The Positions of The Early Church

00:01 Amen. Let the church say amen. I would like to draw attention to something in the bulletin, and this would be in regards to Marvin Margaret. Are you leaving tomorrow? I would like for us to have a special word of prayer for you as you go. And I suspect that there's some people here going with you today. 00:22 Clarissa. 00:23 Just Clarissa so that there's nobody else that's present here this morning. Okay. All right. Well, Clarissa and Marvin Margaret, this is for you and for your team. Let's pray for them this morning. Lord, we thank you for those from our midst that go out from us from time to time to do ministry on the foreign field, 00:43 on the shores of other countries. And we thank this morning of Marvin Margaret and Clarissa as they leave tomorrow after a very busy time of ministry the last several weeks and months. And pray, Lord, for their safety. 01:04 I pray for their protection. I pray for the logistics of their coming and going, the flights that they need to catch, the connections that they need to have, and then for the ministry that they will have over in Kenya. We ask, Lord, for every soul that will be impacted by their presence. 01:22 We ask for souls to be brought into the kingdom. We will not be satisfied, Lord, without souls being added and lives being touched and impacted. And we know that's your desire in sending them and the team. We pray for others that will be joining them and traveling with them. We ask for your protection upon each one. 01:43 And for those that are over there that are coordinating the activities, we pray also for them as well. Lord, we ask that the kingdom of God would be extended and expanded for their witness and our prayers on their behalf. In Jesus' name. Amen. 02:02 In your copies of the scriptures this morning, would you turn to Mark chapter 10? I suppose you're wondering by that passage from 1 Corinthians 6 what exactly we'll be preaching on this morning from a text like that, although that will not be our text. 02:17 But it does give introduction to a section there in 1 Corinthians 7 on the subject of marriage. And I want to talk to you this morning from Mark chapter 10. This will probably be a two-part message because it's very difficult to cover in one sermon what needs to be covered on the subject of marriage, 02:39 divorce, and remarriage. And so our text this morning is found in Mark chapter 10, verses 1 through 12. 02:47 Now, it is not any surprise for us to say this morning that we as a culture and we as a group of churches in the culture as the Christian witness are in trouble when it comes to marriage. We don't have to debate that. 03:07 We know it. 03:08 We have watched for the last 50, 60, 70, 80 years the transmission or the transition from a more biblical understanding of marriage to today when the culture around us doesn't even understand what men and women are and which bathroom to use. 03:31 I said some time ago that a culture that no longer understands which bathroom to use can hardly be trusted with the moral implications of our day. They're out of touch with reality. And unfortunately, that is to varying degrees touching the professing church of Christ. 03:52 And so we are in trouble. We have been for a long time. And it has not failed to touch even the most biblical or conservative or traditional churches of the world around us, of the country. 04:13 In fact, I think about our own history in Living Water for the last over the last 25 years since our birth. 04:21 We have had at least that I know of, my wife and I tried to figure, we have had at least four couples that have gone out from us that have either been divorced and subsequently remarried. And so we've tried to have a strong witness on this. 04:42 And yet it is still impacted even those who used to be a part of our congregation here. And that's at very least. And there may be some others that are impacted that we're not aware of. But it hasn't gotten any better in the culture than what it has been deteriorating. 05:03 And in some cases, the church has led the culture down the wrong road. And in other cases, the culture has led the church down the wrong road. And we have willingly followed. And so that the standards of today are far cheapened from the standards of yesterday. 05:20 And this is not to pretend that marriage has always been in good shape in our midst or in our culture. But we do have to have a biblical standard from which to operate and function if we're going to please God. 05:37 And I read a statement this morning something like this: "That the Word of God may offend you or hurt you with the truth, but it will never comfort you with a lie." And I like that. I like that. 05:51 "The Word of God may hurt you or offend you with the truth, but it will never comfort you with a lie." And that's the great deception is that people get comfortable and comforted in their sin by not taking scripture at its word, God at His word. 06:11 And so when we have a wedding, we ask people, "Do you believe that marriage is an ordinance instituted by God and confirmed and sanctioned by Jesus Christ and that those who enter into it must do so in the fear of God? Do you believe that?" I would guess that every one of us this morning would say, "Yes, we believe that. It is an ordinance. 06:31 It is that which God has given to 06:37 teach and to instruct about the character of God." In fact, one of the reasons that we preached this this morning is because it helps us to understand the character of God. As you look at biblical marriage and what God has instituted in the scriptures as to marriage, you find an understanding of the character of God. 06:58 Well, what about the character of God do you understand from a biblical marriage? Well, one of the most basic things that we understand is the covenant faithfulness of God. You see, God is not asking us to do anything that He Himself has not done or is not willing to do. And that is to be faithful. 07:17 And so He has faithfully instituted and implemented in the Old Testament His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and His covenant with David and His covenant with Noah. 07:29 And then in Christ in the New Testament, we see that He has instituted faithfully His covenant with the New Testament covenant of the blood of Jesus Christ shed for the remission of sins. 07:41 And every time that there is a divorce and a remarriage, it points to a God who would be unfaithful. We are to be faithful for God is faithful. 07:56 And the unfaithfulness of God's people in scripture was a disgrace to the faithfulness of God. And so we learn about the faithfulness of God. We learn about the character of God, the covenant keeping God. We also see it woven into the fabric of creation. 08:13 We see marriage woven into the fabric of the creation around us. We see it as God's divine order. We see it as God's gift to humanity as necessary for human flourishing. The Bible says sets the solitary in families. 08:34 And God has instituted one man and one woman for life. And we're going to see that this morning in our text. And so we want to teach biblical marriage. 08:44 We want to see we want to build strong marriages here at Living Water and want to see that God's word works and that God is faithful as we do what we can to try to build biblical strong marriages that will stand the test of time. 09:06 And if the marriage can't be strong, at least the individual in the marriage who wants to make it work can be strong and of good courage. So we come to our text this morning in Mark chapter 10 where it says, "Then he rose from there and came to the region of Judea by the other side of the Jordan. And multitudes gathered to him again. 09:27 And as he was accustomed, he taught them again. 09:30 The Pharisees came and asked him, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife, testing him?' And he answered and said to them, 'What did Moses command you?' They said, 'Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and to dismiss her.' And Jesus answered and said to them, 09:50 'Because of the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh. So then they are no longer two but one flesh. 10:10 Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate.'" In the house, his disciples also asked him again about the same matter. So he said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, 10:31 she commits adultery." Now, you may ask the question as we look at this passage of scripture this morning, why are we in Mark and not, say, in Matthew? The Matthew account is a little bit more detailed. But I think as we go through these messages, you'll understand why we're in Mark. 10:50 First of all, Mark and Luke were actually written before Matthew. And so you have the pristine teaching of Christ that the church existed from upon for several years before Matthew came to write his gospel. 11:10 And so it's the earliest, probably the earliest written scripture of the New Testament was the book of Mark. And in the book of Mark and also in Luke, there is nothing there that would give us a loophole or a surmised loophole. 11:28 Now, we often think about what is considered a loophole or what people call the exception clause in chapter 19 and chapter 5 of the book of Matthew. And so what I want to do is look at Mark. And then eventually, we'll look at Matthew. 11:47 And because what we have to do is we have to establish the clear teaching of scripture before we can even hope to understand the unclear. This is what is called the exception clause in the book of Matthew is extremely unclear. 12:04 And there have been volumes written about the exception clause in Matthew. 12:10 And so you never in hermeneutics, and that's biblical interpretation, you never take the clear passages of scripture and interpret them in view of the unclear passages of scripture. 12:28 Rather, you take the unclear passage of scripture and come to understand those by the clear passages of scripture. And so what people want to do oftentimes is they look at Matthew 19 or they look at 1 Corinthians 7, which is another passage of scripture that gets misinterpreted and misapplied. 12:49 And they say, "Well, you see, we must understand the clear teaching of Jesus by this exception." No, you understand the exception by the clear teaching of Jesus. And so we'll look at that. And so that's why we're in Matthew this morning to reinforce the absolute aspect of Christ's teaching. 13:10 There is absolutely in this passage of scripture no room for divorce and no room for remarriage. It's not there in the New Testament age. Now, let us look at this passage, verse 5. 13:31 Well, let's look at verse 2, first of all. "They came to ask him a question, testing him." Now, they wanted to test Jesus. They wanted to trick Jesus. They wanted to get Jesus to be inconsistent in his teaching. And they wanted to get Jesus to somehow stumble so that they can have an aha moment, a gotcha moment. 13:53 And they didn't get the gotcha moment with Jesus ever because Jesus understood that he was being tested. And he understood what the truth was. And he presented the truth without apology and without equivocation or doubting. And so they were testing him. 14:13 And is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? Now, the parallel passage in Matthew says, "Is it lawful for any and every reason to divorce your wife?" And so that's an interesting statement. Is it lawful for any reason at all, 14:33 any and every reason to divorce one's wife? And Jesus said, "What did Moses command you?" So what was going on here is there were two different ways of interpreting the Old Testament when it came to divorce and potential remarriage. 14:54 One way had developed from Deuteronomy 24. And if you want to look at it, you can look at Deuteronomy 24 and find out what Moses said there in the first couple verses. And that led to a group of people who followed Rabbi Hillel. 15:15 Rabbi Hillel took a very liberal, permissive view of divorce. And he said that you could divorce a wife for basically any reason. You could divorce your wife because she burned the bagels. You could divorce your wife because she was no longer pretty. 15:35 You could divorce your wife because she looked at you the wrong way or she questioned you with upraised eyebrows when you did something or said something. If there was anything in the wife that displeased the husband, Hillel said, and he was one of the expert authorities in that day that people gravitated toward, 15:55 he said, "For basically any reason, if she displeases you, you may put her away and then remarry." That was very similar to what is happening in our culture. If you look at what happened back in the '60s and '70s with no-fault divorce, 16:15 you didn't even need to have a reason anymore to get divorced. At least back in the '50s and '40s, '50s, and '60s, you had to be able to convince a court that you had a legitimate reason for divorcing. With the institution, the implementation of no-fault divorce, which is pretty much the law of the land now, 16:35 you don't have to prove anything in order to get a divorce. 16:40 The world has basically followed the example of Rabbi Hillel. And then there was another man, another rabbi, and his name was Shammai, Rabbi Shammai. And he believed that divorce and remarriage was more restrictive, 17:02 that the divorce spoken of in Deuteronomy chapter 24, 1 through 4, actually meant only for unchastity or sexual uncleanness. 17:15 Unchastity or sexual uncleanness, sexual immorality, was the reason and the only reason that one could divorce and remarry. And this basically is today Protestant theology, Protestant evangelical theology. 17:36 And basically, the evangelical church and the Protestant church has basically said that in the event that there is sexual immorality in the marriage, 17:47 that looses the marriage from the partners from the marriage vow and then is qualifying them to divorce and if they choose to remarry. And that pretty much is the standard application of virtually every evangelical church in America. 18:07 Now, not all, but most, most. And they would buy into Shammai's doctrine and interpretation of Deuteronomy 24. Now, Jesus appeals to Moses. 18:22 Now, he could have said, "Well, I'm going to side with Shammai or I'm going to side with Hillel." But instead, he goes to Moses. And what did Moses say? Well, they said Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and to dismiss her. 18:41 They were partially right that Moses did permit that under certain circumstances. Now, the question is among the Jewish people, what are the circumstances that Moses permitted this for? That's what Hillel and Shammai were debating and have debated. Deuteronomy 24 says, 19:02 "If the husband finds any indecency in her, what is the meaning of indecency?" Well, Hillel had an opinion. Shammai had an opinion. And Moses was trying; they weren't trying to interpret Moses. Now, we must understand that Moses was not taking a good situation and opening it up. 19:22 Moses was taking a bad situation and restricting it. And so coming out of Egypt, they had no understanding of God and his ways, very little understanding of God and his ways. And there was divorce and remarriage, marriage, divorce, remarriage, divorce. 19:40 And what Moses told them in Deuteronomy 24 and in the law was not, "You've got good marriages. Now, you got some trouble. So we're going to open it up that you could put your wife away under certain circumstances." No, he's taking a bad situation, bad marriages, and restricting it to a limited reason for putting away. 20:04 But that isn't even enough for Jesus. So Jesus is not agreeing with Hillel. He's not agreeing with Shammai. He's not even agreeing with Moses. That may surprise us. But he said, "Moses did this because of the hardness of your heart. 20:24 He wrote to you this precept. However, but from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female." And then he goes on to describe what we could call the universal marriage law, going back beyond Abraham, 20:46 going back beyond Moses, going all the way back to the beginning and reestablishing God's initial purpose and plan for marriage for the church age and for ever after. And Jesus said in the Matthew passage, 21:07 "But I say unto you," and so he's appealing to the creation order, what we would call the universal marriage law. Now, what is the universal marriage law? Well, if we had time this morning, we're not going to take the time. You already know it. You're familiar with the passage back in Genesis chapter 2 and 3, 21:26 Genesis 2 specifically, how that God instituted marriage in Genesis chapter 2. And he made them male and female. He performed the first marriage ceremony in the Garden of Eden. And the standard was, as Jesus says right here, 21:48 "For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. And the two, not the three or the five or the ten, but the two," who are the two? Male and female, "shall be one flesh. 22:08 So then they are no longer two but one flesh. And therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate." So there's a number of powerful things happening in this passage. There's male and female. There's the beginning of the creation. There's the original intention, the original purpose. 22:29 There is the leaving of the man from his father and mother, the being joined to his wife, joined like glue, glued together for life in one flesh relationship, the coming together of two individuals into one flesh, 22:45 and the God of glory doing the joining together of that one flesh. And that's going to be important for us going forward here in this study. 22:56 So they're no longer two but one flesh joined together by God, separable only by death for an entire lifetime and equally valid on all of the sons and daughters of Adam. 23:16 That's the universal marriage law. We must keep that in mind because there are those who would try to hint that scripture does not recognize the marriages of unbelievers. And so if a person was married and divorced and remarried before they were a Christian, 23:37 that doesn't count. That doesn't count because God doesn't really recognize that. But according to the universal marriage law, he recognizes the marriages of unbelievers just like he recognized the marriages of believers. And so you can go through. 23:58 Cain, hardly a believer, hardly a servant of God, had a wife. God recognized him as having a wife. And other pagans, other unfaithful people had wives. Potiphar down in Egypt had a wife. She's off limits to other men. 24:19 And to Joseph, Abimelech had a wife or had many wives. And that's another subject for another time. But Abimelech had a wife. And Herod had a wife. And Herod then wasn't satisfied with his wife. He wanted his brother's wife. 24:39 And so he took his brother's wife. And John the Baptist went to the chopping block over that relationship as he rebuked them. "Remember, the word of God may offend you and hurt you, but it will never comfort you with a lie." John the Baptist 101, 25:01 as it were. "From the beginning," he says, "this is a continuous action from the beginning," verse 6, "from the beginning." Notice he doesn't say in the beginning, but in the beginning, it was this. No, this is from the beginning. 25:20 That means it is a continuous action of, and that's the Greek tense here. It is a continuous action that has resulted and been in effect from the beginning, not just in the beginning. And so he is saying that from the beginning, this is the way it is. And it's still that way. 25:39 Jesus is not implementing and instituting something new. He is reminding them and us of what has been from the beginning and still is. And so from the beginning speaks of continuous action. 25:57 And then he speaks here in verse 7 about the joining of one flesh, to be joined together, to be joined together like glue, a man and a woman. Now, it does not talk here about a man and a man. It does not talk here about a woman and a woman. 26:19 They may enter into some sort of perverted sexual experience or even a somewhat, as is popular in people's vocabulary today, a committed monogamous same-sex relationship. 26:35 But they'll never be in a one-flesh relationship because one flesh does not work. God does not recognize that. And so we have one man, one woman together joined by God. Now, this is important for us to recognize. 26:54 What does it mean to be joined together? And who does the joining? Who does the joining? In verse 8, verse 9, what God has joined together, what God has joined together. 27:10 This is of great importance because if anything else joins the marriage, then that which joins the marriage can unjoin it. If you have the authority to join a marriage, then you have the authority to unjoin a marriage. 27:31 And so some people say, "Well, the state has the authority to join a marriage." Well, the state does recognize marriage in our culture, at least. Sometimes I wish the state would get out of the marriage business and just let us have the church establishing marriages. 27:47 I think it may be a little less complicated in cultures where they have a civil ceremony for the sake of legality and then they have a Christian church ceremony for the sake of the covenant. But that might even itself be a little confusing. 28:06 There's no necessarily good way for the state to be involved in the marriage business. But it has to be for the sake of order, keeping order in society, and establishing some sort of a family order in the culture. But be that as it may, 28:25 if the state or the county or the government joins the marriage and if that's what makes them one flesh, we're talking about one flesh, if that's what it takes, then the state can unjoin it. Man can undo what man does, right? 28:45 Who else might we look to join the marriage? Well, the preacher. And so sometimes you hear people joke at a wedding when you're performing a ceremony. He said, "Now, preacher, tie that knot tight." Well, the preacher doesn't tie the knot. God ties the knot. 29:06 And God is not one who does a half-hearted job. He ties the knot fast. 29:16 And so what God joins together, not what the preacher joins together. If the preacher joins you together, then the preacher conceptually could unjoin you. And what about the church? There are those in certain churches who believe that the church can give an annulment. 29:34 That is because that particular church believes that the church is actually officially joining the couple together because of the sacramental way of looking at the sacraments, that it is something the church does, 29:55 that the church conveys grace through the marriage mass. And therefore, the church can unjoin it through an annulment. And that has been used and tried and debated in Roman Catholicism for many, 30:17 many years. But Jesus doesn't say anything about the church joining him here. Now, it's good to have a Christian wedding. It's good to have a wedding in a church. It's good to have a marriage with a preacher. We don't recommend doing it otherwise. But that is not the ultimate joining force. And we understand this as Christians. 30:38 I'm not teaching you much new this morning. 30:42 Now, there's one other false joint joining out there. And that is those who believe that sex, the sex act joins a person, a man and a woman, in marriage. 31:01 Now, this cannot be either because otherwise, the first person that the first time that a man and woman would have intimate relationships, then they would be considered married. No, scripture calls that fornication. It doesn't call that marriage. 31:20 It calls it fornication. And the reason is God does not join together in one flesh relationship those who just shack up. They make a vow. 31:33 I, Todd Nuswander, take you, Anita Beechy Nuswander, to be my wife as Adam did in the garden when he said, "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh," and that initial wedding vow. 31:52 And so the reason that this is important is because if you believe that sex joins a couple in marriage, then there's two problems with that. One is if you have a couple that's not able to consummate the marriage through a sexual union, they're not able to, then they wouldn't be married. 32:15 Well, 32:15 that's not right because marriage is a vow. And the second problem is if sex joins a couple together, then the violation of sex would unjoin them or could unjoin them because what man does, 32:37 man can undo. And so this is extremely important. And this is the clear word of Christ. 32:45 This is extremely important when it comes to looking at Matthew in another message because I don't think we'll get there today, looking at Matthew with the so-called exception clause except for fornication/sexual immorality/marital 33:04 unfaithfulness or however the modern versions choose to translate that. 33:13 Now, one other thing we see here in these verses is in verse 8, "The two shall become one flesh. 33:23 So then they are no longer two but one, one flesh." So if God somehow mysteriously and majestically and 33:42 unseen to the naked eye joins a couple together and makes them one flesh, they're no longer two but one. Now, the question could be asked, how could they ever then get back to being two? Well, they can't. 34:04 If you make something one, you can't get it back to being two. And so this is no longer two. So what violates or constitutes adultery in the teachings of Jesus? 34:23 What constitutes adultery is a violation of the covenant relationship. 34:31 Notice I did not say a breaking of the covenant relationship because the kind of covenant that God has in the universal marriage law where two become one separable only by death, that kind of covenant cannot be broken. 34:52 It is similar to what is called a salt covenant. In scriptural times, biblical times, there was the salt covenant. And salt was a great commodity back, a very expensive commodity back in Bible times. And they would have their salt packs. 35:07 It was something that you kind of carried with you as an evidence of your wealth. 35:16 And they would take in a covenant, a salt covenant, they would take some salt from one person's pouch and salt from another person's pouch and exchange salt in the pouches. That was the salt covenant. 35:33 What it was signifying was that if it was ever possible to get that salt that is now in someone else's pouch, if it's ever possible to get that back in the right pouch, in the original pouch, 35:52 then you could negate the covenant. It was a symbol. 35:59 It was symbolic of the inability to break the covenant and the longevity of the covenant. And so children, try this when you get home if you want to do that. Let's just say salt and pepper. Take some salt and pepper, 36:19 put it on a plate, mix it up, and then try to separate all the salt from the pepper. Just try it. Now, that would probably be possible because you got black and white. Now, take some salt from one shaker and some salt from another shaker, mix those together, 36:39 and then try to separate those out and get them back in the right shaker. Impossible. That was the nature of the salt covenant. And that is the nature of a covenant, the blood covenant in some cultures. Now, there is a sense that marriage is like a blood covenant. 36:58 And then there is a sense where marriage is not like a blood covenant. I'd be happy to explain that a little bit more on a private level rather than publicly. 37:09 But a blood covenant, which they do in other parts of the world, you take and you cut a slash in one wrist and you cut on another person a slash in their wrist and you mingle that blood. 37:30 And that is the eternal, the unending, the unbreakable aspect of that covenant because it's signifying, again, if you could get all the blood back in the original arm, then you could break the covenant. You can't do it. You can't do it. It's unbreakable. 37:51 Such is the nature of a covenant. Marriage is not a contract where you do this, I'll do this. And if you fail to do this, then I'll be released from the covenant. No, that's not the contract. That's not the way it is in a covenant. 38:12 So what is adultery? It is a violation of the covenant, but not a breaking of the covenant. A covenant cannot be broken. It can only be violated. 38:26 Now, we know from Matthew that lust is also adultery, that if you lust in your heart for someone who is not your wife or husband, Jesus puts it in the male gender, but it also is lustful on the female side of things too. 38:44 If you are lusting after someone that is not legitimately yours by marriage, that constitutes adultery of the heart. We get that. 38:56 But this kind of adultery is the action on that where one divorces his wife and marries another or when a woman divorces her husband and marries another. Now, it's interesting to take the Matthew passages, 39:16 Matthew 5 and 19, the Mark 10 passage, 39:20 and the Luke passage and see what Jesus says about who's doing the divorcing and the remarrying because the three of those passages basically cover all three or all possible scenarios. 39:41 You have some that a man who divorces and remarries commits adultery. A man who divorces and remarries causes the divorced woman to commit adultery. Now, how can that be? Because he opens her up to the potential and the temptation to be married again. 40:01 She's no longer safe and secure in the marriage relationship. Now, she's vulnerable. So Jesus said, "Whoever divorces and remarries his wife causes her to commit adultery." So that's covered. And then you have a woman who divorces and remarries can commit adultery. 40:18 And a man who marries her who is divorced commits adultery. So it's pretty much all covered. It's pretty much all covered right there in the teaching of Jesus. 40:28 Now, this is to reaffirm the solidity or the effectiveness, the longevity, and the absoluteness of the marriage relationship. Now, go with me and we're going to wrap this up this morning. We're not even going to get to the PowerPoint. But in Romans chapter 7, why don't you turn there? 40:49 I want to show you Romans chapter 7, verse 2. 40:54 Now, Paul in Romans 7:1 through 4 is illustrating our being free from the law of Moses because of the death of Christ. But he uses the covenant of marriage to establish that truth. 41:13 Verse 2, "For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives." Any question about what that says? Any question about what it means? It's pretty much straightforward. A woman who has a husband is bound by the law, 41:33 the universal marriage law, to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward. Whether a widow or a widower, when the spouse dies, that marriage vow and covenant goes away. 41:55 It's done. It's fulfilled. So then, verse 3, "If while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called what? An adulterous." Boy, we're hesitant to say that, aren't we? Let me tell you again, 42:14 the Word of God may hurt you with the truth, but it will never comfort you with a lie. So when he says she's an adulterous, but if her husband dies, she is free from that law so that she is no adulterous, though she has married another man. 42:36 There is no room in that text for remarriage apart from adultery. Well, that's where we're going to end it this morning. 42:50 But again, my purpose this morning, first of all, first and foremost, is to establish the absolute validity and absolute nature of the marriage covenant. What a gift God has given to us in marriage. 43:11 Isn't that a gift? What a gift to be given a wife. I'm so grateful for my wife that God gave me at the age of 20 years old. Yeah, 20. What a gift. I'm still enjoying the gift today. 43:31 And I trust you are too. Brother Duane, would you come and close the service, please?