We have much to learn from the puritans. This is especially true in our understanding of marriage and family. These theological giants preached, wrote, and counseled extensively on this vitally important institution and we would benefit greatly if we listened to their instruction and applied it to our marriages today.

Music The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is pleased to present Gospel-Centered Marriages for a Glorious Church. This message is entitled, Learning About Marriage from Our Spiritual Fathers, by Joe Beeky. Turn with me, if you will, to Malachi chapter 2. I'm going to read verses 14 through 16. And while you're turning there, let me say what a joy it is for me to be here.

And I feel right at home among a crowd like this, seeing all these wonderful large families. By the grace of God, I come from a family of five children, but my mother has 35 grandchildren. From those five children, I have a brother with 13 and a sister with nine. And she has 82 great-grandchildren. And one great-great-grandchild, And she probably is in the last weeks of her life at the moment.

I lost my father 18 years ago. He died in the pulpit. He went straight from the pulpit to glory, but I've been blessed with a wonderful, wonderful family. And I praise God that I see so many of you nurturing and bringing up your children the fear and ammunition of the Lord. Keep on keeping on and the seed you sow will bear fruit after many days.

Malachi 2, 14 through 16, Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously. Yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant. And did he not make one? Yet had he the residue of the Spirit.

And wherefore one, that he might make a godly seed? Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away. For one covereth violence with his garment, saith the Lord of hosts. Therefore take heed to your spirit that you deal not treacherously." Thus far the reading of sacred Scripture.

Let's see God's face in prayer. Lord God, as we draw near to Thee, the Triune God, we pray Thy benediction upon this address, that we might indeed learn from our spiritual forebears valuable lessons for earthly marriage not only, but for Gospel living, to the glory of Thy great and holy name. And give, Lord, that this address and this entire conference may transform us to live Christlike lives and to truly model that Christ-church relationship as husbands and wives and future marital spouses, as we heard last hour. We ask Thy benediction now in speaking. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Well, the day I left the active duty of the Army Reserves, my presiding officer said to me, I hope that you make it out there. And I said, what do you mean, sir? And he said, well, it's a big bad world out there. And in the army here, we've got some safety. We've got Uncle Sam protecting us.

And I said, sir, I have the God of the universe protecting me. I will be alright, sir, but I do thank you for your wishes. Well, you've all heard the caricatures of Puritans. You've heard that they're killjoys. You've heard that they're narrow, restrictive.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Did you know that it was the late 16th century and 17th century and early 18th century Puritans that have really bequeathed to us the Christian home, the Christian family, and the Christian biblical view of marriage more than any other group of our forefathers? The things we take so natural today about a beautiful Christian home really have come down to us from the Puritans. You see, the Puritans had a very vast vision of all areas of life. They lived all of life, which was one of their favorite mottos, in the spirit of Coram Deo, in the face of God.

They wanted to be husbands in the presence of God, wives in the presence of God. Their marriages were far bigger than themselves. Their marriages were lived out on the theater of God's divine transactions and God's divine redemption. And that is true of family living. That is true of their work.

They worked as unto the Lord. They were married as unto the Lord. They undertook their education as unto the Lord. Every dimension of life was to be lived wholly and solely for the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what Satan does is he tries, young people, he tries to get you to think that a conservative, godly, biblical lifestyle is narrow and restrictive.

It doesn't have the freedoms the world offers you. But actually, the world offers you a world that only revolves around tiny, little, puny you. And the Christian life is a life, the Puritans said, that offers you a world as big as the God of the universe. For it is Him that you serve, and to Him you live, and for His kingdom and His church and His glory, you are called to spend all your energy." Now that's why the Puritans had this vast view of marriage, of child rearing, of family life. For example, how many of you when you sat down with your spouse and you talked about future children, How many of you said, well honey, I think we need to have a very large family if God allows us because of the state of the commonwealth or the condition of the church?

The Puritans, you see, had such a large vision because God was the head of their family that they believed that the matter of having children wasn't just a decision between husband and wife, what we want to do, or how many we want to have, but when things were normal and there was not undue psychological pressures or mental or physical problems, then, well, you were to try to have a large family because it was not just for your sake you were rearing children, but it was for the church's sake and it was for the nation's sake. Their vision was huge and their attitude toward family was wonderful and positive and biblical and lavish. And that permeated their views on marriage as well. Everyone I'm quoting this evening, unless I give you an exception, is a Puritan, in case you're not familiar with the names. Just trust me, they're Puritans.

Richard Baxter said, "'Tis a mercy to have a faithful friend that loveth you entirely, to whom you may open your mind and communicate your affairs. And it is a mercy to have so near a friend to be a helper to your soul and to stir you up in the graces of God." That's how Baxter viewed marriage. John Dodd and Robert Cleaver, who co-authored a book on the Ten Commandments, said this, Thy wife is ordained for man like a little zolar. She is a city of refuge to fly to in all his troubles, and there's no peace comparable unto her, but the peace of conscience with God." And John Downey said, God the institutor of marriage gave the wife unto the husband to be not his servant, but his helper, his counselor, his comforter. One of my favorites is John Cotton.

He said, women are creatures without which there is no comfortable living for man. It is true of them, what is want to be said of governments, that even bad ones are better than none. Cotton goes on to say, though some call them a necessary evil, I call them a necessary good. Well, that just gives you a flavor of how the Puritans viewed marriage. But let's look at it a bit more systematically tonight.

Let me look with you at four things. I want to set forth before you scriptural purposes, procedures, principles, and practices in their view of marriage. Purposes, procedures, principles, and practices. Now the Puritans agreed with the reformers that Scripture sanctions basically three purposes for marriage. All of which aim for the higher good of the glory of God and the furthering of God's Kingdom on earth.

According to the Anglican book of Common Prayer, the purposes of marriage are these three. The procreation of children, the restraint and remedy for sin, and third, mutual society, help and comfort toward each other. Now some of the early Puritans followed that same order. But by the 1640s, by the time the Westminster Confession of Faith was written, which you know was written by a hundred Puritans, the order had been reversed in Puritan thinking. And from there on in, you'll find most Puritan books on marriage, and there were a lot of them, follow this order.

And I quote here from chapter 24, paragraph 2 of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Marriage was ordained, number one, for the mutual help of husband and wife, Genesis 2.18. Number two, for the increase of mankind and of the Church with a holy seed, Malachi 2.15, and number three, for the preventing of uncleanness, 1 Corinthians 7. So basically, the same three ideas, but number one has become number two, number two has become number three, and number three has become number one. Now that's significant.

The Puritans were the very first in all of Church history who said the primary purpose of marriage is to glorify God through being a mutual help and a companion to assist one another on your journey through this world and to a better world to come. Puritan Henry Smith says, "...this is God's way to avoid the inconvenience of solitariness signified in these words, it is not good for man to be alone, as though he said, this life would be irksome and unpleasant to man if the Lord did not give him a wife to accompany his troubles." William Goudge, who you heard referred to last hour, and by the way, his hefty, domestic duties has just been re-typed, set in normal type, and we actually have it at the Reformation Heritage Bookstore. It's the most popular Puritan marriage book ever written. Most ministers gave it out as a wedding gift actually to every young couple they married. So it became a classic.

And William Goode said that mutual assistance in marriage that flows out of companionship naturally serves the glory of God when it's biblically based. And that should include the tasks of childbearing, childrearing family government, in times of prosperity and adversity, health and sickness. The second reason for marriage, according to the Puritans, is the procreation and the building up of the church through godly child rearing. Now again, the Puritans believed in big families for the reasons I just stated in my introduction. Gudge says Christians should have children so that the world might be increased and not simply increased, but with a legitimate brood and distinct families which are the seminaries of the cities and of the nation.

Your family, dear God-fearing father and mother, is the seminary of the city in which you live and the nation in which you dwell, Gudge is saying to you. Talk about a vision. Yet he says, in the world, the church by a holy seed is also to be preserved and propagated. So in the more narrow form, we have large families by the grace of God to serve the Church of God. And then thirdly, the purpose of marriage is for men and women, as Gudge puts it, to possess their vessels in holiness and honor, rather to indulge in fornication.

Gudge goes on to say, marriage is in haven to such as are in jeopardy of their salvation through the gusts of temptations to lust. Marriage is the best and most sanctified solution to the temptation of fornication. Now though a man is to love his wife with all that is within him, as Christ loved the church, that love is never to supplant his greater love for the triune God through the Lord Jesus Christ. John Winthrop, in a letter written to his wife shortly after their marriage, calls her the chiefest of all comforts under the hope of salvation. But John Cotton warns against the error of aiming at no higher end than marriage itself and encourages people to look upon their spouses, quote, not for their own ends but to be better fitted for God's service and to bring them nearer to God.

So if you think a wonderful marriage is getting very close to your spouse but having no energy and no love to spill over your relationship, beyond your relationship, to your family, and to your friends, and to your neighbors, you've missed the understanding, the global vision understanding, of the Puritan view of marriage. A good marriage has so much love, so much energy, it is so grounded in a threefold cord that is not easily broken between God, husband and wife, that there is energy to spill out beyond that threefold cord to minister unto others, particularly, the Puritans would say, to the poor and to the needy. So just as the triune God has such an intertrinitarian love among the three persons of the Trinity, that God, as it were, could scarcely contain himself and created man in order to spill out his love upon mankind so that sinners might find salvation in Jesus Christ, so a couple patterned after God, though not redemptively, but is to spill over their love and their energy to proclaim redemption and to model the grace of God to others as well. So that means to say, when God is number two in your life, you're not living the way you ought to live, and when your spouse is number one.

But when your spouse is number two, and God is number one, you're living the way God designed you to live. There's a woman in my congregation who passed away a few years ago, and she was actually a fairly worldly non-church member. She always came with her husband to church for many years. And they had a reasonably good outward marriage and common grace. They loved each other.

They had a natural love for each other, and she treated him well. He didn't have any complaints about her. But when she was saved, she turned to him and she said, my dear husband, you've always been number one in my life. You're now number two. But I'm a better wife to you when you're number two than I was when you were number one." You see, this is the point.

When God is first and foremost, the Puritan said, then we're in a position to truly be a good spouse to one another. When God is number one, spouse number two, me number three, you have the recipe when both people feel that way for a very good marriage indeed. Now what about procedures for getting married? La Puritan said there are really six steps to marriage, and I'm collating this from a number of sources here. First, the period of getting to know or to like and love each other.

That could be initiated by the couple themselves, under supervision of parents, or by parents, or sometimes even by friends, but not without parental knowledge. And for the Puritans, this primarily consisted of visiting each other's homes as family, and integrating into the family. It wasn't private dating. It was courting in the midst of domestic activity. And Goude said, when that other person who is courting, say, a young woman in a family, merges well with the family in the fear of God is present in this young man, in the midst of this family, and love grows, that is a sign, a good sign, that God is intending marriage, providing of course other things match up as well, which we'll get to in a moment.

But that's really the key thing. And then he said, mutual love and good liking of each other becomes as glue in a relationship. Glue that will not be loosened by any earthly trials. Secondly, when this relation is firmed up, growing together by love, it's on good foundation, there was a contract of espousals called a commitment to marry, much like we would call engagement today. Only their form of engagement was actually stronger.

It was actually a contract That was the beginning of marriage itself. The couple actually went in front of authorities, and while holding hands in front of these witnesses, they vowed to faithfully promise to marry thee in time neat and convenient. The Puritans found biblical sanction in such a contract from the examples of Lot's daughters who were contracted, says Goudge, to husbands while they are said to have known no man, Genesis 19, and Mary, who is described as a virgin, espoused. Third, the contract was then formally announced in their churches for three successive Sundays. If there were no objections to their marriage, the Church was assumed to have given silent approbation.

Then fourth was the public solemnization of marriage in a religious ceremony, and that was followed by a civil celebration. And Goudj describes the civil celebration this way. All those lawful customs that are used for the setting forth of the outward solemnity of the wedding as the meeting of friends, the accompanying of the bridegroom and bride, both to and from the Church, putting on one's best apparel, seating in families, and with other tokens of rejoicing, for which we have express warrant out of God's Word. Fifth, after the service there would then be feasting at the groom's home where witty questions and doubtful riddles may be propounded. By the way, all those questions and riddles, however, were not risqué in nature, as in so many wedding receptions today.

And then sixth was, of course, the consummation through sexual intercourse. The Puritans believed that the marriage was not actually sanctioned until that first intercourse took place. Now, what about principles? Well, there are two basic paradigms, two basic principles, biblical ones, that the Puritans said we should model our marriages upon. The First is what we heard last hour and we'll hear apparently for two more hours, the Christ Church principle.

Goudge actually spends 133 pages expounding Ephesians 5, 21 through 33. He sets forth a major principle of marriage. In these words, the husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the church, while the wife is to show reverence and submission to her husband as the church does to Christ. And Good says basically this, the husband must love his wife four ways. Absolutely, that's verse 25, and no doubt we'll hear more about that tomorrow.

Absolutely, he must love her as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. Purposely, verse 26, that he might sanctify and cleanse it. There's a goal that he might present it, 27a, to himself a glorious church. Third, he must love his wife realistically, recognizing she does have spots and wrinkles and such things, as verse 27 says. And he must love her sacrificially, as he does his own body, 28 and 29.

This love must be true and free and pure and exceeding and constant, as is the love of Christ. Recently I came across a beautiful Puritan story to illustrate this. There was actually a Puritan minister who saw a brother just doting over his wife, and he was expressing to the minister how much he loved her. And the minister kind of admonished him and said, you know, you may well love your wife too much. And well, the brother went home very upset, and he searched the scriptures.

And he said, I don't love her too much. I love God most of all. How can I love my wife too much? Well, maybe. Am I making an idol of her in some way?

And he struggled and wrestled. And he came across Ephesians 5, so what? Meant to love their wives as their own body, and as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. And he came back to the ministry and said, Look here, look here at Ephesians 5.25. I don't love my wife enough because I'm to love her as Christ loved the church and gave Himself.

He gave everything for His bride and I haven't given everything for my wife yet. And the minister frowned and looked at the text and he said, you're right brother, go home and love your way. You see, these were the days when people were actually persuaded to change their lives by what scripture said, instead of trying to twist Scripture according to their feelings and their desires. So this was the idea, you see. You are to love Christ, and you are to love your bride the way Christ loves the Church.

Now, it's fascinating, isn't it? Even though the demands to love your wife are so strong, so idealistic, so overwhelming, today you don't hear a lot of people complaining, either male or female, that husbands are to love their wives. But somehow people complain when it talks about women, the wives are to submit to their husbands. You don't hear any women complain about husbands love your wives. Why not?

Well, I think part of the problem here is that we men are to be the initiators. We are to love our wives, and when we love them, in most cases, When our wives are God-fearing, submission will become much easier for them when they feel and know and sense the love we have for them. And Yet, each partner, the Puritans insisted on that, each partner is to fulfill his own or her own duties without regard to what the other partner is doing to them or against them. Isaac Ambrosi said this, a wife must be meek, mild, gentle, obedient, though she be matched with a crooked, perverse, and wicked husband. Well, it's a tall order to love your wife the way Christ loved the church, and it's a tall order to be submissive to your husband even if he's a wicked perverse and crooked man.

But these tall orders, you see, are realizable only by the grace of the Holy Spirit when we subject our lives and our marriages to the obedience of God's Word and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Puritans said this love from man to woman and this submission from woman to man is to be voluntary, it's to be wholehearted, it's to be sincere, It's to be consciously setting myself into Christ-church paradigm. And every morning I wake up, I'm to say as a husband, today I should love my wife the way Christ loves the church. And you should say, women, today I should be submissive to my husband the way the church is submissive to Christ. That's what the Puritans would say to you.

The second principle is the covenantal principle. I read it to you from Malachi 2. One Puritan summarizes it this way, Every Proper marriage since the first was founded on a covenant to which the free and voluntary consent of both parties is necessary. Since time began, no man and woman had ever been allowed to fix the terms upon which they would agree to be husband and wife. God had established the rules of marriage when he solemnized the first one, and he made no changes in them since then.

The covenant of marriage is a promise to obey those rules without conditions and without reservations. For the Puritans, this covenant principle was extremely important. You covenant from your soul and your mind, as well as with your affections and with your will, as men, to love your woman the way Christ loves the Church, and you covenant as women, you make a commitment to respect and be submissive to your husbands as the way the Church submits to the Lord Jesus Christ. And what about practices? Well, here the Puritans got more detailed.

And they grounded their practices, however, in the Word of God. One beautiful thing about the Puritans is they subjected every detail of their lives to the Scriptures. J. I. Packer, who's not a 17th century Puritan, he's still alive today, says this, the Puritans went to Genesis for the institution of marriage, to Ephesians for its full meaning, to Leviticus for its hygiene, to Proverbs for its management, to several New Testament books for its ethic, and to Esther, Ruth, and the Song of Solomon for illustrations and exhibitions of the ideal.

You see, they let the foundations, but also the practices, the duties, and the ethics of marriage flow out of the marriage textbook of Scripture. They believed that the Bible was the best marriage textbook ever written. Edward Payson says, the duties which they, husband and wife, bind themselves to perform in marriage are no more, no less than God requires in His Holy Word. Now what most Puritan textbooks do, and by the way, there's about 50 Puritan textbooks of which only two, I believe, or maybe three have been reprinted or are in print now. But what you find in all of these textbooks is a division of the duties into three sections, almost without exception.

Mutual duties, husband's duties, and wife's duties. In terms of mutual duties, the foundational mutual duty in marriage, the Puritans said, is love. A loving mutual affection, one of them writes, must pass betwixt husband and wife, or else no duty will be well performed. This is the ground of all the rest. William Waitley, who wrote two books on marriage, says, As for love, it is the life, the soul of marriage, without which it is no more itself than a carcass is a man.

Yes, it is uncomfortable, miserable, and a living death without love." Whiteley describes marital love as the king of the heart, so that when it prevails, marriage is a pleasing combination of two persons into one home, one purse, one heart, and one flesh. Now this love is to operate in three particular ways. First of all, it is to be a spiritual love in Christ, in accord with Christ's commandments. It is to be rooted in the experience of being equally yoked together spiritually. It must be built on a Christ-centered foundation, cemented with a mutual use of the spiritual disciplines and the means of grace.

Husbands and wives must rejoice in humbly worshiping God together at church and in their own homes. They must read the scriptures together, engage in family worship together, sing psalms together, observe the Sabbath together, partake of the sacraments together, pray for each other, pray with each other. Love that is built on physical appearance or human gifts rests on a sandy foundation, " said William Waitley, and can be easily blown down by any severe storm. But spiritual love that looks upon God and rests upon his will and yields to his commandments and resolves to obey him cannot change itself because the cause of that love is unchangeable. Secondly, this marital love must not only be spiritual, it must be superlative.

So that a husband and wife love each other so dearly that both are persuaded that the other is, as Waitley writes, the only fit and good match that could be found under the sun for them. Now because of parental love, a godly parent would not trade his child for another parent's child even if that child were better looking and had more gifts and had a more pleasant personality. Similarly, a godly husband and wife would not trade each other for a better-looking and more gifted spouse. And so Whately quaintly observes, Marriage love admits of no equal, but places my yoke fellow next of all to the soul of the party loving. It will know none dearer, none so dear, other than God himself.

And thirdly, marital love must only be spiritual and superlative, but also sexual. Marital partners can give themselves fully to each other with joy and exuberance in a healthy relationship marked by fidelity and grounded in the Lord Jesus Christ. Reformers such as Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin, the early Reformers, established this aspect of marriage by abandoning the medieval Roman Catholic attitudes that marriage was inferior to celibacy and that all sexual contact between marital partners was a necessary evil to propagate the human race. Rome had taught and still teaches, technically, that a procreative act that involved passion was inherently sinful. And that negative attitude toward marital intimacy was actually programmed into the church already by some of the ancient fathers, Tertullian, Ambrosa, and Jerome, all of whom believe that even within marriage intercourse involves sin.

And that attitude toward marital intimacy dominated the church for more than a thousand years. That's what made the church embrace the glorification of virginity and celibacy. And by the fifth century, clerics were prohibited from marrying. And two classes of Christians emerged, the religious, the so-called elite spiritual clergy, which included monks and nuns who vowed to abstain from all sexual activity, and the profane, the secular laity, like most of us, who being unable to rise to the noble heights of virginity or celibacy, were conceded the right to marry. Well, the Reformers broke that tradition and they began to write against it, but it was really the Puritans who followed in the footsteps of the Reformers that developed the biblical grounds of why this view is so wrong.

The Puritans called it satanic and straight from hell. They cited Paul who said that the prohibition of marriage is a doctrine of devils, 1 Timothy 4, 1-3. And even the very definition of marriage in the Puritans implied the conjugal act. For example, William Perkins, the father of Puritans, defines marriage as, quote, the lawful conjunction of two married persons that is of one man and one woman into one flesh." And the Anglicans didn't go that far, or those who kind of were halfway to Rome and halfway to the Reformation. Like Erasmus rejected this freedom the Puritans found in sexual intimacy within marriage.

Erasmus said the ideal marriage abstains from sexual intercourse. John Cotton, the Puritan, answered him and said, if that is the case, then the Scriptures are wrong, and we follow the dictates of a blind mind rather than that of the Holy Spirit, who said it is not good that man should be alone. So the Puritans viewed sex within marriage as a gift of God, as an essential, enjoyable part of marriage. Goude said that husbands and wives should cohabit with good will and delight willingly, readily, and cheerfully. And Perkins added, they do err who hold that the secret coming together, a man and wife, cannot be without sin unless it be done for the procreation of children.

And arguing from 1st Corinthians 7 verse 3, Perkins goes on to say that marital sex is a debt that you owe to your spouse. It's due benevolence that a couple owes to one another. There must be singular and entire affection toward one another, says Perkins, by the right and lawful use of their bodies or of the marriage bed. And the fruits of enjoyable, God-honoring sex in marriage are the blessing of children, the preservation of the body in cleanness, and the reflection of marriage as a type of the Christ-church relationship. So couples must cherish one another intimately, rather than having sex in an impersonal way as an adulterer with a prostitute.

A couple should be intimate with a holy kind of rejoicing, writes Perkins, solacing themselves with each other in a mutual declaration of the signs and tokens of love and kindness. The Puritans stressed the romantic side of marriage. C.S. Lewis said, the conversion of courtly love into romantic, monogamous love was largely the work of the Puritans. Herbert Richardson said, the rise of romantic marriage and its validation by the Puritans represents a major innovation within the Christian tradition.

And the Puritans would often write about this. Husbands, especially ministers who were traveling and preaching in different churches, would write love letters back to their wives, wives they were married to for 20, 30, 40 years. The New England Puritan Thomas Hooker wrote this, The man whose heart is endeared to the woman he loves, he dreams of her in the night, he has her in his eye in apprehension when he awakes, he muses on her as he sits at table. He walks with her when he travels from afar, and he parleys with her in each place where he comes. He's saying, when I'm away from my wife in some distant city, I go to bed at night, I imagine making love with her.

I parley with her in my mind. I love her. I'm ravished with her." And then he adds, she lies in his bosom and his heart trusts in her, which forces all to confess that the entire stream of his affection, like a mighty current, runs with full tide and strength toward her. While there are many other mutual duties that Puritans emphasize, They say you must be faithful to each other. You must help each other in every conceivable way.

You must look after each other's spiritual growth. You must try to heal each other's faults. You must steer each other away from sin. You must pray for one another, compliment one another, appreciate one another, keep the spirit of unity in the bond of peace with one another. Puritans were strong in never speaking harshly to one another, provoking each other, must show kindness to each other, must overlook each other's minor faults without even mentioning them, must cultivate friendship, true friendship, must take an interest in each other, must be sympathetic to each other in times of sickness, must promote each other's reputation, Must never speak an ill word of each other in anyone's presence.

Must be confidential. Must be industrious in your callings. Must be hospitable to others. Must use your money wisely, Both husband and wife. By the way, most Puritan husbands dictated the managing of the money to their wives because they felt their wives were better at it.

They were still heads of the home, but they gave it to their wives because they thought it was the better part of wisdom to do so. Now when it comes to husbands' duties, husbands should not only love their wives the way Christ loves the Church, but they should delight in their wives. The Puritans use that word a lot. They should dote upon their wives even. They should not allow blemishes in their wives to slacken their affection for them.

One of the Puritan writers says this, if a man have a wife not very beautiful or proper, but having some deformity in her body, some imperfection in speech, sight, gesture, or any part of her body, he ought yet to be so affectionate to her and delight in her as if she were the fairest and in every way the most complete woman in all the world." Well, that's a toe order, men. But a husband must do more than that. He must provide for his wife in sickness and in health. He must particularly assist her when she's pregnant. He must bestow extra favors and kindnesses and gifts upon her.

He must never strike her or abuse her verbally or physically. Puritan Henry Smith said, her cheek was meant for thy lips after all, not for thy fist." At times, a husband may reprove his wife, but only in tender love and always to steer her away from sin. When he does so, he must do so so gently that she feels his love more than his criticism. Reproofs should be rare, should be administered in private, should be done with humility, and should never be undertaken when the wife is upset or angry. Finally, a husband must accept the functions that his wife performs.

He must show his acceptance by his gratitude, by not demanding too much from her, and by giving her freedom to manage the affairs of the home. The Puritans really believed that the wife was in charge of the kitchen, and the husband delegated that to his wife. And he must do all this, said the Puritans, cheerfully and tenderly. Matthew Henry perhaps said it best when that famous statement you've all heard, and Matthew Henry was one of the most famous Puritans, the woman is not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be beloved of him. Now concerning the wife's duties, in addition to showing submission and reverence to her husband, in fulfilling mutual marital duties, she has her own unique responsibilities.

She's to be a help meet for her husband. She should assist him in a variety of ways. She should help him in, quote, business, in troubles, in sickness, like a woman physician. She should be content with her husband's work, with his social standing, and financial status. When he comes home from a hard day's work, she should praise him for his work, just as he should praise her for a good meal.

Then too, she should manage the affairs of the household effectively. And that includes helping her husband establish Christ's glorious kingdom in their home, " said Rogers, being thrifty without being miserly, consistently persevering and completing her duties. Puritans did not look kindly on a wife who did a half job and then left the other half undone. And handling herself with sobriety, with mildness, courtesy, obeisance, and modesty. Modesty was a big deal in the Puritan mind, as the Bible commands.

Puritan Thomas Gadigar sums it all up by saying that a good wife is, quote, the best companion in wealth, the fittest and readiest assistant in work, the greatest comfort in crosses and griefs, the only warrantable and comfortable means of issue and posterity, the singular and sovereign remedy ordained by God against incontinency, and the greatest grace and honor that can be to him that hath her." Now there you have their mutual duties, husband's duties, wife's duties. Let me just say a word before I close about the mutual duty that then evolves when children do come. Let me just say Three quick things here. Number one, children are to be viewed as the gift of God. God opens the womb.

No parent should ever, ever, ever sit down with a spouse and say, well, we're only going to have so many children, or let's have three children, then let's call it quits. That would be abhorrent to a Puritan mind. Now, if there were medical conditions, or you couldn't get your wife pregnant, again, that would be something different, and they would use some form of natural birth control. But you see, you don't just stop having children for your own selfish reasons. Having children involved you, your family, your church, and your nation.

And therefore children are a gift of God. And having children is a holy vocation from the Most High God. Second thing I would mention is that children must be brought up early on in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Now the Puritans did believe that the wife should do most of the caring of the child in the first six months of the child's life because they realized a wife has more natural abilities for that. They're so realistic.

And the wife should breastfeed, by the way. Goudjie gives ten reasons in about three pages why a woman should always breastfeed her child. Again, the detail is amazing. But once a child reaches beyond that age where men feel more comfortable handling the child, it's not that men shouldn't do anything before that, but the wife has the primary role, then the man takes on a very major role as well. And early on, That child is included in family worship, and that child is spoken to on the simplest possible level.

And the father must never neglect family worship, not even to a three-year-old. And what the child doesn't understand, the child will understand later. You can sing with a three-year-old. You can pray in simple ways with a three-year-old. You can talk in simple ways with a three-year-old.

So every day the father is responsible to read scripture to his family, including all his children. He's to pray with his family, and he's to speak about those scriptures to his family. Maybe five or 10 minutes explaining the word, asking questions, particularly to his children, at their various age levels, dialoguing with them. And then family worship is always to be closed with singing, Psalm 118, verse 15. So every day there's singing in the home that goes up to the glory of God.

So early on, children had to be trained in the nurturing and ammunition of the Lord in the home as well as in the church. Children had to be included in the church worship service from early age. They had to grow up with the family of God, in the Church of God. Families are to sit together in the House of God. They worship as families, realizing their family is a mini-picture of the bigger family of the Church of God.

And they are called to be a faithful mini-picture of the bigger picture in the house of God. And then the third thing I want to say is this. In Puritan culture, What happens is the parents stay completely involved in their children's lives through the teen years. Even though they give a little more slack to help their teens assume adult responsibility, their involvement remains at a very high level. All major life decisions are talked over in great detail between the child, the teenager, the father, and the mother.

And so major decisions, for example, like who one is to marry, is not something that would be approached independently. A teenage, Puritan young man who's 18 years old wouldn't suddenly just go out and start dating a young woman. First of all, he'd talk with his parents. He'd say, Father, you know me. You know my personality.

You also know that young woman who's in church. I'm a bit attracted to her. What do you think, Father? Or the father would have the liberty to go to the young man and say, I've been observing this young lady, what do you think? Now, neither one should force the other.

The young man should not force the father to say yes when the father has very grave concerns. And the father may not force affection upon the young man who might feel nothing for a young woman whom the father thinks would make a great wife for him. But the young man should never say, the Puritan said to his father, oh well, she's not very good looking. I'm not interested in her. But he should always say, father, if you didn't have any attraction to her, at the present moment, I don't have any attraction, but since you recommended her, I will lay this before the Lord.

I will make it a matter of prayer. And I will come back to you, Father, and let you know my decision." And if he came back a month later and said, I've been praying about this and I just seem to have no feeling for this at all, then the Father was to respect that and let that matter lie. But you see, there was involvement to the very end. Children did not leave the home independently of their parents. They sought the wisdom of their parents on all major life decisions.

Now, it's interesting that really the parents taught their young people to look for five things in a suitable mate for life. Let me give them to you very briefly before I close. Number one, would the proposed spouse walk with her son or daughter with wisdom and genuine godliness in marriage? Such qualities are absolutely necessary for marrying in the Lord. Number two, would the proposed spouse fit the biblical description of what a marriage partner is supposed to be?

Does the proposed husband have good leadership skills and a loving demeanor? Does the proposed wife show submission and reverence to her own father. You see, a biblical mindset about marriage and a character that reflected that mindset was of utmost importance. Number three, was the proposed spouse mature and properly motivated for entering into marriage? All wrong motivations, such as love of money or love of power or convenience, were to be rejected.

4. Was the proposed spouse fairly equal to their son or daughter in terms of class and financial resources? They actually believe that unequally yoked extended to this area as well culturally and socially because all their society was more culturally and socially constituted than in our day. And number five, was the proposed spouse somewhat attractive in the eyes of their son or daughter? The Puritans believed that there must be some romantic spark to begin with.

Need not be high. In a good loving relationship, that romantic spark will greatly increase, just as in a bad marriage, that romantic spark will dissipate very quickly. But notice that was question number five of five. Beauty was considered to be an asset, an asset for love, but not a foundational requirement. Now, the legal age for marriage, hold on here, was 12 for girls and 14 for boys.

But you have to remember that the young people under this kind of godly home matured a great deal faster in their day than young people generally mature today. And so there was this huge gap, you see. They didn't really have an adolescence period. They just grew up into manhood and womanhood in their early teens. Now, the average couple, I hasten to add, got married somewhere between 17 and maybe 21.

But they were in college. They were in Oxford and Cambridge and Yale when they were 13 years of age. So their education was also at a higher level. Their maturity was at a higher level. They were into, they were working full-time jobs at the time they were 9 or 10.

Everything sped up in their age. But you also have to remember the average life expectancy was about forty-five to fifty, because they didn't have penicillin. They didn't have other things to fend off diseases. So life was very short, and the afflictions were very many, and they moved quicker through these major life decisions. Well, Thomas Brooks said this, giving advice on how to look for a partner.

If thou art a man of holiness, thou must look more for a portion of grace in a wife than a portion of gold with a wife. Thou must look more after righteousness than after riches, more after piety than after money, more after what inheritance she has in heaven and what possessions she has on earth, more at what interest she has in Christ than at what interest she has in creatures, more at her being newborn than at her being highborn, more at her being good than at all her worldly goods. If money makes the match and she be good enough that hath but goods enough, thou shalt be sure to have hell enough with such a wife." Well, this then is just an overview of the Puritan ideal of marriage. And I think you understand from this that it's grounded in the scriptures. And their view of marriage serves as a window to show us how the Calvinists of their age brought all of life under the domain of Scripture and looked at it through a microscope in every detail.

The Bible was the instruction manual for the purposes, procedures, principles, and practices of marriage. Now of course, some Puritan marriages fell considerably short of the ideal, and you can read notes of sessions in churches of how they dealt with couples that didn't live up to these standards. But the majority of Puritan families came fairly close to living up to these ideals. And these ideals, for the most part, we can tweak them a bit, Ought to be ours as well. We ought to say with Thomas Adams, there is no such fountain of earth, of comfort on earth, apart from spiritual life, as marriage.

And we ought to be able to say with Thomas Gadigar, there is no society more near, more entire, more needful, more kindly, more delightful, more comfortable, more constant, more continual than the society of man and wife, the main root, the main source, the main original of all other branches of societies in this world. And yet, yet keeping an eye on eternity more than anything else, the Puritans shared Gadigal's longing that having lived together for a time as co-partners in grace here, may we reign together forever as co-heirs in glory hereafter. Let me close with this comment. The Puritans believe that even though marriage as such would not exist in heaven, because we'd all be married to Christ in heaven, that nothing in heaven will not exceed what is on earth. And since everyone will be recognizable in Heaven, we will recognize our spouses in Heaven, and because we will love everyone perfectly in Heaven, we will still have a greater love for them in Heaven.

Even though it won't be a sexual love anymore, we will still have a greater love for them in heaven than we've ever had on earth. Because everything will be better in heaven. But even our love for our spouses in heaven will be but a drop in the bucket compared to our love for the Lord Jesus Christ, who will take up all our affections and be our heaven itself. Samuel Rutherford, the Scottish Puritan, said, Were there a thousand heavens piled on top of one another, my Jesus would be the centerpiece of them all. And so the Puritans saw this struggle on this earth of presenting each other more chaste, more holy, on the great day before the Lord Jesus Christ to be a forerunner of that day when both every God-fearing wife and every God-fearing husband would enter into the presence of the Lord Jesus and would be with Him forever as perfect brides adorned for their bridegroom.

And in that day, Christ will see no sin in His Jacob and no transgression in His Israel, and His bride shall be as perfect as He is, no more spots, no more wrinkles. Oh, on that day we shall be done with sin forever. And so I say to you who are single and who may never marry on this earth, don't worry, one day if you're a believer you will enter the best marriage of all. You will be married to the Lord Jesus Christ forever. And that, after all, is what our earthly marriages are called to reflect.

Let's pray together. Great God of heaven, we long for that day when we shall never sin again, when we shall be Thy perfect bride and serve Thee as the perfect bridegroom in a perfect marriage, glorifying Thee with all that is within us. Sitting on thrones, ruling and reigning over, we know not what, but serving Thee in perfect salvation, with perfect love and perfect joy, in a perfect marriage forever. Help us in this life to aim for that ideal and to wash away in the blood of Christ all our sins by Thy grace and by Thy application, so that we may judge our spouses with compassion, and our own soul may be cleansed in the blood of the Lamb. Please go with us and bless our marriages that we may truly reflect the covenantal paradigm of loving our brides the way Christ loves the church and respecting husbands the way the church respects the Lord Jesus Christ.

We pray in Jesus name, Amen. The National Center for Family Integrated Churches is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life and to the establishment of biblically ordered churches. For more information, resources, and products, please visit our website at www.ncfic.org. You