Kennystix's podcast
Marriage Lived to the Glory of God
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God is available at www.desiringgod.org. Before I pray, let me say some things about my own marriage because it seems to me that if I'm going to talk about marriage lived to the glory of God that you should know a little bit about me and be immediately relieved of any thought that I have a perfect marriage. I've been married to Noel for almost 38 years, if my math is right, 1968, December 21st. We have five children, four sons who are grown, married, and all of them have children. They range in age from 36 to 23, and then we have Talatha, who is 11 years old as of yesterday, Talatha we adopted when I was 50, so you can do the math, which is old to adopt a baby. She was eight weeks old when he adopted her, but if you've never had a daughter and you want a daughter, you do it, however you have to do it. My wife always wanted a daughter, and the Lord in his way gave a son, one son, two, son, three, son, four, and so we did daughter, five, and I think he was pleased with the way we did it. So we were walking through parenting a little one again, and now we're learning what it means to be a married couple parenting adult children with all of the pain and joy that that involves. I had the naive notion when I was 30 that parenting lasted until a child was 18, and then they're gone. That's not true. You never stop being a parent, that is you never stop carrying the burden that your children will walk with the Lord, that their marriages will last, that their children will grow up to know Christ, that they won't make shipwreck of their lives in any foolish way. You never get beyond carrying that burden. You do like Job every morning, you get on your face, and you intercede for your grown children that they will walk steadfastly with the Lord. Of course you do that with your little teeny ones as well. So that's the first observation. We've been married, well two, been married for 38 years almost, and we have five children. The third observation is that our marriage has been a tumultuous one, a difficult and happy one, difficult and happy one. I don't know many marriages that are not difficult, and I was praying with David here, the assistant who's traveling with me for you before we came over here, that in this room on the scale from bliss, marital happiness to marital misery, where some of you are right now, probably scarcely talking to each other, that God would minister to you, and that every one of you who is married or someday hopes to be married would go out feeling hope for your relationship. That's one of my goals for tonight. And so I thought it would be helpful just to say that I'm speaking out of a marriage of 37 years of mingled pain and ecstasy. At the end of the 80s there were 33 months in which my wife and I went to Christian counselors, a Christian counselor. So I just want to say openly, if you feel like the relationship is not working, you're not communicating in a way that is helping, it's only hurting, everything that comes out of your mouth seems to wound the other person instead of build them up. No matter how you work at it, it seems to get nowhere, do not as a pastor, do not be ashamed of seeking help. I was over my Bible thinking I'm a pastor of a large church, my marriage is a mess as far as I'm concerned, nobody knows it as well as I do, we're not communicating well, we're hurting each other by almost everything we say, as hard as I try to humble myself to speak in different ways and she, as hard as she tries, we just don't get it. And I was over my Bible wondering is Christian counseling biblical? And I drew the conclusion from reading the Proverbs that the reason there are wise men, wise women, sages in the world is so that when a couple needs a wise referee, that's the way I thought of it, a referee, somebody who listens to him, listens to her and says to him, that's not the way to say it and to her, that's not the way to receive it and back and forth, now you have a third person in the mix helping them hear the way they're being heard and I just want to say if that's where you are, as a pastor, a model marriage, a model marriage, do not be ashamed to go to your elders, deacons, whatever you have and say would you guys support me if I sought out a Christian counselor to be a referee so that my wife and I could learn to love each other better, show love better? So that happened for 33 months for us and you need to know that because I'm going to set some pretty high standards here in just a moment and I'm not naive, okay? I'm not stupid when it comes to pain in marriage, let's pray. So father I asked that you would come and strengthen the marriages of these brothers and sisters who are married in this room. Take the ones that feel like it just couldn't get any better and make it get better and take the ones who feel like it can't even last and make it not only last but get really good. Father I know there's hope beyond where it seems like there's no hope and so I pray that you would awaken God centered Christ exalting hope in these marriages. Bless the churches with strong pastoral families. Don't let any of these brothers make shipwreck of their churches or their marriages. Don't let any disrepute be brought upon the name of Christ by divorce in the Parsonage. So come and help me to that end, I pray in Jesus' name, amen. One other thing came to my mind while I was praying by way of introduction that helped me, still does help me, it helps me when I counsel families, counsel couples who are feeling hopeless about the relationship. I tried to help them imagine something because I've done this, I still do it. Here you are, you're 40 years old, you've been married for 15 years, say, and it feels like it's a mess, it's just a mess. I can't live with this woman another 30 years, you think. And I say, now look, you think you should bail out on this marriage here and this relationship. I want you to imagine something, this is what Noel and I imagine. I want you to imagine you're now 75 years old, your gray hair, your skin is all wrinkled, she's not shapely anymore and you're not shapely anymore. And you're sitting across from each other at a little restaurant on the shores of Lake Superior and outside little birds are jumping between the bushes, the little waves are rippling, the sun is shining, and you're looking at each other across this table at age 75. Don't you want to be able to look into her eyes at age 75 and with tears perhaps running down your face say, we made it, we made it. I want that more than $10 million. I want to look into my wife's eye when I'm 75, which is very close, it feels very close if I make it. And I want to look into her eye and say, Noel, it was hard at times and I'm very glad that you're here and I'm here, we made it. That will be sweet, it will be worth it all, it will be worth it all to be able to say at 75 or 80 or 85, we made it. My topic is marriage lives to the glory of God. Now the word for in marriage lived for the glory of God is the key word. It's not the other way around, it's not the glory of God for marriage. You got to get your priorities right, it's marriage lived for the glory of God. That little word means there's a priority to God. God is ultimate, marriage is not ultimate. And if you needed a Bible verse for that, you know where you would go, don't you? They asked Jesus, okay, she's been married to seven men because they all died. Now when they get to heaven, who's her husband? They thought they had him tripped, polygamy in heaven. And Jesus said, you are not knowing the power of God or the Scriptures, for in the age to come there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage, means your marriage is temporary and it's over. That's very sobering. God is supreme and ultimate and eternal, marriage is for a season and then my father, my mother died when I was 28, I did my father's second marriage a year later and I'm thrilled to do it. Twenty-five years later, his second wife died. He's not married again, he's 86 years old. Now he has two wives and they're both in heaven, I don't doubt it. And very soon my dad will be there. Will he be a biggomist, a polygamist? He will not because there is no marriage in the age to come, no marriage in heaven, which means that all of our romantic notions when he sings our songs, eternally, eternally, blah-blah-blah, it will not be eternally, not that way, not that way, it will be better. Nothing gets worse in heaven. That's good news. At least if you enjoy sex, it's good news and all other good things in marriage, it only gets better in heaven. Marriage exists to magnify the truth and worth and beauty and greatness of God. That's a rehearsing of what we said already today. We're answering the question why does marriage exist and we're answering it the same reason everything exists. It exists to magnify the truth and worth and beauty and value and greatness of God. Marriage exists to make God look good. That's why marriage exists to magnify God. I didn't today say something that I need to say now about the concept of magnifying God. I've got my favorite illustration. You can magnify something with a microscope or you can magnify something with a telescope and microscopes magnify in one way and telescopes magnify in another way. Concepts magnify by making little, tiny things look bigger than they really are. And telescopes magnify by making unimaginably big things which look small to the naked eye look more like they really are. Now I give you a little quiz here. When the Bible says that marriage or you should magnify God, should you do it as a microscope or a telescope? Yes, telescope, if you said microscope, you're a blasphemer. You can't make God look bigger than he is. And if you try, you blaspheme. And so let's just get this clear. For our young people, for ourselves, for everybody, when the Bible talks about magnifying Christ, it doesn't mean doing it like a microscope, like poor Christ. He's just like a little tiny virus or a little tiny bacteria. And he needs our help to look bigger. No, no, no, no, Christ is like a galaxy. And on a night sky when the world is at its best, it looks up and sees a little pin prick and wonders what that is. I wonder what that is. That's what the world feels about God. I wonder what that is, that little pin prick of significance in the universe. And if you could put their eye to the Hubble telescope about a million miles away from the Earth and let them look at that galaxy, they would discover it's not a pin prick. It's millions of light years across. That's the way God is. Knowledge exists to help people put their eye to the telescope and see God for who He is. Now that is a calling that surpasses all of our abilities. And that's the kind of callings we should live for. God is unimaginably great, infinitely valuable, unsurpassed in beauty. Right is the Lord and greatly to be praised. From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. That's Romans 11, 36, or Colossians 1, 16 about Christ. He is supreme above all things and all things were made through Him and for Him. Woe to us, woe to us if when we hear the words all things were made, including marriage, all things were made for Him, woe to us if we mean for His help. It doesn't mean for His help, He doesn't need your help. We know that because Acts chapter 17, verse 25, Paul says, "God is not served by human hands as though He needed anything, but He Himself gives to all men life and breath and everything." God is not served by human hands as though He needed marriage, as though He needed pastors. Or Mark 10, 45, "The Son of Man came not to be served." We should just pause right there and let it sink in. The Son of Man came not to be served, so watch out lest you serve Him as though He needed anything. There are ways to serve which do not meet God's needs, but receive our needs from Him and find the power to meet the needs of other people. That's service. God is the giver we receive and spill over to the benefit of other people. God does not benefit from our supplies of His needs. He has no needs, which is why He can be a fountain and not a watering trough where we carry our buckets of labor and duty and dump them in for Him to drink. God is a fountain. We're thirsty. God is bread and we're hungry. God is riches and we're poor. We're always the receiver in this relationship. So to serve Him, that is to live for Him, is not to improve upon Him. It's to take His perfection, be so deeply satisfied by it that we become servants of other people. We need to let this sink in that we exist for God in that way. That God is absolute and we are not absolute. We are dependent upon Him. God never had a beginning. God will never have an ending. God therefore never is coming into being. He is never developing. He is absolutely. I am who I am, says the Lord. Whereas we, we come into being, we develop, we are totally dependent on Him. God is absolute and we are not. The universe is not ultimate reality. It is not ultimate reality. The universe is of secondary importance. I was talking this over with my, my assistant here, David, and thinking, "There are some very simple truths in the world. We hardly ever say them and they are mind-blowing." And that's one of them. How many people in Montreal or all of Quebec say, "The universe is of secondary importance?" Not many. That's one of the most basic truths in the universe. The universe is of secondary importance. If that's not a truth that is at home in your heart, something is profoundly wrong with your heart. And you are of secondary importance because you're part of the universe. God is of infinite importance. God is more important than marriage. God is very much more important than marriage. God is infinitely more important than marriage, which is why marriage should exist to call attention to that. That's why marriage exists, to call attention to that truth which our culture in North America does not believe, and when they think about it, dislikes very, very much. So there's the starting place for us in understanding marriage. We mustn't get this wrong. If we get this wrong, namely that God is infinitely more important than marriage, everything in marriage goes wrong. To get this wrong, it all goes wrong. We exist in marriage to display the truth and the worth and the value, the beauty, the greatness of God. Now that leads to a very simple conclusion, namely that we should love God more than we love our wives and love God more than we love our husbands. Very simple. We should esteem God more than we esteem our spouse. We should value God more than we value our spouse. Our passion for God should be a bigger passion than our passion for this woman, in bed or out of bed. It should be bigger. That's very simple, very obvious and very controversial and shocking and life-changing. Most young people today do not bring to their courtship and their marriage a vision of God and who He is and what He's like and how He acts. In the world there's almost no vision of God, He's not even on the list to be invited to the wedding. He's simply and breathtakingly omitted. That's where the world is. God is omitted. He's just neglected. That's where He is. That's breathtaking. In the church, the view of God that couples bring to their relationship is so small instead of huge and so marginal instead of central and so vague instead of clear and so ineffective instead of all determining and so uninspiring instead of ravishing that when they marry the thought of living marriage to the glory of this God is an idea if it exists at all without any meaning. What would the glory of God mean to a young wife? What would the glory of God mean to a young husband who spends almost no time thinking about getting to know the glory of God? What would it mean, the glory of His eternality that makes the mind explode with the thought that He didn't begin and He doesn't end? What would they make of the glory of His knowledge that makes the Library of Congress look like a children's book and quantum physics look like a beginning reader? What would they do with the glory of His wisdom that makes Him free from all human counsel? Who has ever been His counselor or who has ever given a gift to Him that He should be repaid? What would they make of God's authority over heaven and earth and hell so that no man and no devil can move one inch without His permission? What would they make of the glory of His providence without which not one bird anywhere in Canada falls to the ground and not one of our hairs turns white? What would they make of the glory of God's Word that upholds the universe by the Word of His power and keeps all the atoms and the molecules together by speaking them together? What would they make of the glory of His power to walk on water and cleanse lepers and give sight to the blind and hearing to the ear and walking to the lame and stealing storms and raising the dead? What would they make of the glory of God's purity so that He never sinned and Jesus never had two seconds of a bad attitude? What would they make of the glory of His trustworthiness so that He never breaks one single promise, nothing of His mouth ever falls to the ground? What would they make of the glory of His justice by which God settles all accounts in the universe justly either on the cross or in hell so that you know justice will be done for every wrong that's ever been committed in the universe? What would they make of the glory of His patience when He endures your dullness and my dullness decade after decade after decade? How will they make of the glory of God's obedience in His Son sovereign obedience slave-like obedience embracing the excruciating pain of the cross because His Father said let's do this, son. What will they make of the glory of His wrath, wrath that will one day cause the whole world who has not believed to want rocks to crush them to death quickly lest they have to look upon the face of the wrath of the Lamb? What will they make of that glory? What will they make of the glory of the grace of God that justifies the ungodly? What will they make of the glory of the love of God that dies for us while we are yet sinners and on and on and in other words when a couple comes together and they spend almost no time in their teenage years almost no time in their adult, young adult years and now in marriage almost no time passionately trying to get to know the glory of God how are they going to live for the glory of God, they don't even know Him. How are people going to live their lives and their marriages to display this God when they devote almost no time to vividly seeing Him and loving Him and cherishing Him? Now perhaps you can see why I said in the question and answer today that my ministry is really based on some really simple observations and what have I said that doesn't lie on the face of Scripture? There's no fancy footwork here, no nimble, subtle exegesis here. This is just theology 101, God is great. And my life mission and our church's life mission and you don't have to use these words, you can find your own words, is I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things including marriage for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. It's so simple, so basic and it's what the world needs to hear and what Christians need to hear, what married couples need to hear. Churches lived for the glory of God are the fruit of churches permeated by the glory of God. And churches are permeated by the glory of God when pastors are permeated by the glory of God. It's a river, it's got to start somewhere and it sweeps people into it and when people can see the glory of God as they're all satisfying passion, marriage is change, they change. You get two people and they are very self-oriented. You got war on your hands and if those two people suddenly become ravished with something outside themselves and outside the marriage, namely God, when they come back down here to live, everything's going to be different. So I will conclude again with my simple observation that if we want marriage to glorify the truth and worth and beauty and greatness of God, we must preach God more and marriage less. If we want to make a great impact on marriages, we must preach God more and marriage less. Now let me qualify that, not that we preach too much on marriage, but that we preach too little on God. I doubt that any of you has preached too much on marriage and my guess is that proportionately the glory of God unpacked in all of its magnificent specificity and fullness perhaps is not being unfolded as much as it should be. I wrote a letter to one of my sons about eight or nine years ago because he was far away from home and I was concerned from what he was saying and what I was watching that he might not be walking with God in the way I hoped he would. So I risked writing a long letter and in the letter I basically developed a metaphor of the sun in the solar system of life, the sun is the star at the center of mercury and Venus and earth and Mars and the planets and it's the sun that keeps the planets moving in a beautiful symmetry and order so that a year is a good thing in the life of the earth because the sun is exerting its massive gravitational power over these planets and I wrote to him and I said I'm concerned that one of the planets might be striving to become the sun around which everything else is to revolve and that God in his glory which is the sun that will hold everything in life including marriage and children and money and academics and relationships of all kinds will hold them in their proper orbit is shifting out of center and another thing is moving in and let me tell you son what's going to happen if you move the sun with its massive gravitational pull out of the center of the orbit of the planets of your life everything will be ruined everything will bang into each other the perfect orbits that God has designed for your life will not hold and I developed that in about three pages and sent it to him with fear and trembling that he might say something like I listened to your preaching for 18 years thank you very much I feared that could possibly be don't preach to me anymore and that is not what happened he called me on the phone and he said to me one of the sweetest things I've ever heard he said daddy read your letter and you're right that was happening and I want to thank you or to thank you for sending up the alarm marriage lived to the glory of God must have this massive sun with all of its untold heat and light and gravitational pull holding everything else in its proper orbit and if you move that out of center things will start banging into each other and be ruined so the key that unlocks a thousand doors in marriage and everywhere else is that superior satisfaction in God above all earthly things including above your spouse superior satisfaction in God is the source of the kind of long suffering and self denial that is required for a husband who wants to live like Christ and a wife who wants to live like the church in relation to Christ now that's an illusion to Ephesians 5 right Ephesians 5 says husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her and then it said wives you take your cues from the church as God willed her to be and you support and love and delight in and celebrate that husband's call to be leader and head and those two things are the hardest things in the world for this man to exercise leadership like Christ did and for this woman to exercise submission like the church should are impossible for fallen selfish human beings which means that a resource has to be found for the constant dying that is required of husband and wife in these two roles there must be daily dying in order for him to lead like Christ because he's not Christ and for her to submit like the church because he's not an ideal church they both are sinners and that makes things very complicated I should bring you up to date on the imperfection of the Piper marriage I feel out an accountability form for my executive pastor every week we are mutually accountable and I have a sheet of paper that asked me have you looked at any pornography have you misused any money there's about seven of these questions and one of them is on a scale of one to ten how is your marital marriage harmony one two three ten perfect one we're about to divorce and last week I think I circled three I almost always circle seven or eight I'll never circle ten because that's perfection but some weeks it's really good but I circled three here's the reason Monday a week ago we went to eat at Chipotle got Chipotle up here doesn't matter totally irrelevant observation we went to eat together and I wanted to approach an issue I was concerned about I wanted her to be doing something differently you don't need to know the details and I approached the issue and an hour later we couldn't talk to each other not out of rage not out of anger but out of an emotional paralysis of totally different perceptions of what was going on about forty five minutes into it I said I just wanted I just wanted to talk about this and it's not working and she said you're like a bulldog I didn't think I was like a bulldog I still don't think I was like a bulldog so I was upset maybe I was like a bulldog that did not get fixed for one week so picture yourself in our house for one week cool just cool no intimacy hardly touched each other every comment was subdued now the next Monday we always go out to eat on Monday that's our day off and so we have a state of the marriage lunch there it came again the next week this time we were at famous Dave's and you don't need to know about famous Dave's either and we were just sitting there because we both knew this is a mess this is just there's nothing to talk about except the issue and we can't and you can't yes you can you can imagine how hard I prayed all week long I'm gonna talk about marriage in Quebec I gotta get this fixed and I'm pleading with the Lord Lord if I'm a bulldog make me a puppy do whatever you have to do I can't remember the details I just know there were some tears at that table and she made a little step and I made a little step and and it's okay now we've done now a hundred times a hundred weeks like that plus isn't that awful just life now here the point is this underneath underneath my sin and her sin and I don't know who's the worst inner here probably me underneath those sins is a passion in both of us to find our contentment in God and not in each other now you can see I imperfectly we apply that but I just want you to know it's a massive foundation on which to be miserable there's never been a point I don't think in our marriage of thirty seven plus years where we have looked into each other's eyes with very great sadness and misery maybe haven't touched each other for weeks no sex for weeks in which our eyes would not say divorce is not an option because we're standing on a rock together as much wind is blowing as much sleep and snow is coming down on this rock we're standing on a rock and we're both going to the same rock to get strength to press on and we know that rock is sufficient we know that rock is going to get us through we know that rock will satisfy our souls to get us through long lean seasons when there's not much satisfaction going this way there can be coming this way and eventually that will suffice for me to humble myself the reason I said guys that loving a wife like Christ is hard is because headship headship is not mainly about bossing her around headship is mainly about going ahead and apologizing first even if you think it's her fault that is very hard husbands are called upon to lead out of misery no matter loose fault it is that is a very hard role to fulfill we would much rather say I'm the head it was your fault when you get fixed come talk to me if that's the way you lead your wife you're not leading when your kids will see that they won't ever want to be like that and they'll bail on this biblical model to be a head means to go ahead with the apology humble yourself like Jesus got on his cross when it was our fault was our fault and he crawls up on a cross to make it right how you doing husbands this is our job and it's an impossible job the only hope in my marriage is that God would heal me of my bull dogishness by teaching me what self-denial and crucified life means and my point is satisfaction in God not her is the key to doing that finding my satisfaction in God not her not her is the key to loving her we will only magnify God in our marriages if we love God more and love her less love God more and love her less so let me close by reading you a poem that I wrote for my son I'll tell you the background of this poem and then and then I'll stop I'll read it and then I'll stop my son Carson has three children been married 11 years and he asked me to write a poem to read at his wedding which just amazed me because my son Carson just spent a year in St. Andrews doing a master's degree in poetry he is a a world-class poet nobody knows poets so you don't know what that means poets are unheard of so for me to tell you my son is one of the best poets in the universe you will understand I'm exaggerate but he's very good and and I'm not I'm I am a roses a red violets of blue I'm just kind of a home spun I write poems for my kids on their birthday so he asked me to write this poem a poem and and I I worked hard on it and and the reason I'm reading it now is because it preaches this sermon another way and so listen listen in the poem for what I've been saying as a summary of tonight's message so the poem begins with me explaining how thankful I am that he asked me to write this poem and so on and then I get to the meat of the matter and tell him the secret the secret of glorifying God in his marriage which he has done now for these eleven years so here's here's the poem for Carson and and Rochelle at their wedding the God whom we have loved and in whom we have lived and who has been our rock these twenty two good years with you now bids us with sweet tears to let you go a man shall leave his father and his mother cleave henceforth unto his wife and be one unashamed flesh and free this is the word of God today and we are happy to obey for God has given you a bride who answers every prayer we've cried for over twenty years our claim for you before we knew her name and now you ask that I should write a poem a risky thing in light of what you know that I am more the preacher than the poet or the artist I am honored by your bravery and I comply I do not grudge these sweet confines of rhyming pairs and metered lines they are old friends they like it when I bid them help me once again to gather feelings into form and keep them durable and warm and so we met in recent days and made the flood of love and praise and counsel from a father's heart to flow within the banks of art here is a portion of the stream my son a sermon poem its theme a double rule of love that shocks a doctrine in a paradox if you now aim your wife to bless then love her more and love her less if in the coming years by some strange providence of God you come to have the riches of this age and painless stride across the stage beside your wife be sure in health to love her love her more than wealth and if your life is woven in a hundred friendships and you spin a festal fabric out of all your sweet affections great and small be sure no matter how it rins to love her love her more than friends and if there comes a point when you are tired and pity whispers do yourself a favor come be free embrace the comforts here with me know this your wife surpasses these so love her love her more than ease and when your marriage bed is pure and there is not the slightest lure of lust for any but your wife and all is ecstasy in life a secret all of this protects go love her love her more than sex and if your taste becomes refined and you are moved by what the mind of man can make and dazzled by his craft remember that the why of all this work is in the heart so love her love her more than art and if your own should someday be the craft that critics all agree is worthy of a great esteem and sales exceed your wildest dream beware the dangers of a name and love her love her more than fame and if to your surprise not mind God calls you by some strange design to risk your life for some great cause let neither fear nor love give pause and when you face the gate of death then love her love her more than breath yes love her love her more than life oh love the woman called your wife go love her as your earthly best beyond this venture not but last your love become a fool's facade be sure to love her less than God it is not wise or kind to call an idol by sweet names and fall as in humility before a likeness of your God a door above your best beloved on earth the God alone who gives her worth and she will know in second place that your great love is also grace and that your high affections now are flowing freely from a vow beneath these promises first made to you by God nor will they fade for being rooted by the stream of heaven's joy which you esteem and cherish more than breath and life that you may give it to your wife the greatest gift you give your wife is loving God above her life and thus I bid you now to bless go love her more and love her less so father I pray for Noel and me and for these couples and these single people that you would help us to love you more and love each other less than we love you that we might love each other more than if we didn't love you more teach us that if we don't find our satisfaction in your supremacy in your supreme worth and beauty and greatness we will not have the resources for this massive challenge called marriage so grant I pray that across these churches there would be a saturation with the glory of God and that souls and minds and hearts and marriages would be permeated with the glory of God and so would you transform everything Lord would you preserve these marriages would you make them strong and beautiful would you cause Christ and his church to be seen like a parable on the way humble husbands lead like Jesus and the way humble and wise and creative and articulate strong wives celebrate that kind of leadership oh God make it beautiful make it beautiful for the sake of the church for the sake of the cities for the sake of the nations and above all for the sake of your glory I pray in Jesus name amen. Thank you for listening to this message by John Piper pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis Minnesota. Feel free to make copies of this message to give to others but please do not charge for those copies or alter the content in any way without permission. We invite you to visit desiring God online at www.desiringGod.org there you'll find hundreds of sermons articles radio broadcasts and much more all available to you at no charge. Our online store carries all of pastor John's books audio and video resources you can also stay up to date on what's new at desiring God again our website is www.desiringGod.org or call us toll free at 1-888-346-4700 our mailing address is desiring God 2601 East Franklin Avenue Minneapolis Minnesota 55406. Desiring God exists to help you make God your treasure because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Love between husband and wife flourishes when you put God first. Only when you love God most will your life sync up with what God intends.