"The Gift of Singleness" Matthew 19:10-12 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Let me begin reading in verse 3, and I'll read all the way down through verse twelve.

Pharisees came up to Jesus and tested him by asking, Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

And said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two will become one flesh, so that are no longer two but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

They said to him, Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?

And he said to them, Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives.

But from the beginning it was not so.

And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.

The disciples said to him, If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.

Jesus said to them, Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given.

For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.

Back in my early days of Christianity, I was working for a missions organization that basically had a I don't want to say a vow of celibacy, but an approach towards all of the 20 somethings that were working for them, that singleness was better.

In fact, it was definitely, it was not ambiguous.

It was definitely made clear to us that we were expected to stay single as long as we were working for this missions organization, because then we could be truly devoted to the Lord.

And the uh director of the organization definitely, you could say he exploited us in our singleness, but I would like to looking back on it and say that we leveraged the opportunity.

Um because I got to live all over the world, I got to go to crazy places and take crazy risks that looking back on it, there's no way I would do some of those things if I had a wife or kids at home.

I mean, just in one example, there was a place in Ghana where me and some of my friends lured crocodiles out of the water with guinea hens, and then we took turns sitting on the crocodile while our friend fed them the guinea hens, and we could pet the crocodile while it was eating.

Now, this is not a smart thing to do.

And the guide who took us there who assured us that this is totally okay, he was like missing part of his ear and had scars all over his face and arms, and he's like, you know, they hardly ever attack.

Uh not all of our silly risks were for touristy endeavors like sitting on crocodiles.

We went and preached the gospel in places that were very hostile towards uh having foreigners or white people there that were certainly closed uh to the gospel.

We took uh in that sense risks that could have in different locations definitely resulted in us getting arrested or um imprisoned, persecuted any number of ways.

And yet the Lord was always kind to me.

And looking back on it, I don't think I would have done those things had I had a wife and kids at home.

Um it probably wouldn't have been wise.

And so you know, I think we uh maximized that time.

I know some of you here tonight even worked for that same missions organization at that time, so you know these stories.

But I think we did maximize that.

But then what happened is that some of our friends started to get married.

And as they started to get married, we heard this uh like, aw, like almost like, see you later.

It was this undervaluing of marriage.

Um they were choosing what was second best.

And we took vows, you know, the bachelor to the rapture vows that we will remain single until the rapture comes.

Um, and let's hold each other accountable to that.

And that was, of course, foolish, and I don't want to speak too negatively about it because the Lord certainly used it in my life and uh and kept me until I finally met Deedra and was uh ready to get married.

There's no way I would have been mature enough to be married back in those days.

But I feel like a lot of evangelical Christianity swings the other way from that.

You know, that would be a form of Christianity that overly esteems marriage.

Uh sorry, overly esteems singleness and treats marriage as if it is second best.

Marriage is for those that can't hack the life of singleness.

You know, sorry, uh if you leave, we'll replace you with somebody who's more spiritually mature than you are and can remain single for as long as we want them to.

And that's, I think, an error.

But I think another error that is probably more common in in our environment today is the error that looks at singleness as second best.

It has that same kind of diminishing attitude that that missions organization had towards marriage.

I think a lot of believers now can have that same diminishing attitude, only applying it to singleness.

Uh, like singleness is for those who just, for whatever reason, can't get married and, oh, you know, we're so sorry for them.

Um, but it's just not quite obviously God's best for them.

It's amazing how Jesus takes this encounter with the Pharisees, who are ambushing him for the purpose of trapping him.

The Pharisees are trying to get Jesus to publicly identify with John the Baptist, is the context of this.

They want Jesus to side with John the Baptist against Herod before Jesus is able to escape the Galilean region, so that hopefully he can be seized up there before he gets to Jericho and Jerusalem.

That's their goal in this.

And Jesus takes that and turns it to, this is one of those little speeches of Jesus that just turns the world upside down.

He has many of those in his ministry.

Matthew captures a lot of them.

That's kind of what Matthew had his ear for, is those kind of speeches, where Jesus will take a truth that might be known by the world and reword it in such a way that it really turns and reorients everything around Jesus.

It takes our normal categories of marriage and singleness, it takes our normal categories of good and bad or of righteous and unrighteous, the normal categories that people use, Jesus has a knack for taking those and obliterating those categories and reorienting them around himself.

And this is no exception.

They're trying to trap him with Herod's divorce and marrying his brother's wife, and Jesus responds by artfully and carefully and articulately navigating the distinction between singleness and marriage, why some people are married, some are single, and how marriage comes from the Lord.

Now we looked at the first part of his answer this morning.

How God designed marriage, how sin wrecks marriage, and how ultimately Jesus is going to restore marriage.

The Pharisees, if marriage was a car, the Pharisees had driven it into a ditch, and Jesus designed, uh, explained to them, God designed the car, he designed marriage.

You crashed it because of your sin, and yet Jesus is going to restore it.

And he doesn't give you a full picture of the restoration of marriage in this chapter.

That's going to wait for some of the epistles, I think of 1 Corinthians 7, which we'll look at later tonight, or Ephesians 5, which we'll look at next Lord's Day.

Uh Jesus esteems marriage, the New Testament esteems marriage, and the New Testament definitely reorients marriage around the person of Christ.

That being said, the New Testament also reorients singleness.

In the Old Testament, singleness was definitely a curse.

Singleness was not esteemed.

I mean, the easiest way to say it is in the Old Testament was that singleness was not cool.

Like you did have sympathy for a single person in the Old Testament.

The more extreme way of saying it is that in the Old Testament, singleness was cursed.

If you were single, it was because probably you couldn't have children.

Probably your husband left you, maybe because you couldn't have children, or perhaps your family doesn't have any lands.

If you're a guy, your family doesn't have any land or any property, you've squandered it away, your ancestors had squandered it away, and you have no uh ability to take a wife.

It was somebody, it was a desperate situation.

So much so that a lot of the marriage laws in the Old Testament don't make sense to us today.

You know, if if uh a wife, if her husband dies, you know, the brother-in-law has to marry her and sleep with her and give her offspring.

Like it's a command.

That makes no sense in our world today.

No sense at all.

It's probably illegal in our world today.

But in their world, the word marriage was the function of it, one of the functions was to make children, to pass down property.

That made sense to them.

They obviously weren't excited about it.

The examples of it you see in the Bible occur somewhat reluctantly, you could say that.

But nevertheless, it was part of the fabric of that world because singleness was cursed or at least not esteemed, not pursued in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is taking place under the creation mandate to subdue the earth, to be fruitful, and to multiply.

Adam and Eve are brought together for the purpose of marriage and increasing the, you know, the army of humans that could take over the earth, subdue it, and multiply.

Of course, one of those humans, the main uh object of the creation mandate was going to be the seed that would be born to Eve, the virgin birth, that there would be a human being who would be born, and that human being, the man Christ Jesus, would crush the head of the serpent and usher the gospel into the world.

So so much of how the Old Testament viewed marriage was angling or funneling towards Jesus.

And when he is born, he's going to turn this whole thing on its head.

The creation mandate is going to give away to the Great Commission, where in the New Testament it's not a mandate to subdue the earth and multiply and fill it.

All of that mandate still takes, is still there.

It's still operating the backgrounds, to use computer terminology there, it's still operating the backgrounds.

However, there's a new mandate that supersedes it to go into all the world, making disciples of all nations, teaching them all that Jesus has commanded us and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That's the new mandate.

Family gets reoriented in the New Testament around Jesus Christ.

And so much more can be said about that.

So in the New Testament, singleness changes.

And we're so familiar with what the New Testament teaches about marriage, you might lose sight of how really radical it is what Jesus says in Matthew 19.

Um, because we read Matthew 19 and 1 Corinthians 7, we might read them in the same afternoon.

Uh at least I did today.

I read Matthew 19, this preacher this morning, I'm reading 1 Corinthians 7 this afternoon.

I've got Ephesians 5, who we're going to teach on next week.

I mean, all that is simultaneous in our minds.

It was not simultaneous for these listeners.

They hear Matthew 19, and then years go by between the conversation in Matthew 19 and what is recorded in 1 Corinthians.

Years go by from even 1 Corinthians to Ephesians.

There's long periods of time that are taking place in here where they don't have the full picture yet.

And so what Jesus begins with in Matthew 19 is shocking to them.

So remember the question was can you divorce your wife for any reason like Moses commanded?

Love the way they word that question.

Jesus says, haven't you read a little a little book we call Genesis?

And no, God designed marriage, and you can't get divorced for any reason you want to.

In fact, you can't get divorced for any reason, Jesus says, except for adultery.

And even that is a mercy, remember, the punishment for adultery in the Old Testament was being stoned to death.

Clearly, that is not the punishment for adultery in the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire adultery proliferated.

The Romans had different categories of marriage, even they allowed adultery.

People aren't getting put to death for adultery during the life of Christ for the most part.

There might be exceptions, but for the most part, people were divorced for it.

And so Jesus says something radical to the Pharisees.

You cannot get divorced for any reason.

Specifically, you cannot get divorced because your wife isn't providing you children.

But if you do get divorced, you're dooming yourself to a life of adultery.

And the one exception is if you do get divorced for adultery.

That's the grounds that the New Testament gives for divorce.

If your spouse commits adultery on you, that becomes what has broken the marriage bond, and you are allowed to pursue divorce, and Jesus doesn't command you to pursue divorce.

He doesn't say you must get divorced, that you just have that option in his teaching, but it is not a command of his.

So the disciples aren't coming at this from the perspective of what about adultery?

That's not what they're focused on.

That's what Americans get focused on.

That's not what the disciples are focused on.

They're coming at this from the perspective of what about the person who doesn't have children, and you're saying they can't get divorced?

Or what about the person who's no longer found favor, is the language from Deuteronomy 24 in their husband's eyes.

You know, the there's so much Jewish literature filled with all the excuses for divorce.

She oversalted the food.

Divorce.

What about those scenarios?

And Jesus says, you may not get divorced in those scenarios.

That's what would have been shocking to them.

They're operating in kind of a no-fault divorce world.

And Jesus says, you cannot get divorced for any reason except adultery.

And as the disciples are taking that in, their first response is not the American response of like, well, what about abuse or what about divorce 10 years ago or those exception clauses is not really the way the Jewish mind works.

The disciples are just struck by the big picture of this.

We can't get divorced.

So that means if you marry, and you marry, to use the more modern analogy language, if you marry the wrong person, you're stuck.

That's where the disciples go.

You're stuck with that person for the rest of your life.

That can't be right.

I mean, that is a high-risk move right there.

Marriage goes from like, yeah, that might be nice to, whoa, if I do this wrong, it will ruin my whole life.

That's how the disciples are hearing this.

And then you can tell because the disciples respond after the Pharisees kind of faded their background because they were just humiliated by Jesus.

After that happens, the disciples say to Jesus, verse 10, if that's true, then why would anyone get married?

Do you catch their question?

If there's no escape hatch, it's better to never marry than to be risk being trapped with the wrong person for the rest of your life.

Because in their mind, that is ridiculous.

What Jesus just said, absolutely insane.

You get married and your wife can't have kids, obviously, in the Jewish mind you should be able to divorce.

Now Jesus is saying, no.

You know, forget the salting on the food.

We're talking more extreme things right here, and Jesus is saying there's no way out.

And the disciples are shaking their heads, going, That's if that's true, it would be better to not marry at all.

Because if no matter what your wife did, you can't divorce her, you're putting your future in somebody else's hands, and you don't even know that person in the Jewish world.

You might know them a little bit.

You're putting your future into somebody's hands.

What if they turn out crazy?

Then what?

So that's their question to Jesus.

Calvin, in Calvin's commentary on this, has a very kind of uncharacteristically funny line for Calvin.

He says, after the disciples ask that question, Jesus might have been tempted to respond, it's a good thing your wives didn't ask that question to the disciples.

You're worried about what happens, and you're saying it's better not to marry John and Peter.

I mean, I know you guys, it's a good thing your wives didn't ask that.

They're likely trapped to you.

Jesus doesn't respond that way.

He says, not everyone can receive this saying.

Now the antecedent to the saying, it's not crystal clear, but I think the antecedent for the saying is verse 10.

Uh the disciples question that it's better not to marry.

So the disciples say, is it better not to marry?

And Jesus says, Not everybody can receive that.

In other words, not everybody, because he's going to repeat that phrase at the end of verse 12, and that's why I take it as I say the same language in verse 11 is also used in verse 12, that the saying refers to the statement that not everyone should get married.

Disciples are saying, if that's true, if it's such a high-risk move, it's better to not marry.

And Jesus' response is you're kind of right, but not everybody is capable of that choice.

And then he's going to give some different categories here.

Now, before we read the categories, let me give some principles for understanding this.

God ordains marriage for good.

We know this because Jesus just said that six hours ago or two verses ago, depending on what timeline you're working on.

Just this morning we heard him say it, or it's just the next paragraph above you.

Jesus just said that God designed marriage for good.

Of course, quoting from Genesis chapters 1, 2, and even reaffirming it.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And three, even in the curse, God reaffirms that marriage is designed for good because he curses man and woman.

He curses the ground and Adam will work as he's providing for his family.

Childbirth will become painful.

So even the curse takes place in the context of marriage.

So God designed marriage for good.

Marriage is designed to function in a fallen world.

So you're not allowed to despise marriage.

This is a sin that is reiterated in the New Testament.

Well, Paul will write to Timothy.

Stay away from those who defile marriage.

It's going to be repeated in Hebrews 13 by Paul.

The marriage bed remains undefiled.

There are those that pass ordinances restricting marriage.

Paul tells the Corinthians, and I believe it's in Colossians as well.

The idea is that there are those who make regulations restricting marriage and diminishing marriage, and that's wrong because God designed marriage for good.

So don't despise what God makes for good.

Also, in this world there will be trouble.

There's no part of this world that's untouched by sin.

So in this world there will be trouble.

So do not be surprised if you have trouble in your marriage.

So don't run away from marriage because of that.

But there is also a beneficial kind of singleness, and that's where Jesus is going with his answer.

He's going to esteem a kind of singleness that is different than marriage.

Obviously, when Jesus is using the word singleness here, he means somebody who's not married.

There's a kind of singleness that isn't cursed like it would be in the Old Testament.

It's not second best like perhaps it would have been perceived in the Old Testament, but it's something that Jesus is actually elevating above even, or at least at the same level or par with, the married person.

And the reason I say he's elevating is because he says not everybody can receive this.

So what's he about to say that not everybody can can handle?

Well, there's three kinds of eunuchs, he says.

Okay.

Three kinds of eunuchs.

Those that have been so from birth, physical deformity, and I think that could even be uh a wide enough umbrella to just even cover those that have uh to even cover those that have no sexual desire, whether or not it's an actual uh genetic deformity.

A commentator says it's often a genetic deformity or physical deformity, but I think it could even be an emotional deformity or whatever, where the somebody's just not has has no desire for marriage whatsoever.

That could be one category.

They're born that way.

Another category could be those who have been made eunuchs by men.

Now, this is foreign in our world, very common in the New Testament times, very common in the ancient Near East, of course, but even more so in the Persian Empire, uh, very common in the Roman worlds to have people who were eunuchs.

Um you're gonna meet a eunuch in the book of Acts who ministered to the queen.

Eunuchs would often wait in the uh royal courts, minister to the king's harem.

Um, and so they were made eunuchs uh for the sanctity of the royal line.

You couldn't have non-eunuchs caring for the king's wives because then you wouldn't be sure of the genetic validity of a prince or princess that would be born.

And so eunuchs cared for kings and queens and their the the harem, the women that were in the households, and that's just the reality of that world, again, totally foreign to us, so I don't want to be detained by that any longer.

But the third category is what's interesting: those who have been made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

So this is the kind of verb tense here, not those who were that way from birth.

That's a very passive way of saying it.

They were that way from birth.

They just don't have desire.

This is a third category.

It says this happens to the person by their own choice.

The second category, it happens to them by somebody else.

The first category is just happened.

Second category, somebody did this, but the third category, they're doing it to themselves.

They're making this choice.

This is, I don't think it's talking about physical castration or anything.

It's a more of a spiritual category of people that volitionally make the choice to remain single for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, is how he says it.

This is a new category of thing.

You don't encounter this in the Old Testament, a new category.

That Jesus introduces that there are people who make the choice to remain single for their life so that they can serve the kingdom of heaven.

I say for their life, that might even be overstating it, because Jesus doesn't say for their life.

There are people that make the choice to remain single for a period of time, perhaps their whole life, but for a period of time for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Now, when Jesus is talking about this, clearly he's talking about what is often called Christian singleness here, which implies sexual celibacy.

He's not talking about somebody who's unmarried but is sexually active in the world.

That's not this category.

That's not somebody who's, you know, a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven.

This whole position here is somebody who has made the decision to remain single and abstain from sexual activity for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

And I'm not going to give that footnote every time for the rest of the night that I talk about singleness.

I'm not going to say Christian singleness, which means celibate singleness.

Just file that in the background.

That's what we're talking about tonight.

Not the singleness in the world.

Jesus esteems it.

This would be brand new for the disciples.

This is world-changing for the disciples.

That Jesus now introduces people that are going to make a deliberate choice to be unmarried.

Not like the disciples were toying with five seconds earlier with yikes.

What if I get in a bad marriage?

Better to be single.

Jesus calls their bluff.

Basically tells them, yeah, you guys couldn't hack it.

So he's going to teach now on singleness.

This is picked up in 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

I'm going to give you an outline here before we turn to 1 Corinthians 7.

Four ways that singleness is a gift.

Four ways that singleness is a gift.

It's often called the gift of singleness.

It's not any spiritual gift test that I know of, but it is often called a gift.

The reason it's called a gift is because of the language that is used in verse 11, and then in verse 12, the end of verse 12, let the one who is able to receive this receive it.

That is a gift kind of language.

Not everyone, verse 11, can receive this saying.

The idea here is that you have the capacity to receive it, which implies that it is a gift.

Jesus' language here is implying not only that it is a gift, but first that it is actually good.

The singleness is good.

The way Jesus describes it implies that it is good to remain single.

So I want you to flip over to the longest passage in the Bible that discusses this, 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

And you can keep your little Bible ribbon or whatever in Matthew 19, but we're going to be in 1 Corinthians 7 for probably the next half hour.

And then we'll just end it for a few minutes back in Matthew 19.

But the next 30 minutes or so of our lives will be in 1 Corinthians 7.

I say it is good, and I'm getting the word good morally speaking from how Jesus described it in Matthew 12.

But now in 1 Corinthians 7, Jesus can continues, speaking through the Apostle Paul here, to describe it as good.

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

And some translations say not to touch a woman.

It is clearly a euphemism or an idiom for sexual relations.

So I think the NIV even translated it's good for a man not to marry.

That's obviously what Jesus means.

By the way, the reason I say that this is Jesus speaking in 1 Corinthians 7 is that Paul identifies his teaching in 1 Corinthians 7 as coming from the Lord.

Likely meaning that Paul had taken, he says this, you know, in verse 12 and uh verse 10.

Um he's saying it's coming from the Lord because of what's written in Matthew 19.

So, you know, 15 years after what took place in Matthew 19, uh, at least Paul's describing this in 1 Corinthians 7.

He has Matthew in the background.

He's read Matthew, I'm sure by the time he's writing this, he's familiar with what Jesus said in Matthew 19.

He's even addressing it as saying it came from the Lord.

And so he's picking up on what Jesus said in Matthew 19 and saying, it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.

In other words, it is singleness is a good thing.

Now he doesn't say it is the only good thing.

Paul is not diminishing marriage.

And I think for you to get the most out of 1 Corinthians 7, because I look at, oh, I see mostly married people here tonight, the way to get the most out of 1 Corinthians chapter 7 is to not pit marriage and singleness against each other.

1 Corinthians 7 · chapter mention

There will be some contrasts, but understand that both are good.

Paul is actually esteeming both.

He's esteeming marriage above where the world esteems it, and he's esteeming singleness above where the world esteems it.

He's making much of both singleness and marriage.

So when he says it's good for a person to be single, don't take that as, so Paul doesn't like marriage.

No, Paul does like marriage.

He also likes singleness.

In fact, he's he's even going to say that he personally prefers singleness.

He's glad that he is single as he's doing his ministry.

And he, of course, was married in the past.

Um, we know this from all kinds of reasons, but he was part of the Sanhedrin, which would have required marriage.

He was uses a word for himself later on in 1 Corinthians 7 that seems to imply that he is a widower.

So Paul was married.

Here he describes himself in this chapter later on.

It's good that he's single.

He wishes all people were as he, meaning single.

Um, but for now, he's saying it is good for a person to be single.

So I just want you to start your understanding of the New Testament's teaching on singleness, that it is good.

It's not bad, it's not cursed, it's not second best.

It is, in fact, good to be single.

Now, celibacy, in particular, is good for single people, not good for married people, which is where he goes in verse 2, uh, all the way down through verse 5.

We'll skip over that for now, but basically 2 verse 5, verses 2 through verses 5, he's just saying, yeah, it is celibacy is good for single people, not good for married people.

Uh, so repent.

Verse 6, now as a concession, not a command, I say this.

I wish that all were as myself am.

Here's where he's saying, I wish others, all Christians, were single like he is.

Now he the word concession is weird.

It almost says like Paul's reluctantly saying it.

It's a very strange Greek word.

It's not a very common Greek word.

Uh it's translated concession here.

A better way to say it might be like for your awareness.

It's almost like when you have, you know, lettuce right here and chocolate right here, and the kid is going for the chocolate, and you can say, I want you to be aware that there's also lettuce on the table.

They're both good.

They're both good differently.

However, I see you gravitating towards one, so I want you to be aware that there's another option.

You recognize as a parent what you're doing with that.

You're you're letting the the child make his own decision, but you're increasing their awareness.

And as a child understands the awareness of what the options are, and even that you're saying there's another option, maybe the child will pick up on the fact, like, ooh, I go for lettuce now, I get more chocolate later.

You know, the kids have that decision-making capacity.

That's this word.

And I think that's why you don't say that as a you don't say as a concession, I'm letting you know there's also lettuce.

You're saying, like, I want you to be aware, there's another option here.

And I think that's a better way to render this.

Again, it's not a very common Greek word, but that's how I would render it.

Paul's saying, I'm I'm letting you know of this other option.

I'm not commanding you, in other words, I'm not commanding you to stay single.

I'm not telling you you must stay single.

He's not doing that.

He's saying, I want you to be aware.

There's something else good on the table.

In fact, he says, I wish that everybody were as I am, but each has his own gift from God.

We'll talk more about that in a second.

The point is that it is good to be single, and spirituality is not determined by your marriage status.

And I hope you hear me say that.

Your spirituality is not determined by your marriage status.

You can be a spiritually mature single person.

And by the way, ditto with contentment.

I hit on that this morning a little bit, but I just want to reiterate it.

Your contentment ought not be determined by your marriage status.

Because marriage status does not have the capacity to make you content.

If you are discontent as single, you'll be discontent as married, and vice versa.

People that toy with divorce in their mind say they're not content in their marriage, well, they will not be suddenly content in their divorce either.

The point here is that singleness is good, and your spirituality is not determined by it, nor should your contentment be determined by your marriage status.

And I repeat that just because I know the Catholic Church oversteems celibacy, oversteems singleness.

You know, the priests have to take a vow of celibacy because that's what the real spiritual people do.

And that's, of course, bonkers and has led to centuries of horrible abuse.

But certainly, many Protestants similarly undervalue singleness.

And so that's why it's good to start just with the reminder that it is, in fact, good to remain single.

I tell you that because if you are single, you have so much, so many well-meaning people at church probably are like, so where's the ring?

What's gonna happen?

You're going home for Christmas?

Anyone waiting for you?

Kind of lie, like well, I've heard well-meaning people say things like that to single people at church.

Like, you know, hey, if you need help, I I know a guy.

You know, I I could I could send you, you know, I'm just saying, I'm good at the people I've heard people say, like, I I fancy myself a cupid.

I'm really good at fixing you up.

When fixing implies brokenness, right?

And so it's probably good to just start with the reminder that singleness is good in the eyes of Paul and in the eyes of Jesus and in the eyes of the Lord.

Um, so I just want to make sure that we don't regress to the Jewish view of marriage, that singleness is practically a curse, and marriage is necessary for holiness and happiness, and by reminding ourselves that Jesus was single, so is Paul.

Both of them esteemed it.

Um, first of all, it is good to be single.

So if it is good, why shouldn't everybody be single?

Why does Paul not command singleness if it's good?

Because of the second point.

It is also assigned.

And specifically in verse 17, but I want to draw out one thing from verse 9.

First, if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry.

It is better to marry than to burn with passion.

Remember, the point of singleness, the point of choosing to be single for the kingdom of God is holiness and devotion to ministry.

And so if you are burning with passion or lust, you're not devoted to holiness.

That's the bottom line.

And so this is why Jesus himself says not everybody can handle this kind of command.

Because there are those who do want to get married.

If you want to get married, in other words, get married.

Remember, this is a two-edged sword.

Jesus is esteeming both marriage and singleness.

Paul is esteeming both marriage and singleness.

Jesus starts his answer by taking you back to Genesis and God designed marriage.

Paul does the same thing here.

It is better to marry than to burn with passion.

And here he's using the word better for marriage.

So marriage is good.

So is singleness.

So marriage and singleness are both assigned by the Lord.

If God has given you the grace to remain single, then embrace it.

Embrace it.

Paul's going to give more instructions on divorce and remarriage here for believers, but jump down to verse 17.

Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, in which God has called him.

So how do you know if God has called you to a life of singleness?

Well, there's two ways your own desire and providence.

You know, similarly, how do you know if God's called you to be married?

Well, there's a very easy question.

Are you married?

Then yes.

You know, it's it's the ring.

If you have the ring, that's the window into providence.

Singleness is the same way.

Are you single?

Then God at this moment in your life has called you to singleness.

Is God giving you the ability to fight against sexual sin in your life?

And that's validating your calling.

God's given you that grace.

And so embrace it.

Embrace it.

But do you want to get married?

Then get married.

But do you want to stay single?

Then stay single and don't let other people bully you out of it.

It is assigned, is the language Paul uses in verse 17.

I love the way the ESV translates that word.

The Lord has a sign to him.

This is God's sovereign choice.

And this is Paul's rule in all of the churches, by the way.

He's going to go on to say, uh, he's going to compare it to slavery.

Look down in verse 20.

Each of you should remain in the condition in which he was called.

Were you a slave when you were called?

Don't worry about it.

But if you get your freedom, get your freedom.

Do you catch his analogy here?

Stay how you were when you were called, when you got saved.

If you were you a slave when you got saved, then stay as a slave.

But you say, oh man, I really want my freedom and there's an opportunity for my freedom.

I've got money, I can buy my freedom.

But Paul says, stay as a slave.

No.

Stay as a slave, but if you have money for freedom, you have opportunity for freedom, then get your freedom.

In other words, your spiritual maturity isn't determined by whether or not you're a slave either.

The same principle is applying to marriage right now.

Are you single?

Then stay single.

Were you single when God saved you?

Then stay single.

But I want to get married and there's an opportunity for marriage.

Then get married.

It's fine.

But recognize if you were single when the Lord saved you, it very well could be his will for you to stay single.

And this is good in the Lord's plan.

Not meaning you should never be married, but just understand, verse 24, in whatever condition you were when you were called, let just remain that way with God.

That's verse 24.

But again, if you're burdened by this and you want to be married, and you have the opportunity, that's the language Paul uses earlier.

If you have the opportunity, then take it.

In other words, your spiritual maturity is not about divorce.

It's not about I'm sorry, spiritual maturity is not about marriage.

Earlier, for those who are divorced, Paul says, remain as you are single.

Your spiritual maturity is independent of that worldly circumstance.

Thirdly.

Singleness is a gift because it is good, because it is assigned, and thirdly, because it is freeing.

And he picks this up in verse 25.

Concerning the betrothed, I have no command from meaning somebody who's engaged.

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

People say, so here's where Paul is not inspired.

You know, Paul's just riffing off the cuff here because it's not the Lord, it's me, as if Paul's making stuff up.

To which I respond, that's not the way the Bible works.

Like there's not a part of the Bible that the author is just like riffing and like, hey, let's see how this happens, you know.

Let me turn in this.

Oh, people believed it.

Wow.

Now when he says it's not of the Lord, he's saying he's leaving what's taught in Matthew 19.

Everything so far has basically been taught in Matthew 19.

He's leaving that, and now he's going beyond Matthew 19.

He's still inspired.

He's still speaking as somebody who's uh, well, as he says, who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy.

In other words, you should believe this.

It's still inspired, it's still scripture, but it's beyond Matthew 19.

In view of the present distress, meaning the church age, it's good for a person to remain as he is.

Are you engaged?

Then don't break off your engagement.

Are you free?

Are you single?

Then don't seek to get married.

So you catch what he's saying?

This should be a freeing position.

Are you single?

Then don't worry about being married.

Unless you really want to be married.

And then he look what he says in the next verse, verse 20 uh verse 28.

But if you do marry, you haven't sinned.

And if you are engaged and you get saved and you're like, well, I don't know what I should do.

Well, I mean, do you want to get married?

Is she a believer also?

Then get married.

It's not sinful to get married.

Remember, marriage is also good.

So you go through this whole paragraph, and I won't take the time to go through every single verse in this paragraph because he says the same thing 15 times in a row.

He's trying to drive home the point to you that you really should worry less about this.

That's why I chose the word freeing for the outline.

You really should worry more about your own personal godliness and your own personal sanctification than you worry about your marriage status.

You know?

You just should.

You should be freed and you think, but what if I make the wrong choice?

Then you're not thinking maturely.

Okay?

Embrace providence, embrace your situation in life.

Trust that the Lord brought you to the situation in life that you're in right now, trust that the Lord's going to give you the grace to live out the life that God has called you to live with holiness, knowing that with every temptation he's given you a way to escape that temptation, he tells the Corinthians that, just in a few chapters.

And you think, okay, I'm married.

Then stay married, Paul says.

You can't divorce your wife.

You think, okay, I'm single.

But then stay single, Paul says.

Like, oh, I really want to get married.

Okay, then marry a Christian.

It's fine.

Like, oh, but I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

But just embrace where you are in your life.

This is a difficult world.

He says, in the view of this present distress, there's all kinds of problems in this world.

But if you think, I'm not content now, well, that's the problem.

Your lack of contentment is the problem.

And you will bring that lack of contentment into marriage.

He says there's this world is filled with distress right now.

Marriage will not take away your distress.

The truth is, marriage may cause some problems while it fixes others.

If the source of your distress is sexual morality, marriage may provide an outlet for that, but marriage will provide other problems for you to deal with.

Marriage is not intended by God to resolve all personal, emotional, and physical difficulties and problems in your life.

In fact, it will likely intensify some of them.

So don't be distressed over whether or not you are married or single.

The point of Paul writing 1 Corinthians 7 is to free you from that worry.

And to say, you can be godly as a single person, you can be godly as a married person.

Stay as you as you were when you were called.

Don't be devoted to singleness throughout your whole life.

Don't say, I'm gonna make the decision to be single throughout my whole life if you're burning with lust.

That would be a foolish choice.

A foolish choice.

Because you won't be devoted as for the kingdom of heaven as you're burning with lust your whole life.

So that's that would be a bad choice.

So get married then.

But if you're saying, I don't know, I want to be single, but I also want to get married.

Paul says, embrace the providence that you're at.

Embrace the situation you were when you were saved.

Reorient your current situation around heaven.

This is what I mean, verse 29, he says, the appointed time has grown very short.

From now on, let those who have wives live as though they have none.

And those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing.

And those who buy as if they didn't have any goods.

Those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it.

For the present form of this world is passing away.

Again, very profound passage, often overlooked because it's in the middle of a paragraph on singleness.

Often misunderstood.

Let those who have wives act as though they had none.

There were monks back in the 300s and 400s that justified leaving their families.

The whole Catholic monkery system is kind of built on a misunderstanding in this verse that, I mean, a lot of the monks, you understand, were married and they're having problems in their marriage and they wanted the extra godly life, and so they would leave their wife, they would leave their kids and go off to a monastery.

And they would use this verse to justify it.

He says, if you have wives, live as though you had none.

The point here is that everything is reoriented around heaven.

Your eyes are on heaven.

You're looking forward to heaven.

So your goods aren't eternal.

You understand that.

Your goods aren't eternal, and so you use them for the ministry of the church.

Your mourning is not eternal.

You mourn not as those who have no hope.

You mourn knowing you'll see those who died in the resurrection.

And you have your marriage.

You orient your family, not with this world as its terminus, but you order your family around the next life.

Your marriage is preparing you for glory for heaven, specifically for husbands.

You're supposed to be married to your wife in a way that presents her pure and spotless before Christ, knowing that you'll you'll rendezvous in heaven.

Your wife is yours as a gift for you to pursue her sanctification, knowing that you will give her back to the Lord.

That's what he's talking about here.

Your marriage doesn't terminate in this world, it terminates in the next.

So the main point, verse 32, verse part A, just the first part of verse 32, I want you to be free from anxieties.

In other words, stop worrying about it.

And I know that's not an effective way to get you to stop worrying.

You're worried about it?

Stop worrying.

Did it work?

That's why you need the whole paragraph below it and above it.

You need to reorient your thinking around heaven and around eternity.

But that's where Paul goes.

I want you to be free from anxieties.

Just embrace where you are.

The fourth reason marriage is our singleness is a gift.

Singleness is good.

It's assigned by God, in other words, it's given to some.

It's freeing, it frees you from the that present distress.

And fourthly, it's focused.

And this circles back to what Jesus was talking about.

We re-enter the text of Matthew 19 again with the second part of verse 32.

The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord.

That's that phrase from Matthew 19.

Your kingdom for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Your eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of God.

You're anxious about the things of the Lord.

How to please the Lord.

The married man is anxious about worldly things.

How to please his wife.

And his interests are divided.

The unmarried person or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord.

How to be holy in body and holy in spirit.

In other words, the single woman is devoted to pursuing holiness in her own body and her own sanctification as well as serving the Lord in so many other areas.

But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.

By calling it worldly, it gives it a negative ring to it because he's esteeming singleness, is the point of this passage.

But we understand when you balance this with Ephesians 5 that that's also good.

It is good for the wife to be submissive to her husband.

It is good for the husband to sanctify his wife.

It's good for the husband to worry about his wife and the wife to worry about her husband.

That's the way God designed marriage.

Here he's calling that worldly concerns because they're concerns that terminate in this world.

That's what he means by that.

So that is a difficult part of marriage.

It is difficult for a wife to be submissive to her husband.

It is difficult for a husband to lead his wife and sanctify his wife.

That is a worldly concern that you're dealing with in marriage.

You have family.

You have your own obligations as you care for your family.

A husband has to care for his family.

That requires time and money and resources.

That's not true of the single person.

He doesn't have his own family to care for.

He's not financially responsible for other people.

He's freed from that worry.

Not freed to live for himself, not free to be a hedonist, but freed to be focused on the kingdom of God.

Free to pour out his time and his money and his energies on people in the church or on evangelism.

That's what it means to leverage your singleness, to pour out your life for others in a way a married person can't.

In a way a married person can't.

There's a thousand practical illustrations you probably have for your own life.

I know that when I was single, I was very much consumed by ministry.

I had my phone with me all the time, and I would, you know, be responding to text messages from all these students that I was discipling.

And, you know, what if one of these students has a problem or what if they need something?

I felt like I needed to be available to minister to them at any point in time.

And I remember when we were dating, a deater told me, you know, you can't, you shouldn't really be texting high school kids when you're at dinner with my parents.

You know, little thing like that.

Like put away the phone and talk to my parents.

Well, yes, that's part of maturity.

That's part of entering into the married world.

I understand that.

But do you see the shift there?

Where the single person is consumed by those kind of things.

How can he minister?

Where can he go?

Someone needs to ride somewhere.

I'll drive them there right now.

A homeless person shows up and wants to ride to the rescue mission in DC.

A single person can take them and share the gospel with them up to the rescue mission in DC.

Right now, a married person has to go home and be with his wife and put his kids to bed.

That's the basic reality of married life.

And that's not bad.

That's the way God designed it.

In fact, it's commanded in Ephesians for husbands and wives to live like that, prioritizing their family.

But the single person has the freedom to do those kind of things with their time, with their money.

They can spend money on people in the church in a way that would be unwise for a married person to do.

I think of the children's ministry here.

You know, most many married couples serve in the children's ministry every other week.

So they can be involved in an ABF and they can be discipled as a married couple in their ABF, and then every other week they're in children's ministry.

I know that's what my wife does, I know it's what many married couples do.

I know many single people will serve in children's ministry every week.

Because they're not going to go to an ABF with their wife because they're single, so they can pour themselves out just in the children's ministry of the church.

It's not a very basic way you see that distinction.

And don't misunderstand Paul or me by saying if you're a married person and you're only serving every other week in the nursery so that you can minister to your wife or to your husband in the married ABF every other week, that that's somehow bad.

It's not bad.

You're called to do that.

But for the single person, be aware of that trade-off and embrace it as good.

For the single person, grab hold of that and love that God has placed you in a situation in life where you can live like he describes in that paragraph.

You can be anxious about the things of the Lord.

Paul says in verse 36, look at this.

I say this for your own benefit.

I don't want to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

He's not trying to guilt trip you.

Again, remember the third point.

This is freeing.

He says, I'm not trying to restrain you with this.

I'm freeing you for this.

I'm freeing you for this.

I want you to serve in those ways.

When I was uh associate pastor back in California, I had uh interns that were almost all single guys.

And that spoiled me because I could text them any time, any favor, any time, anything.

I could have a Bible question at midnight and send them.

I could want Bibles taken to the airport for a 2 a.m.

flight, missionaries coming in at 3 a.m., no problem.

I got an army of single guys that can go do that.

And I remember the the wake-up call that happened when they started to get married.

Like, hey, I can no longer text you at midnight and say, hey, there's a missionary landing at 2 in the morning.

Can you go get them?

Gotta hire a new single guy to go do that.

That's the freeing nature of singleness.

And Paul says, embrace it.

Embrace it.

Look what he says down in verse 38.

He who marries does well.

He who refrains from marriage, even better.

What's even better than well?

Again, understand the framework of this whole chapter.

He's not pitting them against each other.

He's freeing you and allowing you to live the life that God has given to you.

You can flip back to Matthew 19, or we will end.

Jesus says there's that third category that have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven.

I said that Jesus reorients marriage around this because of this basic principle.

Ultimately, singleness can be fruitful.

This is exactly why singleness was considered a curse in the Old Testament, because you had no children to pass down your property and your inheritance to.

In the New Testament, the gospel is no longer held in a nation.

There's no year of Jubilee.

The land doesn't revert back to your ancestors every 50 years as allotted to the 12 tribes of Israel.

We're in the United States.

The whole system changes.

And now the New Testament uses this language of family directed predominantly in the church.

Romans 16, verse 32, Paul calls another woman his mother in the faith.

The New Testament is filled with language referring to other people believers as brothers and sisters.

1 Corinthians 4 verse 15, Paul calls himself the Corinthians' father in the faith.

1 Corinthians 4:15

1 Corinthians 4, verse 17, he calls Timothy his dearly beloved son.

1 Corinthians 4:17

1 Peter 5, verse 13, Peter calls Mark his son in the faith.

1 Peter 5:13

1 Timothy 2, Timothy identifies himself as Paul's son in the faith.

So you recognize that you have these people.

Paul, many of those for Paul, calls himself a father of many, many people, even in his singleness.

With many brothers and sisters in the faith, even though we don't know of any by the flesh.

A mother in the faith.

I don't know what that means.

She cared for him.

She did motherly things for him because she was a believer.

Rufus' mother.

She was a believer.

And she cared for Paul almost as if she were Paul's own mother.

That's the kind of thing a single woman in the church can do.

And I know my own family has been blessed by people like that that are single and pour out their lives in ministry to my own family and other families in the church.

That's such a blessing of singleness.

So if you're single tonight, I would encourage you to embrace it and pour out your life serving the church, pour out your life in evangelism.

Perhaps for some of you, pour out your life by going to be a missionary.

I know Christine going to be a missionary in Chad, in a very remote part of Chad, a very difficult place out there to go to.

It would be very difficult to take family out there, and she's going to go out there.

You can do radical things for the gospel as a single person that would perhaps be difficult or unwise for a married person to do.

And you'll bear spiritual fruit doing those kind of things.

I'm struck this morning as we were reading Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

The scripture reading ended at verse 14, but you go on in Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

There's Anna in the temple.

And she's 84 years old.

Did you catch that?

84 years old when Jesus was presented to her in the temple.

And Luke just lets you know a little tidbit about her life.

She was married for seven years.

Just think a little bit about what her life would have been like.

At what age is a Jewish woman married?

Probably in her twenties?

Maybe would be a reasonable guess.

Maybe younger.

It'd be very unlikely, very unlikely in the Jewish world for somebody to get married when they're 30 or 40.

So it's probably in her 20s, if not younger.

Seven years.

Say she got married when she was seventeen.

24, her husband dies.

This is a very reasonable scenario.

She spent the next 60 years single.

Doing what?

Just ministering in the temple.

And what was her reward?

That when the Savior comes to earth, the Savior comes to her in the temple.

And she can hold Jesus.

And when you read her words in the end of Luke 2, you don't come away thinking, man, she regrets this.

She doesn't regret this.

She understands what Jesus is going to teach when that little baby grew up.

He was going to teach that there are some that remain single for the kingdom of heaven.

So if you're single tonight, I pray that you would embrace it and delight in the Lord's call on your life.

I know the hardest place in this discussion to be is a single person who really wants to be married.

But the same principle I would challenge you with to pursue contentment in your own life, be content with where the Lord has brought you.

Know that the Lord will provide a way of escape from every temptation, and trust the Lord's providence in your life and his timing for his own good work.

Lord, we're thankful that you work in us and through us to will and to act according to your good purpose.

We began our service tonight praying that, and I want to bring the teaching to a close with that same prayer.

We know that you are at work in our life.

You've numbered our days.

You, of course, are sovereign over our marriages.

Lord, I'm thankful for the gift of marriage and how you provided Deedra for me and our three precious girls.

I'm grateful for the gift of family you've given us.

I pray, I just beg you that the single people in our church would have that same kind of joy, that they delight in their situation in life, that they know that it is good, they know that they're blessed by you because of where you've called them, and that they would receive your providence.

I pray particularly for grace for those that are single that want to be married.

I pray that you would encourage them in their singleness, help them maximize this moment of their life.

We don't know how long this moment will be, but we know you esteem it and you call it good because it's you who have given it to us.

So help us receive it as a gift from your hand.

And Lord, I do want to thank you tonight for those who are single in our congregation who pour out their lives, serving this church, serving this church, and I think of people serving in children's ministry, serving in facilities, serving in the mission field, serving in so many different ways.

Evangelism, pouring out their life, college ministry, spilling out their life in ways that married people just can't.

I'm thankful that you've blessed the church with so many faithful servants like that, like Anna, who serve you with a pure heart, devoted for the kingdom of God.

We're thankful that they serve by your good pleasure and for your purpose.

We give you thanks for them in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.