19th November 2025

19th November 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 20:14)


Message (Alan Burke)


You are being catechised all the time. Not through a catechism but through the culture that surrounds us to believe what the world wants you to believe.  You may not think that but you are from the books you read, the television shows and films you watch, the news you read, through social media, surfing the internet, school, university, place of work, clubs all of them are making an impact. In the UK the average adult spends five hours a day in front of a screen scrolling, watching, reading and yes it’s five hours and if you work that out over a year it is seventy six days! One of those things we have been catechised about is that the intimacy that should belong in a marriage doesn’t anymore and that at any time anywhere, with whoever they are as long as there is consent anything goes. That though is not God’s command. We have already established that the intimacy that is designed for marriage should be in marriage. Jesus said if we look lustfully we have already committed adultery making it clear that it applies if you’re single, married, divorced no matter who you are or what stage of life you are at or relationship you are in, it has far reaching implications. 


God designed the intimacy that is to take place in a marriage for marriage. He made man and woman in his image and made them for each other. In Genesis 2 the Lord gave Adam and Eve to one another and said; “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh, v25 and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Gen 2:24-25). 


Notice also that the man and woman, the husband and wife are to become one flesh. They were made to connect physically but also spiritually, there is oneness thought the union that they have that speaks of two becoming one, as they become one person. Marriage that God designed was to make two become one person, a man brings certain aspects to the marriage relationship and a woman certain aspects to the marriage relationship and this was as God designed it. This first marriage that between the first man and woman, there when they were together, they were naked and they were v25 not ashamed. The ‘not ashamed’ is more than speaking to that of nakedness, but rather what is in view is something much more, it is of being open, intimate, that there can be a relationship with one another and there is nothing that separates the two of them, no fear, no shame, they can know each other in a way that they can know no others, being vulnerable to one another, in effect they share a union that no one else does. 


This was God’s ideal, that one man and one woman would be joined in marriage, it is the first institution established in the bible, but it doesn’t mean that this is aways the case. For we know then what takes place as sin came into the world. So although God saw and said that it is not good that man should be alone we know from our own experiences that not everyone gets married. In Scripture there are many who were unmarried that God uses both in the Old and New Testament. In Matthew 19(11-12), Jesus makes it clear that he gives each the grace they need to serve even if they are single and celibate. What the scripture teaches about marriage, about lust, about divorce is totally counter cultural, the culture that we live in downplays the seriousness of sexual sin and we should be careful because if sin reigns in our life it takes us to hell.


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q23 What offices doth Christ execute as our Redeemer?
A. Christ, as our Redeemer, executeth the offices of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king, both in his estate of humiliation and exaltation.
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