It's an honor among all and let the marriage bed be undefiled. For God will judge the immoral and adulterous.

Keep your life free from the love of money

and be content with what you have,

for he has said,

I will never fail you nor forsake you.

It's interesting that the writer puts side by side

the marriage bed and money.

I wonder if that's a coincidence

since most marriage counselors would today put at the top of their list the trouble spots in marriage, money, and sexual relations,

wouldn't they?

Agreement in money matters and agreement and harmony in the

marriage bed are apparently not very easy to come by. Now our focus this morning is going to be on the former, namely sexual

relations in marriage, but I want to draw to your attention something that's coming here at Bethlehem.

May 20th and 21st, a Friday evening and a Saturday morning, we are co-hosting with the Minnesota

Baptist Conference a family conference on personal finances.

And I'm going to be there, and I hope that many of you will save that date and plan to come so that we can learn how

in a day of rampant inflation to be better stewards with our personal finances. But today we want to talk about mainly sexual

relations in marriage, though you're going to see I think there's an interesting correlation

from Hebrews between these two dimensions of our married life.

Let marriage be held in honor and let the marriage bed be undefiled. That is, let sexual relations in marriage be kept pure, clean,

without blemish.

And all those words, undefiled, pure, clean, without blemish,

...