The Greatest Gospel Story NEVER Told!

Introduction

Last year we spent most of the year focusing in on the biblical idea of Identity. How we see ourselves, compared to what God says about us can often be two entirely different things. And for us to love God well, we have to have a proper understanding of who we are.

Today we are starting a new series on called A Fruitful Marriage. This series is intended to help us see that marriage, which was created by God should produce something in us. It was designed to do that. It should produce fruit. And we will get there, but this is the first sermon in the series, so I’ve got to lay some foundation.

With that said, this series is probably going to be a battle. The world, the flesh and the enemy do not want us to have good marriages. They work against us. I want to start with this quote today…

There is no estate to which Satan is more opposed as to marriage.

Martin Luther

I agree with Luther. There is nothing more dangerous to the kingdom of darkness than for Christian men and women to have good marriages and to raise godly children. This is the biggest threat to secular society and it should be the church’s number one goal to train people in this area. So I want to start by covering my bases and then we are going to dive right in…

As we launch into this new series, I want to encourage you if you are not married. We have a few single folks here. If you are single, I promise that there is a lot to learn from this series, including what to look for in a spouse and hopefully a realistic idea of what marriage is like. If you are divorced or widowed or you just want to remain single, you can apply most everything I’m talking about to other relationships as well. And this is because these are universal gospel truths. The gospel is all about relationships in one sense - our relationship with God and then our relationship with others. Paul says we’ve been given the ministry of reconciliation, which is to say our relationship with God has been reconciled, but we are also used to bring about reconciliation within relationships as well. So this series should have something for everyone and if you are not married and sitting here, do me the favor of listening with an open heart and allowing God to speak to you through this.

With that in mind, let’s read from God’s word today.

Ephesians 5:21–33 ESV

submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Today we start with a passage we will surely reference throughout this series. This passage is one of the longest passages we have in the Bible on the subject of marriage and it’s also a controversial one to some people since Paul uses word like submit.

While I don’t have plans to touch the controversy around this passage today, I do want to say, at any point if you want to discuss what we are talking about here, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. The context of this passage is that it comes just after Paul is encouraging the church in Ephesus to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit and to give thanks to the Lord by singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Essentially, he’s saying get together and have church.

He then uses this idea to launch into this encouragement on relationships. He starts with marriage, but he also touches on children and parents as well as bondservants and masters or what we might call our work relationships. All of this is part of one big idea for Paul and he spends a great deal of time unpacking marriage. Now I believe he does this because he sees marriage as a picture of something else and we will get back to that in a few minutes. But first I want to ask you something.

I want to ask you, what is the goal of marriage? Some of you might say to love each other well or to build each other up or to glorify God and I would respond simply with those are the means to the goal, but not the goal itself. The goal itself is much bigger. It’s something that we have to strive for and we don’t actually ever obtain it. We work towards it always, knowing that it will always be a work in progress. So what’s the goal of marriage?

The Goal of Marriage Is To Become One Flesh

The two shall become one! That’s it! Paul says therefore, in other words, because of everything I just said, for this reason, man will leave his father and mother and cleave, cling to, hold fast, glue himself to, be joined with, his wife…and the two shall become one flesh…

Now, this is big so let’s take it apart real quick. First there has to be a separation from the father and mother. Lots of people struggle with this. I’ve seen couples where the parents won’t allow the separation to take place. The entire point of having children is to raise them up (Paul says this is in Ephesians 6:4), which means to grow them into or to push them out of the nest. And a lot of parents have a hard time with this. For some men, it’s about forever remaining a momma’s boy. You never separate. For women, it can be the same. Either way, that separation never takes place and the marriage is stunted, it’s not allowed to grow and flourish. There has to be a leaving.

Next there’s got to be a cleaving. This word means to be joined to or to be united with. This happens at the wedding. You are joined to your spouse. The picture here is that you are glued together. So, if you find yourself married and never spending time with your spouse, hello, that’s a problem. When you get married, you are choosing to be glued to each others hip! I know a lot of couples who are “Friends with benefits” but they aren’t doing the friends part. They are just enjoying some benefits, but they never see each other and never talk. That’s not marriage.

Marriage according to Tim Keller, at its essence, is friendship. It’s the ultimate friendship. It’s you finding someone that you want to have the deepest friendship possible with and choosing to live the rest of your lives together, glued to one another.

which is why…

Marriage Should Be Between Two Believers

Marriage should be between two believing, born-again people. If you are single, don’t look for someone based on looks, look for someone based on belief! Find a believer! If you are married, pray that your spouse becomes a believer because its too late, you are married, you made your choice.

Marriage with the ungodly is expressly mentioned, because it is a frequent and deadly snare. It has done more mischief in the church of God than tongue can tell. It is the wolf which devours the lambs.

Charles Spurgeon

Spurgeon is right here, we cannot talk about marriage without mentioning this - You can’t have a fruitful marriage without God. Period. That’s the bottom line. You must have God in your marriage if it’s going to produce fruit.

This happens in friendship. When we marry our ultimate friend, it allows us to really find true meaning in our marriages and when we find meaning in our marriages, they can be come fruitful. They become fruitful because marriage has a goal. It has something we are working towards. The goal of our marriages should be to become one flesh.

The greek word for flesh “sarka”, means body. But it’s more than just what we think about, as in our physical body. It’s our being. It’s who we are. The Bible uses the same word to mean people. As in people group or a person. It means every part of you. What it’s saying is this, two people are to become one person. That’s the goal.

When you get married, you are saying, it’s not about what I want to do anymore. It’s about what we do. It’s not about me doing my thing and her doing her thing, it’s about us doing our thing. We are one.

And this is a process. This isn’t something that happens overnight. Just because we said “I do” in front of the preacher doesn’t mean we are now one. We’ve been joined, yes, but it takes work to become one flesh. And you might be asking, why is this the goal? Why should we be striving to become one flesh? Here’s your answer…

Marriage Re-Presents The Gospel

Marriage re-presents the gospel in the most profound way. Marriage is the first institution that God creates. Marriage is wrapped up in the basis of our identity. We were created male and female and the reason for that, found in Genesis, is that it’s not good for man to be alone. Our identity is wrapped up in our need for not just community, but for intimacy and true friendship.

Jesus used marriage and weddings to describe the kingdom. It was a huge theme in his parables. 10 virgins waiting for the bridegroom, parable of the wedding feast and so on. Jesus seemed to believe that this was one of the primary ways for us to understand the gospel of the kingdom.

I think it’s because marriage and the gospel share similar goals. The essence of the gospel and the essence of marriage is oneness. We become one with our spouse through marriage and we become one with God through the gospel. In other words, we are looking at the same things. We are staring at the same goal.

Ultimately, I believe that marriage is pointing us to the gospel. It helps reveal the full essence of the gospel to us. We understand God better when we understand marriage better. We understand creation better, when we view it through the lens of marriage. We understand the end of all time better when we see us heading not toward our destruction but towards a wedding feast.

The one-flesh marital union is a signpost pointing to our relationship with Christ as our bridegroom. Once we reach the destination, however, the signpost becomes unnecessary. That one marriage—our marriage to Christ—will be so completely satisfying that even the most wonderful earthly marriage couldn’t be as fulfilling. Earthly marriage is a shadow, a copy, an echo, of the true and ultimate marriage. Once that ultimate marriage begins, at the Lamb’s wedding feast, all the human marriages that pointed to it, will have served their noble purpose and will be assimilated into the one great marriage they foreshadowed. The purpose of marriage is not to replace Heaven, but to prepare us for it.

Randy Alcorn, 50 Days of Heaven

This is what we are heading towards! We are preparing for heaven. Marriage prepares us for that. So if that is the goal and purpose of marriage, we should be striving for oneness. We should desire to be one with our spouse. We better reflect the gospel to the world by having really good marriages. When we are striving towards that goal, the goal of oneness, other people can better understand the gospel, which calls us into oneness with God.

This is the same principle for all of our relationships in one way. The church is called the body of Christ and when we love one another well, we are showing people the Gospel, we are demonstrating it to them. Now, in all these cases, it would be a tragedy to demonstrate the gospel and not share it verbally as well. Some believe that if you just live a good godly life, that’s enough, but Jesus says this gospel, this good news of the kingdom must be preached! So don’t neglect speaking the gospel to others as well as living it out in your daily life.

So what keeps us from accomplishing this? What is the enemy of not just good, but great marriages? Or what is the enemy of good relationships in general? It’s simple when you think about it. I’ll sum it up this way…

Self-Centeredness is the Antithesis of the Gospel

When we are self-centered or when we are focused on ourselves predominately, we are working against what the Gospel is all about. The gospel is about the two becoming one, while self-centeredness is about the one becoming two.

Self-centeredness is the opposite of what the Gospel is all about. The Gospel says I will lay down my life for you, while self-centeredness says you must lay down your life for me. See the difference?

“When two spouses each say, “I’m going to treat my self-centeredness as the main problem in my marriage,” you have the prospect of a truly great marriage.”

Tim Keller

Keller believed that this was the biggest source of conflict in marriage is self-centeredness, that most conflicts can be reduced down to this, if you just dig under the surface a little. I agree. This is one of the main reasons for conflict in my own marriage. When I look at the situation or the problem or just even approach the marriage trying to answer the question, “what will I get out of it?” I am looking at it all wrong! I’m putting my selfish thoughts and desires ahead of my wife!

DAVE

When doing couples counseling, one of the ways I’ve seen self-centeredness rear its ugly head is when the problems are framed in terms of “you” versus “I or We”. If you find yourself complaining about your spouse or friend or parent or whomever and you are constantly pointing the finger at them, you can rest assured that you have entered into an area of self-centeredness. Now, I’m not saying you are wrong, they may be treating you terribly, but I have found that sometimes our selfishness gets in the way from truly seeing things the way they are. We tend to think we are being treated worse than we are because we give grace to ourselves when we do something wrong and hold others to a higher standard. That’s human nature.

But if you can work to rid your self of any and all selfishness, you will see clearly what is actually going on in your relationships. And this is incredibly hard to do. Because I don’t know about you, but I love me some me. If I get tired, I take a break. If my wife takes a break, I wonder what’s wrong with her. If I need to buy something, I go get it, if she needs to buy something, I give her 20 questions on whether she needs it or not. Why is this? I’m selfish. This is the natural reaction of my flesh and the Christian’s job, according to the Apostle Paul, is by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the flesh. I have to kill those things. And when I do, that’s how you become one flesh.

If I kill my flesh and she kills her flesh, guess what happens? We become one. It’s no longer about my sinful thoughts, will and desires and it’s no longer about hers. It’s about us becoming one in Christ.

Conclusion

To close today, I want to take some time together and let’s root out some of the selfishness in our lives. I’ve prepared some prayer prompts for you today. Marriage has a goal. The gospel has a goal. If we are going to be one with Christ, we are going to be hard at work, putting to death the works of the flesh in our own lives. Those works are deeds of selfishness. They are us being self-centered rather than others-focused. So here are our prompts for the day.

Prayer & Journaling Prompts

Lord, reveal to me one area in my life that I am being self-centered?

Father, what is a practical thing that I can do to better serve my spouse or friends?

I’ll give you a few minutes to pray through these and after you have time to pray and journal, I will come back up here and pray for us and dismiss.