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What we're seeing here today is something powerful. I want to minister about marriage as the foundation of society.
Let me start with Matthew 19:4. Jesus answered and said: "Have you not read that he who made them in the beginning made them male and female? A man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So then there are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together let no man separate."
This text shows us that marriage is God's plan. Jesus Himself is speaking about what God did in Genesis. Marriage is meant to be a blessing for us.
I was reading some articles recently with statistics showing that if you have a good marriage, it's very good for your health. People with good marriages usually have better health outcomes. A good marriage also helps people financially—two people working together and building a home fare better than one.
I cannot even list all the benefits of raising children in marriage. In a couple of weeks, I'm starting a new series called "Fatherhood," and the research on what it is to grow up with a father in your home is striking. The statistics are off the chart.
About a year ago, a friend of mine bought a property and asked me to look at it. He was doing renovations—moving walls to create a bigger, open-plan front room and kitchen. It looked really nice, and he was feeling proud.
But then he told me something alarming: the ceiling collapsed.
When they took away one of the walls, they didn't realize it was a load-bearing wall. When they removed it, the ceiling came down. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but it took a lot of work to fix.
Here's what I want to tell you: marriage is a load-bearing wall. When you remove marriage and don't understand what you're doing, things collapse. Things go wrong. We're seeing that in society today.
Me and my wife literally flew in yesterday from our Bible Conference. I had to preach in West Virginia, and due to a ticket mistake, I had to fly from West Virginia to Atlanta, then Atlanta to New York, then wait a night in New York, then fly to Manchester, then get the train from there. I am tired!
But something interesting happened. On each flight—West Virginia to Atlanta, to New York, to Manchester—the planes themselves were fine. Everything on the flights was perfect. But there was one problem: they couldn't get the bridges or jetways to connect properly with the planes. We had to sit and wait. In Manchester, they couldn't even get the jetway to work; we had to walk down stairs and take buses.
Here's the point: you can have everything going well in life. We can have technology, economics, education, sophistication. We can invent AI and Bluetooth. But if marriage isn't working, if families aren't working, things are not connecting right.
We're starting to realize it very quickly. Depression is up more than ever—especially in young people. When I was growing up, I never heard of a young person being depressed. We probably were, but we didn't know how to articulate it. Now we're seeing people more and more confused about their identity.
More and more, there's no marriage. I was looking at statistics for areas where there is no marriage—there's more likely to be poverty. It has an effect on all of us. It is from the breakdown of marriage that these things are going down.
Marriage is meant to be a good foundation for us. Proverbs 18:22 says: "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord."
All the married men say Amen! We have a lot of married men in this church. Most of them came in single, but they're real men—red-blooded, real men. We're raising men in this church, and they're the real deal. They said, "I want to get married. I want to start a family. I want to be productive to society." So they found a wife, and their wife said, "Okay, I see you doing something." And they're married, and it's a blessing.
The Bible says: he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from God. God has instituted marriage, and He blesses marriage. You gain His favor from marriage.
If you want God to bless your life, it's very simple: do what God says to do. Sometimes people do what they want, live how they want, do all those things, and then go to God and say, "God bless me, God bless me!" But that's not how it works. God says, "When you do what I want you to do, when you live the way I want you to live, I will bless that."
We tap into favor this way. This is what is needed.
When my friend's ceiling collapsed, the problem wasn't with the ceiling. The problem was that they removed the walls that were holding it up.
A lot of people see the problems in society today, and I believe there are problems. We've got wars. We've got people hurting. We've got so many things going on in the world. But we've chosen something that's quite popular: to complain and campaign.
People want to campaign about the problems. "This is a problem. Everyone sees the problem." But what few people are speaking about is the reason for these problems. Where is this coming from?
Just like in my friend's house, the ceiling wasn't the problem. The problem was that he removed something that was holding it up.
When things are collapsing in our lives and things are going wrong in society, people are campaigning and saying, "You got to do this, you got to do that." Some of that is good; some of it might not be. But what many people are not campaigning for is more marriage. What many people are not speaking about is the correlation between the breakdown of the family and the good, faithful marriage.
We can be passionate about saving the planet, going green. But who are you saving the planet for? If we all get more depressed and more anxious and society collapses, we may have loads more trees, but we'll all be nuts! That's what people are doing—throwing orange everywhere because we need to save the planet.
"What about the future? Think of the children!" Okay, let's think of the children. Children do better in marriages. Imagine if I was stopping traffic talking about marriage: "Why are you not getting married, bro?" Imagine if the church did that, campaigning on the M1: "Come on, you got to get married!" Society does better with marriage. People would think we were mad!
Now, I'm not saying the planet doesn't matter. I'm not saying don't recycle. But if we are going to do these things, we must also look at this very foundational thing, which is marriage.
There's been a shift—a shift from looking at the foundation of life to more people being focused on the gratification of life. What I mean by that is pleasure. We are so focused on our feelings and our emotions that we've not considered: what foundation are we building for the future?
What Robert and Charlene are doing today is not just hooking up. This is not just moving in. This is not just boyfriend-girlfriend. This is not just a thing. It's not about, "Yeah, you know, Charlene is his main squeeze." No. She's his wife. She's his wife. That's a big difference from having a baby father or a baby mother.
Let me give you a story from years ago when I was a kid growing up. We went down Oxford Street, and my friend showed me a sports shop—JD Sports—the first time I'd ever seen this brand. This was 35 years ago. There was a shop called JDS, and I believe it was the only one I knew of in London.
We looked at all these trainers and shoes. My friend bought some Jordans and some kickers. He wore them straight out of the shop! He was feeling hot to trot, rolling down Oxford Street, feeling himself.
But about three months later, they were getting old. So what did he do? He started picking at the stitching. Then he took them back to JDS and said, "Look, this is faulty." They said something wasn't right, so he went to Consumer Advice. They said it was faulty, so he got a replacement. He got new kickers and did the same thing—three months later, picked at the stitching again. He did this about five times. He got five pairs of free shoes!
Here's the point: that works with JDS. That does NOT work with life. You can't just go around picking up multiple people. You can't order different sizes and colors online, try them all on, and return the ones you don't want when it comes to relationships and marriage.
The decisions that we are making have repercussions in our society. The children that we are having have repercussions. I'm not judging anybody. My mother and father were not married. I did not grow up with my father. I grew up with just my mother on a council estate in Kennington.
I'm not here pontificating about how it should be done. I'm not a politician talking and never living it. What I'm saying is that the decisions my family made—that my mother and father made—had ramifications on me.
That's why God says: I have given you this institution called marriage. I have given you this thing, and this thing is going to be a blessing to you—to your mind, to your health, to your finances. I've given you this thing called marriage. It's going to bless your children and your children's children if it's done right.
Not only that—it's going to bless society.
The decisions you're making—and I'm making—today will lead to either generational wealth or generational poverty. Your children's children are either going to say, "Thank God they did that," or "I wish they didn't do that."
The Bible says in Proverbs 13:22: "A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children, but the wealth of sinners is stored up for the righteous." It is better to invest in your children than to give it all to Gucci, Balenciaga, BMW at the end of your day.
I was at a funeral recently. I've been to a few funerals over the last year, and you get to the graveside at a solemn time. I was looking at what it said on the graves. I was thinking about how all these people were alive at one point. Every single one of you are heading there.
When I read those gravestones while we were waiting for the casket to come, I said to one of the guys in the church with me: "Look what it doesn't say." It doesn't say how much they earned. It doesn't say how many girlfriends or boyfriends they had. It won't say how many followers they had. It doesn't say their IQ. No one puts their IQ on their tombstone. It doesn't say the car they drive or the value of their home.
What it always says is usually something connected to how they related to people: "Beloved husband," "Dear wife," "Beloved son," "Beloved mother or father." Every single one of them had something like that—something to do with the family, something to do with the foundation.
The word of God tells us: a good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children. The decisions you're making today—are your children's children going to say, "Thank God they made that decision"?
This is convicting. This is challenging. I think of how much money I've wasted on things, how much time I've wasted on things.
Marriage is a good foundation for the future. What Robert and Charlene are doing today—this is not just hooking up. This is building a foundation.
I want to bring this to a close. There's a lot going to happen today. It's going to be a great day. But I want to tell you: we need to think carefully about our marriages and about marriage. Marriage is the foundation, but I want you to also think very carefully about what you're building your marriage on.
It's more than economics. It's more than money. It's more than looks.
My wife's mother and father are Nigerian. My mother and father are not Nigerian. My father is Jamaican; my mother is Irish. When my wife and I started dating, our families had stereotypes between Jamaican and African cultures. But when I told my mother I was dating someone, she never said, "Don't marry an Irish woman." She didn't care about her ethnic origin.
Why? Because my mother is a Christian.
But what my mom did care about—she asked: "Does this woman know Jesus? Does she love Jesus?"
After 20 years of marriage, me and my wife are still together. I've known people who are both white get married—not married anymore. I've known people who are both black get married—not married anymore. I've known two Italians get married—not married anymore. I've known rich people get married—not married anymore. I've known two poor people get married.
Me and my wife are an anomaly to some minds. We're very different. We come from different backgrounds, different cultures. But we're still together. We're still in love. We're still making impact for God. We're still being used.
But it's not because of culture or economics or looks. It's to do with Christ.
See, marriage is the foundation for society, but marriage needs a foundation. And the foundation of marriage is Jesus Christ.
Matthew 7:24. Jesus speaks: "Therefore whoever hears these words of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon a rock. The rains descended, the floods came, the winds blew and beat on the house, and it did not fall, for it was founded on a rock."
Unfortunately, we don't want to mention it in a day like today, but marriages do collapse. But I'll tell you this: when a marriage collapses, it means it's not built on Christ.
When you build your life on Christ, you will have a firm foundation. When a man and a woman say, "We will obey Christ. We know what he says. Sometimes we don't want to do it, but we know what he says, and we will do it"—the Bible says you're like building on a firm foundation.
The rain and wind will come. Hard times will come. Finances may go down or go up. Sickness may come in and go out. All different things can happen. People may not like you or may like you.
But when you're built upon Christ, the wind and the rain will not blow you over. You will not be moved. Your marriage will stand.
But let me give you the blessing here: This is not just for marriage. This is for life.
You may be single here. Jesus wants to be your foundation.
You may be broke or very affluent here. Jesus wants to be your foundation.
You could be black or white. Jesus wants to be your foundation.
You could be male or female. He wants to be your foundation.
If you are building your life on anything else, we will see it will fall.
This year we have an election. People don't even know who. I've never in my life seen it like this. Even the papers—these two—I'm not making a political statement. I'm just saying what the sentiment of many people are. America has an election, and it's even worse. I'm not even going to get into that.
If you're putting your hope in the White House, or in 10 Downing Street—well, they're good people. I vote. I think it's important to do your civic duty. But when it comes to my life and my future, I don't really care who's in 10 Downing Street. As long as I'm building my life on Christ, no matter what they do, I will lay up an inheritance for my children's children.
Today I want to ask you a question, and you just answer in your heart: Is Christ your foundation? Are you listening to him? Are you obeying him?
The first thing you got to do is be born again. Jesus says: "Unless you're born again, you shall not see the kingdom of heaven."
I'm sure there's a lot of people here who go to church, maybe, but you're not born again. You know about church. You grew up in church. Your mom and dad went to church, but you're not born again.
Today God wants to give you this opportunity to make him your foundation. I want to promise you: your life will not collapse. He will keep you. He loves you. He brought you here.
As we celebrate this couple's wedding today, remember: it's more than an event. What they're doing is not just blessing them—it's helping us, because we believe this is the foundation for human society. We believe this is a blessing for us, and we urge them and pray for them that they will continue to build their life upon the foundation of Christ.
Some of you have come to a wedding today. We're so glad you came. We really do appreciate it. But we want to give you an opportunity to maybe make some adjustments with God and say, "God, you know what? I want to make you my foundation."
I want to tell you: that's the best decision you could ever make.
I want every head bowed, every eye closed. We're just going to pray and close off on a word of prayer. I appreciate everybody's patience here. You've come here today to celebrate a marvelous day, a wonderful day. But maybe, as I was speaking, the Holy Spirit—God—was almost like tapping on your shoulder. God is tapping on your heart, saying, "When he was talking about making me the foundation, you haven't done that."
But I want to give you an opportunity today—whether online, whether seated in this place. You can be single. You can be married. You can be older. You can be younger. You can be anything here. But I'm telling you: if you make him your foundation, you will be blessed.
If that's you here, say, "Pastor, I want to do that." Pray this prayer with me. I'm going to pray right now. Just say this in your heart, but say it from your heart:
Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for my sin. Please forgive me. I receive you as my Lord and Savior. Help me to know you and live for you the rest of my life. In the name of Jesus, I pray.
With every head still bowed, every eye still closed.
