"Singleness: Called, Not Commanded" Matthew 19:10-12 Sunday Morning Worship Service

There are a few moments in Jesus' ministry where his disciples hear him clearly, but completely miss the point of what he's saying.

This is one of those moments.

The disciples are talking with Jesus about marriage.

They hear the Pharisees ask Jesus a question about marriage.

They hear the answer that Jesus gives them completely, correctly, clearly, and yet they arrive at the completely wrong conclusions.

Jesus has been teaching that marriage is permanent.

He's been teaching that people in difficult marriages can avail themselves of the church discipline process where the sinner is confronted and corrected, and if he doesn't respond, you bring a witness, and if he doesn't respond, you put them out of the church.

But marriage is designed by God and is meant to be as long as the two of you shall both live.

That's God's design for marriage.

What God has joined together, let no one separate.

Now, of course, the immediate objection to that is what about people who are in difficult marriages, people who are married to someone who makes their life difficult, who argues and nags and harasses, who lie, slander, undercuts, gossips, even the language that we would call today emotional abuse.

What about somebody in that kind of marriage?

And of course, you avail yourself of Matthew 18, you confront the person who's in sin.

If they repent, great.

If not, you bring a witness.

If they repent, great.

If not, they get put out of the church.

But then what if the person repents then?

What if after a while he returns or she returns and wants to be restored to the marriage?

And wants back.

Then what?

Now remember the Jews had a very common teaching that you would receive such a person back three times.

They've left and they come back at repentant.

You receive him back great, once, twice.

After the three strikes are out, so to speak, then you don't have to take them back anymore.

God wouldn't want you to live like that.

In fact, Peter thinks he's being extra spiritual when he says, Lord, I would take my wife back seven times.

And again, it we laugh at that because we know we minimize this, like, oh, you left her because she put too much salt in your eggs, you know.

That's not it.

These are complicated, difficult situations.

And Jesus responds to Peter's suggestion of a seven-time maximum with the story of the man who is forgiven an incalculable amount, billions of dollars, trillions of dollars, but who won't forgive the person who sinned against him.

You know, it is an interesting question.

Does it take more courage to confront someone in their sin, or does it take more courage to receive them back when they've repented?

You could argue it either way, and certainly there's different kinds of courage and different kinds of people.

Some of you might find the confrontation part easy.

In my experience, it is often the receiving the repentance sinner back part that is harder.

That's especially true in marriage.

If you're in a difficult marriage and the person repents and wants back, and Jesus says you have to take them back.

That can seem like an impossible situation.

An impossible situation.

Now listen, to be clear, I'm not saying that every claim of repentance is true.

There's false repentance.

There's people who say they repented that are lying.

They didn't really repent.

That's not this sermon, though.

That there's other passages.

Jesus teaches about false repentance in other places.

That's not this passage or this sermon.

This sermon is about the person who does repent and comes back.

And Jesus says, you have to receive them back.

And the disciples hear this, and you don't receive them back once, twice, three times, but 70 times, seven times.

The disciples hear this, and they follow it up with, Well, can I divorce?

And Jesus says, not unless it's adultery.

And do you understand the conclusion the disciples get to?

It's a question that when it, if you just read it in isolation, you might laugh at it.

Where the disciples say, Well, if this is the case in verse 10, it's better to not even get married.

But when you recognize the seriousness of what they're talking about, you start to understand their point, don't you?

If you're in a difficult marriage and your spouse is just so impossible to live with, and Jesus says, You can't divorce them, you could get your life wrecked because you married the wrong person.

That's their thinking.

And if that's true, certainly it's better to never marry at all.

Like if you're playing with live ammo, this is like Russian roulette.

It's better to not play the game, the disciples say.

It's better for us to not marry than to marry and be stuck with someone who makes our life terrible.

That's their point.

If marriage is that binding, we should just avoid it altogether.

And to appreciate Jesus' response, you have to at least appreciate the direction from which the disciples are coming with their question.

And of course, they understood the weight of what Jesus was saying.

God brought a husband and wife together, what God brought together, let no one separate.

They're just drawing the wrong conclusions from this.

They're overreacting to Jesus' teaching.

Now Jesus doesn't respond with, you know what, you're right.

Marriage is too risky.

Better not do it.

Now he gives a very balanced teaching here.

Remember, he already taught that God ordained marriage for good, and so it's wrong to despise it.

It's wrong to despise marriage.

God made it, so it's wrong for you to discount it or minimize it.

Also, in this world, there's going to be trouble.

That's a basic principle.

We attract trouble.

We're sinners.

Bad things happen to sinners.

We're in difficult situations in our life, often of our own making, often of other people's making.

We're sometimes you're just minding your own business and sin hits you.

Somebody else's sin.

And so the person who says, I'm going to avoid marriage, so I avoid trouble, is not thinking clearly.

Trouble is in this world because sinners are in this world.

Avoiding marriage doesn't help you in that regard.

And yet, Jesus introduces something new.

He introduces a kind of singleness that serves the kingdom in a unique way.

So don't dismiss that either.

There's probably a little truth going on there.

Calvin has a very humorous, an uncharacteristically humorous line for Calvin in his commentary on this.

He says, It's probably a mercy the disciples' wives weren't standing there when they asked their question.

It would not have gone well for them.

You know, don't forget the fact that Jesus doesn't only know these men, but for those of them that are married, he knows their wives.

Like he's been in their homes.

He knows who he's talking to.

He knows Peter's wife, for example.

Calvin has, I mentioned his line there.

The disciples are responding to this out of fear, but Jesus responds with a balanced truth.

He says, not everybody can receive this saying.

Verse 11.

You know, you're right, disciples.

In some limited sense, it's better to not marry.

But not everybody can receive that saying.

Now what he says next is going to be shocking to the disciples.

They're coming from a world where singleness is a curse.

In their world, the overarching command here is the Christian mandate.

Go into all the world, be fruitful and multiply.

Bring up an army of kids behind you.

Children are quivers.

For the archer to take on the world, you're supposed to subdue the earth.

You're supposed to be blessed with children and take over the earth.

In a more Israel sense, you're supposed to have land that you pass down through your children.

This is why in the Jewish mind, and of course, if your family's not, if your wife's not giving you kids, and they didn't have all the biology figured out, but if your wife's not giving you kids, of course you could divorce her and find kids from somewhere else.

I mean, if you're if your wife, if your husband dies, it falls to the brother to go into the wife and produce offspring.

Something that's probably illegal in our world.

In their world, that was commanded.

I mean, the point of this was to create children.

Lack of children equals a curse, lack of marriage equals a curse.

That was their thinking.

And Jesus introduces a category of somebody who's choosing to be single for the sake of devotion to God.

The disciples would have never heard of that before.

There are those who are eunuchs who were made that way by men.

So those who are born without the capacity for physical intimacy or marriage.

Those that were made without that capacity by other people.

So this is becoming more common in our world now, of course, with physical mutilation of people's bodies and all that.

In their world, they didn't have that.

But in their world, what they did have is people that were deliberately made eunuchs so that they could serve in the king's court.

They could have a more royal position.

Kings and their closest advisors, kings would surround themselves with eunuchs.

The queen's court would she'd be surrounded with eunuchs.

This was to protect the integrity of the line.

People volunteered for this.

Sometimes they didn't volunteer, they made it happen to them, but sometimes they they volunteered.

Not so common in our world today, but it was very common.

Then you're going to see the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8, for example.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

So he's talking about that category of persons.

Some people were born that way, some people were acted upon to make them eunuchs.

Those two don't really concern our topic this morning.

It's the third category that draws our attention.

Third category is those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Somebody who's deliberately saying, for the sake of the gospel and service in the church, I'm going to refrain from marriage.

Again, this would have blown the disciples' mind.

They're coming from a world where that's not conceivable.

It's a world without the Great Commission, of course.

Matthew 28 comes later.

So far, when Jesus is talking about the gospel, it's always, shh, don't tell anybody.

Yes, the Son of Man's gonna die and be resurrected, but don't tell anyone yet.

It's not until after the resurrection where he says, okay, now go tell everybody, go into all the world, making disciples, baptizing people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all I've commanded you, and lo, I'm with you even until the end of the age.

That's later, that's coming.

And when that happens, everything gets reoriented.

In a sense, the creation mandate gets set aside and replaced or expanded or amplified, augmented, whatever word you want to use, with the Great Commission.

So singleness in the Old Testament would be a curse in that sense.

Singleness in the New Testament becomes a blessing and a virtue.

A useful tool.

In the Old Testament, singleness means you couldn't have children to pass down your legacy.

In the New Testament, singleness might mean that you have more children in the faith than your married friends, with a larger opportunity to amplify the blessing and pass down the legacy of faith to your spiritual children.

It becomes an insane blessing, so insane that people would actually choose it.

Not everybody is that mature.

Not everybody is going to be granted that gift.

Not everybody is going to be godly enough or spiritually or physically with the self-control and restraint or spiritually mature enough to do that, to receive that gift.

But for those who were able to receive it, what a blessing.

So notice what the disciples meant as maybe a little bit of sarcasm, maybe a little bit of dismissing Jesus' teaching on divorce, like if that's true, why would anybody get married?

They weren't ready for what came next.

Like I'll tell you why somebody wouldn't get married, because they're so sold out for the kingdom.

That's why.

Not approaching it from an easier path to divorce, but a more deliberate path to gospel ministry.

Why would anybody choose that?

Jesus, of course, is not lowering the importance of marriage.

He just said, I know it was a few weeks ago in our world, but like five minutes ago in this world.

He had just said that marriage was designed by God for his glory and our good.

What God joins together, let no man separate.

He's esteeming marriage.

He's not lowering the value of marriage, he's raising the value of singleness.

He's telling people, you can stay single, not because marriage isn't good, but because the kingdom is better.

Again, at this point, the disciples don't have the great commission.

We received all of this together.

We get the gospel of Matthew and 1 Corinthians at the same time.

They didn't.

So they had 30 years between Matthew's gospel or 25 years, whatever, between Matthew's gospel and 1 Corinthians.

They had to wait 25 years for more biblical teaching on what Jesus is talking about here.

But we don't have to wait.

In fact, let's avail ourselves of that privilege right now.

Flip over to 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

1 Corinthians 7.

And I'll give you an outline as we go through this.

For way singleness is a gift.

So the idea of singleness being a gift comes from Jesus in Matthew 19.

He refers to it as not everybody is able to receive this.

He's using gift language.

Paul is going to expressly call it a gift in 1 Corinthians 7.

Singleness is a gift.

Now marriage is also a gift.

Marriage is more common than singleness.

It's a gift more regularly given.

But that doesn't mean that singleness is not a gift.

And so Jesus in Matthew 19 amplifies singleness, elevates this category of it.

And that's taught about in Matthew, or in 1 Corinthians 7, concerning the matters about which he wrote.

This leads to the first observation about singleness.

It is good.

It is good.

The Corinthians are writing Paul with this question.

It's good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.

It's in quotes there.

This is drawn from Matthew 19.

What's happening in 1 Corinthians 7 is that Paul is kind of exegeting or preaching or teaching on Matthew 19.

Paul knew Matthew 19.

He's going to be teaching on it.

He's even going to contrast what Jesus says there with what, when he goes beyond what's written in Matthew 19.

We'll look at that later.

But let's begin with this.

It's good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.

Obviously, that's not true about a married person.

And he says that in verse 3 and 4 and 5.

Don't deprive one another except for a limited time and by mutual consent.

So it's not good for married people to be celibate or to abstain from sexual relations, but it is good for a single person too, obviously.

And all there's all the complicated natures of this in marriage, just very briefly in verse 5 there.

Some people will try to leverage this.

It's okay to separate for a short period of time to mean like I'm leaving my spouse indefinitely.

That's not what he says here.

Here he says it's by mutual consent from mutually agreed upon period of time.

So it doesn't authorize married people splitting up for a while.

But let's not lose the main point about singleness in verse 1.

It is good for a man to stay single or for a woman to stay single.

Everything in 1 Corinthians 7 is reciprocal between husband and wives.

It's good for someone to be single.

And I harp on this because many Christians don't think that way.

Many Christians have brought into Old Testament thinking that marriage is a blessing that they're deprived of.

If somebody who's single might think, whoa is me because I'm single.

But the Bible elevates singleness.

Jesus does, and Paul echoes it as well.

If the Catholic Church historically overvalued celibacy, I fear that many evangelicals have undervalued it.

Drifting back into Old Testament thinking.

And so Paul hints, well, hits in verse 1, it's good to stay single.

Now in verse 6, he doesn't command singleness.

Look at verse 6.

As a concession, not as a command, I say this.

I wish everyone was single in verse 7, as I am.

But each of you is his own gift from God, one of one kind, one from another.

And he's going to go on to contrast married people and widows and those who are engaged and single, but the categories here are basically married single.

And he says, I wish everybody was where I am.

I wish everybody was single, he's saying, I wish every Christian was single.

As a concession.

Now the word that in verse 6, you can look at your Bible there in verse 6 as a concession.

The word concession is an odd word.

It's a very difficult Greek word to translate.

There's not really an English word that captures it.

Concession is a good attempt at it.

It's this idea of, you know, if someone's been to your house before and you've noticed every time they come to the house, they park in a faraway parking spot.

Like a guest parking is far away.

And you just want them to know that like there's actually a closer spot.

So I'm telling you this as a concession, not a command.

There is, in fact, a closer spot.

Maybe he wants to park far away because he likes his truck and he doesn't want it scratched.

Maybe.

But you just want him to know there is also a closer spot.

You're not saying I command you to use the closer one.

I'm not saying the closer one is better than the farther one.

You do you, man.

I'm just letting you know this is an option.

There's a Greek word for that, and that's this word.

Hopefully it doesn't take you that long to explain where to park at your house.

But you get the idea.

I came across an illustration of food in one source of, you know, a child's going for chocolate, and you say, you know, there's also salad.

And I want you to think about that.

Like for a six-year-old, that's an odd thing to say.

Like the six-year-old is not going to choose salad over chocolate.

Of course not.

And for the 18-year-old, you're probably not pointing out the food options on the table anymore.

But there's a middle age there where the 13-year-old maybe is going for the chocolate.

And you say, you know, there's there's also salad.

And you're not saying, you're not saying you must eat the salad.

That would be for the six-year-old.

You're not saying, you know, here's the food pyramid.

Hopefully you've already gone through that.

You're saying, I want you to know there's a second option available to you.

And a 13-year-old is able to even think through, like a cunning 13-year-old might think, hmm, maybe if I had a salad now, there's more chocolate later.

Like a very reasonable thing for a 13-year-old to think.

There's actual choices.

And again, not the 18-year-old, not the six-year-old, but that middle-age, that would be a very normal thing for a parent to say, hey, there's other things for you to eat than what you're grabbing.

I'm not telling you you have to.

I'm just saying there's options out there.

The Greeks had a word for that, and this is that word.

So Paul's telling you, I'm not telling you you have to stay single.

I'm not telling you you have to get married.

Listen, both chocolate and salad are good.

They are.

They're both very good, but they're very good in very different ways.

And that's his point.

Marriage is very good.

Singleness is also very good in very different ways.

That's the point.

That's a concession.

By framing it this way, he's saying singleness is not a problem to solve.

So oftentimes single people think this is I'm single, I've got to fix that.

No, you don't.

Singleness is a gift for you to steward, and it is a good gift.

It's not a problem to solve.

Marriage is also good, and for many people it's necessary.

But his main point is that singleness is also good.

Let me put it this way your spirituality is not determined by your marital status.

That would be the most basic way.

To say it.

Your usefulness to God is not determined by your marital status.

You are not more spiritual if you're married and less spiritual if you're single, or flip that around.

It's not true.

And a corollary of that is your contentment is not connected to your marriage status.

And this obviously works both ways.

If you are a discontent single person and you think, man, if I get married, I'll suddenly be content.

That's a big fat lie.

It is.

If you are a discontent single person, you will be a discontent married person because marriage cannot fill that hole in your heart, I promise you.

And you can flip that around.

If you're in a difficult marriage and you think, you know what, I would be content if I was out of this marriage.

Also a lie.

You will not be.

If you are a discontent single person, you will be a discontent married person.

If you're a discontent married person, you will be a discontent single person.

This is not a magic ring.

Do you know that?

This is not a magic ring.

It doesn't suddenly make your problems go away and make you content or godly.

Singleness is good.

Secondly, singleness is assigned.

Verse 17, let the person, I'm skipping the instruction about marriage, because again, that's a different sermon.

Verse 17 of 1 Corinthians 7, let each person lead the life the Lord assigned to him, okay?

This is my rule in all the churches.

If you're married, God assigned you to be married.

How do you know?

Because you are.

I have often said this, I say this to college students all the time.

There's two ways for you to know the will of the Lord: the word and the ring.

You know it's God's will if the Bible says it.

You also know it's God's will in some sense if it's happened.

How do you know it's God's will for you to be married?

Are you married?

How do you know she's the one?

Well, did she say yes?

You really don't have to make it harder than that.

How do you know it's God's will for you to be married?

Are you married?

How do you know it's God's will for you to be single?

Are you single?

Then yes, it's God's will.

And he goes beyond God's permissive will to the language of assigned.

God's directed you providentially at this point in your life for your current situation.

So do it well.

Such an important principle.

God is sovereign over all things.

Your circumstances are not random, and they are not obstacles.

They are assignments.

What a great word.

I love the way it's translated here as assignment.

That is a perfect way of translating this.

Your situation in life is what God has assigned to you to deal with.

It's not plan B.

It's not a holding pattern for something better.

It's not God forgetting about you.

God has assigned you your current situation for now.

And so embrace it.

You know, you're on a 20-person team at work.

And the manager comes in and splits you up into four groups of five or whatever to work on some new project.

And you know, you want to be on the marketing team, but he puts you on the development team.

Lame.

And so you're like, huh, I don't want this.

I'd rather be in marketing.

So, all right, well, you're not on marketing.

You're on development.

So have a good attitude while you're on development instead of whining about it.

You know, like the development people need any help whining.

You can do it just fine yourself.

And do whatever your boss told you to do.

Well, and maybe next time you'll get a different assignment.

Who knows?

But just embrace what you have now.

That's the kind of language Paul is using.

Are you single?

Well, just receive it from the Lord.

And know that if you're single, you can fully obey Christ.

If you're married, you can fully obey Christ.

And your contentment won't come from your job or your family situation or your marriage status.

Only sin can keep you from obeying God, not whether or not you're married.

Singleness is a sign.

Thirdly, it's a gift because it's good, it's a gift because God has given it, and it's a gift because it's freeing.

It's actually liberating to be single.

And this is his point in verse 25 concerning the betrothed or the engaged.

I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who is by the Lord's word mercy trustworthy.

I have read those people who say, see, here's Paul, he's not writing authoritative scripture anymore.

He's just kind of riffing, so to speak.

Not true.

What he's saying here is everything else in this chapter, much of which we skipped, but everything else he's talked about, he's getting from Matthew 19.

He's expanding on what Jesus said in Matthew 19.

Here he's not.

He's going beyond what Jesus taught.

It's still scripture.

He says that in verse 25.

By my judgment, the Lord's mercy has made me trustworthy.

This is an errant, inspired, infallible, and binding on every believer.

If you are single, then stay like you are, he says in verse 26.

That's good.

If you're single, stay single.

Verse 27, are you bound to a wife?

Don't seek to get out of it.

Because you can picture a married person who's not happy in their marriage reading verse 26 and being like, well, hello.

God wants me to be single.

No, listen, if you're single, embrace it.

If you're married, embrace that.

Don't try to get out of your marriage.

He's going to say the same thing about slavery.

If you're a slave, Paul says, obviously it's better to be free than a slave.

So if you have the opportunity for freedom, embrace it, take it.

But if you don't, don't sweat it.

I mean, life is short.

Let's not forget the most basic thing about 1 Corinthians 7.

You're a Christian.

You're going to heaven when you die.

This world is so fast and so short.

Stop acting like this world means everything.

It doesn't.

It's a temporary place, man.

It's fading away, he says.

This world in its present form is dying.

The light is leaving it.

It's lapsing.

It's going to be over before you know it.

With that being said, look, he says in verse 29, this is what I mean.

It's so short.

If you have wives, live like you don't have any.

And if you mourn like you're not mourning, and if you're rejoicing, like you're not rejoicing, and if you're biased, though you don't even have any stuff.

You know, he's not saying actually do this.

He's not saying if you're married, live like you're not married.

He doesn't mean that literally.

He's saying, get your mind around the fact that this world is so short.

You're in a bad marriage.

There's no way Jesus would want me to spend my life like this.

No way.

Maybe a little way.

It's so short.

It's going to be over.

So soon.

And you have eternity.

You have stuff.

Wait, you bought a lot of nice stuff.

Wow.

Impressive.

Put it in your garage, man, and get on with your life.

It doesn't mean a whole lot.

Look at what he says in verse 31.

This world is passing away.

I want you to be free from anxieties, he's saying in verse 33.

The married man is anxious about worldly things.

I don't want you to live like that.

The married person has so many responsibilities.

You know, a single person has way less responsibilities.

Maybe the same responsibilities, but they're the shock waves are more minimized.

Here's a silly example.

If you forget to pay your credit card as a single guy, who cares?

Like you have a$40 fee.

Whatever.

Nobody needs to know.

Your life goes on.

If you're a married person and you forget to pay your credit card, you have that same$40 fee.

But now it affects other people.

Like your wife is going to know, and it's going to affect both of your credit scores.

And, you know, it's just a silly little example.

It's not actually that big of a deal, but you recognize how the complexities layer out.

You know, if you're a single guy and you sleep in on Saturday morning, nobody cares.

If you're a married guy and you sleep in, well, I mean, your family knows you're still in bed.

They're going to do things without you.

They're going to start on whatever the chores are for the day, or start on the yard work, or weigh me wait for breakfast.

The point is that your life is starting to affect other people.

It becomes way more complex.

There's blessings of that, of course, but there's also difficulties with that.

So the person who says, I have to get married to fix my life, does not understand what marriage does.

It does not fix lives.

John MacArthur wrote in his commentary on this passage, quote, marriage may cause some problems, of course, and it may fix some problems.

But it is not designed by God to resolve all personal, emotional, and physical difficulties.

In fact, in most people, it will intensify them.

You know, if you're the kind of person that you can only spend a limited time with one of your friends before you start getting aggravated at them or notice all their weaknesses and whatever.

Okay, now you're married.

How do you think it's gonna work?

You're gonna get aggravated with your spouse and notice their weaknesses and all that, and then what?

You're still married.

You got to work through that.

And then you're gonna have kids.

And you'll get aggravated with them, and they'll get aggravated with you.

It becomes layers of complexity.

And it becomes problems, and it becomes distracting problems.

And so Paul says it's why it's good to stay single, but he also says it's good to get married, they're both good.

And this is what I mean by it's supposed to, this teaching is supposed to be freeing.

You can stop getting consumed by if you've made the right choice.

Bottom line, his point is if you want to get married and you have the opportunity to, go for it.

If you don't want to get married and you want to stay single to serve the Lord, also go for it.

Quit beating yourself up about this decision.

Like just embrace however you are right now as a blessing.

You're not signing a contract.

Like when you're 19, you don't need to figure out right now.

Am I called a single list the rest of my life?

You don't need to say that.

It would probably be unwise for the 19-year-old to make that kind of decision now.

But you can embrace your singleness now and say, I'm gonna live out of biblical singleness now.

And as opportunities open up, then you re-evaluate.

Paul's point is that this should be freeing.

It should not consume you.

If you want to get married, great.

If you don't, also great.

Because this world is so short.

And then fourthly, singleness is focused.

It's focused on serving the Lord.

He says, look at verse 32, the unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.

We skipped that earlier.

His point is that the unmarried man is, he also has his own anxieties and his own issues, but they're focused on serving Jesus.

That's the point.

The married person is focused on serving his spouse.

And that's not bad.

That's good.

If you're married, you're supposed to love your spouse and serve your spouse and love your family and serve your family.

Of course you are.

That's good.

It's also different than being sold out on service in the kingdom for the Lord.

I remember when I was single, I lived with a bunch of single roommates, and we were fully plugged in in church and we're doing all kinds of things, man.

I felt like we never slept.

You know, somebody needs to go give a bunch of food to the church.

Let's go hand it out on Skidero after evening service.

Yeah, I'm in, let's do it.

Let's do street evangelism.

Yeah, I'm in, let's do it.

There's a missionary that lands at three in the morning, needs picked up from the airport.

Oh, I'm there.

I'm totally there.

Small groups of high school kids that meet all the nights.

I'm there.

Pastors going away out of town.

Need someone to house sit.

Oh, that's totally me.

I'm in.

A hundred things like that.

Somebody early to serve in this area in the church or late in that area of the church or this airport run or that airport, a mission trip to a dangerous place.

All of these things for a single person are no-brainers.

You're totally sold out.

And then you get married and you can't do that anymore.

Like you can't go every Sunday night to this place or that place after night church because you have kids that need to go to bed.

And you can't go do the 3 a.m.

airport run for the missionary.

That's, you know, it's affecting everybody in your house now.

And you can't go house sit at somebody else's house.

You have your own house with your own kids and your own cat and all that.

Stay where you're at, man.

Like it's just basic changes.

It's not that one is good and the other is bad, but they're different.

And the married person who lives like he's single is missing it.

But the single person who has such a gift to live in an undivided way towards Jesus can have so much powerful impact for the gospel.

That's his point.

You can flip back to Matthew 19.

Back in Matthew 19, Jesus says, Man, you're right in verse 10.

You're right.

Singleness is a blessing.

Now the disciples didn't even say that.

They meant it sarcastically, but Jesus says, You're right.

Singleness is such a blessing in verse 11.

It's such a blessing that not everybody is godly or mature enough to receive it.

There just aren't.

If we're cutting it straight, you're right.

Not everybody is going to be mature enough to believe this and to receive it.

Only to those in verse 11 whom it is given.

This is such a gift that God gives it.

He repeats at the end of verse 12 let the one who is able to receive this receive it.

Now the Great Commission is coming and is going to transform what it means to have children in the faith.

Timothy is Paul's beloved son in the faith.

All the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 4, verse 15, are called Paul's children of the faith.

1 Corinthians 4:15

Believers are Paul's brothers and sisters.

He has one father, God, in heaven, but he even calls in Romans 16 another woman his mother.

The whole family dynamic gets reoriented inside of the church.

Listen, in the New Testament, you don't need children to leave a legacy.

You need the gospel.

You don't need marriage to leave a legacy.

I think of Anna in Luke chapter 2, married for what, seven years and then widowed?

Luke 2 · chapter mention

And spent her time in the temple.

Did she waste her life?

No kids, it seems.

Did she waste her life?

No.

She got to receive the Lord Jesus and be one of the first to worship him.

Because she was single.

Her life wasn't defined by what she lost, but by who she served.

As we prepare our hearts for the Lord's table, this is a testimony of that same point in front of us.

If you're married, you might feel like your life is divided between the interest of the Lord and the interest at home.

That's fine, that's good.

That's a good feeling to have.

But know that Jesus' life wasn't divided that way.

He was sold out and steadfast, only doing what the Father told him to do, only walking in what was before him, serving God in every way imaginable.

He did all the Father told him to do.

He set his face towards the cross and he went there.

Never distracted from the mission.

He had a singular purpose to accomplish our redemption.

The body is represented by the bread, his blood represented by the wine.

So when we come to the table, we don't come celebrating our marriage or singleness.

We don't come celebrating our singular devotion or our divided affections.

We come commemorating Jesus' singular devotion, his perfect obedience, his finished work on the cross, and we rest in that.

Lord, we're thankful for the gift of marriage.

It's a blessing in the grace of life, and we're thankful of the gift of singleness.

It is also a blessing and a powerful tool in the church.

Thankful for the many single people you've blessed this church with in all that they do.

We're thankful for Christ in his singleness and undivided attention, laying his life down on the cross for us.

As we turn our hearts towards communion, sanctify us with the delight and joy of knowing that our single-minded Savior laid his life down in our place.

We give you thanks in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.