It’s been a few weeks since I’ve been able to speak with you and I’d like to just kind of do a little review today of this past semester as we have worked through our theme on Divine Design.
And of course, our goal and purpose is to go back to God’s purpose and plan for man in both marriage and in life. And so, we’ve covered lots of subjects. We went all the way back to how do we do this, how do we understand the purpose of marriage, the purpose of manhood and womanhood. We talked about complementarianism and Mr. Benson talked about singleness. The last two weeks I’ve actually been talking about marriage and my intent was actually to be quite practical and so my first message was on Genesis 24. These were lessons that I learned while I was a college student as I worked through Scripture and studied it and worked through principles.
And so, one of the things that I’d like to just leave with you is the importance of living by principle. And that is that especially when you approach marriage and life, that you really need to be solidly committed to what the Scripture says, as opposed to being driven by what the world says or your own emotions, that you build on solid principles.
And then I gave a message this week on four things you need to know before you say “I do” before you get married, and really the very basic. And one is that marriage requires work, it requires effort. Everything in life requires effort. You can’t have good relationships without that.
And then marriage requires change. When I went into marriage, I knew that, but you really don’t realize it until you begin to experience it. And that change is really spiritual, it is a growing in maturity.
But I also said you can be happy in marriage. My wife and I have been married for 38 years and I’m so deeply thankful for my wife, her love for me, her commitment to the Lord, and her faithfulness to God.
And I said in the end that there’s a secret to marriage and that secret is the Gospel. In Ephesians, Paul says that husbands are to love their wives like Christ loved the church and the wife is to reverence her own husband like the church reveres, respects and loves Christ. And centering your life around the Gospel, but let me take it a step further. Centering your life around the church is so absolutely crucial. When you get out of Bob Jones University, when you get married and you step out into life, you need to connect with a solid, Bible-preaching church, where the two of you can grow together in the Lord, and you can grow together in service, and you can grow together in mutual fellowship with other Christians.
So, it’s been a great semester. We have a couple more sermons left here and looking forward to what’s going to be coming up.
Watch Dr. Pettit’s chapel messages on marriage:
Principles on Marriage
Four Things You Need to Know Before You Get Married
