonna do is we're gonna do the outline, and we're gonna come back to the outline at the end. What's the word about teaching? You say something, and then you say it again, and you say it again, and then you say it again. Something like that. Say it a lot of times. Okay, so this is McCauley's outline, which I've kind of adjusted a little bit.

General teaching on marriage. So the first two verses talk about staying single and getting married. That's verses one and two. Then three through seven, which we're not going to cover all of that, talk about the married must consider mutual indebtedness. The married must consider the surrender of independence. The married should avoid separation. And that's kind of where we're going to stop for today.

There's a lot to be said just in those parts. So now let's get to the verses. Actually, before we do that, I want to go back and look at just two charts on the verses that Mike covered in about three weeks. I just kind of picked out, and what I wanted to do was not saying that, this is no, I'm not judging anyone. I'm just saying, here's some cool things that I found that help us to understand chapter seven. And actually, looking through those 12 through 20 in chapter 6, there are two phrases that pop out.

The Lord is going to declare something about the believer's body. Remember Scripture teaches that we're body, soul, and spirit? The body is kind of the third thing that kind of gets left out. Well, chapter six that Mike taught talks a lot about the body and talks a lot about spiritual immorality. The two don't mix. The Lord does not want the believer's body involved in sexual immorality. I said spiritual immorality. Sexual immorality. And that's really gonna be clear from these verses. So I'm gonna highlight some of that and we'll carry that over. In fact, it makes, once you read the last part of six, you'll see why God did some things in instruction for marriage.

Okay, verse 13b says, yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. So a couple of bullets from that, just repeating the idea of the body is not to be used for immorality. That's not the place where the believer should be. the believer's body is to be used for the Lord. Think about the beautiful pictures about the, on the Lord's hands, the feet, his eyes, there's all kinds of these pictures in scripture about how the believer's body is to be used for the Lord. And then the last part, the Lord has saved us, sanctified us, will raise our bodies.

He's really concerned about our bodies. And then 15 says, 615 says, you do not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Boy, that's a, you know, we think about I'm in Christ, Christ is in me, but this statement is incredible. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? That's why it's so important that they not be involved in immorality. Shall then I take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be. Your bodies are members of Christ. Take members of Christ and make them members of prostitute, God forbid.

Okay, then the next one, in 18b it says, but the immoral man sins against his own body. And Mike pointed that out in a whole bunch of detail more than this. That happens when you give your body to a prostitute. And just for, in the culture of the times, prostitution was a real problem in Corinth. They had a whole temple that that was the whole deal there. And that's why he uses prostitution, I think, so much in that.

And then 19 says, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you're not your own? Just incredible statement. The Holy Spirit indwells every believer. That's a grace gift. We don't earn the Holy Spirit. We are given the Holy Spirit by God's marvelous grace. And that's another reason why would you wanna get the resonance for the Holy Spirit involved in something immoral. It makes no sense.

You belong to God, you're his child. And then the last one in 20 says, for you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. And then the price that was required for that to happen was the death of Christ on the cross was the required price for that. That was the price that was required. So that's kind of a real quick Summary of the important points about the believer's body and sexual immorality. So let's look at the verses for today. First five verses.

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her body, but the husband does, and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another. except by agreement for a time so that you may devote yourselves to prayer and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

You know, interestingly enough, if you look through here, you know, other parts of scripture in Ephesians, Colossians, it talks about the husband and the wife. It talks about their roles. This talks about, if you notice that the, It's the husband and the wife have equal responsibilities and they're equal. They're not, this points out some points that are not made when you talk about the husband is the head of the wife. You talk about different aspects of their roles. This talks about this equality that exists between husband and wife and how they're mutually dependent upon one another.

And then verse four, we're gonna see that, that sounds, That's an impossible situation where another person has control of my body. Well, I think that as we go through it, you're going to see that this can make sense. It only makes sense because of what God has done in the life of a married couple. Okay, so let's start out. Here's our little phrase, now concerning the things which I wrote to you.

So this is what, if we look back, I think Mike covered this a little bit, you look back and you see that the Corinthians wrote to Paul and asked him questions, and this is one of the questions. And we saw an allusion to that earlier in chapter five where it talks about, it's actually reported that there is immorality among you, and that was a problem that Paul addressed with the man having his father's wife, an incest situation. So this is something, they're asking him a question, he's going to respond to that.

So the question is, or the statement, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. So fortunately, Scripture explains Scripture many times. There appears to be a quote that was in the letter that was written to Paul. to touch a woman is a euphemism for sexual relationships. And how do we know that? Well, the key passage on that occurs back in the Old Testament.

And if you follow the travels of Abraham and Sarah, Abraham was kind of an interesting guy. Sarah was his sister, a half-sister. But he would say that sometimes, I think, I'm not quite sure, Mike, we've been going through that in Mike's study on Wednesday, but he would say, Abraham's my sister. She's a beautiful woman, apparently, from what we can tell from scripture. He would say that, I don't know, maybe to get favor with these kings. Well, when he said that, that opened the door for these people to take Sarah into their harem, so to speak, and who knows what goes on there, so it wasn't a good thing.

He would say, she's my sister, and he says that in the early part of Genesis 20, he says, Sarah's my sister til bimelech. Well, it's interesting, God says til bimelech, if you touch her, you're a dead man. God is concerned about immorality, and so in this verse, we get this touch her phrase. Then God said til bimelech, in the dream, I also kept you from sinning against me, therefore I did not let you touch her. And that was referring to Sarah. So here, this is the one passage that we have that kind of connects it.

And you know, we use euphemisms like we'll say, rather than saying a person died, we'll say he passed away. I can't think of, there's another more popular one. He passed or whatever. We won't want to say the real word, so this is a word used in place of that. So I think that answers the question about what does it mean to touch a woman? Okay? So let's just have more thoughts on that.

Good here is advantageous, expedient, profitable. And what's cool is, if you get a chance to spend some time looking at, it's really, there's some helps out there that allow you to have, and our brother Hal with diagram sentences, I know that Andrew knows about that, he, incredible. I never got there. I could read the diagrams, but I couldn't produce them. Well, the Lord has provided other men that have done that.

So if you look at the diagram of that phrase, good is a subject complement. It's basically, it describes, good is describing the man. It's good to avoid that temptation. It's saying that's a good thing that you avoid that temptation to touch a woman, to have sexual relations with her. That's a good thing.

So the question comes up is, is a single life, is that the desirable thing? Is single life here and married life sort of down below? But we're going to find that Paul will say single life is good, but also the majority of Scripture and also what Paul teaches shows us that marriage is God's plan from the beginning. And there are several verses that talk about that.

In Genesis 2.18 it says, It's not good for a man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable.

And then back earlier in Genesis, in Genesis 1.28, God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

So marriage and being single are both states in God's world. They're both acceptable states, but there are rules that God has set in place for that. So Paul will now explain the plan for marriage. He kind of explained the plan for being single is that you abstain from sexual relationships. The plan for marriage is, and we'll see that shortly here.

So this verse actually has, I'm gonna teach it, I'm gonna do the last part first, but the verse says, but because of immorality, each man is to have his own wife and each woman is to have her own husband. Okay, so let's take the second part first. Each man is to have his own wife. Each man is a subject, let him have, it's present tense, and it's a command, let him have, literally, let him go on having.

And the point here is that it's continuous action. It's pointing to the fact that this is a continuous relationship. It's a permanent relationship. It's not something that you enter into with the idea that, well, maybe if this works out, if it doesn't work out, I'll try plan B. No, God's design of marriage is that you enter marriage with the idea that it's a permanent relationship. the direct object is his wife and it's unique it's a unique situation and then one of the key verses about this I'm going to use it several times here in Genesis 2.24 says a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh Boy, that idea of one flesh, it seemed you'd say, well, this is an impossibility. How can two human beings be one flesh? Well, God declares that's His design of marriage, that you become one flesh. And we're going to see why that one flesh is going to be important as we get farther down in this.

But keep that verse in mind. We're going to come back to it several times. Okay, and the second half of the verse is, like I mentioned before, these are equal statements about the man and the woman. In this case, you can't say, you know, you get to the place where it says the man is the head of the wife and the wife is to listen under or submit. You think, well, I'm going to argue with God about that. Well here, he says, no, I'm gonna say that both of your roles are the same. You're both to have the same, and he makes the same statement about the husband and the wife.

So the same points can be made about the wife. Each woman is to have her own husband. Same verb tense, let her go on having. Continuous action, a permanent relationship. It's of herself, of her own self. And Macaulay says basically the concept of monogamy is found in the words his own, and her own. Her husband, his wife, permanent continuous relationship. Okay, so let's go back to the but part here.

This is Amplified Bible, but because of the temptation to impurity and to avoid immorality. So the marriage union, and what he points out here, the marriage union is a union that is designed by God to guard against immoralities. That's part of the wonderful part of marriage. But marriage also, we see from many parts of scripture, is a picture of Christ in the church. And there's other truths that come out.

I thought about going down a rabbit trail here and going through that part. I didn't go down that path. But you might think, well, just from this verse two, is that the only reason for marriage, to avoid immorality? And it's not. There are many other wonderful things, but it's an important part, and that's what Paul's concentrating on in these verses here.

Immorality is pornea, fornication, lewdness, or any sexual sin. And we actually, a couple verses that we've, have shown up in the past is actually, that one I quote, actually reported, there's immorality among you. And then in 618, we saw a flee from immorality. The immoral man sins against his own body. So immorality is something to be avoided, and God has a plan and a way to deal with that. So now we're at verse 3. So now it kind of shifts in verse 3. Verse 1 and 2 talked about the single life, the married life, and what God has in mind. Now he kind of moves into the area of duties and responsibilities in verse 3.

He says the husband must fulfill his duty to the wife and likewise the wife to her husband. Once again this equal, the likewise is used as it's the same picture for the husband as for the wife. And I know what you're going to say and I say it myself, well, men and women are different. Duh. Duh. If you haven't figured that out, if a guy hasn't figured it out by now, he's in trouble. There are differences. And that's a wonderful thing. But the instructions are the same.

So one of the challenges is to say, well, okay, how does this fit for the man and for the wife? I don't claim I've done this in this message, but that's a point to think about. The husband must fulfill his duties to his wife. Must fulfill is the idea to give, to do something necessary to fulfill an obligation. And actually it's, It is translated render, and I want to show you some passages on that, and it is present. So he must be continuously fulfilling his duty to his wife. And another command.

So in Matthew, this is one which you may haven't thought about. Remember when they showed this coin to Christ? He held this coin up and he said to them, Christ said, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar and to God the things that are God. I said this verse many times in these days. I'll leave that to you during this pandemic. I said that verse many times to myself. And maybe out loud, too.

Anyway. But in this context, it could be translated must fulfill. And then Macaulay says the word fulfill is a Greek word that means to pay a bill or a debt. In the present tense, it means the obligation is continuously and must be constantly fulfilled.

You know, one of the themes you're going to see through this, that the marriage relationship is continuous and constant. You don't say well, I've halfway through this marriage situation now I can I can kind of slide I can put it on I coast through the rest of it. No it says Your responsibilities continue on during your entire entire period you're with your wife and in a way that's you know, that's Challenging and it's wonderful. It's great and And let me say one thing, in preparing this, and when Bonnie said, oh, Roger, you had those messages, I wish Mike had that chapter.

And I said, well, it didn't work out that way. So, you know, when you're reading these things, you realize I'm reading that thinking, Well, how am I doing here? And I'm saying, I'm teaching this. So don't think that I'm here preaching at you and saying, wagging my fingers saying, I got this all figured out. These verses are just as challenging for me as they are for you.

So what duty is spoken of in this context? So let's think about that for a second. The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife. And his duty here, that's a direct object. What is owed, his obligation to owe someone. So another usage of this word render, render to all what is due them, tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom is due, fear to whom fear, and honor to whom honor is due. And I think of that one, that just kind of jumped out at me.

Wow, you know, my wife deserves to be honored. You know, that, you know, from the man's, she deserves to be honored because God has put her in that place. And likewise, the husband is to be honored by the wife. And here's a neat verse. I have a story about this. This is actually the last part of a verse. It says, but through love serve one another.

And this is kind of a special verse to me and Vonnie when we were overseas in England. We got to be there for five years. It's incredible. The government paid me to go there and paid me extra to live in England for five years and travel over England and have a great time and have a daughter. Anyway, and have a whole experience of having a daughter in an English hospital, that's another whole story.

But we had a dear couple in a church. Actually, to come to know the Lord, I mean, I forgot the best part of that, I came to know the Lord during that time period. And so this lovely Christian couple, before we left, gave us this little tray. It was carved, I think, and they had this verse, through love serve one another. So that's always kind of been a special verse for me, and I think it speaks well to these verses that talk about this duty between the husband and the wife of serving one another.

And the Amplified has a good translation here. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, goodwill, kindness, and what is due her as his wife. Okay, and then we have the likewise. in like manner, to do likewise. Therefore the verse says the same thing to the wife. The wife must fulfill her duty to her husband, present tense, constantly being fulfilled.

Since the husband and wife are one flesh, this is where it gets to be really special and really interesting. One flesh and the Lord, the mutual duty is not to be a burden but a blessing. And then, I had to bring it back again. Through love, serve one another. So we see these verses talk about both being responsible. Okay, so now we get to the interesting part here.

This verse, the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, also the husband does not have authority over his body, but the wife does. So I thought about this and I said, well, it seems like that Paul's pointing out here that the one flesh is really what's in view here. Paul will point out, since they have one flesh, this will be true under grace. So this authority, this gets to be kind of interesting to have or exercise power. One has no separate power or liberty over her own body, to use it as you will. So this verse kind of, I thought, fit in from what we studied previously.

Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God, and you're not your own? So think about, in terms of your salvation, You're not your own. You've been bought with a price. God owns you. And in a sense, there's a mutual ownership between husband and wife of their bodies. And that kind of goes against what the world would have us believe, but that's one of the wonderful things that comes through here, that we're bought by God, he owns us, and then we come into this one flesh relationship, and there's a mutual ownership between the husband and wife. And likewise, the husband does not have authority over his body, but his wife does. So Macaulay says here, the obligation of marriage are mutual and is conveyed by the word likewise, which links the husband and the wife together in their duties.

Then I liked, Chafer had this comment, the earnest supplication by Paul is for a daily life which corresponds to the wonderful fact that they already have, they already are the temple of the Holy Spirit. So that's one of the things, that picture of the one flesh and the Holy Spirit.

So I took a stab here, is this the place where I want to go? I think it is, okay. So here's my, here's my, I'll do, this is a how picture. Andrew will appreciate that. Okay, so here we go. So I tried to gather what has been said in this verse. So come talk with me if you think I've gone over the edge here. So basically he talked about one flesh.

Within that one flesh, we have the husband's body and we have the wife's body. And we're being taught here that they're temples of the Holy Spirit. But there's a mutual authority. But it's not of their own bodies, it's of their spouse's body. And that's to be in love, through love serve one another.

So this is my picture trying to put together what we've been seeing in these verses. So if you, you know, pictures are helpful, can be helpful, may not be helpful, but hopefully this is helpful. So tell me what you think, you know, write me, you know, send me an email or, you know, see me in the parking lot and say, I know, I don't think about that one. I don't like that one.

Okay, all right, so let's go on to the last verse. So the last verse is sort of maybe a verse that says problems may develop in the marriage, there may be problems. So what are we to do about when problems develop in a marriage? And also it assumes that a problem possibly has been going on. It says, stop depriving one another except by agreement for a time so that you may devote yourselves to prayer and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. So stop depriving one another. It assumes the action is already going on. You're already depriving one another. To deprive is to defraud. Some translate it to defraud. You're defrauding one another. So I tried to, this is my bullet.

I was saying, what could we be depriving one another of? And the thing is, because there's so much focus on sexual intimacy here in these verses, you tend to go there first. But I don't think that's the place what, where the Holy Spirit wants us to go. He says, you can defraud one another of your time, think about that, of your time, of your attention, of your help, and then lastly, maybe of your intimacy.

So I think it's all those go together. And men and women are different. And a lot of those ones, if you don't spend time with your wife, there's a problem. You've got a problem right there. From what I've seen in my life I've lived, I've seen that's one of the major things, not spending time with your spouse. If you don't spend time with them, then a lot of problems occur.

So it says, stop depriving one another, except by agreement, Agreement is a Greek word for symphony, which means a harmonious voice. So you both must agree to this course of action. So this is kind of proposing a, some have seen this as like a formula or a roadmap. There's been a problem. Step one, you make an agreement. Step two is you decide how long it's gonna be. Step three, you get back together again and so on. And maybe it is, but anyway. So you agree upon what the course of action is.

Step three is for a time, except for a time. From what we see, it's for a limited time. It's not to be open-ended. It's not like, well, we'll separate for a while and just, you know, if you feel like you wanna talk to me, let's talk to me. No, it's, you make an agreement. You decide, okay, however long, and this may be, you know, I took this possibly to be, you wouldn't have to leave one another physically. You could be in the same house, but maybe you just spend time separate in your own house, I don't know.

So that you may devote yourselves to prayer With the purpose that devote yourselves to have time for opportunity to be occupied with Both the husband and wife and I This first haven't kind of occurred to me where the Lord when he was with the disciples He spent time alone in prayer who went off to the mountains to pray to spend time and spent time the whole night in prayer and And actually, Macaulay says, take time with the Lord. This is kind of a paraphrase of what Macaulay said, take time with the Lord to examine and reflect upon your own personal condition with Christ.

And the point is that many times, you know, you can, I guess you could pray, Lord, you know, fix my wife. Or Lord, or if you're a lady, fix my husband. That probably isn't the right prayer. You know, the focus isn't Lord, Hey, you know, I probably blow it in here a few times that may a thousand times and you know It's more between you and the Lord not so much.

Um, this is a blame game session with the Lord So that's how I kind of kind of view it here And come together, but after is resumed marital relationships Must result in restoration of marital relationships So that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control With the purpose that This is a neat word we learned a lot from Brother Hal.

There's two words for temptation. This is a bad word. This is a solicitation to sin. You know, when you open yourself up, when you, this is a situation where you're tempted and you take the bait and you sin. Because of lack of self-control, Separation would involve sexual abstinence, opens up the potential for temptation and resulting in sin.

So, all right. So I promised that we would go back to the beginning. So we're going to go back and just kind of review quickly here. staying single, God's plan, abstain from sexual relationships. And you know that's, I have a little chart that I built that I was gonna teach this time, I decided not to.

There's a whole question of whether Paul was a married man or a single man. So there's an interesting, J. Vernon McGee has an interesting picture of this, and I'll present that next week. But the path of a single person, a godly single person, according to scripture is abstinence from sexual relationships. And that's, to my mind, that's a tough road.

Getting married, that's God's plan. Be fruitful, multiply. Marriage is intended to be a permanent relationship, intended to be a monogamous relationship. The married must consider their mutual indebtedness, they're in debt to one another. The married must consider the surrender of independence, one flesh. Marriage should avoid separation. The married should avoid separation. Separation must be by mutual consent, must be for a limited time. must be devoted to prayer.

Actually, I didn't point it out, but there's actually the definite article, it's the prayer, and many commentators kind of say, what's the prayer that the couple, that the husband is to pray and the wife is to pray? Well, it seems to be the prayer about Lord, I'm in this situation, it's a prayer about their marriage. It shouldn't be about, you know, something else. It would be about their marriage. But there's a definite article there. eventuate in reunion. Separation must be seen as having a dangerous potential. So hopefully that was helpful. We're going to continue on. Lots more in this chapter. keeps going on.

And so we're going to see where Paul's going to address in the coming weeks here. He's going to address widows. He's going to address that their spouses died. He's going to address unbelievers married to believers. And either case where the, you know, it can be either situation. And what are you to do about that? So Paul gets down to very specific cases about marriage. So let's pray.

We thank you, Father. We thank you for this wonderful message about marriage, Father. We thank you for your care for a husband and a wife, and the special place you call them into, Lord, is one flesh, and that you see them as no one else sees them. You understand their hearts, and we're thankful for your marvelous word. Amen.