Satan is always attacking marriage. He has perverted marriage in culture, but he also seeks to distort it in the church by twisting the Scripture. Brian Borgman’s message will be this: Marriage is beautiful when it is biblical, and it is biblical when husbands honor their wives.

Would you stand with me we're going to sing three stanzas lead all in okay eternal This is a hymn that should have a full auditorium, so you're going to have to make up for a lot more people singing this with me, L'Eon, O King, Eternal, these three stanzas before we go on to the next chapter. Please stand before your homes, families, and friends. Leon, oh, Chitano, the day of march has come. In swarming fields of conquest, your days will be our own. Through days of preparation, your grace has been motioned, and now, O King eternal, we lift our vows to song.

And now, O King Eterno, remember my true song. Late on, O King Eterno, till Satan's fierce war shall cease, And holiness shall whisper The sweet amenities For not with short, fervently Nor roll obstructing drums God with short, well-flashing, low, old, obstinate rubs. But deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes. Lead on, O King, be tato. We follow from thee.

Come. Lead on, O Hickory Taddle, we follow from the fields, for madness breaks thy party, wherein our faith appears. Your cross is painted over us, We channeying in His light, The proud Alvades, the dark West, The unborn, the blind. Amen. You may receive your brother's star.

Well, good morning. I'd like to ask you to turn with me in your Bibles to 2 Chronicles 34. Second Chronicles 34 this morning. It is as always a delight to be a part of this conference and really very thankful for a much-needed theme on biblical manhood and womanhood this year and an important topic that I would like to address this morning that I hope will be a challenge and an encouragement to all of the men in the room and then of course mothers and wives an important challenge too as you help to rear your sons. Second Chronicles chapter 34, and I wanna read verse 27 to begin us this morning.

Second Chronicles 34, verse 27. Because your heart was tender, And you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against this place and its inhabitants And you have humbled yourself before me and have torn your clothes and wept before me I also have heard you declares the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray together.

Father, I pray that you would teach each one of us something significant from this passage this morning from the life of Josiah, that you would challenge each man and boy in this room and Even the women as they rear their sons that we might be the kind of man that you would have us to be not the kind of man that culture raises up but the kind of man that the Bible teaches us to be as modeled in Josiah and ultimately in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We pray this in His name, amen. We are as you know as has been covered many times already in the sessions of this conference living in a day that is deeply confused about manhood. And that confusion is not just coming from one direction, I think it's coming from two different directions. On the one side, the broader culture has given us the concept of what they describe as toxic masculinity.

And let's be very clear about what that phrase actually is. That phrase is a weapon in the secular culture. It's a rhetorical tool designed to flatten all true masculine strength into something pathological, something that we need to avoid. In the broader secular culture, when a man leads decisively, he is toxic. When a man speaks with conviction, he is toxic.

When a man exercises authority in his home or in his church, he is toxic. That phrase is not a diagnosis of a true problem, it is an accusation, it is a caricature, it is a straw man. And we as believers in the church must not accept their premise. We must not let the world define our categories for us. They cannot define what true masculinity is and we must not apologize for the masculinity that God designed and that scripture celebrates.

But on the other hand, and this is where we as the church must be equally honest, there is a kind of masculinity that is being raised up in our culture that is genuinely toxic. And unfortunately, it is a kind of false masculinity that is even growing within conservative Christianity. It is a sort of machismo, a kind of swagger, a posture of perpetual combat, a vision of manhood that measures itself by how many enemies it has, how many fights it picks, and how unflinching it is in the face of opposition. This is an equally problematic picture of manhood that is being raised up increasingly in our culture. The culture's critique of true masculinity is a weapon that is aimed at us and we need to reject that.

But increasingly within the church we have a problem of also false secular machismo and it must be named by us as the church and rooted out as well. When men in our churches use strength to dominate rather than to serve, when headship becomes an excuse for hardship, for harshness, when theological precision is wielded as a club rather than offered as a gift, that is not biblical manhood either. That is a distortion. And So it is our job as believers to correct that, to correct both of these false views of manhood that are prominent in our secular culture and increasingly even in evangelical churches. And so this morning I wanna bring you to this text that I believe corrects both distortions at once.

Second Chronicles 34 gives us a portrait of Josiah, the last good king of Judah, a man who reigned in the most corrupt era of Israel's history and the only king of whom God said as we read a moment ago, your heart was tender. Josiah is the man who, as we will see this morning, ground idols to dust on the one hand, but also tore his clothes when he heard God's Word. He was a warrior who wept. He was a tender warrior. And this portrait, I believe, is a corrective that both the culture and increasingly the church needs to hear.

And so this is what I want you to see from this passage this morning. Biblical manhood is not a choice between strength and tenderness. Biblical manhood is strength governed by a heart that trembles before God. And it is that combination, not one half without the other, but it is that combination that God honors in a man. So let's go back to the beginning of this text, 2 Chronicles chapter 34, and look at the first three verses to see the foundation of all of this.

2 Chronicles 34 verse one, Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem and he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in the ways of David his father and he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left for in the eighth year of his reign when he was 16 years old while he was yet a boy he began to seek the God of David his father. First this morning we need to see the foundation of everything that Josiah became. Before Josiah was a warrior, which we will see, before he purged the high places or led a covenant renewal, Josiah sought the Lord. And this is where everything must begin. Biblical manhood does not begin with action.

Biblical manhood begins with a pursuit of the Lord. It begins with a young man on his knees. Notice here that Josiah was 16 years old when he began to seek the Lord. He had been a king since he was eight, placed on the throne after his father Amon was assassinated by his own servants following two years of evil. And before Amon was Manasseh, Josiah's grandfather, the worst king in Judah's history.

A man who practiced sorcery, who sacrificed his own children in the fire, who set up carved images in the temple of the Lord and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood from one end to the other. Second King tells us that Manasseh seduced the people. This is the King of Judah. He seduced the people to do more evil than the nations God had destroyed before them. This was Josiah's heritage.

This was the family that he came from. This was the spiritual wreckage that he inherited. And men, I know that some of you are sitting in this room with a terrible spiritual heritage. You came from broken homes, perhaps. Perhaps you were raised by fathers who did not seek God or who sought God in ways that were more performance than reality.

Some of you grew up in churches that were doctrinally sound but spiritually dead or doctrinally confused and emotionally manipulative. Many of you in this room inherited wreckage and the temptation is to believe that your heritage determines your trajectory, that you are destined to repeat what was modeled for you. But Josiah's life is a refutation of that lie. Josiah came from the worst possible heritage. You think that your upbringing was bad.

Just think about Josiah. The worst possible heritage, but he became the best king that Judah ever had. Why? Because he sought the Lord. Not his grandfather's God, not his father's God, not the God of his terrible heritage.

No, Josiah sought the God of David his father, the text says. He reached back past the corruption to the covenant. And at age 16, in the middle of all of that wreckage, Josiah began to seek God. The Hebrew word here means to seek earnestly, to inquire, to pursue diligently and desperately. This is active, intentional, initiative-taking pursuit of the living God.

And this kind of seeking is the foundation for everything that follows in this chapter, both Josiah's warrior courage and his tender heart. And young men in this room, I want you to hear me this morning, you are not too young to follow this example. Josiah was 16. You don't need perfect circumstances. You don't need to wait until you are an older man.

Josiah had the worst circumstances imaginable, and Josiah took initiative in a generation that had forsaken God and abandoned God. So if you're a young man in this room, I want to urge you this morning, stop waiting. Seek God now at an early age. Biblical manhood begins early and is not passive. Biblical manhood pursues the Lord.

And so four years of seeking the Lord and then decisive action. Josiah moved from devotion to reform, from private pursuit of God to publicly purging of idolatry. Look at the second half of verse 3. After he sought the Lord, in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, and the carved and metal images. And they chopped down the altars of the Baals in his presence, and he cut down the incense altars that stood above them, and he broke in pieces the Asharim and carved and metal images, and he made dust of them and scattered it over the graves of those who had sacrificed to them.

He also burned the bones of the priests on their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem and in the cities of Manasseh, Ephraim and Simeon and as far as Naphtali in their ruins all abound, all around, He broke down the altars and beat the Asharim and the images into powder and cut down all the incense altars throughout the land of Israel. Then he returned to Jerusalem. The language here of the chronicler is violent. Josiah smashed the high places. He broke the Asherim.

He ground the carved images to dust. He burned the bones of the false priests on their own altars. And he didn't even stop at the borders of Judah. He extended reform into the cities of Manasseh and Ephraim and Simeon and as far as Naphtali into a territory that was not even in his jurisdiction. This was a man whose private seeking of God produced public courage that recognized no boundaries.

You see, biblical manhood is not just internal and private. It begins there. It begins with seeking after God, but biblical manhood acts. It doesn't just theorize. It doesn't just hold private opinions.

It moves from conviction to conduct. Act like men, Paul says in 1st Corinthians 16 13. Military language, the language of a soldier standing his ground. Biblical manhood requires a spine. It requires the willingness to destroy what is evil and build what is good, even when the culture around you considers those activities to be offensive.

But here is where we need to be careful. Because the machoism of our day is action without seeking the Lord. The man who fights before he prays. The man who swings his sword before he kneels. Josiah sought the Lord for four years before he purged.

The seeking came first. The devotion to God came first. The action, the necessary action that he took flowed from a heart that had been formed for years by earnest pursuit of God. We need to recognize this morning, men, when a man's action does not flow from seeking the Lord, it flows from ego. And ego-driven action is not biblical manhood.

It is bravado dressed up in a theological costume. We need to recognize both as being important. And we see that in the central turning point section of this chapter. Look at verse 14. While they were bringing out the money that had been brought into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the Lord given through Moses.

Then Hilkiah answered and said to Shafan the secretary, I have found the book of the law of the law in the house of the Lord. Now look at verse 19. And when the king heard the words of the law, this was his response, he tore his clothes and the king commanded Hilkiah, Ahikam the son of Japhon, Abdon the son of Micah, Shafon the secretary, and Asiah the king's servant saying, go inquire of the Lord for me and for those who are left in Israel and in Judah concerning the words of the book that have been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out on us because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord to do according to all that is written in this book. Notice how Josiah, this warrior, this strong man, this man who did what it took to rid the land of idolatry, notice what this strong warrior did when he was confronted by the law of the Lord.

When the king heard the words of the law, he tore his clothes. Stop and feel the weight of this. This is a king. This is a reformer. This is a warrior who had already purged the land of idolatry, who had already ground carved images to powder and extended reform across national borders.

By any measure, Josiah was one of the most decisive and courageous leaders in Judas' history. He was not a weak man. He was not a soft man. He was not the kind of man that the world looks at and says, this is a man who can be easily broken. That was not Josiah.

But when this man heard God's Word, when the truth of God's holiness and the depth of the nation's unfaithfulness confronted him, he was shattered. He tore his clothes in a sign of grief. The visible bodily expression of a heart that could not contain its sorrow. This warrior wept before the law of the Lord. Josiah didn't hide his tenderness.

He did not wait until he was alone to fall apart and then compose himself before returning to public view. No, he let his people see that their king was broken by God's word. And this public tenderness was not a failure of strong masculine leadership. It was the most powerful act of leadership in this entire chapter. Because when the people saw their king weep before the Lord, they knew that this was a king who feared God more than he feared the opinions of man.

The machismo man of our modern culture doesn't weep. Weeping is weakness. Weeping is something the man of bravado has trained himself to suppress because his entire identity is built on being unmoved. He can tweet about God's holiness, he can podcast about God's judgment, He can write blog posts about the nation's unfaithfulness, but can he tear his clothes before the Lord? Can he be broken by the truths that he proclaims?

The man who can speak about God's Word without being moved about God's Word in his heart has a hard heart. And a hard heart is not a strong heart, it is a dead heart. Josiah was moved by the Word of God. The text doesn't present this as a failure of manhood. The text before us presents this as the highest expression of manhood.

A warrior who could grind idols to dust, but also a warrior who could be ground to dust by the word of God. And the chronicler wants us to see that these are not contradictions. This is the same man, the same heart that drove him to act decisively in a world that needed it, also drove him to weep humbly before the Lord. And then what did this tender heart before God's word cause Josiah to do? Look at verse 29.

He sent and gathered all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem, And the king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the priests and the Levites, all the people both great and small. And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that had been found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book. Then he made all who were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin join in it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God and the God of their fathers.

And Josiah took away all the abominations from all the territory that belonged to the people of Israel and made all who were present in Israel serve the Lord their God. All his days they did not turn away from following the Lord, the God of their fathers. After courageously destroying the false gods in the land and humbly submitting himself to the Word of God, Josiah gathered the nation. Elders, priests, Levites, people great and small, and he stood in the house of the Lord and he read the words of the covenant in their hearing and he made a covenant before the Lord to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all of his heart and all of his soul the text says And the last phrase of this passage is so encouraging. All his days they did not turn away from following the Lord.

Biblical manhood is not just about protecting those under your care and it's not just about tearing down the idols. No, Josiah then took the next step and he brought all those who were under his care, in this case, the entire nation, and he opened the word of God, and he led the whole community in covenant renewal. This is what husbands do. This is what fathers do. This is what elders and deacons do.

Not barking orders, that's the machismo distortion. Not abdicating, that's the passivity distortion. No, true men of God lead. They gather their families, they open the Word, they take responsibility for the spiritual direction of those who are under their care. And notice how Josiah did this.

He didn't just expect this of others, no, he stood in the house of the Lord himself and he read the book of the covenant in their hearing. He made a covenant with God personally, publicly before the Lord. He stood among his people and he bound himself to the same word that he was calling them to obey. That's the difference between a true man, a true leader, and just a machismo boss. A boss issues commands from a distance, but a true leader stands in the midst of his people and he says, this is the Word of God and I am binding myself to it first.

Now follow me as I follow the Lord. That's true leadership. Fathers, this is what your family needs. Your wife does not need machismo. She needs a man who gathers his household, opens the scriptures, and leads with both conviction and tenderness.

Men, your children don't need a dictator. They need a father who walks in the ways of David his father and does not turn aside to the right or to the left. The warrior leads. And this is the turn the chronicler is about to make. The warrior who can be trusted to lead is the warrior, and this is what God specifically signals out, the warrior whose heart has been broken by God's Word, as we saw.

In response to all of this, as we saw, Josiah sends his officials then to inquire before the Lord, what are we to do? And Huldah, the prophetess, delivers God's word. Judgment is coming. The nation's sin is too deep, too entrenched, too far gone. Disaster will fall upon Judah.

But then God through the prophet delivers words directly about Josiah. And this is really the key of the whole chapter. Look at verse 27. This is the word we read at the beginning. After all of this promise of judgment, this is what God says to Josiah.

Because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before God when you heard his words against the place and against his inhabitants, and you have humbled yourself before me and have torn your clothes and wept before me I have heard you declares the Lord. Judgment is coming because the sin of the nature God says but I'm gonna hold back that judgment just a little longer. Why? Why will God hold back his judgment on the nation just a little longer? Think about what God does not say here.

God does not say, I will withhold my judgment a little longer because you heard because you purge the high places. He does not say because you extended reform into the northern territories I have heard you. He does not say because you fought the right battles and took the right stands I have heard you. All of that is good but that's not what God says here. All of those things did matter, but they were not the basis of God's commendation upon Josiah.

The basis was Josiah's heart. The tender, humble, broken, responsive heart. We spend so much energy, do we not, on what we are supposed to do. And we are supposed to do things. We see this in this passage.

But God is looking at who we are before Him when no one else is watching. That is what He is primarily concerned with. Actions matter. We see that. But what God commends is hearts that are tender before Him.

The thing God praised about Josiah is his tenderness. You humbled yourself before God. The warrior king who had the power to command armies and destroy temples made himself small before the God who commanded the universe. He knelt, he wept, he tore his clothes, and then God said, because of that I have heard you. John Flavel wrote that the greatest difficulty after conversion is to keep the heart with God, to keep it tender, to keep it responsive, to keep it pliable in the hands of the Almighty.

The heart that hardens, the heart that becomes calloused through neglect, through pride, through the habit of hearing God's word without being changed by it, that kind of heart is not a sign of strength. It's a sign of spiritual death. The man who can read his Bible without being moved, who can hear a sermon without being searched, who can confess the great truths of the faith without feeling the weight of them, that man's heart has grown hard. And a hard heart, however doctrinally precise, however active, is not the heart that God hears. Men, when was the last time that God's Word really broke you?

Not just informed you, not just confirmed what you already believe, not just armed you for the next argument, but broke you before the Lord. When was the last time you heard a passage of scripture and you felt the weight of your own sin, your own insufficiency, your own desperate need for grace? If the answer is I can't remember, then your heart may be harder than you think. Isaiah 66 verse two says, "'This is the one to whom I will look, "'he who is humble and contrite in spirit "'and trembles at my word.'" Is that you, men? God's not looking for the man who is unmoved.

He's looking for the man who trembles before him. Now let's bring these two halves together because both are important. Again we have two errors plaguing biblical manhood in our culture. Passivity, squishiness, no action, and boldness machismo, but no soft heart before the Lord. The whole point of this text is not that Josiah is either a warrior or he is tender.

No, he is the warrior whose tenderness before God is what makes his action trustworthy. This is the vision of manhood that both the culture and much of the church has lost today. The man who trembles before scripture can be trusted to act decisively in the world because his actions are flowing from a heart that has been broken and reordered by God's word. His courage is not ego. It's not just to build himself up.

His decisiveness is not performance. His leadership is not dominance. The true man of God acts because it is an overflow of a heart that has been humbled before God and then sent out to serve him. The man who never trembles, the man of pure bravado, can't be trusted with power. He has no governor on his strength.

His action serves himself, not truly God's purposes. He fights because fighting feeds his identity, not because God has called him to fight. And the damage that a man like that does to the people around him, his children, his wife, his church, even his opponents, that's the damage of unchecked strength without a tender heart. We've all seen men like this, Right? Perhaps we've all been men like this.

He says the right things. He holds the right doctrine. He fights the right battles, but there's something missing. There's no sorrow in his confrontation. He wins arguments but loses people.

And he doesn't even seem to notice the difference. But on the other hand, the man who only trembles, the passive man who weeps but never acts, has abandoned the other half of his calling. He has a tender heart but no spine. He feels deeply but he never moves. He's broken by sin but he never fights against it.

He's the man who sees the high places standing, but lacks the courage to tear them down. And that too is a failure of manhood. Josiah held both together. He sought the Lord, and then he purged the sin. He wept and then he led.

He was tender before God and then fierce before idolatry. He tore his clothes in the throne room and then tore down the altars in the countryside. And God commended both, but He commended the tenderness first. So what does this look like in your life? Well, It looks like the man who has the hard conversations with his teenage son about sin, but he does so with tears in his eyes because he loves the boy more than he loves just being right.

It looks like the elder who confronts a divisive member and then he goes home afterward and he falls down his knees because the confrontation cost him something. He cares about that divisive man. True biblical manhood looks like the husband who leads family worship not as a performance of his authority but as the overflow of a heart that has already been broken and rebuilt by the word that he is reading to his family. The tender warrior does hard things but they cost him And the cost is what makes the action trustworthy. Richard Baxter captured this synthesis when he described the Christian leader as one who must speak plainly, but also be a tender father to those under his care.

Both. The plainness without tenderness is harshness. The machismo man who bludgeons people with the truth, the tenderness without plainness is sentimentality, squishiness, the passive man who feels deeply but says nothing. But the man who speaks hard truths with a broken heart, the man who weeps over the very sins that he must confront, that is the kind of man that God will use. That is the man the church needs.

That is the man that your family needs. But Josiah, for all of his glory, for all of his strength, for all of the model that he can be to us as a picture of biblical manhood, was still a shadow. He was the last good king of Judah and even his good reforms ultimately failed. He couldn't change the nation. Within a generation of his death, Judah fell to Babylon.

The temple that he rebuilt was destroyed. The covenant that he renewed was broken. The nation that he led was carried into exile. Josiah was a glorious leader, but his glory was temporary. His kingdom ended.

His reform did not endure. This tender warrior of 2 Chronicles 34 ultimately pointed beyond himself to a greater tender warrior still to come. And he has come. Jesus Christ is the tender warrior that Josiah could only foreshadow. He is the lion of Judah who is also the lamb who was slain.

He overturned tables in the temple with holy fury and then wept over Jerusalem with holy grief. Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing. Jesus Christ rebuked the Pharisees with devastating precision, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. And then he said, come to me all who labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest for I am gentle and lowly in heart.

Jesus Christ set his face like flint toward the cross. The warriors resolve the unflinching determination of a man who would not turn aside to the right or to the left. And in Gethsemane he fell on his face and sweat drops of blood and cried out to the Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. The strength and the tenderness are not in tension in Christ. They are the same man.

They flow from the same heart. Josiah tore his clothes when he heard the law, but Christ fulfilled the law in his own body that was torn for us. Josiah led a temporary covenant renewal, but Christ established the new and better covenant by his own blood. A covenant that will never be broken, a kingdom that will never fall, a temple that will never be destroyed. Because he himself is the temple.

Josiah sought God from his youth, but Christ is God, the very one that Josiah was seeking. And the tender heart that God commended in Josiah finds its ultimate expression in the Son of God who was obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. The world looks at that and they say weakness, But that's not weakness. That was the strongest act of love in history offered from the tender, the tenderest heart that has ever existed. And this is why the call of this text before us this morning is not, be more like Josiah.

The call before us men is be conformed to Christ. Josiah was a shadow and shadows can't transform you but Christ the living man of God can transform you. The same spirit who kept Josiah's heart tender is at work in each one of us as believers, if you belong to Christ. He is forming you into the image of a tender warrior, not by your own effort, not by gritting your teeth and trying harder, but by the slow, patient, powerful work of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, the same Word of God that broke Josiah. And it's a broken heart that is being shaped by that word.

Men, this is the pattern before us. You're not called to be conformed to the image that the culture raises up as true manhood, stripping you of strength, apologizing for masculinity, Or the picture that the culture raises up of the machismo man, all hardness, all tenderness. Don't look to either of those. Don't look to the squish and don't look to the man who's just hard. You're called to be conformed to the image of Christ, the tender warrior, the lion who is a lamb, the king who kneels.

And young men, again, I want to urge you, stop waiting. Be this kind of man now. Josiah was 16. Seek the Lord now with what you have in the generation that you were given. You don't need more information before you begin pursuing God.

You need a willing heart. Josiah sought God before he had even discovered, rediscovered the book of the law. Seek the Lord. And husbands and fathers, your family, your church needs a tender warrior. A man who leads with courage but is broken by God's Word.

Not the authoritarian who demands obedience but never models repentance. Not the passive man who is present at home but absent from this family's spiritual life, but the man who gathers his household, opens the scriptures, grinds the idols in his home to dust, and then kneels before the Lord with tears in his eyes. Because your heart was tender, God said to Josiah, and you humbled yourself before God, I have heard you." That is God's verdict on Josiah. And that is the verdict every man in this room should long to hear. Let's pray.

Father, we are surrounded in our culture by four false images of true manhood. Either a man who is soft and passive, or a man who is strong but never tender before the Lord. Help us to reject both of those images. Help us to look to the true man, Jesus Christ, he whom men like Josiah and many other men in the scriptures resembled and pointed toward. Help us to commit this morning as men and as boys to be true tender warriors.

Help the men and women in this room to seek to raise young men who are tender warriors, who are both strong and tender before the Lord. We recognize that we cannot produce this on our own. We need your word and we need your spirit to do this. And so I pray that you would do this among us, that we might see more and more men raised up in our churches who seek you, who fall down before you with broken hearts, and then who stand ready to fight against sin and to build up for your glory. We pray this in the name of Christ, amen.

Amen. We'll have approximately a 25 minute break and we'll start our next session at 10 15. So you wanna to be prompted 1015. We're dismissed. My name is Heath Lambert.

I'm the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and the author of Finally Free. I use, accountable to you, on all my devices and require it to be used on the devices of our dozens of pastors and ministry staff here at First Baptist. There are three reasons why. The first is precautionary. Internet pornography does not merely exist, it's predatory.

That means pornography is not sitting passively waiting for you to find it, but is looking for you. It wants to find the eyes of your children, your spouse, your pastors, and anyone else. I want to provide the people I love and am responsible for a precautionary resource to keep them safe from the predatory practices of pornography. Second reason is protection. We all know people who've struggled with internet pornography in their past or present.

I want to stand alongside those brothers and sisters and provide a resource that can help protect them. I want those who struggle to know they are not alone, but have someone walking alongside them who loves them enough to hold them accountable and help them change. A final reason is proof. We live in a suspicious world that finds it easy to distrust religious leaders too often for very good reasons. The record that Accountable2U keeps of Internet activity helps me and my fellow pastors obey the biblical command to stay above reproach.

This technology keeps a record of innocence and gives me the peace of mind of being able to supply evidence against any false charge. Internet accountability is biblical and is good for everyone, even if you don't struggle with pornography. The reality is that in the pornographic world in which we're living, it needs to be just as normal to have accountability as it is to have internet access. I've tried many different kinds of accountability in my ministry, and I think accountable to you is the best. Well, we went on a publishing spree, and I want to tell you about five new resources that we've pushed out.

First is, What is a Family? A Catechism for Diagnosing and Restoring the Christian Home. It's In a catechism format, very practical, very simple, very easy for a father and a mother to use to teach their family about what a family is. And 201 catechism questions. It's a great book.

Then the family that sings, restoring the joy and the significance of Christian singing in the church and in the home. I wrote this book really to try to improve the culture of singing in my life, in our church's life, and anybody who would listen. So, this book, The Family That Sings, short chapters to just re-energize your singing. And then An Urgent Call to Young Men. This is an edited version of something that Richard Baxter wrote in the 1600s.

Maximize the Years of Youth, timeless counsel from Richard Baxter for the rising generation. This is a really riveting, super practical book for young men. And then, the speed of sound, lessons learned at the speed of sound, from my friend, Lieutenant Colonel Phil Cochran, who's been a fellow pastor for many years, but he was an F-16 pilot and he wrote spiritual lessons and incorporated them in his preaching. He wrote them down. They're super practical.

You'll be amazed at how neat this book is. And then finally, last but not least, Secrets of a Happy Home by J.R. Miller. We've reprinted this pamphlet. As you can see, it's short.

But what does it look like? What does it mean to make Jesus Christ the center of your home? So there you go, five new books. Hope you can go out and get them. I think you'll enjoy them.

CPS investigations often arise from medical choices, accidents or innocent mistakes, and false reports from disgruntled friends, family, neighbors, and others who disagree with your parenting decisions. So what do you do if they come to your door? If you don't open the door or you just tell them to go away, they could easily get a court order to come in by force. Or they could close the case, but with a finding against you, which could go on your permanent record. Thankfully, there's a Better solution.

By joining Heritage Defense, you can get peace of mind knowing that you can call 24-7 and immediately have an experienced attorney ready to fight to protect your home, your children, and your parental rights. Membership with Heritage Defense also provides you an attorney beyond your initial call, including being with you for any meetings with CPS and representing you in court if needed, at no extra cost to you. Your membership also includes consultations with our attorneys any time you need answers to your parental rights questions. For less than the average cost of one hour of another attorney's time, you can get an entire year of access to our experienced Christian attorneys. So if you want peace of mind about your parental rights, join at heritagedefense.org.

Since 2010, Heritage Defense has been fighting for parental rights of our members in all 50 states. Don't wait until you have a social worker at your door. Become a member now, before it's too late. Go to HeritageDefense.org right now to join. One of the most important places you ever take your children is to a local church to gather together, to sit together, to sing together, to experience the preaching together, to experience the fellowship of God's people together, the prayers.

We are here to encourage you to ditch Kitty Church and bring your children into this rich generational fabric of the worship of God. So we've created a kit to help your family experience the worship of God that shows you how to prepare your children to come to the worship of God. And then how to experience all the things that take place, the singing, the prayers, the preaching, the fellowship. And then how do you gather your children together after all of this has happened later in the day and review it? So go, gather, worship, bring your family together for the worship of God so that every member in your family says, deep within their hearts, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.

Psalm 1 presents a picture of a righteous man who's like a fruitful tree planted by the streams of water versus the chaff that just gets blown away. The righteous man prospers in whatever he does because he delights in the law of the Lord on which he meditates day and night. I think the heart desire of every loving Christian parent for their children is that they be strong and prosper. In a world of ungodliness, we wanna see our children firmly rooted by the streams of water, standing firm for Christ and His Kingdom. As parents, we have an incredible opportunity to saturate our children in God's Word and root and ground them in a biblical worldview in their daily education.

But sadly, sometimes we don't realize we've chosen a curriculum that conveys the wrong worldview in regards to science, literature, history, life's purpose. And that's why Generations has spent the last 10 years developing a new line of distinctively Christian curriculum. It's called the Christian Discipleship Curriculum and it's based on four foundational pillars. The first is family discipleship, where parents are teaching God's word as they sit in the house. A biblical worldview where Christ is at the center of every subject, the best teachers, best books approach, the best Christian books for our children, and worship and life application where children learn that the fear of God, the worship of God, is the beginning of all knowledge in every subject.

Our core curriculum includes five essential subjects for passing on the faith to your children. Christ-centered history, literature, Bible, worldview, and Christian character. Our hope and prayer is that this curriculum will help your family pass on the faith to your children. Go to Generations.org slash curriculum to learn more and explore our Christian discipleship curriculum. Let me just give you a two minute heads up.

We're going to start service in two minutes. If you would make your way to your seats so we can begin with song. The most powerful, the most enduring thing you will ever do in your family is to read the Word of God. And it's really very simple. You open your Bible, and you read it, and you pray, and you sing.

This is the greatest investment you will ever make. It sounds daunting, but it's really very, very simple. And what we've done is we've provided some help, a kit. In that kit is a Bible reading plan, hymns you can sing, and questions from Joe Beeke about particular passages of scripture. I hope you go and sign up for this free resource to read, sing, and pray.

This is the most powerful thing you can do for your family. Well, good morning. As you're working your way to your seats, you can remain standing. We'll sing just one hymn in a moment. I want to read just another portion from this work that Scott has put together, The Family That Sings.

Maybe you can pick up your own copy, which is at the Church and Family Life table. Chapter 22 is entitled, Sing to Your Own Soul. Let me read a little portion. It says, in the Psalms, David sings to his own soul. He is asking the Lord, for example, in Psalm 103 to bless his soul, his innermost being, his unseen self.

He uses beautiful poetic language full of verbs to acknowledge the neediness of his own soul and his spiritual need. After giving examples from Psalm 103 and Psalm 42 and Lamentations, it concludes with these two short paragraphs. Singing Christianly is to sing with depth to your own soul. It accomplishes several things at once. We are fellowshipping with God, our brethren, and our souls at the same time.

So in this sense, Christian singing is meant to be self-consciously rich and diverse, even to the level of your own soul. But Christian singing is far superior to secular. Lots of secular music includes singing to the soul, but it encourages sin and lust and depression and anger. In contrast, Christian singing calls up the mortification of sin, Christian duty, holy love, and sanctified emotions. So sing to your own soul, yet not I, but through Christ in me.

What gift of grace is Jesus my Redeemer? There is no more for him now to give. He is my joy, my righteousness and freedom, my steadfast love, my deep and boundless peace. To this I hold, my hope is only Jesus For my life is only bound to Him Oh how strange and divine I can sing all is mine, yet not I, but could Christ be me. A night is dark, but I am not too slow, For by my side the same Lord he will spare.

I labor on in weakness and rejoicing, For in my need his power is displayed. To this I hold my shepherd-building family, where the deepest valley near and near. All the night has been gone, and I shall overcome. Yet not I, the prize is given. Let's sing that third verse with just our voices.

Has been paid for Jesus fled and suffered for my pardon. And he was raised to overthrow the grave. To this I hold my sick has made me needy. Jesus now I am dead, but he is my King. All the changing of the East I can't sleep, I am free.

Oh, the changing of weeks I miss the guy I've dreamed yet not I But who I see in me With every breath I I know he will be with me until I spend with joy before the Lord. To this I hold my hope is only Jesus, all the glory ever was in him. Jesus, all the glory evermore to him. When the praise is complete, still I this shall repeat, Get my life, but through Christ with me. Amen.

And you may be seated. We want everybody to know about a really wonderful ministry. I'm sure many of you know about Generations. How many of you know about Generations? I'm so glad you do.

Generations is likely the most like-minded ministry to me and my heart and the things that I believe about education on the planet and I'm just so delighted to have Chad Roach come and and and speak to us. One of the things that's so critical to understand about generations is that this this is a this is this is an educational philosophy that is counterculture to the education philosophy of the world and even the educational philosophy, even in the Christian homeschool community. And the desire of generations is that Jesus Christ would be magnified in math and history and science, and they do it so explicitly and so carefully. I just can't more highly recommend a curriculum set than what you find at Generations. And of course, many of you know Kevin Swanson and I have been laboring together, you know, for about almost a quarter of a century.

And we want to keep doing it. And I'm really thankful for Chad Roach as well, one of my dear friends who's gonna come and tell you all about it. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, everybody. Good morning.

Good morning. It is sure good to be here with you today. I've been coming to these conferences for over 20 years. They're one of the great joy for me. I would say that as a young teenager, I think I started coming to these when I was about 14 years old.

I would say that my spiritual affections and vision were largely set and encouraged through coming and hearing preaching at events like this. So I hope it's a blessing for you, for your children, and yeah it's just wonderful to be here with you. I want to read from Acts 17 22 Where Paul stands up in the midst of the people of Athens and he says, men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious. I don't want to playfully apply this verse right now and look out here and say, men and women of church and family life, I perceive that in all things, you are very religious. I perceive that you're very confessional, that you love good doctrine, good preaching, good theology, excellent discipleship.

I perceive these things because I've met you, I've talked to you, I've heard the preaching here, and it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. Carefulness in worldview is so commendable. But I'd like to just ask a question. If I were to wander into the living rooms or school rooms of your home and meander through your curriculum, would I find the same careful commitment to the worldview that you say that you hold. I'm amazed sometimes when I find Sunday morning all dialed in, but Monday through Friday a little different.

Maybe perhaps a different worldview or perhaps a variety of worldviews crammed together, maybe perhaps a touch of the secular humanist approach to the so-called classics or the child-directed Pelagian philosophies that influence much of modern homeschooling, maybe perhaps straight up Arminian accounts of history. Isn't the curriculum that we teach our children equally important to be careful about as the doctrine that we teach him in family worship that night. And look, I get it, like, my parents homeschooled me 20-something years ago, 30-something years ago, with whatever they could get their hands on. And I'm so thankful for that. In many ways, they were the early pioneers, and I'm grateful that they were willing to do it with whatever resources that they could get their hands on.

I praise God for the pioneers. But I think it's time to move on from the pioneering phase to try to really settle the land with good curriculum that takes a good solid worldview and pushes that through every grade and every subject of curriculum. And that's the goal in the heart behind what Generations does. We don't do it perfectly, but our goal is to see Christ glorified and espoused and the wonders and the glories of God brought through every subject, K through 12, of our children's training and raising. That's the heart behind the curriculum that Generations offers here.

Our goal is to offer a God-centered curriculum in all different subjects, so that Jesus Christ may be praised in all things. We cover a variety of different subjects, and just to give you a quick drive through, many of you are familiar with this curriculum, but Christ-centered history, looking at the work of what Christ has done in every continent around the earth and taking history through the lens of what God is doing through his church and then contextualizing the rest of what happens in history around that instead of the other way around. And as just beautiful books, in the back of the lobby, just kind of back there to your left, you can put your hands on this and start looking through some of the books. Christ-centered literature, taking them through the greatest writings that Christians have done. A God-centered science, if you can imagine, Kevin Swanson, who's one of our directors, you heard him preach last night as he was teaching up here passionately.

Imagine Kevin Swanson teaching as passionately through octopus and the laws of physics and like what God has made in the created universe and then bottling that all up in a set of books. That's what you get when you get Generations Curriculum. It's fun, it's engaging, and Lord willing, it's Christ exalting on every page. There's a family Bible study set to help you in family worship if you need help as a father, walking your children through the word of God. One of my favorite books here, Thoughts for Young Men, is a republishing of J.C.

Ryle's famous, just, encouragements for the life of young men. The book Strong, Kevin mentioned that last night. A great just encouragement for men to stand up in this present age and to be strong. And then what we call our fruitful families in Babylon set. For those of you who are working in a home business or desire to be more fruitful economically as a family, you can see that set back there in the back.

Re-allowed books, all kinds of fun stuff. We've gotten some folks, just Really it's blessed them and it's caused just something of a spiritual revival in their home and we praise God when we hear those testimonies. That's what we think that the homeschool should be. It should be an extension of the very doctrines and things that we believe about God applied to our children every single day through every single subject such that they leave with the greater wonder and awe in the Lord. That's our heart and ministry.

We don't do it perfectly, but we do offer these resources to you. And I'm told there's a five dollar off coupon in the back if you sign up for our list. And we would just love to connect with you and help you in any way that we can as you embark on that beautiful and God-blessed journey of discipling your children in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. So, thank you very much. We turn back to the theme of our conference of manhood and womanhood, and I'm delighted to have Brian Borgman talk about something that's so critical, it's actually so revealing.

There's no religion, there's no philosophy in the world that exalts womanhood like Christianity. In paganism, in the unbelieving world, you use women, in Islam you dominate women, but in Christianity, you actually honor women. And I'm especially thankful to have Brian come because, you know, Brian, He's saturated his whole mind, his whole life on the words of Scripture. That's what he's been doing, you know, for the past decades. And I always want men who are careful expositors, who linger on the words of God.

And when I think of Brian Borgman, I think of a man who has humbled himself under the mighty hand of God through the word of God. And I know many of you appreciate him like I do, but would you please welcome Brian Borgerman. Thank you, brother. Thank you, brother. Well I would normally say a bunch of nice things and how great it is to be here, but there's this big, ugly green clock in the back.

So we're going to skip all the niceties and turn right to our text, 1st Peter chapter 3. 1st Peter chapter 3. As I read this, there will be some differences in some of our translations. We'll talk a little bit about that. This is a precious text.

1st Peter chapter 3 and verse 7, This is God's word. You husbands likewise live with your wives in an understanding way as the weaker vessel since she is a woman and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered. Let's pray. Our Father, your word is forever settled in heaven. The grass withers and the flower fades, but your word abides forever.

And so, Father, we pray that you would give us ears to hear. We pray that you would open our hearts and our minds. Father, we recall the words of our Lord Jesus, be careful how you hear. And Father, we know that there is a responsibility to hear your word. We pray that you would give us the grace to hear it today.

Pray for your help, Lord. I am absolutely, utterly desperate for you. Apart from you, I can do nothing. And so I plead for the help of your Holy Spirit even now and we ask Lord that you would do good to us in this time in Jesus name amen. So Marriage is beautiful because God designed it.

He designed it, of course, to reflect Christ and the church. It's not that Christ and the church were an afterthought that God said, oh yeah, that looks a lot like marriage. It's the other way around. He designs marriage to reflect the beauty of the relationship between Christ and the church. And it occurred to me in thinking about this text that the idea of shalom should characterize our marriages if we're living them according to the way that God designed.

And of course, shalom is the idea of wholeness and wellbeing and as Cornelius Plantinga said many years ago, shalom is the way things ought to be. And so our marriages should be in accord with God's design. They're beautiful, but Marriage is also messy. And we know that marriage is messy because there are no two people that get married who are perfect. Only sinners get married.

And so what oftentimes happens is that we find our own sin as husbands or wives vandalizing that shalom. And what we need in order to recover the wholeness and the beauty of what God has designed is we need instruction, we need correction, and we need the grace of God. We need encouragement so that we can honor the Lord in this beautiful thing called marriage. And so what we have in front of us in this passage is a passage that acknowledges on the one hand the the wonderful differences between a husband and a wife and also the marvelous equality between a husband and a wife. The passage really does focus on reminding husbands on how they are to use their God-given authority and how they are to treat their wives.

And as I think about the import of this text, what I wanna do is I want to plead with you men to please give ear to the word of God. Be careful how you listen. We hear lots and lots and lots of sermons, and we can become connoisseurs and sermon tasters instead of being men who are encountering the living God through the proclamation of his word. And so as the word is preached men give yourself to it. Be willing to be corrected by it.

Be willing to hear what the Spirit says through the word to your heart as a husband. So the text begins with addressing husbands directly. Wives had been addressed in verses one through six. Peter now addresses husbands in verse seven. This is just in the broader context of, you can see it if you just turn back one page, the apostle Peter says in 2 13, submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it's to kings, as the one in authority, etc.

And so the idea is submission in these realms of government and then occupation as he addresses slaves and masters and then in marriage. And so he says husbands likewise. Now the idea is now husbands I'm getting to you and so husbands for your part. And so the connection goes like this. He's addressed women and the woman's responsibility to submit to her husband in verses one to six, and now in verse seven, he's now, likewise for you husbands, I want you to understand that your responsibility is to honor your wife.

So that means marriage is reciprocal. There are mutual responsibilities. In a relationship where all the responsibilities fall on one person and all of the advantages just fall on the other person, that's not a Christian marriage. Now in the Roman Empire and Roman culture, Men had all the benefits of marriage, and women bore all of the responsibilities. But it is not to be so in the Church of Christ.

And so husbands are now addressed, the wives have been told to submit, and husbands are being addressed because headship does not mean tyranny, headship does not mean autocracy, it means loving servant leadership, which is tremendous responsibility. I just want to take a quick second to say to the men, especially the young men, beware of the phony, chest-beating masculinity that is supposedly passed off as Christian manhood today. Rule your home. You're the king. Your wife is to submit to you, to obey you, and there's a sense in which all of God's beautiful, glorious truths always get twisted and perverted.

I heard one of these podcasts not all that long ago where they mocked the idea of servant leadership. As if servant Leadership was somehow the refuge for weak men. Brothers, I would remind you that our model in all things is the Son of Man who said, I did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many. And so that requires a responsibility and it requires a grace and it requires a love. And so Peter then tells these husbands and thus tells us, dwell with your wife according to knowledge.

Even just the word dwell, The idea live together, the word is actually used in the Septuagint to convey the total marriage relationship. In fact, D. Edmund Hebert says it's a word that's inclusive of all aspects of a shared home life. Now what's interesting to me, and I love grammar, and you love the Bible, You should love grammar. If you love God, you should love grammar because God made grammar.

I never get amens when I say stuff like that at my church. The word that we see in your Bible says something like, live with your wife, and actually the word's not the ordinary word for wife. It is actually, believe it or not, a neuter adjective, this probably modifying weaker vessel, and the word choice that Peter has here is not just wife, but The idea is the feminine one. And so what Peter's doing is he chooses a word that underscores not just the woman as a wife, but the woman with this notion of femininity. And so Peter says you dwell with the feminine one in an understanding way.

Literally, as you've heard many times, according to knowledge. Now I take the according to knowledge, so live with your wife, the feminine one, according to knowledge. I take the according to knowledge to be knowledge of one's wife. The idea is that you dwell with the feminine one according to knowledge as a weaker vessel. I remember there's a wonderful book by Lou Priolo called The Complete Husband and the very first chapter is I wish she came with an owner's manual.

Now he actually in that chapter argues she does and it's called the Bible, all right? But he says there, he says, to live with your wife according to knowledge means that you must become a lifetime student of your wife. The phony masculinity, the phony manhood, never actually, that man never humbles himself enough to want to learn because all he's concerned about is getting his needs met and all he's concerned about is that woman is submissive to him and does what he says And Peter says, listen, you need to live with her according to knowledge. Priolo goes on in that chapter and actually gives really wonderful practical advice on how to draw things out of your wife and to learn from her or learn about her. Let me just say, and this is just a plug for a great book.

If you don't have the redeemed man edited by Dr. Beeke, it is pure gold. All right? Helpful for the heart. And so Peter says, you gotta learn about your wife.

You gotta do your best to understand her. Don't buy into this myth that somehow men and women are so fundamentally different that you could never understand your wife in a million years. My wife is absolutely wonderful. She's Dominican, she's wonderfully submissive, but she's feisty, a little spicy. She is one of the most cheerful people that I ever have met in my life.

But there are times where I look and I just go, honey, I don't understand you. All right? And so Peter would say, all right then Borgman, start studying. And so Scott assigned this text to me, right? And I wanna thank you for it.

I wasn't thanking you for it at first, but I started thanking you for it later. So, Ariel and I are in Missouri, and I was preaching for our brother Justin Miller, who's here somewhere, and we were driving this country road and we're going down this hill, back up a hill to a stop sign and it's a T, so the road stops and you have to go right or left. And I'm driving down the hill, getting ready to come up and Ariel starts trying to push an invisible brake and she grabs the thing and she gasps. I looked at her and I said, what are you doing? She says, you're accelerating.

I said, no, I'm not. I said, you know, I hate it when you like gasp like that and start pumping the invisible brake. And she says, no, you were accelerating. I said, I was going down a hill. I saw the stop sign.

Did you think I was just gonna blow through it and go into the alfalfa field? And she gets real quiet. And then I get real quiet. And we're driving and we're not saying anything. I know in a group of sanctified people like this, you've never done that.

Finally, I just said, I wish you wouldn't do that. And she said to me, I don't know what it is, but the older I get, I feel a little more fearful when we're driving. It's not you're driving, I promise. I just feel more fearful. And then this text is ringing in my mind.

Live with her according to knowledge. Understand her. Learn about her fears, learn about her desires, learn about her struggles, learn about her needs. I asked her for forgiveness, for getting irritable with her Because I realized that there's something about my wife that I need to know. Be the kind of husband who's a good listener, who's a good student, who knows what it is to study his wife and to do it in a way that she can open up and she can express and explain things without fear of criticism or judgment.

And then Peter says, live with your wife, that feminine one, according to knowledge, as a weaker vessel. Now let me just make one point here, and this is just an exegetical point. Live with her according to knowledge is the weaker vessel. So the King James, ESV, and many other translations all take weaker vessel with showing honor. So show honor to her as the weaker vessel, but it seems to me better to take it like this, that there are two balanced statements, live with her according to knowledge as the weaker vessel, and then show honor to her as a co-heir of the grace of life, okay?

So that's the way that I think the text should be exegetically understood and it doesn't, it's not earth-shaking. But when Peter says, as the weaker vessel, what does he mean? Well, you know, you get some people that jump to all kinds of conclusions. Let me just emphatically say that weaker vessel does not mean intellectually inferior. Most women I know are smarter than men.

Nor does it mean spiritually inferior. And frankly, I'm actually hesitant to say the idea of being emotionally weaker because I don't think that just because in general, most women are more emotionally expressive than men that we turn around and assume that emotional stoicism is somehow strength. A woman may be more fragile in certain ways, she may have greater sensitivities in certain ways, but the emphasis here is almost certainly on the fact that physically she is simply the weaker vessel. So kids, kids, all you guys look up here, I have a question for you and I want you to answer. If mommy and daddy were to arm wrestle, who would win?

There you go. Right? Kids, who's stronger, mommy or daddy? Dad, right. So I was really hoping that there wouldn't be some kid who's got this big giant Scandinavian mother and some little tiny, you know, maybe French dad or something.

Now, I want to thank Tom for taking all my good illustrations yesterday on this. I kept thinking, no, not the US women's soccer team illustration, please. That was a good one. Anyway, so I had to come up with a different one. So stop and think about this.

There are reasons why there's no reciprocity among so-called trans athletes. That is, you don't see girls or women beating down the door to compete against males. What you see is males beating down the door, taking advantage of their superior strength as they compete against females. Now, That should actually settle the issue for us in terms of the myth of equality here, right? Because there are certain reasons why women don't play American football against men.

There are certain reasons why you don't have a female middle linebacker playing on, what football team do you have out here? Do you have a football team in Panthers? Okay, Panthers. You don't see a woman as a defensive lineman. In fact, I found it very interesting.

Some of you remember the tennis player, John McEnroe. And of course, John McEnroe was a big crybaby when he was a professional tennis player. But he was on one of these morning shows, and they asked him, So what do you think about Serena Williams? Now Serena Williams, if you pay attention to tennis, Serena Williams was a beast who dominated women's tennis for years. And John McEnroe said this, Yes, Serena is the best women's tennis player in the world.

The host said, why did you say women's? Why not just the greatest tennis player in all the world? And John McEnroe said, because the top 100 men could beat her in any given match. Now, they had a coronary. But what was interesting is that Serena Williams, being interviewed one time, was asked, how would you do if you played against a man?

And she said, if I got on the court with Andrew Murray, I'd lose six zero, six zero in less than 10 minutes. There is a fundamental axiomatic truth that we all know, and that is generally men are physically stronger than women. Peter says, live with your wife according to knowledge, get to know her as the weaker vessel, as that one who needs protection as the weaker vessel, as the one who needs understanding as the weaker vessel. Luther said that the idea was this, is that husband, you are to help her, you are to conserve her, you are to support her, you are not to be her ruin. What Peter's calling for here is for husbands to live with their wife in such a way that they realize that she is weaker than them and that requires that they understand her, that they know her, that they study her, that they learn all about her.

Now, are there things, are there things that you're going to learn or that maybe you just already know that won't thrill your soul. The answer's of course, like invisible breaks, gasping and grabbing the thing. I don't really like that. But there's not a lot I can do about it, except understand and adjust myself as the one who is supposed to live with her according to knowledge. Now the second part of the passage goes like this, and you are to show her honor as the co-heir of the grace of life.

And so the idea to honor her, says Edmund Clowney, is the honor or preciousness that the husband must bestow on his wife is not only the recognition of her place in God's ordinance of marriage, but it is to honor that hers is one of God's, She is one of God's precious and holy people. Husbands, we should honor the wife that God gave to us because she is a daughter of the king. God has given you a gift of a wife and she is the king's daughter. And to honor her means that you affirm her, you build her up, you praise her. It also means that you refrain from being critical and from being harsh.

Just because you're A man doesn't mean you have to be harsh. Harshness and manhood are not co-equals. Affirm your wife. Praise her, honor her, Honor her in front of your children. Men, do not dare demean your wife in front of your children.

It is a sin. You honor her in the family. You honor her at church. You honor her out in public. She is this treasure that God has given to you.

And you say, well, you don't know my wife. I'm sure she could say, and you don't know my husband. That woman that God has given to you is a precious gift that you are supposed to honor and honor her, not just at church, not just out in public, not just before the kids, but you honor her in private. Isn't that where it ends up coming down to being the most Crucial area where you honor her is when it's just you and her. Pray for her.

Pray with her. In that book that I mentioned a minute ago, the redeemed man, this really nice guy named Dr. Beeke writes these words. He says, pray for your wife at least once every day. Your wife is the companion that the Lord has given to you during your earthly pilgrimage.

Can you not spend a few minutes every day in private prayer for her? Praying regularly for your wife is part of your duty to dwell with her according to knowledge, 1 Peter 3, 7. Know her needs, her desires, her hopes, her fears, her dreams, her likes, her dislikes. Supplicate for her specifically. It is remarkable how the Lord often uses a healthy prayer life to soften your heart and make you more sensitive to your wife's needs and wants.

And so pray for her, but pray with her. Many years ago, maybe 20, I was at a conference that Dr. Beeke was speaking at, and they had a panel, and Somebody asked a question about praying for, or praying with your wife, and one of the guys on that platform, he was the last one, and of course, I still remember it, it's so wonderfully emblazoned in my memory, Dr. Beeke spoke so sweetly and sincerely and unpretentiously about he and Mrs. Beeke and their prayer life and even when he's gone, they pray on the phone together and it was heartwarming and they got to this last guy And he says, and by the way, he was preaching on prayer.

And he said, I've never prayed with my wife. Now, if I remember it correctly, Dr. Beeke fell right out of his chair onto the floor. And actually, there was a wonderful gentle rebuke. I think that some of you would be surprised at how few men pray with their wives.

Pray with your wife. Jumping ahead, she is a co-heir of the grace of life. Pray with her. Know what it is to actually join heart to heart together. One of the ways that you honor her is that you treat her as a spiritual equal, not only equally made in the image of God, but one who knows God, is loved by God, saved by the blood of Christ, and is every bit as saved as you are, and in all likelihood may be more sanctified than you are.

Pray with her. Peter says, you honor her. And you honor her as a co-heir of the grace of life. That wife that God has given to you is in fact your equal spiritually before God. Yes, different roles.

Yes, there's a stronger. Yes, there's a weaker. But there is a beautiful equality in that both husband and wife who are in Christ share the same destiny in Christ as heirs of the grace of life. You could probably translate this idea as, as, heirs of the grace which is life, speaking in a sense of future life, the eschatological life. So honor her, respect her as a daughter of the King, as a co-heir of the beautiful grace of God which has been given to you and to her in Christ Jesus.

As a co-heir of the grace of life, she's deserving of the dignity and the respect and the honor that is hers as a child of the living God. If you are not a wife yet, let me urge you young ladies, Look for a man who delights to give grace because he knows he's received grace. Look for a man who knows what it is to be humbled before the cross of Jesus. Look for a man who knows what it is to be humbled before the cross of Jesus. Look for a man who knows what it is to not only have experienced the love of God, but to be a channel for that love.

Now Peter gives one warning at the end. He says, this is why you must live with her according to knowledge and why you must honor her as a co-heir of the grace of life, and it's this, so that your prayers aren't hindered. So listen carefully, God is so opposed to mistreating those who are weaker, he is so opposed to treating people harshly, people who misuse and abuse their authority, that he says, if you harden your heart towards your wife, if you fail to seek to understand her, if you fail to honor her as my daughter, I will impede your prayers. Peter's actually telling us that the way that we treat our wife, if we are treating her in a way that dishonors God, God says access to me will be hindered because you are not using your authority and you're not loving well and you are not honoring the woman that I gave to you. And so the idea of hindered, it's a military word, the idea of throwing obstacles in the way or even to cut up the road to make it impassable.

So brothers, to demean or belittle our wives, to not be considerate of our wives, to not care for our wives, to not honor our wives, we'll close off the pathway to God in prayer so that the only prayer that will be of any value will be a prayer of heartfelt repentance. And so in a world where male leadership and female submission is seen as abusive and oppressive, let's defy those false accusations and misperceptions by being men who cherish and honor our wives to the glory of God. Let's be strong men, redeemed men, humble men, gracious men who don't lord it over our wives, but seek to understand the heart of this king's daughter and show her honor. Brothers, why should we do this? Well, in one sense, we could say, because God said so.

And at the end of the day, that's enough. Is it not? God said so. But I wanna give you one last encouragement to make sure that you live with her according to knowledge and that you show her honor as the co-heir of the grace of life. I hope this encourages you.

Men, Christ dwells with us. He dwells in our hearts by faith, Ephesians 3, 18. And here's what's more, he dwells with us according to knowledge. He knows our hearts. He's the searcher of our hearts.

He is actually the one who knows us better than we know ourselves. He sees our sins. He examines our hearts. He tests our thoughts. He tests our affections, our motivations.

He is the God who sees all things. And our Lord Jesus Christ not only dwells with us, but he dwells with us with an extensive knowledge of ourselves so that he knows every nook and cranny of us. And Here's the thing is that he knows that we're the weaker vessel. He knows our weaknesses. He himself knows our frame.

He's mindful that we are but dust. He sees your failures. He sees your weaknesses. He sees your sins. He sees the things that you struggle with.

He sees the things that you struggle with, He sees the things that you battle, He sees your defeats, and He loves you still. I want to just say that there is something right and good and true about encouraging men. Be strong, be courageous, right? And those are the kinds of men we need, but at the end of the day, we are still sinners saved by grace who have not yet arrived, who need to be sanctified even more by the Spirit, yield to Christ even more as Lord, and we are indeed still fallen. And so yes, be strong, be courageous, but don't forget, you are still Roman 7, 14 to the end of the chapter.

Amen. And Jesus knows that. He knows things about you that your wife doesn't know. And his knowledge of you is so perfect that he knows things about you that you don't even know. And so great is his compassion for us that when we fail, he's not moved to wrath, He's moved to pity.

He's brokenhearted over our failures and our struggles. In fact, he is more brokenhearted over our failures and struggles than we are. And yet he continues to be that great high priest who ever lives to make intercession for you. He doesn't say, you know what, I'm so sick and tired of this, you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. Jesus would never treat you the way some of you treat your wives.

And he shows us honor. Honor as heirs of God. He shows us honor as joint heirs with him. Romans 8, 17, He honors those who are not honorable by lavishing his love and his grace upon us. Men, do you not understand that the very thing that you are called to be and to do towards your wife is what Jesus is and does to you.

So what a responsibility. How much we need the grace of Christ. So if you've been one of those who mistreats the king's daughter, and you're hard, and you don't listen, and you're not interested in learning, let me just say you are not nearly as spiritual as you think. Your prayers are being cut off. Repent.

If you're a husband and the Spirit of God is pointing these things out to you, this is what you're doing, this is how you're failing. What I want you to understand is that there's good news, and there's good news right now today, and that is there's a fountain that's been opened for sin and uncleanness, and you can run to that fountain, and you can find not only forgiveness for your sins, but you can also find divine empowerment by God's Holy Spirit to start being the husband that you're called to be. Wouldn't it be absolutely glorious to be to be a model of God's grace in a marriage that's been rescued and restored. Oh, brothers, may we strive after these things. May our hearts be tender towards these things.

Don't buy into the false bravado. Manhood, as Jeff Pollard said yesterday, is Christ likeness. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that your word does not return to you void, and we pray that you would accomplish the purposes for which you've sent it. We pray, Father, that you would give us open and honest hearts who would receive your word, even where it stings.

Give us grace Lord, change us, Conform us to the image of your dear Son in whose name we pray, amen. What a powerful message. Thank you, Brother Borgman, for feeding us with God's word. Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Adam Triplett, and I have the distinct privilege of serving as the Director of Advancement for Church and Family Life.

It is a joy to be able to serve many of you, those of you who are our financial partners, those of you who are a part of the church network. I'm so thankful to be able to be a part of this team. You know, for over 25 years now, we have been watching what we like to call a quiet revolution. We have been seeing fathers return to the old ways of family worship and bringing their children alongside of them in the life of the church. We've seen children submitting and obeying their parents and longing to follow them in these ways.

We've seen pastors plant and revitalize churches in the ways of God's word, depending upon the scripture as sufficient and effective for bringing about Christ's kingdom. Church and family life exists to strengthen that mission. We exist to bless you, followers of Christ, in your pursuit of having biblical families and biblical churches. One of the ways that we do that is through our family integrated church network. This is a free network that seeks to connect pastors together and to equip and resource them in the great work that lay ahead of us.

I know that many of our network pastors are here in the room with us this morning, and I'm sure we could go around and hear testimony after testimony of how God has used church and family life to bless you. I know that many of the families in this room right now are in churches that you found via that network. As we look forward to the future of this ministry, one of the things that we want to see grow and strengthen is this network. And so I wanted to take just a few minutes this morning to point those pastors in this room who are not a part of the network to consider joining it today. One of the things that we're offering this weekend at the conference for any pastor who signs their church up to be a part of the network is we're giving you three free digital books as an incentive.

But I think one of the best incentives is that our network is free. And that is because of faithful donors who consistently and ongoingly give to this ministry, but it helps make this network a place of just free joy and blessing that we can give to you. So if you're a pastor here this weekend and your church is not a part of the network, I wanna encourage you to come back to our booth in the back corner, talk to myself. Chris Baines will also be there. We would love to share with you more about what this network is.

And if you're a family here this weekend who's looking for a church that stands on the sufficiency of scripture, that preaches God's word with boldness, that lives out God's word in the context of faithful family fellowship, our network also exists for you. We have a small business card back there in the back that you can take, has a QR code on it, and you can scan it, and it'll bring up the map. And if you're looking for a church like the churches that you see represented here, you can find one on that map that might be close to you. And so thank you for giving me an opportunity to share, but as I go, I just want to encourage you to Utilize this network and to take it up as your benefit, as we seek as a body of believers near and far to glorify Christ in the days ahead. Thank you.

(*audience applauds*) Thank you, Adam, so much for that. We now have the privilege of having Dr. Joe Beeke with us. I first met Dr. Beeke because years ago, I'm thinking it was 20 years ago, I was putting on a small conference in Wake Forest where I live called the Puritan Family Reformation and I thought who can I who can I talk to to coach me through some of this and so I reached out to Dr?

Beeke and I got a bibliography as long as my body. It was fantastic by bibliography. And that really began a relationship with Dr. Beeke, which I have so appreciated. He's been at this conference.

I was trying to figure out, Joel, if you've been here 16 years in a row or 15 years in a row, I don't know, it's a long time. And I would hate to do a conference without Joel Peakey. He's gonna come and talk about a very, very critical matter regarding marriage. And by the way, on Sunday, we're having a worship service here, and he is, he's going to be preaching on motherhood, on Mother's Day. How about that?

That's fantastic. You can clap. Yeah, I'm clapping. So let's welcome Dr. Vicki.

Genesis 2, Genesis 2, 18 through 24, the creation of the woman. That's the topic given to me. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him and help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

And Adam gave names to all cattle, to the fowl of the air, to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found and help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, And he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, woman, because she was taken out of man.

Therefore, shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, bless us now as we consider the creation of the woman and provide for us lessons from this part of Thy Word that will stand us in good stead in our marriages and in understanding what we just heard in the last address about the tenderness of the woman and how we are to treat our wives in such a very special way. Help us now, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.

I want to look at three things with you this morning under the theme of the creation of the woman. First, the woman made as an help, meat for the man, fitting for the man. Second, the woman made by God as his special handiwork, and third the woman made to be one with the man. So the woman as a helpmeet, the woman as a special handiwork of God, and the woman to be one with the man. The passage before us is really a remarkable statement.

It's not good that man should be alone. The negative not good in Hebrew is emphatic. You see, until now, everything God had done was very good. He's pronounced his own benediction at the end of Genesis 1 on all creation. But here for the first time, it seems that there's something lacking, something not good, not evil in itself, but something missing.

Without female companionship and a partner in reproduction, the man could not fully realize his humanity. So out of this need comes a creation of a woman to be Adam's wife and companion. And after man and woman are completed, then we read that all was very exceedingly good. So the creation of this woman has far reaching consequences. It sets the foundation for the relationship of a husband wife within marriage.

Also the relationship of Jesus Christ, the husband of his church, and the church as his bride, think Ephesians 5, as well as, which Jeff Johnson is going to look at this afternoon, the function of a man and woman within the church. So I'm going to stay in my lane in this address and just consider with you this text and a few of its ramifications for marriage and spiritual marriage with Jesus Christ. So God's creation of Eve is set in the context of the creation's story. The first part of that story is the preparation of the man for the woman's arrival. Adam had been made in God's image.

He was filled with God's pristine glory. And yet God showed Adam that in all the created order, with all of its variety, there was still at this time no creature suited to be his companion. And God chose to teach Adam that in a fascinating way. He brought all the animals to Adam from the ant to the zebra and he asked Adam to name them all, to name them in the very essence of what they were. And Adam did that.

He had insight to do that. Verse 20 says that Adam gave names to all cattle to the fowl of the air, to every beast of the field. And then we read these astonishing words that when Adam was all done, naming the thousands of animals that paraded before him. But, but for Adam there was not found in help meat for him. Boys and girls, do you have a dog?

How many of you have a dog? How many of you have a cat? Oh, too many. I get allergic to cats. I've slept in many a bedroom in my life with a lot of cat hair around and it was not good.

But you can get pretty close, can't you, to your pet, right? And you love your dog, you love your cat, but it's not like when you love your mother, or your dad, or your brother and sister, even though you fight a little bit. You see, you love your dog because your dog loves you and you feed your dog and you play with your dog and you run with your dog, but you can only reach a certain level with your dog. You can only reach a dog's level. A dog does not have a soul.

You cannot talk with your dog about the deepest things of life. And so what happened to Adam was he went through all these animals, but he was still alone. He needed someone that was more than all the animals, someone prepared to be with him, Someone to be his ideal counterpart in this world. Someone who like him was made in the very image of God. Someone who had a soul.

That was Eve. God made Eve as a perfect woman. What a striking woman she must have been. I love Martin Luther's comments. You know Luther said just about everything and He pointed out that Adam must have been an extraordinarily handsome man.

He thought that Adam must have excelled the animals even in those points where the animals were strong. Power greater than a lion, he said, and eyesight sharper than an eagle's. I don't know where he got that in the Bible, but he said it. But if that was true of Adam, Luther said, what shall we say of Eve? Luther thought Eve must have been as strong and fast and clear sighted and brilliant as Adam.

And in addition, he said, she must have had such a beauty and grace that excelled him that you would almost be prone to bow before her. Well, what he was trying to do, of course, was he was just trying to say that pre-fall, both Adam and Eve were in their pristine glory. Sin had not impacted anything about them, or in them, or of them. And yet, in spite of Eve's physical, mental, and moral excellence, far surpassing a sinful woman's excellence. Verse 18 says, she was made for the man.

To be a helpmate, that is to be one suitable to be one who complements, P-L-E, the man. So in this perfect, isn't that something, pre-fall condition, every woman already has a clue to her unique God-given position in marriage. She is to be a help corresponding to the needs of her husband. Now that, or of her need to be obedient to the man in marriage is anathema today. So many Women and even men think these ideas are just simply old-fashioned, unjust, prejudiced against the woman.

And one reason we think that is because our fallen nature never likes to surrender its desired independency. Had a lady come to me with her husband, the first year of their marriage, saying, I want to divorce my husband. And I said, why? Has he been unfaithful to you? She said, no, He doesn't meet all my needs.

And when I said to her that there's no man on earth that can meet all the needs of a woman and no woman on earth that can meet all the needs of a man, she looked very confused. And her husband looked very relieved. But the point was this, you see, post fall there is no way that one sinner can meet all the needs of another sinner because we're both sinners and we all need the perfect bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's just impossible to meet all of each other's needs. But the Bible says We are to be a help to each other.

And the woman's role particularly is to deny this inward sinful desire for independency and to be a help to her husband. Now help is not a derogatory term in the Bible. God created us to serve him and to help our neighbor, Scripture says. It is an honor, women, to help your husband. In fact, the word help is a word used for God himself.

Did you know that? 10 times in the Psalms alone. If God is not ashamed to be the help of fallen sinners, why should the woman look askance on Eve being the help of her unfallen husband? This is not a degrading position. The verb form basically means to aid or supply that which the individual cannot supply for himself.

The Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, translates it, boethos, which is a word the New Testament uses in the sense of physician. Physician. It conveys the idea of aiding someone in need, such as the oppressed. So a godly wife delights to meet the needs of her husband. And the root of the very word to meet in the Hebrew language means the opposite.

In other words, she's according to the opposite of him in certain qualities, meaning that she will compliment him and correspond to him so that what he is lacking, she fills. And vice versa. And that is the idea of marriage pre-fall. Meaning that she will correspond to her husband. She's to be equal to her husband, to be adequate for the man, meeting needs he finds difficult to meet, or even impossible to meet, without her.

So, exactly though, in what ways are they equal and what way are Adam and Eve not equal? Well, they were certainly both equal and being created in the image of God. They were both placed under the moral command of God, thus given moral responsibility with all of creation. They were both guilty of disobeying the command of God, Genesis 3, and were therefore judged by God for their disobedience. Paul tells us in Galatians 3 that both men and women are equally object of God's gracious redemption in Jesus.

As husband and his wife, a man and woman are equally called to leave father and mother to cleave to each other to love each other as one flesh. And yet, this whole context of Eve's creation shows that there's an inequality in another area Because the woman was created for the men, they were not equal, created equal in authority. God has a different authority structure laid out for husbands than he does for wives. And the inequality of that structure doesn't mean, however, that the husband has the advantage over his wife. No, no.

He has a greater responsibility in the area of authority than his wife. It's not that his position is better than another or his wife's position. Actually, my wife says sometimes to me, she says, you know, I got the better end of the deal. All I have to do is be submissive to a man who really loves me like crazy, but you have all the responsibility of leadership. That's huge.

I got the lighter end of the stick. Well, that's wonderful when your wife says that to you. But you see, the point is this. God created man and woman, as we've been hearing all conference long, differently to fit his design and his purpose, and there's a higher view, and we'll get to that in a little while, that resembles a spiritual relationship between Christ and the church. So what God had in mind with man and woman from the beginning is that a husband and wife are to mutually submit to Christ.

That's why in Ephesians 5, where we're told the man must love his wife, husband must love his wife, as Christ loves the church, as she must show submission and respect to her husband, we must not forget that in verse 20, prior to these graphic, deep theological instructions, it says that both man and woman are to be submissive to Christ. So God has an authority structure in all of life, doesn't he? First, God the Father hands all authority to his Son in heaven and on earth. His Son works out that authority through the Word of God, the Bible, and the premier author of that, which is the Spirit of the Son, the Holy Spirit, and then in the Bible we find chains of authority in every area of life. The husband leading his wife, the employer leading the employees, the teachers leading the students, government leading the citizens, office bearers leading church members, every area of life is structured by authority.

You can't have, in other words, two heads in one home. And so there's both glory and humility in the man's position and in Eve's position, the woman's position as well. The man's glory is that he's the head. His humility is that he's not complete without the woman. The woman's glory is that only she can give the man fulfillment.

The woman's humility is that she is made of man. So post fall, these complimentary roles come out even stronger, especially in Ephesians five, when we are called to model our marriages as two sinful people in Christ according to God's directions. And what Paul is saying to husbands is you're to love your wife in four different ways. You see that in Ephesians 5, don't you? Clearly, four different ways.

You're to love them, first of all, absolutely. Turn with me a moment there to Ephesians 5. Ephesians 5, husbands, 25, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. It's not a 50-50 deal. You're to give your whole self to your wife.

Second, you're also to love your wives purposely. Look at verse 26, that you might sanctify and cleanse your bride with a washing of water by the word, so that you may present her to Christ on the great day, a glorious church without spot or wrinkle. Is that why you married your wife? How many men here married their wife for this purpose, that on the day of judgment, you could present her to Christ, flawless in the perfect righteousness of Christ, but also because all through life, God blessed the means you used to lead her to wash her with the water of the word every single day in family worship and through your daily conversation so that on the day of judgment she could look at Jesus and say because of that man because I was married to this man, I was made more godly in this life and more prepared for glory. That's what I want my wife to be able to say it on the judgment day.

And I hope you too. So we're to love our wives absolutely. We're to love our wives purposely. We're to love them realistically. We just heard that for 40 minutes from Brian Borgman.

Remembering who they are. And remembering they too like us are sinners. Hence the words, without spot or wrinkle. That's on the judgment day. Here, we all have our spots, we all have our wrinkles, And it's not our business to try to make our wives flawless.

We need to accept those flaws that are not connected with sin. We need to remember that fundamentally we don't change our spouse. We need to love them so much that those minor flaws that are not sinful, we actually learn to love those as well because it's part of who she is and we love her. So stop nitpicking your wife and you women stop nitpicking your husbands. It's never worth it And it's not God-honoring.

Either way, we had a man in our church who was a very godly man, but he was a little eccentric in some ways, and His wife was just very, very open and just said what, it was like a seamless, whatever came to his mind he said. That's a little dangerous. And his wife was very pristine. Every hair was in place. Every word had to be perfect.

She was constantly nitpicking her husband. So one day she calls him down from the upstairs for supper and he doesn't respond. She walks up and lo and behold, He's on his knees at the bedside. His head is in his hands. He died praying.

And she was horrified. She called me right away. We went over there right away. And it was so sad. It was so sad.

She said to me, to my wife, she said, if only, if only, I could have him back for one day. I wouldn't nitpick him for anything anymore. You see, treasure your spouse men, treasure your spouse women. They have spots and wrinkles, accept that, embrace it, you have them as well, And then love your wife not only realistically, but love your wife sacrificially as your own body. If you get something in your eye, you get it out right away, don't you?

You try to at least. If your wife is hurting, you give her attention right away. You treat her like your own body. But then in reverse, you see, submission in Ephesians 5 is not a degrading concept. You know, submission is found even between the incarnate Son of God in His humanity and God the Father.

In fact, the submission of wives to their husbands parallels the submission of the human Christ to his Father. He says, my will is to do my Father's will. Now in the Trinity, in its deity of course, there's no submission. They're the same all three in one, in substance, in power, and in glory, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says. However, when God the Son became a man in the purposes of his mediatorial work, he subjected himself to the humanity, in his humanity, to the Father's divine will.

Even coming under the law, Paul says in Galatians 4. So the son who is the Lord becomes a servant of the Lord. Isaiah 42, forward. Having become a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. So Paul points to the parallel between Christ's human submission and marital submission of the wife when he says, the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God.

1 Corinthians 11. So our submissiveness to proper authority in the home and in every sphere of life is a manifestation of the beauty of Jesus Christ's relationship to his father. Now some feminists respond to these kinds of arguments and say that submission is part of the curse, now abrogated by Christ's atonement. Their argument, however, doesn't reckon with the fact that the subordinate relationship of wife to husband is found first in Genesis 2 before the fall and before the curse. It's not something ugly.

It's not something demeaning. It's something beautiful. It's bringing man and woman in their peculiar design to fit together as one whole. And therefore, if a woman cannot be a loving, submissive helper to the man who proposes to her, she should not marry him any more than a man should propose marriage to a woman to whom he does not intend to show loving, self-denying servant leadership. These things are fundamental because this is the way God made us and this is the way we are to live.

Now that leads me then to my second thought, the woman made by God as his special handiwork. Think of this. This woman is made by a special act of God bringing Adam to a deep sleep, a deep sleep. Sort of like anesthesia, it seems. An operation takes place on him.

God takes out this rib and builds and constructs a woman miraculously for the man, designed for him so that he could love her. And they could be one flesh. And then God brings her to the man, a special Hebrew word here that means presented or conducted her to the man, a formal solemn giving of her in the bonds of the marriage covenant to the man as a woman's creator and father or as the Puritans used to say, as his second self to be a help fitting for him. I love the way Matthew Henry put it. It's a famous statement he made.

The woman was not made out of the man's 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 loved by him. That's the way to treat your precious help meat. All other human institutions in the entire world trace their origin back to the marriage institution. And from the marriage came the home, the family, and ultimately every other organization in society and this is the foundation of the whole. Adam, Adam and Eve are made as perfectly fitting companions.

They're naked and unashamed. They have the perfect fit for the longing that has been awakened in Adam. And so Adam breaks out in a kind of wedding song, celebrating his similarity and his union with a woman. In verse 23, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called, wo man, ish, ish, coming out of ish, taken out of ish, the man." Can you imagine? Better harmony than that.

But of course, we know what happened. The fall. But it didn't change God's plans for marriage and what marriage is to be. And so Adam finally finds that which corresponds to him. The very words in Hebrew have a connection, a close connection.

Isha and Ish, woman and man. It's almost like saying lion and lioness, tiger and tigress. God brings a beautiful partner to Adam. And Adam breaks forth in poetic praise for his beautiful, sacred wife, who becomes his love, and God provides the blueprint for their marriage. They are to love one another in Christ, and they are to serve one another in Christ, and they are to leave and cleave and join themselves in oneness in a beautiful way.

The woman is made, that's my third thought, to be one with the man. Leaving, cleaving, oneness. That's the beauty of marriage. And that's symbolized at a wedding, is it not? When the bride and the groom walk down the aisle, they walk down as two different people.

They never walk down together. When they're pronounced husband and wife, they're stated to be one flesh, and when they walk out of the wedding, how do they walk? It just doesn't happen by chance that they're holding each other's hand, walking down as one. Because they've now entered this state of marriage, And they're called to be one, but it takes a lifetime to truly become one. And for two Christians who are married, That oneness is not reaching its idealistic perfection until heaven, when together they can stand side by side and gaze upon the perfect lamb of glory, the perfect bridegroom, in a spiritual utopian marriage with him forever.

But all our lifetime, you see, we are seeking to approximate more and more that oneness, to think alike, to have our hearts be alike, to both love Christ, to both love his word, to both love our children and our grandchildren and great grandchildren. And it's so beautiful when you see a couple grow old together in Christ, isn't it? The condition of oneness grows more and more. In fact, they can even finish each other's sentences. And they know what each other's thinking.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful to become more and more one. But what is that a picture of? It's a picture of Jesus Christ with his father. He left his father willingly, left the crown and throne and courts of glory to come into this world to seek out his bride.

He also on Calvary's cross joined himself to his bride. Just as Eve was formed out of the side of Adam. Mystically, the bride of Christ is formed out of the side of Christ who got the sword in his side and out came blood and water symbolizing justification and sanctification. This is a great mystery, Paul says, but I speak as he completes his theology of marriage, it's a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. It's all about Christ and the church.

As Christ and the church become one. So we are called to reflect that oneness and cleave to one another in marriage in unbreakable Union. And so Paul is constantly talking about this marriage with Christ, isn't he? As a marriage of oneness. Again and again he says things like this, I am co-crucified with Christ.

Galatians 2.20. That is when Christ died, in a sense I also died. In Romans 6.4, he speaks of being buried with Christ. He speaks of being resurrected with Christ, of sitting in heavenly places with Christ, of the believer's union with Christ that is so great, so one, that when he was died, we died. When he was buried, we were buried.

When he was raised from the dead, we are raised. When he ascends, it's a promise of our ascension. Who can comprehend this mystical union? And we're to strive to let our marriages be a picture of this beautiful, profound union. You see, then there's no room for nitpicking or trivial stuff, or expecting our spouse to be perfect.

No, no. We aim for this union. As the poet said, one in the tomb, one when he arose, one when he triumphed over his foes, one when in heaven he took his seat, while Seraph sang all hell's defeat. With him our head, we stand or fall, our life, our security, our surety, our all. This is the dignity of marriage.

Dignity in Eve's creation as a woman, one with her husband, equal in dignity with him, sharing that dignity with him, and post fall, looking to Christ for the capstone of that dignity, despite their sin. And now through faith, there is dignity in the recreation of Christ's bride, in regeneration, to be one with the bridegroom, to share in his dignity, to share in his glory, to be loved by God with some of that very same love, Jesus says, John 17, 24, with which God the Father loves his only begotten son. Truly, there is no dignity like the dignity of recreation. And when husband and wife are both made new creations in Christ, the love they have for one another should be beyond all human vocabulary. You see, that love in Christ is what can give you a straight A marriage.

If you both don't love Christ, maybe God's common grace, I don't know, maybe you can get a C plus marriage, you know, can be kind to each other, which is great, but only in Christ can you have an excellent marriage. Only in Christ. And so let me close by just saying this. We need desperately to understand the Christological essence of marriage in Ephesians 5 over against the beautiful spotless marriage of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2. Because we've fallen, now marriage is stained by sin.

But you see, we aim for that day when we will be United with Christ forever as the perfect bridegroom. And so what that means for you young people is that you never, never, never marry an unbeliever because you will be unequally old. You will not have the same view of marriage, 2 Corinthians 6, 14. So, as Thomas Matanapyrton said, do you want to be married? First of all, clear up your right and your title to Jesus Christ and make sure you are in him before you look for a spouse.

Make your own calling and election sure. And if you and your partner are God fearing, Your marriage will greatly profit because you will have someone to assist you in striving to live to God's glory and you will correct one another. When you sin, you will correct one another in tender love with knowledge and with understanding. And in striving to live a holy life you will encourage each other to take up the cross, to deny yourself and to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. So may I ask you and myself in closing the biggest question of all, are you married now to Jesus Christ?

Adam and Eve were not ashamed because they were clothed with God-given original righteousness. Are You too now, by grace, not ashamed because you are clothed with a God-given righteousness of Jesus Christ. What do you think of your perfect bridegroom? Are you married to him or are you married to another Lord, the Prince of this world? Then you are not fit for earthly marriage, nor the heavenly marriage.

Satan's promises are lies. His dowry is anguish. His embrace is death. His chamber is darkness. His bed is flames of fire.

So whatever the case may be, your spiritual condition, fly to the perfect bridegroom for the first time, but also daily. Flee with all your shortcomings, also in your natural married life and in your spiritual marriage to the Lord Jesus Christ. Flee whether married or single to Jesus Christ by faith to find the perfect Adam, the second Adam, the only perfect bridegroom. Amen. Let's pray.

Gracious God, we ask thy benediction upon this short message and pray that the glorious creation of Eve and the fall of Adam and Eve may point us to the beauty and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and that he may be our model for our earthly marriage, but also that he may be our perfect spiritual bridegroom forever and forever. Lord, please go with us now and bless us and let thy kingdom come. In Jesus' name we pray also for the noon meal. Bless it to our bodies and bless the conclusion of this conference in the sessions afterward. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Well, let me say I had four books up here to recommend to you in two minutes, but someone took them away, so I won't be holding them up. But let me just say this. Meet the Puritans if you really want to grow in a godly marriage. They've got lots of good books on marriage.

Living in a Godly Marriage is a great book. But also, Meet the Puritans is a fat new volume, greatly expanded, gives you the life story of all 200 Puritans. And references, summaries of all 1, 000 books they've written. They will grow you. And also there are some piles of those 20 or so Puritan paperbacks for that very special price of $106.

Buy that for your family. It will feed your soul immensely. Get the whole pack. Read them. Share them.

It will grow your family in holiness. God bless you and may you have a wonderful day. Far be it from me to second anything Brother Beeke has given us. I just picked up Dr. Beeke, Meet the Puritans, again, and gave it to some men in my church who are always hearing about the Puritans.

Highly recommend that book to pick that, Meet the Puritans, and it gives you a good exposure to them if you haven't. Let's sing one hymn, so you'll stand to do that with me. We'll sing of the practical love of Christ that we experience. He will hold me fast. I'll give you a few announcements and we'll be dismissed.

When I fear my faith would fail, Christ will hold me fast. When the tender would prevail. He will hold me fast. I could never keep my hope through life's fearful path, for my love is often low. He must hold me fast.

He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. For my Savior loves me sure. He will hold me fast, Those He saves for me for I, my soul be vast. Those he saves are his own wide.

I should move in class. That should save his own inside. He should move in class. That shall save this world inside, even when they pass. They'll not let my soul be lost, his promises shall last.

His promises shall last, but by Him at such a cost, He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. One of the most important places you'll be ever to reach. For my Savior loves me so.

He will hold me fast. For my life He led and I Christ will hold me fast. Justice has been satisfied, he will hold me fast. Raise with him to end his life, he will hold me fast till our faith is burnt in sight. When He comes at last, He will hold me fast.

He will hold me fast. All my Savior loves me strong. He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast.

For my Savior loves me so. He will hold me fast. As people said, Amen. Let me give you these brief announcements and then I'll have to get a dismissal. The lunch break, of course, is your last chance for the kids to submit their answers or their entries for the treasure hunt.

You need to drop those off at the CFL booth, which is an immediate rear, and that is up till 1 o'clock. Okay, so by 1, those entries have to be in because we'll be announcing the winners right after the choir performance this afternoon and I'm gonna go ahead and read the rest of this the prize bags contain books from our vendors in the back as well as chocolate and other things so children don't miss your chance to enter. So if you want chocolate, that's evidently your ticket to it. Leaders' luncheon is starting immediately, so if you're a church leader, please head over to Rhododendron. Austin Higgins, Brian Borgman will be speaking over there.

And then come back promptly at 2.30 for the children's choir performance, which we're all abuzz waiting for that. And parents, you need to bring your children back by two. So bring them by two, everybody else promptly at 2 30 and we'll meet together. Godspeed, we'll see you in a couple of hours. Go enjoy lunch.

Your children is to a local church to gather together, to sit together, to sing together, to experience the preaching together, to experience the fellowship of God's people together, the prayers. We are here to encourage you to ditch Kitty Church and bring your children into this rich generational fabric of the worship of God. So we've created a kit to help your family experience the worship of God that shows you how to prepare your children to come to the worship of God and then how to experience all the things that take place, the singing, the prayers, the preaching, the fellowship. And then how do you gather your children together after all of this has happened later in the day and review it? So Go, gather, worship, bring your family together for the worship of God so that every member in your family says deep within their hearts, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go to the house of the Lord.

Psalm 1 presents a picture of a righteous man who's like a fruitful tree planted by the streams of water versus the chaff that just gets blown away. The righteous man prospers in whatever he does, because he delights in the law of the Lord, on which he meditates day and night. I think the heart desire of every loving Christian parent for their children is that they be strong and prosper. In a world of ungodliness, we want to see our children firmly rooted by the streams of water, standing firm for Christ and His kingdom. As parents, we have an incredible opportunity to saturate our children in God's Word and root and ground them in a biblical world view in their daily education.

But sadly, sometimes we don't realize we've chosen a curriculum that conveys the wrong world view in regards to science, literature, history, life's purpose. And that's why generations have spent the last 10 years developing a new line of distinctively Christian curriculum. It's called the Christian Discipleship Curriculum and it's based on four foundational pillars. The first is family discipleship, where parents are teaching God's word as they sit in the house. A biblical world view where Christ is at the center of every subject, the best teachers, best books approach, the best Christian books for our children, and worship and life application where children learn that the fear of God, the worship of God, is the beginning of all knowledge in every subject.

Our core curriculum includes five essential subjects for passing on the faith to your children. Christ-centered history, literature, Bible, worldview, and Christian character. Our hope and prayer is that this curriculum will help your family pass on the faith to your children. Go to Generations.org slash curriculum to learn more and explore our Christian discipleship curriculum. The most powerful, the most enduring thing you will ever do in your family is to read the Word of God.

And it's really very simple. You open your Bible and you read it and you pray and you sing. This is the greatest investment you will ever make. It sounds daunting, but it's really very, very simple. And what we've done is we've provided some help, a kit.

In that kit is a Bible reading plan, hymns you can sing, and questions from Joe Beeke about particular passages of scripture. I hope you go and sign up for this free resource to read, sing, and pray. This is the most powerful thing you can do for your family. My name is Heath Lambert. I'm the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida and the author of Finally Free.

I use, accountable to you, on all my devices and require it to be used on the devices of our dozens of pastors and ministry staff here at First Baptist. There are three reasons why. The first is precautionary. Internet pornography does not merely exist, it's predatory. That means pornography is not sitting passively waiting for you to find it, but is looking for you.

It wants to find the eyes of your children, your spouse, your pastors, and anyone else. I want to provide the people I love and am responsible for a precautionary resource to keep them safe from the predatory practices of pornography. Second reason is protection. We all know people who have struggled with internet pornography in their past or present. I want to stand alongside those brothers and sisters and provide a resource that can help protect them.

I want those who struggle to know they are not alone, but have someone walking alongside them who loves them enough to hold them accountable and help them change. A final reason is proof. We live in a suspicious world that finds it easy to distrust religious leaders too often for very good reasons. The record that Accountable2U keeps of internet activity helps me and my fellow pastors obey the biblical command to stay above reproach. This technology keeps a record of innocence and gives me the peace of mind of being able to supply evidence against any false charge.

Internet accountability is biblical and is good for everyone, even if you don't struggle with pornography. The reality is that in the pornographic world in which we're living, it needs to be just as normal to have accountability as it is to have internet access. I've tried many different kinds of accountability in my ministry, and I think accountable to you is the best. Is the best. Well, we went on a publishing spree and I want to tell you about five new resources that we've pushed out.

First is, what is a family? A catechism for diagnosing and restoring the Christian home. It's in a catechism format, very practical, very simple, very easy for a father and a mother to use to teach their family about what a family is in 201 Catechism Questions. It's a great book. Then the family that sings restoring the joy and the significance of Christian singing in the church and in the home.

I wrote this book really to try to improve the culture of singing in my life, in our church's life, and anybody who would listen. So this book, The Family, that sings short chapters to just re-energize your singing. And then an urgent call to young men. This is an edited version of something that Richard Baxter wrote in the 1600s, Maximize the Years of Youth, Timeless Council from Richard Baxter for the Rising Generation. This is a really riveting, super practical book for young men.

And then, The Speed of Sound, Lessons Learned at the Speed of Sound, from my friend, Lieutenant Colonel Phil Cochran, who's been a fellow pastor for many years, but he was an F-16 pilot, and He wrote spiritual lessons and incorporated them in his preaching. He wrote them down. They're super practical. You'll be amazed at how neat this book is. And then finally, last but not least, Secrets of a Happy Home by J.R.

Miller. We've reprinted this pamphlet. As you can see, it's short. But what does it look like? What does it mean to make Jesus Christ the center of your home?

So there you go, five new books. Hope you can go out and get them. I think you'll enjoy them. CPS investigations often arise from medical choices, accidents or innocent mistakes, and false reports from disgruntled friends, family, neighbors, and others who disagree with your parenting decisions. So what do you do if they come to your door?

If you don't open the door or you just tell them to go away, they could easily get a court order to come in by force, or they could close the case, but with a finding against you, which could go on your permanent record. Thankfully, there's a better solution. By joining Heritage Defense, you can get peace of mind knowing that you can call 24-7 and immediately have an experienced attorney ready to fight to protect your home, your children, and your parental rights. Membership with Heritage Defense also provides you an attorney beyond your initial call, including being with you for any meetings with CPS and representing you in court if needed, at no extra cost to you. Your membership also includes consultations with our attorneys anytime you need answers to your parental rights questions.

For less than the average cost of one hour of another attorney's time, you can get an entire year of access to our experienced Christian attorneys. So if you want peace of mind about your parental rights, join at heritagedefense.org. Since 2010, Heritage Defense has been fighting for parental rights of our members in all 50 states. Don't wait until you have a social worker at your door. Become a member now, before it's too late.

Go to heritagedefense.org right now to join. Are you allowed on the board? Yes. Are you allowed on the board? Yes.