D6 - Voddie Baucham
I wish I had Voddie's session on video so I could post it and let you all watch it. He was phenomenal. His combination of knowledge, humor, communication skill, and passion make him a force to be reckoned with. I had never heard of Voddie before last week, so I was not sure what to expect. But now I know, if I have a chance to listen to him talk I'm going to take it.
His session was about marriage and culture; how the reigning culture of today is on a mission to destroy marriage and how we as the church need to stand in the gap and defend biblical marriage against the onslaught of popular culture. Society wants to debunk biblical marriage for a number of reasons. Those reasons all stem from what worldview you have, for example: if you are feminist you want to debunk biblical marriage because the man is the head, if you are homosexual you want to debunk biblical marriage because it is between a man and a woman only, if you are a secular humanist you want to debunk biblical marriage because it represents and illustrates faith in a God that 'doesn't exist', etc. The bottom line is that biblical marriage is under assault from all sorts of angles.
Why is biblical marriage worth defending? It is worth defending because it is something that God designed on purpose for us. We did not design marriage, God did. And if God designed it and created it then he gets to define it. So if, as Christians, we are going to defend Christianity, the veracity of Scripture, the existence of God, etc, we most certainly must be prepared to defend biblical marriage as well. This is especially hard when divorce rates are just as high, if not higher, in the Church than they are in the secular world. This cannot be. If we are going to defend biblical marriage then we need to stay married!...it's a groundbreaking concept, I know.
Your marriage can be a way to share the gospel to your kids, your siblings, your extended family, your neighbors, your co-workers, or even complete strangers just by the way you live and love one another. Marriage is the ultimate picture of Christ and the church. So if the husband is loving and caring for his wife and leading her like Christ and the wife is respectful and loving to her husband you are preaching the gospel to anybody and everybody who can see you!
Always be working on your marriage. Men always look for ways to love your wife, to sacrifice for her, and to cherish her. Wives always look for ways to show respect and love for your husband. And both husbands and wives, always look for ways to live out the gospel for your children, show them what it looks like to love unconditionally, to show mercy and grace, and to forgive.