Engagement and Marriage

Review

Where we have been so far:

First Things First: We must first get our relationship with God right before we can get a relationship with the opposite sex right.

Singleness: Singleness is a season of life for every human being on the planet. Singleness is not for distractions or ambitions, but a good gift from God to allow one to have an undivided devotion to the Lord.

Dating: Not a status to dwell on but a process to move through. The purpose is to evaluate whether or not you are meant to marry a particular person.

Engagement

The purpose of engagement is union.

Ben Stewart says, “the brief season of engagement exists to allow a young couple to focus on the complexities of bringing their two lives together as one. It is not simply a time to work on the wedding, but rather a time to work on the future marriage.”

Four Ways To Know That They Are The One

1. You have a Strong Sense of Commitment

Do both of you have a commitment to one another to stay with one another even when conflict arises or things get hard?

Do you WANT to work through conflict?

Song of Solomon 8:6 says that love is as strong as death…when it takes hold of something, it is final, and never lets go. -DO YOU HAVE THIS TYPE OF COMMITMENT? NEVER LETTING GO WHEN THINGS GET TOUGH?

Ben Stewart says, “Evaluate long enough to see how the relationship survives when drama comes.”

Emotions can come and go and be fleeting…remember the 90/10 rule.

2. You Have A Growing Skill of Communication

You must have the ability to communicate and to navigate relational conflict.

If you have never had to work through a disagreement in the dating process....that is a problem.

One of you is probably not being honest and stuffing how you really feel.

How do you handle disagreements?

Proverbs 12:18 “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

Ben Stewart says, “If you can learn to communicate well with each other, you will navigate through a lot of issues quickly. But if every disagreement dissolves into arguments and yelling, you need to pump the breaks. Before you jump into “till death do us part,” make sure you pick up the skill of communication.”

3. You Have Survived a Moment of Confession

Every rock needs to be uncovered before you propose or say “yes.”

There should be no major surprises about one’s past life before you get engaged.

If someone can’t share these things with you it demonstrates a lack of trust.

Proverbs 28:13 “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”

4. Support of Your Community

Consult with your family, friends, and pastors…those who know you best and have seen you and the other person through the dating process.

If they give you the blessing, that should be encouraging and affirming of what you are feeling.

Proverbs 11:14 “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.”

Fostering Union in Three Key Areas

1. Family

You need to be around and connected with the person’s family and parents.

When you marry someone, you marry their family.

Guys, you need to get the blessing of the girls father before proposing.

Value and respect your in-laws. This is obeying the command to honor your father and mother…just as you should your own parents.

2. Finances

Let the in-laws know that you can take care and provide for their daughter.

Create a budget!

For your in-laws and do it with your future spouse.

Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps.

3. Future

How will you do holidays?

Traditions?

Vacations?

How will we do ministry together?

How will we cultivate devotional life with Jesus together?

Career dreams/aspirations?

“Ask questions so you can minimize friction in the first years of marriage.” -Ben Stewart

Marriage

The purpose of marriage is to display the glory of God in the relationship between Christ and His church.

Essentially, person’s marriage should be a picture of the gospel.

Marriage should be lived in the joyful service of God as we join ourselves with another to serve God better than we could alone.

Don’t make marriage an idol:

We do not need to marry someone simply to meet our own needs, for if we do, our marriage will just be a good-looking mask for selfishness.

“If we pursue any goal except the honor of God, then we are worshipping an idol.” -Christopher Ash

Marriage Was Designed By God

Genesis 2:18-25

God is the one who created marriage, therefore, He is the one who defines what marriage is and what marriage is not.

“God designs a husband and a wife to complement one another.” -Ben Stewart

Marriage Displays God

In marriage, the husband is to represent Jesus in the way he loves his wife.

The wife is to represent the church in how she respects and submits to her husband.

Just as Jesus loved the church and gave himself up for her, the husband is to do the same with his wife.

Just as the church lovingly submits and respects Christ, the wife is to do the same with her husband.

God has given the husband and wife these specific roles so that marriage will be a beautiful display of God’s redemptive relationship with His people in Christ!

Now let’s look at the text that makes this clear: Ephesians 5:22-33.

The Wive’s Role: Loving Submission and Respect

Ephesians 5:22-24 “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.”

From Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5:22-24 we see that the role of a wife is to be her husband’s helpmate…to lovingly submit and respect his God-given authority to be the leader of the family and the home.

This means that the wives role is to help support the husband in various ways so that he can fulfill his role as the leader, provider, and protecter of the home.

Elephant in the room: What does it mean for the wife to submit?

What it does not mean:

Subjugation: Forced submission

Servitude: Second-Class citizens only alive to serve the husband and do every request he asks.

Make sure to remember that both women and men are made in God’s image and equal in the sight of God.

Jesus fully submitted to the Father’s will, yet this did not remove his divinity, was was still equal with the Father being fully God.

“Exercising authority does not increase my status or value, any more than submitting to authority reduces my status or value.” -Christopher Ash

What it does mean:

Submission as recognition

You recognize the God given order in which God has established marriage and the family.

You recognize that God has placed the burden of responsibility on the husband to lead, guide, and care for his wife and family.

Submission as response

You have an inclination to receive and affirm your husband’s leadership.

This does not mean you can never initiate or disagree with things he says, but you have a posture that affirms and respects his leadership.

*notice vs 22 says, “own husbands” not every man…when you marry someone you are vowing to submit to him…so be careful who you marry.

Notice where the motivation to submit lies in verse 22… “submit to your own husbands...as to the Lord.”

Wives should submit to their husbands out of first submitting themselves to the Lord and for the purpose of loving and obeying the Lord.

Wives, you should not necessarily submit to your husbands because he is worthy of it, but because Christ, who is worthy of your submission, commands you to do so.

Also, Paul says, “in the same way the church submits to Christ…wives submit to your husbands.”

This is a tall order…wives, you are commanded to submit to your husbands just as you submit to Christ.

Paul also says, “in everything.” Does that literally mean EVERYTHING??

It does not mean if your husband tells you to sin against God, you are obligated to do so.

But essentially, everything means everything. Just as the church submits their lives fully to Christ, wives are called to submit to their husbands in everything.

This essentially means that your husband has a voice into every area of your life.

Again, this is weighty command…so consider this as you look for a godly husband…is he the person that you would be willing to submit to in everything out of submission to Christ?

In Ephesians 5:33, God also calls wives to respect their husbands.

Respect goes along with submission, for one of the best ways you can respect your husband is through submitting and affirming his leadership.

Ultimately, ladies, know that if you lovingly submit and respect your husband and affirm his leadership, you will be a beautiful picture of the church’s love for Jesus and an example for others to follow in submitting and respecting Jesus.

The Husband’s Role: Sacrificial Love

Guys, if you think women have the tough role…just wait. Paul devotes three times more space to lay out the husband’s duty than the wives.

To summarize the husband’s role, Ben Stewart says, “A husband’s job is to initiate and sacrifice so that his wife might flourish under God.”

The role of the husband is to love his wife JUST AS Christ loved the church…how did Christ love the church? He gave up His life for her.

Verse 25 reads, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...”

This first command shows it is impossible for a husband to rule over his wife in a dictatorship.

Guys, you are not called to love your wife only when she is nice, respects you, submits to you, etc…Did Christ only love and give Himself for us when we loved him??

“At every stage of married life the husband should do a crucifixion audit on the way he is behaving. That is, he measures up the way he actually treats his wife against the way Christ treated the church when he went to the cross for her.” -Christopher Ash

Notice also that Jesus initiated his love for his church by coming and dying for them…he did not wait to let his people desire him…Jesus initiated…Therefore, if husbands are to love their wives in this same way…they should initiate.

Initiate in four ways:

Romance

Date your wife…the fire of love and romance go out because you have not been tending to it.

Communication

Don’t go to bed angry, pray together each night.

Spiritual leadership

Sacrifice

verses 26-27 “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.”

These verses are specifically speaking to the truth that Jesus laid down his life for the church in order to purify and sanctify her so that he would present her holy and blameless in the last day.

Specifically for the husband, it is Christ and his word who does this sanctifying work…not the husband…however, the husband should seek to promote their wive’s holiness by pointing them to the words of Christ and seek to lead his wife in their walk with Christ together.

Just as Christ protected his bride, he took her sin, he sought to do everything to make her holy and blameless, husbands should seek to protect their wives.

verses 28-30 “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.”

Just as Christ loves the church and seeks to do all that he can to provide for her needs, husbands are called to provide all that their wives need and nourish and cherish them as they would their own flesh.

Now, this does not mean that we become a servant to every demand she has…but we should be a student of all her needs…we need to study our wives so we can know exactly what they need and how to provide for them...

Essentially, whatever you would want to do for yourself, do for your wife.

When you get married, there is nothing that is “yours” anymore…everything is now “ours.”

Verse 31-32 “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.”

Since as the church, we are members of Christ’s body, and a husband should love his wife as he loves himself, this proves the point that was made during the first marriage at the beginning of creation…in that when we get married, we become one flesh with our spouse.

Paul was blown away with how Jesus was the fulfillment of this first marriage in creation with his marriage to the church…and in part how a husband and wife can emulate these roles of the relationship between Christ and the church in marriage.

Fathom this…the institution of marriage, that was to be a picture of Christ redeeming his bride for a relationship with himself, was given in Genesis 2 before the fall of man and sin entering the world that occured in Genesis 3.

Jesus redeeming his bride was not plan B.

Ultimately, if you get married one day, your marriage should show people that God exists and what he has done in Christ to bring us into a relationship with him.

Our marriages should be the Rolls-Royce of God’s glory to be put on display for the world to see...

Illustration of Rolls-Royce being made in Britain and being driven by British ambassadors in other countries to demonstrate Britain’s greatness.

“Most people in a foreign capital have never been to Britain, they said. But when they see this magnificent car gliding through their streets with the UK flag on the hood, they will say to themselves, “I have not been to Britain. I don’t know much about Britain. But if they make cars like that there then Britain must be a wonderful place.”

“In a similar way, I like to think that men and women may say to themselves as they watch a Christian marriage: ‘I have never seen God. Sometimes I wonder, when I look at the world, if God is good, or if there is a God. But if he can make a man and woman love one another like this; if he can make this husband show costly faithfulness through sickness as well as health; if he can give him resources to love when frankly there is nothing in it for him; well then he must be a good God. And if he can give this wife grace to submit so beautifully, with such an attractive gentle spirit under terrible trials, then again he must be a good God.’” -Christopher Ash