Oneness is a central component of marriage. But what exactly does this oneness mean? Oneness begins when a man and a woman are joined together and become one flesh. However, while the physical relationship is crucial to biblical oneness, it is just a small part of a much more expansive concept. Biblical oneness extends throughout all marriage and is seen in several different areas of the marriage relationship.

Okay, we're going to be engaging this whole subject of oneness. It would be proper to say that the essence of marriage is oneness. This is one of the central components of marriage. If anyone wants to understand sort of the heart of the matter of marriage, This word oneness is critical. You know, as you're training your children about marriage, this word needs to be part of your vocabulary in teaching them about marriage.

And then, of course, you demonstrate it in different ways as you live out your lives together. Because God has called a husband and wife to oneness and the primary or actually maybe the first expression of that oneness is in the physical relationship. The two shall become one flesh and this oneness to which husbands and wives are called goes beyond the sexual relationship. It extends to everything in the marriage, in their partnership in life together, in the way that they conduct their home life, in the way that they exist in their community, in the way that they are involved in a local church. The oneness of a husband and wife is expressed everywhere in life and it begins with their intimacy together but then it's expressed, you know, all over the place, all over town, and this is the thread that runs through all the teaching in the Bible about marriage, this matter of oneness, and We first encounter this in Genesis chapter 2 verses 21 to 25 and I'll read it.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman and he brought her to the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

And they were both naked, and the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." And so we also encounter this in out of the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew chapter 19 where we read beginning in verse 3. The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? And he answered and said to them, Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh so then they are no longer two but one flesh therefore what God has joined together let not man separate And then the Apostle Paul also corroborates this theme in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 beginning in verse 15 where he says to the Corinthian church, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not.

Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For the two, he says, shall become one flesh, but he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee sexual immorality. And then of course in Ephesians 5 verse 31 which we looked at yesterday. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

That's why when most people stand at a marriage altar and they take their vows, at some point somebody is likely to say, what God has joined together, let no man separate. And That's just a common understanding of marriage that finds its root in this whole matter of unity. And you can easily trace problems that couples have in marriage to this matter of oneness. And my understanding of this proposition of oneness is that it is physical, but it's more than physical because the two are now one. They are unified and their unity is pictured in the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit where you have different roles on the one hand but you have unity.

You have authority, but you have unity. You have submission, but you have unity. You have delight and unity and love and all these things mixed together. So the oneness that a husband and wife demonstrate in the world is demonstrated by God himself in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. And as it works out in normal life between a husband and a wife, the unity is more than just physical as it demonstrated by the physical act of intimacy in marriage.

There's a physical aspect to it, there's a spiritual aspect to it, there's an emotional aspect to it, There are many different aspects to this kind of unity, and the Bible speaks very distinctively about unity and how important it is. The Lord Jesus Christ said that if a kingdom is divided against itself it cannot stand and he says and if a house is divided against itself that house cannot stand he's speaking about spiritual divisions in a house and how this unity is not just physical, it's spiritual as well. And this is why, you know, the prophet Amos said in Amos chapter 3 verse 3, how can two walk together unless they be agreed? And so one of the great opportunities for a husband and wife is is that they increasingly become one in all these other areas. It is interesting how that happens.

You know the longer a couple has been married together, the more they think alike. They just continue down a pathway of like-mindedness as they work through the different problems. At least, if the Spirit of God is the governor of that trajectory, they will become more and more one. They'll think more like each other. They'll look at things going on in a very similar way.

And in some ways, they'll have an uncanny way of knowing what the other person is thinking from time to time. Now I have experienced that many, many times, but there have been a few times that Deborah has been totally wrong about what I was thinking. But in this whole trajectory of oneness that God puts His children on, individuality is never lost through oneness. Identity is not absorbed. It's not demolished.

It's combined. And you don't lose yourself in a bad kind of a sense. You continue to be the people that God made you to be. But there's this complementarity. There's this collaboration.

There's this mingling together of the various strengths that takes place when two are becoming one. And so I want to talk about some of the practical expressions of oneness and I want to just ask some questions. Some of the questions, they have some overlap, They sound a little bit the same, but I, they have maybe just slight, you know, angle inflection points of difference. So I want to ask them anyway. And I want to ask you questions about oneness.

Here's question number one. Do you have oneness in your understanding of marriage? Do you have oneness in your understanding of marriage? In other words, do you agree or have you agreed upon who you are in the marriage? Have you together embraced and agreed that the biblical language is the description or ought to be the description of your marriage.

You know when the Bible says, for the husband is the head of the wife, do you have you embraced that? When the Bible says wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord in everything, Have you embraced that? In other words, do you agree on your understanding of marriage and the way that God has described it in His Word? Now one of the great blessings of the Word of God is that the Word of God unifies. The Word of God is really the only thing that can bring true unity to a church or anything.

Your unity is not based on your opinions, your backgrounds. Our only hope really is that our unity is based on the Word of God. So that two people are looking at the Word of God and they're saying, okay, that's what we are going to be united on. Not my version of authority, not my version of submission, but on what God has said about it. That's what unifies a couple.

And the question is, do you agree on the theological underpinnings that describe what your marriage should look like in terms of the various roles and responsibilities. We've talked about the fact that you're painting a picture and is the picture that you want to paint the picture that's in Scripture and is your understanding of marriage something that you're unified? That's the first question. Second question, Are you unified in your thinking about your life purpose? You know, is it clear to you both and you are united on what is the purpose of your life together in marriage.

Earlier I talked about Priscilla and Aquila. They were united. They had a church in their house. They risked their necks for the apostles, they were teaching sound doctrine, they were united. They had a world of love that they were creating.

They were together in life and they were doing life together. And so this question, you know, are you united in your thinking about your life purpose together? God has different works for different couples. The work that God has given Deborah and I is not the work that God gives to every couple. And that's fine.

That's a good thing, you know. God has given each couple in this room a particular sense of calling and purpose and service in the kingdom of God. And it looks different in all these different houses that are here. But here's the question, are you agreed upon it? Are you agreed?

Question number three, Are you unified in the priorities of your daily schedule? Are you unified in the priorities of your daily schedule? Or, you know, is there disagreement about how time should be spent in the daily rhythms of life? Have you agreed upon what is a good use of time? What is a good work?

What is, what are the things that should be happening in the day? And a husband and wife should have agreement about the daily priorities of their schedules. And There are two components to this. There is a husband and a wife. There is the head and then there is the helper.

And they, but there ought to be an agreement about it. In the one sense, you know, my view is that God places a particular responsibility on husbands. They are the prophets and the priests and the kings in the relationship, so they need to be able to cast a vision for the kind of life that they should be leading together, but that's not the only proposition on the table because that prophet, priest and king is also married to a help me. And that prophet, priest and king is also married to the one who has authority over his body. So he should be listening to her.

There should be a collaborative understanding of the daily priorities of life. This can get really difficult, especially for young mothers. It's so hard for young mothers, you know, juggling, you know, multiple diapers and children and throw up and everything like that. And, you know, they're trying to figure out how to have a productive day. You know, it gets really simple.

How am I going to have a productive day? What does that look like to you, you know? And but it's a good thing when a husband and wife can agree on what a productive day looks like together. It can save a wife from a lot of frustration of feeling like she's throwing her life away when she and her husband have really agreed, this is a good work. It's a good thing when a husband and wife can come together and say, yes, this is how we ought to dedicate our time.

The priorities of your daily schedule, are you unified on those things? Number four, are you unified in your overall goals? You know, the last question had to do with just sort of activities. This has to do with objectives, things that you're trying to accomplish. And my view is that can encompass lots of different things.

Spiritual, physical, relational, all kinds of goals that you might have in your life. And, you know, have, are you agreed upon those? Now, a husband and wife are so blessed when they're working off the same sheet of music and they see out there the things that they desire to accomplish. We really were made to accomplish things. In the kingdom of God you become a worker.

You know, in the parable of the vineyard you're given work to do. Even in heaven, you're given work to do. By the way, in heaven is not a place where you quit working. You're giving work to do in heaven. So work is part of the whole scheme of life on earth and in heaven as well.

And but there are objectives in work. There are things that you accomplish in work. That's what work is all about, right? You do stuff that makes things happen. And, you know, so the question is are you unified in your overall goals, working off the same sheet, you know, seeing out there that thing that you're working together to accomplish.

It's always helpful, you know, when husbands and wives sit down together, they take the time and they plan, they consider their ways. A lot of times, you know, husbands and wives are either unproductive or unhappy with what they're doing because they never sit down and consider where they're going and dream about it and write it down and then come to the end of it and say yes this is the this is the Lord's plan for us. It's such a freeing thing in a lot of ways. A lot of times we get so busy with life that we don't think about life and we don't end up where we want to be in life because we don't take the time, you know, to work on the trajectory of it. A long time ago I was talking to a friend of mine and he was talking about the difference between working on your business and working in your business.

And what he said was if you're always working in your business, You'll never be able to really change it for the good. It'll just be the same old business it was last week. But if you can take time to cease working in your business for some measure of time and pull back and work on the business, working on where it's going, considering, you know, the various problems that it's experiencing and figuring out how to solve those problems by getting out of the business for a minute and working on the business, not in it. The couples often need that because there's so much to work in, there's so much to do. And if you don't step back and look at where it's going, then you may not be unified in the overall goals of where you're going.

So are you unified in your overall goals? Here's another. Are you unified in your understanding of the role of your family in the world? You know, the same way that God puts husbands and wives together that are different than other husbands and wives and they have a different kind of work to do. Families are like that too.

You didn't get to choose what children were born to you. They have different gifts, they have different inclinations, and every husband and wife, you know, has a responsibility to look at those children and say, what did God give us? He gave us these kids for a reason. They have particular inclinations, skills, bases of knowledge, things like that. Why?

Why did God give us a kid like that? Well the reason God gave you a kid like that is so that you would help that child glorify God in his generation, to grow, to expand, to fulfill the design of His life that God built into that kid's life. You know, it was interesting for us to do that, to observe the different kind of children that He gave us. And He gave us different children with different skills that performed different kinds of functions in our family life. And they were all so different.

But In God's providence, they were all able to work in concert together for these other objectives that Deborah and I had. And so you have to look at your family and say, what does God call us to? By virtue of the children that God has given us, the various ages, the various stages of life and how does that all work together? You know, are you unified in your understanding of the role of your family? And, you know, the objectives in terms of time investments and relationships.

You know, even to the tune of vacations and things like that, that you're unified in how your family is going to go out there and do life together. Here's another question. Are you unified in your ministry in the community? Are you unified in your ministry in the community? God by His providence places us in these different communities that He's put us in.

In Acts chapter 17, we learn that it was God's sovereign hand that put you living where you're living right now. Now That means that where you're living right now is a sacred matter and you shouldn't take it lightly. You live in that town because somehow God and His wisdom put you there. So you need to realize it was an act of divine wisdom that put you where you are. You know, you're having conversations with you.

Some of you live out in the middle of Nowheresville and some live in, you know, this town with 3, 000 people and another with 30, 000. And, you know, God put you in those places. Why did He do that? Why? Well, there's a reason in that He put you there to fulfill particular purposes, to build His church, to be involved in the Great Commission, to be a blessing to your community.

That's why you're there. He didn't put you there just for yourself so you could live in a nice place. You know, maybe it is a nice place. Maybe there are nicer places, but God put you there, and He put you there for particular kingdom-oriented purposes. So are you satisfied as you recognize the communities that God's put you in and how you live your life out there?

There are a lot of different ways to live life out in the community. And a husband and wife should be unified about how they're going to do that. Not going in different directions. What's happened in America is that the family has become so fragmented that everybody is going in their own direction. And the whole social structure is designed to separate the family and to disunify it and send every family member in a different direction.

Even the church does that by the way in many ways. But, you know, the normal family in America, the husband is working off in this corporation, you know, Johnny the third, you know, the third grader is over in this educational institution and the ninth grader is over in this institution and the twelfth grader is over in this institution and mom is working in a cubicle somewhere. And when they come home, if they're Christians, they're going to go to church and they're going to go to church, and Johnny's going to get put over here, and Susie's going to get put over here, and Mama's going to get put over here, and Daddy's going to be put over here. Because the entire fabric of our society is designed to separate the family, to disunify it, to fragment it. And these social forces are so powerful, they affect every institution, every church, and every family.

And you just have to recognize that's the society you live in. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to just follow along with it and just do what the Gentiles do? Or are you going to become a unified family? You know, once you send a wife out into the workforce, you've really changed the entire fabric of the home and but when you have a wife who is in a home and she's teaching her children, you begin to create a unified body, a unified circle of people where there's industry and there's creativity and there's beauty in that home.

And the home becomes a place where you are investing in it rather than fragmenting it. Right now, homes are not something that you invest in. They sort of become, they become like flophouses more than anything else. They're not places of spiritual activity and economic activity and all that kind of thing. It's interesting.

If you want to do a really interesting study, look at the particular uses of homes in the New Testament. Here's what you'll find. In the New Testament, homes are not flophouses. Homes are places of ministry. Homes are where people get healed.

Homes are where people get instructed. Homes are where Jesus is seeking and saving the lost. I mean homes are, in the New Testament, are places of richness. Why? Well the Bible says that God sent his son And his son said that he is building dwelling places in heaven.

Because there's a home in heaven. You see the imagery here? Your home is a picture of another home. Why did God give you a home? So that that home would become a living picture of the home in heaven, where there's unity, where there's collaboration, where there's industry, where there's creativity, where there's love, where there's authority, where there's submission.

Your home is a pattern, it's a type of that home in heaven because what God does in His kingdom is He makes a home and He unifies that home, But everything else in society tries to fragment a home. And I know a lot of you have been trying to resist that. Praise God. Praise God that you've been resisting this cultural feature that has been pressed upon us. But, you know, what is your home like in a community?

You know, when Deborah and I got married, We wanted our home to be the sweetest place. We wanted our home to be a picture of heaven. We wanted it to be the happiest place in the neighborhood. We wanted to have more stuff going on in our house that was neat than anywhere else. That's what we wanted to do.

But we did that because we saw, we saw the home in heaven and how beautiful it was. And all of the beautiful things of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You know, if you go to Proverbs chapter 8, there's this remarkable picture there of the Father and the Son working in eternity past. And the text is, the words are so remarkable that the Son of God says, I was daily his delight and my delight was in the sons of men." The Father and the Son are creating all that there is. They're creating mankind and there's delight in the work.

The Son of God delights in the sons of men that they've created and the Father and the Son are working together in creating everything that there is with just remarkable delight. It's such a beautiful picture. Well that's a picture of a home and God gave us homes and communities for particular reasons So that there would be a house of light, a house of love in a community, a place of unity, a place where people are growing and learning and testifying to the gospel of the grace of God. That's why God gave you a home. You know, when you think about your home, you should always think about heaven.

Because your home is designed to be a picture of heaven in the same way that your relationship as husband and wife is designed to be a picture of Jesus Christ and his church. The pictures are everywhere. So your ministry in the community, do you have unity regarding your ministry in the community? Here's another question. Is there unity in your life and ministry in the local church?

Is there unity regarding your life and ministry in the local church? You know, have you agreed, and I hope you have, or I hope you will, that you together will be lifelong, dedicated partners in the life of your local church. That you would spend your lives there bringing benefit to the Church of Jesus Christ that you would love her members, that you would desire her ordinances, you would crave the instruction that's there, you would follow the elders that are there, you would take every ounce of good out of every word that's preached in that church. Have you agreed that that's what you're gonna do? That's your deal?

You know what Deb and I did? When our family walked into the church, we went right to the front row. We wanted a front row seat on this. We were going to be there all the time. When Deborah and I, you know, here's my recommendation.

When you think about the church, don't think of the church as another option in your life. Think of the Church of Jesus Christ as a fixed reality in your life. Here's an example. In our church we get together and pray on Wednesday night. Here's something that never happens.

As the day wears on on Wednesday, I never think, oh am I too busy to go tonight am I too tired to go to prayer tonight I never think that I never cross I've already made this decision I made this decision a long time ago I'm not I'm not renegotiating this I we are going to gather our family together and pray. That's what the Browns do, you know. We're gonna do that because the church is a fixed category of priority. It's not something that we decide about every day and because we were unified about how we were going to be involved in local church life and I commend that to you. I would encourage you to do the same.

Make the Church of Jesus Christ a big part of your life, that you would be lifelong sweetening partners in a local church. You know, come to an agreement about how you're going to be involved in a local church, But agree to make the Church of Jesus Christ the biggest thing in your life, the first priority. And then order everything else around it. Once you fix that priority, then you can do, you can think about doing other things. God sent his son to save a church, to rescue a bride.

The only institution that Jesus Christ established on the earth was the church. And that should be very telling. It should tell you what a high priority we all ought to place on local churches. So, do you have unity in your life and ministry in the local church? Here's another question.

Do you have oneness in your hearts? Is there a heartfelt unity? You know the essence of Christianity is genuineness that comes from the heart. And that's why Moses, when he was commanding the fathers of Israel, when he commanded them to teach their children, when they sit in the house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise up, when Moses was commanding the fathers of Israel to do that, here's what he said. He said, these things shall be in your heart.

In other words, they're real. They really, you really do love them in your heart. That's the essence of Christianity. And do you have oneness of heart? Truly.

And can you say as a wife, I love my husband's vision for this family or as a husband, can you say, I love the way my wife navigates in this life. That's a heartfelt kind of unity. Now, if you don't have that unity, you should work to get there so that you do have heartfelt unity, not just on paper, but really deep within your heart, and to reconcile yourself with one another heart to heart about the whole direction of your family. You know, the marriage vow is the beginning of that heartfelt unity. The marriage vow is a covenant that a husband and wife make that they would be one in everything.

And it's so significant because in that covenant they're really devoting themselves to a mission in life, to take dominion over all the earth in every detail of life. When the marriage vow is given, It is given for everything in life, not just a few things, absolutely everything. And this means that a husband and wife, you know, set themselves off to work together for the glory of God as they love one another from the heart. And the marriage vow fulfills this whole purpose. Now, a biblical vision of oneness is a very helpful thing in a marriage.

It's a delivering thing. It delivers our marriages from the Hollywood vision of marriage that's so poisoned with individualism and self-seeking and psychologized, sappy romance, you know, focus on your own needs and trivializing marriage so much to the degree that you think that your marriage is just about meeting one another's needs or trying to figure out one another's love language. That is so far afield from what the Bible says about marriage. And so the essence of marriage is oneness. Now, there are so many things that are around us that would defeat oneness in marriage.

Of course, sin is at the bottom of all of it. But I'd like to just talk for a few minutes about something and it's how technology can disunify you, how technology can destroy your marriage, how Technology can slowly make you single again. And how technology can suck you into your own, you know, personal ever expanding world while your spouse is found alone, you know, in her own ever expanding, intensely personal world on the internet or on whatever kind of entertainment that might be served to her. So that you end up really living very separate lives and you become the proverbial couple, you know, each one looking into their own device and actually not with one another at all. You know, the truth is is that if you're not unified with your wife or you're not unified with your husband, somebody will.

Somebody will be unified with them on some level. And so it matters that we protect oneness in our marriage and marriages in the ways that we are, that are challenged. And, You know, I'm not against technology. I want to be really clear about that. Technology always presents new challenges.

And one of the problems with technology is that those challenges aren't known until some of the problems are felt, right? And they add much to life, but they can also take away from life. You know, with the additions of technology always comes some subtractions and married couples need to understand that as they navigate this world. It's just full of technology like never before. But, you know, the kind of technologies that are upon us today threaten to make us a world of individuals and it's an enormous problem, you know, particularly in the rising generation where, you know, Children, you know, ages to 18 spend almost every waking hour online.

And it's remarkable what's happening. And there are a number of, there are a number of, you know, tools or culprits in this. You have computers and iPods and, you know, you can walk into a home today and you can see five people all staring off into their own intensely personally satisfying world. But they're not at home, okay? They are in another world.

And conversations die, people live separate lives, relationships are stunted, and, you know, a brother asks a sister a question and the answer is, huh, as they continue to stare into their computer screen. These are just common things that happen, you know, with technology and, You know, you've probably reached, you know, a moment or two in your marriage where you're thinking, hello, hello, is anyone home while that person is staring off into their intensely personal ever expanding world. And, you know, marriages are impacted, you know, by this with games, you know, and blogs and things like that. You know, one of the interesting things that's happened with homeschool moms is that there are moms that are at home and are known to be homeschooling, but they actually aren't home. Their bodies are home.

But they're off posting this and posting that and they're reading, you know, 15 blogs commenting on three of them and They really aren't, they actually aren't at home. They're somewhere else because they have this ever-expanding, intensely personal world that is slowly making them single again and not a mom at all and not a teacher at all. Because there are all these worlds out there, these vast universes of knowledge and conversation and imagery that are out there. And it really, it's completely changed the whole fabric of family life, you know, and of marriage. You know, there's the curiosities of surfing the internet.

It's remarkable how you can go to a news site and then find yourself 30 minutes later, you know, having been lost in Nowheresville and you didn't do a single thing as a result of this acquisition of quote-unquote knowledge that didn't do you or anybody any good at all. It just distracted you from your calling. And then you get into, you know, even, you know, more damaging technology, you know, through pornography. And you find yourself being plunged even deeper into this intensely personal, ever-expanding world of defilement. You know, the Internet it takes you into a world, and couples need to recognize that and to understand that they must recognize the challenges that are there.

And when we talk about unity, oneness, it's really important that we understand the threats to it. And I've just identified a lot of them, you know, in the last few minutes. But I think One of my objectives in this session is to just try to stimulate your thinking about the ways that you might be existing in your ever expanding personally intense world that is slowly making you single again. One of the hardest things in a marriage is when husbands and wives are living two separate lives. It can happen really easily.

Where husbands and wives aren't sharing what's going on with each other and what they're doing, what they're thinking, and all their troubles. But God has called us to unity. And when God said, the two shall become one flesh, He was calling a couple into a beautiful and satisfying world where they actually from the heart are engaged in life together And that's the kind of life that I think this command of God and this principle of marriage of the two becoming one flesh implies. So there you have it.