Were the disciples right when they told Jesus, "It would be better not to marry"?  (see Matthew
19:10)  The Word of God is strict concerning divorce and remarriage, forbidding remarriage while one's
spouse still lives.  Also, as we understand the difficulties attending marriage, should we avoid marriage,
considering it hopeless to maintain a solid home and family?

 There is one response to that, which forms the backbone of a Christian home and family.  How can
a Christian family be maintained?  By proper family worship of God.  If a man and woman conduct family
worship as the Bible teaches, they need not fear that their family will go the way of the majority of families
and marriages.

 I make bold to say that this is the anchor of family life.  Or, to use our original metaphor, family
worship brings the foundation of the family down to bedrock.  No quake can shake loose the family that is
built on the love and worship of God.  With firm, joint commitment to family worship, we need not fear
marriage.

 In addition to the worship God calls His people to bring him on the Lord's Day, there is a worship
required by His people daily.  Deuteronomy 11:18-21 speaks of a private worship of God, especially in the
homes, and particularly with children.  Family worship is the tradition of God's church since the beginning.
Noah's first act outside the ark (even though his family was the church at that point) was to erect an altar
and worship God.  Abraham immediately after arriving in the promised land, built an altar.  When Isaac fled
famine, and God appeared to him to promise to be with him, Isaac "builded an altar there and called upon
the name of the Lord," with his family.  Concerned with his family's welfare, Jacob commanded his
"household and all that were with him to put away the strange gods" they had taken from the land of  their
uncle Laban. (Genesis 35).  In a marvelous, but little remembered passage, the book of Job (1:5) tells us
that "continually" Job rose up early in the morning and sanctified his children, worshipping God with them.
In addition, the Passover, the heart of Israel's worship, was really a family rite.

 The New Testament is no different.  Acts 10 says that Cornelius was "a devout man and one that
feared God with all his house," and that with them he "prayed to God alway."  Acquilla and Priscilla were
useful in the ministry of the gospel to the extent that they had been diligent in the study of the Word and
worship of God.  And how is it that one of the brightest lights in the early new Testament church was an
able and faithful minister?  Because his mother and grandmother had taught him to worship the Lord.  (see
II Timothy 1:5, 3:14,15)

 Conscientious family worship remained a practice among the faithful down through the ages.  Each
day began and ended with prayer.  All meals (and even baths) were preceded and followed by prayer
because, as the church father Tertulliam said, "the heavenly before the earthly."

 Luther's prayers and songs during family worship (conducted also for all the boarders in his home),
bear witness to the faithful family worship of those who loved the Lord.  Shortly after the Reformation,
Presbyterians, seeing the great need to maintain family worship, wrote a "Directory for Family Worship."

 By this article, we encourage God's people to restore a kind of family worship that has slipped
from the grasp of most.

 What does that include?  Briefly, it includes the Word of God read, explained, sung, and prayed,
with the family present and participating.  "These my words ye shall lay up in your heart and in your soul"
(Deuteronomy 11:18).  Just as in public worship, so in private worship, God's Word, and not man's. must
rule.

 Fathers are responsible to lead.  Where there are marriages and children, father should begin by
saying, "Let us worship our God."  this doesn't mean the mother is silent, for often she has insights into the
Word and the needs of children that the father doesn't have.  But the father is head of the home.  He makes
sure worship is conducted.  He is careful to study ahead of time the passage to be read, so that he can teach
the family.  He supervises, but encourages the whole family to participate and be active with comments and
questions.  If fathers are absent, mothers take over.  Those who live alone conduct their worship privately.

 Let the family worship be frequent and regular.  This does not mean that the Words of God is not
taught and does not rule throughout the day.  It just means that formal family worship should be regular and
often.  Families today are busy, but are responsible before God to set aside some time each day to be
together in worship. (see Psalm 55:17, Daniel 6:10).

 Family worship must be diligent.  As the Word was to be bound on the hearts of believers in Israel
(symbolically by binding the words on their hands, making frontlets on their forehead, writing them on their
doorposts), so the Word must be bound carefully upon our hearts in our worship.  No quick reading of a few
verses, hastily to pray and "get it over with," honors the Lord.  This is hypocrisy.  Our time with the Lord as
compared to our time for ourselves - what is it?  Our diligence (or lack of it) in worship indicates who we
are spiritually.

 Read the Scriptures.  There is a great danger that "Devotionals" take over in family worship, so
that one verse is read, followed by the reading of a comment on that verse by a minister who wrote the
devotional.  As profitable as devotionals may be, they should not replace reading of the Scripture
systematically and carefully.  Besides, devotionals, used for family worship, make the father spiritually lazy;
he has little need to teach and explain the word to the family.  That's fundamental.  The family needs the
word applied to their own specific, immediate needs.

 Explain the Scriptures.  God did not command parents to "read the commandments," but to
"teach them (to) your children, speaking of them . . ."  Only the parents know the particular needs, the
spiritual maturity, the troubles in the hearts of their children.  God's Word is such that it speaks to our needs
so wonderfully.  During family worship, we see the struggles of God's people with their sins, witness their
miraculous deliverance by God's grace, and observe their lives of gratitude.  Everywhere, we find Christ.
During the discussion of a particular passage, a Christian family grows together, spiritually.  They learn how
great their God really is, and together put their trust in Him.

 Sing the Scriptures.  What ever happened to family singing?  God must be worshipped!  Let us
sing!  Let us put to memory the Psalms, the sound biblical hymns, and give praise to God with our voices
every day!  We forget that worship is not just "what can I learn from the Bible" but "How can I worship
God?" (Our word worship comes from the old "worth-ship" meaning to acknowledge the great worth of our
God!)  In the familiar New Testament passages that speak of singing (Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3), the
apostle is not referring to worship in the church, but to private, family worship.  "Be filled with the Spirit,
speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart
to the Lord . . ."

 And then let us pray.  Modeling our prayers after the one the Lord taught us, we pray for the
sanctifying of God's name, the coming of His kingdom, the doing of His will, for our physical needs, for
sins forgiveness, for deliverance from evil.  At each point, we take into consideration the needs of the
family and God's church.

 Here the children learn to pray.  Here, we pour out our hearts to the God who has redeemed us
from sin and death, confessing our present sinfulness, our future hopes, our needs that only God can meet,
our utter dependence on the Lord our God.

 When we honor God in our family worship, He honors and blesses us (see Deuteronomy
11:21-25).  There is no other influence so great upon children as the home.  the Lord will bless families
who worship Him.  Children will be brought to faith and godliness.  And God will be praised.There is a religious teaching about sex in marriage that says that the only purpose of sex in
marriage is for procreation - for bringing forth children - and that all other uses of this gift of God are sinful
and not to be practiced by the Christian.  We take exception with this teaching.  We oppose its teaching on
the basis of the Bible.  We believe that this teaching harms God's people to whom He has given a spouse.
In this article, we would like to explain why.

 For solid, Christian marriages, it is important to understand the bible's teaching regarding sex; and
not only regarding the Bible's prohibition of sex outside of marriage, but the Bible's teaching on sex within
marriage.  The Bible has important and specific instruction concerning this part of a husband's and wife's
behavior.

 Both the Old and New Testaments have something to say about sex in marriage.  In Proverbs, King
Solomon instructs his son about sex.  In the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul answers questions put to him
by a young, serious-minded church, about problems in marriage - questions about fornication, about
marriage and divorce, about fathers giving away their daughters in marriage and, yes, questions about sex in
marriage.  The church ought to give this instruction to her members.

 (This says something practical, by the way, to Christians today:  If we have questions about any
aspect of marriage, we should not go first to all kinds of books, but to God's Word, and to God's appointed
servants who are given by God for help in these matters.)

 The apostle Paul gives instruction in I Corinthians 7 about sex in marriage, and points out that is it
Necessary, Blessed, and God-Glorifying.

 Sex in marriage is NECESSARY "to avoid fornication."  This is a very realistic approach to sex
and marriage.  Realism demands that we acknowledge the very powerful desire created in man and woman
by God, a lesson the child of God forgets to his harm.

 The Bible teaches this in two ways.  First, the apostle Paul says, "to avoid fornication, let every
man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband" (verse 2).  This itself overthrows the
teaching that sex in marriage is only for producing children.  Second, he says, "it is better to marry than to
burn" (verse 9).  Paul is not teaching that one will burn in hell (although if one gives in to his sexual urges
outside of marriage without repenting, he will).  Paul ,means that it is better to marry than burn in one's
lusts.  Marriage is the remedy for that.

 Sex in marriage is also necessary because it is a "debt" one spouse owes to the other.  I Corinthians
7:3 says, "Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence:  and likewise also the wife unto the
husband."  "Due benevolence" is a careful way of referring to the sexual obligation of the one spouse to the
other.  Christian husbands and Christian wives owe it to their spouse to give themselves to each other
physically.  And because this is Jesus' command, you owe it to Jesus to give yourself to your spouse.

 The reason this is a debt Paul gives in the next verse.  "The wife has not power (really "authority")
of her own body, but the husband:  and likewise also the husband hath not power ("authority") of his own
body, but the wife."  Husbands and wives have "authority" over their spouse's body.  They "own" the other.
This does not mean that the husband may say, "You have a debt to be paid" for this debt is not demanded.
Each spouse must look at it from the viewpoint:  "What do I owe my spouse?"

 If Christian couples do not live in this way, Satan will tempt them for their abstinence.  This is the
teaching of I Corinthians 7 in verse 5.  When a husband does not give himself to his wife, or the wife to her
husband, the devil seizes the opportunity to tempt the other, and lead them to be unfaithful.  And then the
fault belongs as much to the one who withheld as the one who was unfaithful.  Jesus confirms this when He
said, in Matthew 5, that the one who puts away his wife for unbiblical grounds, causes her to commit
adultery.

 Sex in marriage is not only necessary; it is BLESSED.  We do not stop with saying that it is
necessary, as though that's the only reason couples engage in this act.  Hebrews 13:4 says, "Marriage is
honorable in all, and the bed undefiled."  All by itself, sex in marriage is a blessed and sanctified gift of
God.

 Genesis 2:24 shows that sex is not the result of sin, but was blessed by God before the fall.  "God
blessed them and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth."  And they had no
shame, as verse 25 shows:  "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed."
For us, the grace of Jesus Christ restores us to the right attitude and the right use of this gift of God.

 The Song of Solomon is unashamed in its description of this gift (chapter 1:3).  Or, read how a
wise father describes the blessedness of married life in Proverbs 5:15-19.

 But sex is blessed only when we keep in mind the Christian view of it.  In the thinking of
non-Christians, the marriage partner is only a tool for self-gratification.  The Christian perspective is
different, because it flows out of a Christian definition of love.  the Christian does not ask, "How can my
wife please me?"  He asks, "How can I please my wife?"  Not:  "What does my husband owe me?" but:
"What do I owe my husband?"  This is the uniquely Christian perspective of love that gives instead of takes.

 If this is the Christian perspective, then Christian parents ought to be ready and willing, yes, even
jealous, to teach this to their children.  Are parents concerned only to warn their children about the sin of
misuse of this gift, but never to teach its good and blessed use in marriage?  This is wrong and will result in
warped thinking and undue distress in the children's marriages.

 How should they be taught?  Not in school. This subject is too sacred, too private, too important to
be taught in public where the children are all herded into a room and the boys snicker behind their hands out
of embarrassment.  This is the parents' duty and privilege.  And if parents let television and the movie
theater educate their children about this gift, it will ruin them for their future marriages.  We have a
responsibility toward our children to teach them this part of good family life, too.  Good parents want to do
this.  Good parents are not ashamed of this.

 But sex is not everything.  It is the icing on the cake.  Young people (and married adults) ought to
be reminded of that, too.  A cake with only frosting is no cake at all.

 The main thing is the spiritual union between the husband and wife - their love for God, their love
for each other in Christ, their commitment to good, solid family life under Jesus Christ.  This must be
worked on - by prayer, by family worship, by good fellowship with other Christians, by dealing carefully
with sin and sin's influence in our lives.

 And the spiritual union can be served by the physical!  Married couples ought to be counseled to
have a bible by their bedside opened to the Song of Solomon, for bedtime devotions.  We must be so
spiritually minded that when we think of marriage, we think of Christ and the church.  For our love for our
spouse - our physical love - reflects our passionate love for Jesus Christ, and His powerful, saving love for
us.

 Remembering this, sex in marriage will be sanctified, truly pleasurable, and GOD GLORIFYING.