The Covenant of Companionship

Introduction

Do you remember the movie, “The Princess Bride?”

Play “marriage” sound clip from princess bride

Marriage, marriage is what bring us together today (Princess Bride)

This scene has stuck in my mind for all these years and I remember finding it hysterical as a child. Not sure why, it did.

But the truth is, Marriage IS what brings us together today.

Marriage has all kinds of purposes: it provides the environment in which children may be born and properly reared. It provides the context in which the sexual instincts can be exercised in a God-intended way. But first and foremost, Genesis teaches us, it provides a very special friendship. In marriage a man and a woman can become the best of friends, knowing each other to such a depth that only God knows them better! This, too, is a gift from the Creator.

A Heart for God, 1987, p. 32, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. Sinclair Ferguson

But what is marriage? What is it that we have come together for today?

As we share this day together, as we gather for this ceremony, I want to take a moment and remind you two (and all of us) what exactly it is that we have come together for and the implications of this gathering.

I submit to you this morning that… (Big Idea)

Outline

Big Idea: Marriage is a covenant of companionship whose enduring commitment is a living display of the gospel of Jesus Christ

A Covenant of Companionship

An Enduring Commitment

A Living Display of the Gospel

Sermon Body

Big Idea: Marriage is a covenant of companionship whose enduring commitment is a living display of the gospel of Jesus Christ

A Covenant of Companionship

Listen to how the word describes marriage....

Genesis 2:18

Genesis 2:18 ESV

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Proverbs 2:17 (speaks of a wife....)

Proverbs 2:17 ESV

who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God;

Malachi 2:14 (Husband’s Vantage point)

Malachi 2:14 ESV

But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

Genesis 2:18 makes clear that one of the purposes of marriage frames marriage in terms of companionship to meet a need of intimacy and relationship

God created man LACKING and in NEED. Then, when he realized it, GOD SUPPLIED for that need of relationship, community, fellowship with woman.

She is his HELP meet…meaning not only is she to be a companion for him but she is to be his companion in effort....as he is to be hers. They are to aid, assist, and work side by side AS ONE in all that they do.

Proverbs 2 takes that imagery and deepens it, clarifies it, calling marriage a “companionship.”

The word uses in the Hebrew literally means “to tame; to be docile.” One cannot establish a close, personal relationship with something that is wild. The imagery behind this word is that which has been tamed, brought near, and is enjoying a trusting and intimate relationship. Companionship, then, involves closeness.

The Malachi 2 passage uses a very different word for companion, but one that is complementary to Proverbs. The term is ONLY ever used here and refers to a close, intimate union or association.

Putting these terms together, Jay Adams give us a definition of companionship

…marriage is fundamentally a contractual arrangement (called in Malachi 2:14 a marriage "by covenant") and not a sexual union. Marriage is formal (covenantal) arrangement between two persons to become each other's loving companions for life. In marriage, they contract to keep each other from ever being lonely so long as they shall live.

Jay Adams - Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage

The marriage union is the closest, most intimate of all human relationships. Two persons may begin to think, act, feel as one. They are able to so interpenetrate one another’s lives that they become one, a functioning unit...God’s revealed goal for a husband and wife is to become one in all areas of their relationship intellectually, emotionally, physically. The Covenant of Companionship was designed to fill this need.

Jay Adams - Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage

Marriage then....is a very specific response of God to meet man’s very specific created need of companionship.

Fundamentally speaking then, marriage is a covenant of companionship.

Why is this important to emphasize? Because to best fulfill your vows and covenants today, it is ESSENTIAL that you understand WHAT you are committing to.

Big Idea: Marriage is a covenant of companionship whose enduring commitment is a living display of the gospel of Jesus Christ

An Enduring Commitment

In you vows today, you both will express the permanency of your commitments.

The nature of a covenant, versus a contract, is that the vows you make today ARE PERMANENT. There is “OUT” clause. THERE is no just cause for breaking the covenant’s you make today. What God puts together today, man is forbidden to separate.

As you join your lives today, you MUST UNDERSTAND that you are required to biblically address problems when they come…and they will…in his power and might.

It is also IMPORTANT to note that YOU HAVE ALL YOU NEED in Christ to affectively meet those challenges. For two followers of Jesus, there is no such thing as irreconcilable differences. God, His Word, and His Spirit provide ALL you need to live a healthy and whole marriage for His glory and each other’s good.

And when you live with this ENDURING commitment, you display the nature and character of God in your marriage.

In 2 Timothy 2:11-13, see something of the nature of God…something that our enduring commitment in marriage imitates and displays.

2 Timothy 2:11–13 ESV

The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.

If we are faithless, HE REMAINS FAITHFUL---for he cannot deny Himself.

When we rebel, follow the flesh and disobey, The Spirit He has placed in us IS HIS SEAL that guarantees our relationship with God cannot be broken.

Certainly fellowship may well be, but the relationship is secure

God cannot deny us because His Spirit has sealed us, indwells us, and makes it impossible for God to deny us.

God IS FAITHFUL

When we endure with each other in our marriages…

When we endure with the brokenness that is our spouse…

When we endure the sins of one another, humbly loving and obeying scriptures will for our roles in marriage...

THEN WE ARE A LIVING DISPLAY OF THE GOSPEL and OF CHRIST to each other and to the world.

Big Idea: Marriage is a covenant of companionship whose enduring commitment is a living display of the gospel of Jesus Christ

A Living Display of the Gospel

And what is the gospel?

Ephesians 5:25-33

Ephesians 5:25–33 ESV

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.

How did Jesus love His church?

He entered the limited confines of human flesh, the infinite God, confined.

He endured the weakness of human flesh…omnipotent God…knew weakness

He endured betrayal, denial, rejection, ridicule.....

He was wrongly accused of wrong doing, put on an illegal trial, and wrongly PUT TO DEATH.

On that cross....he endured the weight, guilt, filth of sins HE never committed, never knew…SO THAT WE WOULD NOT HAVE TO

He endure the WRATH and INDIGNATION of His father…His own wrath and indignation over sin....For that moment in time…endured separation from God…THE GOD who had never known dissent, disruption, or relational brokenness, enduring it now....

All for people, who according to Romans 3, did not seek him, did not want him, did not come to him.

JESUS..GOD took the initiative to seek us, to pursue us…When we didn’t want it, didn’t seek…then he does a work in us to make us want it and draws us with great patience and love to himself.

When we do this in marriage…when we commit to the long haul, to fight through the sins that will come against us, to fight for the good of the other, WE EXEMPLIFY WHAT CHRIST DID FOR US ON THE CROSS.

God’s covenant faithfulness is our measure, our norm. The faithful love of Christ models the Christian man’s marriage covenant. Jesus does not love the church because it is pure and spotless – He purifies the church in order to make it spotless. Just so, godly husbands love their wives despite their wives’ blemishes, not until they get blemishes. Thus we do not size up our wives each week to decide if we will love them a while longer.

The Life of a God-Made Man, P&R Publishing, 2001, p. 61. Dan Doriani

David and Lauren....Today, you make a covenant of companionship whose enduring commitment is (and will be) a living display of the gospel of Jesus Christ!

And this…this is glorious. (=

Conclusion

Big Idea: Marriage is a covenant of companionship whose enduring commitment is a living display of the gospel of Jesus Christ

A Covenant of Companionship

An Enduring Commitment

A Living Display of the Gospel

Therefore, the vows you make today, the choice and decision you make today is MORE ABOUT AN ACT OF THE WILL THAN IT IS ABOUT AN EMOTIONAL STATE.

Feelings change.

Emotions ebb and flow.

You cannot promise future emotions of love.

YOU CAN and YOU WILL promise an ongoing deliberate act of the will to LOVE the other from this day forth.

Love (as Lewis defined it) being “…unselfishly choosing for another’s highest good.”

One author put it this way…and this is the thought I leave you with today....

Feelings change. You can’t promise to have a feeling. So if love is a feeling, the marriage vow makes no sense at all. But the vow does make sense because love is not a feeling. What is it, then? Love is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person. Of course, people who love each other usually do have strong feelings too, but you can have those feelings without having love. Love, let me repeat, is a commitment of the will to the true good of another person.

Copied from How to Stay Christian in College by J. Budziszewski copyright 2004, p.98. Used by permission of NavPress (Think Books) – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book! J. Budziszewski

What you promise and covenant to today is not about your emotions and how you feel…but about a deliberate act of the will TO CHOOSE love even when the emotion is absent…to choose to be a companion to one other whose enduring commitment is a living display of the gospel of Jesus Christ.