JK Wedding Sermon

Selections/Paraphrases from “Marriage in Christ: A Study of Ephesians: Who is the Church?” —Spoken January 15, 2012 at Redeemer Presbyterian Church

Message: 1850 words apprx. Avg Speed: 14.6 minutes. // Slow Speed: 18.6 minutes.

Ephesians 5:21–33 NLT

And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body. As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Ephesians 5:22–33 NLT

For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything. For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. And we are members of his body. As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

1. What Marriage Is (Design)

1. What Marriage Is (Design)

29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

1. What Marriage Is (Design)

1. What Marriage Is (Design)

What’s the essence of marriage? What’s the definition of marriage? This is probably the New Testament spot in the Bible about marriage. Paul quotes the main Old Testament text on marriage, so you have it all right here. Down in verse 31, he says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” That’s a quote from .

When it says, “A man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,” some of you recall that older English translations say, “A man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.” The Hebrew word there in is the word that basically means covenant. A covenant is a deep, exclusive, permanent, legal and personal, binding commitment. A covenant.

The essence of marriage, then, is not a declaration of present love, as important as that is. To say, “I love you” is not marriage. You can say that and not be married. Marriage is not so much a declaration of present love; it’s the binding promise of future love. It’s a promise not to feel warm and loving all the time, because nobody can promise that. It’s a promise to be loving and tender and faithful and cherishing and serving, regardless of the ups and downs of emotions or circumstances, long term, through thick and thin.

That’s the essence of marriage. It’s a covenant. It’s not the declaration of present love; it’s the promise of future love. I don’t think I have to tell you (but I will anyway) this is a complete collision with our culture, which doesn’t see the most important thing to be covenant but chemistry. Many in our culture have decided that there is a serious problem with monogamy. What is that?

For example, in 2008, there was a moviemaker, Dana Shapiro … He was a single man, and he noticed a lot of his 30-something friends’ marriages were breaking up and they were getting divorces. So he interviewed 50 couples who were breaking up, and then he did a film about it. The film was called Monogamy. A year and a half ago or so, there was an article in the New York Times magazine about it. We’re using his statements, because his attitude is pretty typical. After doing all this study, his conclusion was that basically you couldn’t commit yourself to one person for good. There was this insurmountable problem. What was it?[1]

He observed that passion and physical chemistry need spontaneity. But marriage is, by definition, an obligation. What you do in marriage is a matter of duty because that’s a defining aspect of marriage. So if passion and chemistry need spontaneity and marriage is all about duty, marriage inevitably smothers it. It’s impossible to get that spontaneity, that chemistry, going, because the covenantal nature of marriage inevitably smothers it, so it’s not surprising that there’s a serious difficulty with marriage.

2. Delight In Marriage

Now in complete opposition to that, the great poet, W.H. Auden, said, “… any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.” Can I repeat that with the stress on the word any? Think about this. A brilliant man, a great poet, W.H. Auden, says, “… any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.” Why? Because, he says, marriage is “not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will.”

Why would that be? How could anybody say that any marriage (the creation of time and will), happy or unhappy, is more interesting than any romance, however passionate? Covenant is far more interesting than chemistry, in other words. How could anybody say that? Well, imagine a person with a view that chemistry is what really matters asking me a kind of antagonistic question.

Imagine the person coming up to me and saying, “Think of the first time you kissed your future wife. Ten years later, does it have the same electrical thrill to it??” My answer would be, “No, and I should hope not.” Here’s the reason why. That chemistry you’re talking about, that first electrical thrill, the very first time you kiss or touch somebody, is largely ego. It’s largely about you. That’s why you’re so excited. It’s not really love; it’s more ego.

What’s so thrilling and electrical about it is this person whom you think is pretty great is into you, is responding to you. So this deep need for affirmation you have, that every human being has, is getting filled. Of course that feels wonderful. I want you to know the incredible thrill of knowing this pretty great person likes you isn’t anything like the electrical thrill of actually loving the other.

See, that is all about you, but to actually love someone, to actually be so absolutely committed to somebody else’s joy and happiness and well-being that you would cut your right arm off, that you would die for that person … That’s a strong feeling. That’s passion too, and that’s not the same. You can have a so-called night of passion and not be willing to make any sacrifices at all, which shows it’s about you.

How does that other kind of passion, that other kind of thrill, develop? It takes a long time.

First of all, you have to get to know who that person really is.

At the very beginning, when you think you’re falling in love with someone, you’re always falling in love with your image of the person, not the real person. It takes a long time to find out who that person is, and vice versa.

Secondly, you have to make sacrifices.

You have to walk through difficulties. There have to be confrontations and reconciliations. As time goes on, it shifts from the thrill of this great person liking you to your love of that person, your desire for that person, your commitment to see that person flourish and thrive, even at great cost to yourself. That’s a passion too, and that grows.

That’s a thrill too, but it’s a thrill that contrasts with that first thrill the way a river contrasts with a mud puddle. It’s covenant, not chemistry. That’s the meaning of life. Any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate. The essence of marriage is covenant. It’s not the declaration of present thrill; it’s the binding promise of future, sustainable, reliable love.

The End Goal – The Destination of Marriage (The Kingdom of Love).

Marriage is All About Love

Marriage is All About Love

The tie between the design of marriage, love and covenant commitment in God’s design.

(NLT)

Romans 13:8–10 NLT

Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law. For the commandments say, “You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.” These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law.

(NLT)

8 Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law. 9 For the commandments say, “You must not commit adultery. You must not murder. You must not steal. You must not covet.”* These—and other such commandments—are summed up in this one commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”* 10 Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law.

(NLT)

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 NLT

“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

(NLT)

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 NLT

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

4 “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.* 5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. 8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

(NLT)

LOVE NEVER FAILS.

(NLT)

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

LOVE NEVER FAILS.

Winston Churchill, the famous British Prime Minister who was so instrumental in leading England through the terrible and dark days of WWII, is famous for saying over and over, “Never give up!” was probably equally known for this ALL-IMPORTANT truth that making that possible – Every day we are building up or tearing down, through our thoughts, our words, and our actions.

“Guard, your heart above all else, because everything you do flows from it” was spoken in for this reason.

What you think on will determine your words, and your actions in many ways. And your words and actions will either build up the strength of your marriage or chip away at it- and this is happening every single day.

So, if you want to never give up, then pay attention to the small things, and in ALL things aim for Loving God, and Loving each other. And anything… ANYTHING AT all that gets in the way of that has to die. Your covenant is worth a fight, and our culture needs more of them to show the power and love of Jesus.

[1] Keller, Timothy J. The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive, 2012-2013. New York: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013. Print.