“What Does My Marriage Say About God?”

Introduction

Well, as Providence would have it, this song selection was excellent, Daniel. The gospel is a love story. That’s true from beginning to end. The song we just sang about being more like you. Just think about that statement that we sang, part of that song, draw me in your presence. Lead me in your ways. I mean, that is God being the husband to his bride. That is Christ leading the church. It’s a story of love. Has it ever struck you that the story that God tells us begins with marriage? Probably has. You probably got that far in the story with Adam and Eve. But have you ever considered that the story ends with marriage as well? We have the story of Adam and Eve in the very beginning.

And God brings all the animals to Adam and he names them, and they all go together. And then God makes this statement.

Not good that man should be alone.

Everything else that God made was good. The end of chapter one, it was very good. And then in chapter two, as it retells the story of creation, it gets to this point, and God looks and it says, It is not good. God has a purpose behind what he’s doing. And so he takes Eve and he brings her to Adam. And Adam says, Now this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she is taken from the man. And the writer then narrates that the two shall become one flesh. If you were married this morning, husbands, you know that is good news. She’s brought to him, and they become one flesh. It’s the gospel. And we’re going to see this morning as we work through the idea of marriage and really through the story of the gospel itself, that they really are one story.

They come together as one. And we all love a good love story. We love to tell our stories. I know you do, because some of you have heard you tell your love story. How you came together and how you met each other. And of course, there’s highs and there’s lows and there’s obstacles and there are struggles, but in the end, now you are together and you are one, and there is bliss, at least at first. But this is the gospel, right? And so then there’s sin, and then there’s struggle, and then there’s restoration. Because really the story of marriage is really the story of the gospel. And we’re going to continue to see that all throughout the sermon this morning as we really filter the idea through a couple different terms.

But ladies, especially, as I read this next section, I want you to think about how much you love stories of romance and love. And we come to this story at the very end of God’s big story. And it’s this knight in shining armor, riding on a white stallion who has delivered his people, and he has found the woman, and they’re going to get married. Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. The one sitting on it is called faithful and true. And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire. Don’t you love that? He’s got steely eyes. He’s come in to save the day. He is here to deliver. And of course, that’s exactly what he’s done.

And so in chapter 19 of Revelation, it’s a scene of triumph. He has entered the scene on this white horse because he is the deliverer, and now he has come to get his bride. And they’re going to be wed. And so John says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself with them as their God.

But it gets better.

And death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. When we found that love, all the things in the past are gone. In that moment, all things are new, and they seem wonderful, and the future seems bright, and there is hope, and it’s like nothing that’s come before. That’s the story, that’s the gospel. And it’s lived out in so many ways within the relationship of marriage. And so marriage, as we’re telling the story of marriage, it can represent the fall, like with Adam and Eve. As they step away from God in ungodliness, they bring division and separation both in their own life and their life with God. Or it can represent a new life.

And I would suggest to you that in our marriages and our relationships, we see both from time to time. It’s being illustrated from day to day. Because that is what this is about. That’s what Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 5. Marriage really is that which relates to Christ in the church. It connects these two ideas together because it is telling the story of God and it’s telling it through this relationship that we have in this life. It’s kind of sad to me the way marriage is viewed today. There’s all kinds of statistics and research and things I could bring up, but one point stood out to me as I was looking through a lot of different details. According to Pew Research, 43% of conservatives agree with the statement, marriage is becoming obsolete.

Now, I hope already, as we’ve just looked at the story of creation and the story of salvation in the end, you realize as a believer that is absurd. How do you make something obsolete, which is really the story of the gospel in the personality of people’s lives as they come together in relationship? That makes no sense whatsoever. But even so, those who you would expect to value marriage and to hold it up and to elevate it as something that is what we’ve just talked about, this illustration of the gospel. Almost half of them, and actually, this is a few years ago, and it is getting closer to half, seem it see it as this kind of obsolete kind of social construct that really doesn’t have a whole lot of significance or meaning.

And maybe that’s because marriage has been done so poorly for so long. Maybe it’s because many fail to understand its actual significance in the way that we’ve talked about just in this short little time so far this morning. And for our purposes, I want us to think about this idea because we’re talking about being ambassadors for Christ this year. In fact, the class out here this morning is on that theme. Ambassadors for Christ. And Paul says, we implore people to be reconciled to God. Let me ask you this. How can I implore someone to reconcile to God if I’ve resigned myself to brokenness in my own marriage? If I’ve resigned myself to an attitude toward marriage that it is broken, that it doesn’t have significance, that it doesn’t really have all that much meaning, that it’s just some modern idea.

How can I implore people to be restored to God, to be brought into oneness with God when I don’t even believe that’s true within the relationships that God gives us? And so it’s from that center point that I want us to work outward this morning. And realizing that marriage is important. And you may be thinking, well, is it really that important? I mean, I know marriage is important, but is it really all that you’re making it right now? Yes, it is. Whether it’s Genesis or Hosea or Ezekiel or Malachi or a host of other New Testament passages, this is the very point that’s being made in many of them. So much so that Peter in 1 Peter 3 and verse 7 says that husbands need to live with their wives in an understanding way so that their prayers are not hindered.

In Malachi chapter 2, when God is criticizing the Israelites, they’re unfaithful to their wives. And he will not accept their offering. It’s affecting their relationship with God, it’s affecting their worship to God because their marriages are not right. And those marriages are supposed to represent something. And so it is that marriage is the gospel story told over and over and over again. In many ways, a lot of our relationships do this. But because of the significance, the closeness, the intimacy of marriage, we see this day in and day out, those who are married. And even if you’re single, even if you’ve never been married, you can look to marriages and see these sorts of things happen, whether it’s the marriage that your parents have or friends, and you are you’re observing what’s happening in their marriage.

You see the same pattern, the bliss that comes, the oneness that is there, the sin that then enters in and separates, the struggle that comes from that, and then ultimately, if things are going the way they’re supposed to, the restoration that it is then there. It’s two imperfect people growing together as one, loving each other despite their faults and their failures. And the only way for this to actually really happen, and many people do this without even realizing they’re embodying the characteristics of Christ. They’re so influenced by them and the world around them that it’s happening. It’s this selfless type of love that comes from God, the mercy and forgiveness and covenant loyalty that is embedded within this relationship of marriage. That’s what makes it last.

That’s what marriage is about. That’s what that’s what it’s meant to show to us. And so bad marriages are not a matter of destiny. It’s not that two people come together and they just weren’t made for each other. No. It’s the absence of godliness in one or both spouses that then results in what we sometimes call a bad marriage. And so let’s talk about a couple terms this morning that I think can help us understand how this is really a story that’s being told to help us understand the gospel. Marriage itself is this embodiment of the gospel. And so I just want to use two simple terms, two basic ideas, and there’s going to be obvious overlap between them. They’re not completely different, and that’s sort of the point.

1. Marriage Tells a Story About Unity

They’re going to go together, and so I’m going to try to delineate them as best I can as we work through them, but there’s just gonna be some overlap. But two terms that I think are really simple, and then in the end, I want us to talk about how our marriages tell or show something about God Himself, which I think is a very basic concept, but I think it needs to be talked about. The first thing we need to understand is that marriage tells a story about unity. It is a story about oneness. And Adam and Eve in the garden, when they are brought together, they are in harmony. That’s the whole point of that text at the end of chapter two. They were naked and not ashamed.

They came together and all things were right. They were good. There’s nothing in between them, even clothes. It’s all open, and they’re not ashamed about anything. They’re open with each other, they’re open with God. All things are good and right in their world. And they are one. The two become one flesh. That’s what marriage is. Now, you know the story, and I’m not gonna get into that part of it right now, but the basic idea obviously is that through sin comes the brokenness. And then the rest of the story of scripture is really getting back to that oneness, getting back to the unity. But where I want us to go now is the book of Ephesians, and I want to show a pattern of what the gospel actually is and how marriage fits into that.

So follow me to Ephesians chapter one in verse 10, because I want us to understand this about the gospel itself. We sometimes think that the gospel is people getting baptized. And yes, that’s part of the gospel, that’s an aspect of the gospel because it fits the bigger picture of what good news is. What baptism is, and why we put so much emphasis on it is someone dying to self and being resurrected to new life. And now they’re in harmony with God. That’s the significance of baptism. But the gospel is a bigger concept than that. The gospel is really that God heals brokenness. God takes that which is torn and broken and he binds up, he brings back together. And we can find this model in all kinds of things in life.

But I want you to understand this from Ephesians chapter 1, that this plan that was before the foundation of the world, the mystery of Christ is this. It is a plan for the fullness of time. This is verse 10. A plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him. Things in heaven and things on the earth. That’s the gospel. It’s taking things that are broken and bringing them back together. This is the plan for the fullness of time. So where did the brokenness begin? Well, brokenness can happen lots of places, but in the story we’re looking at in scripture, it actually begins in marriage. Isn’t that amazing? Adam and Eve not doing the things they were supposed to do in the garden. That’s what leads to brokenness.

That’s where sin enters the world, and the reversal of that is taking place. This oneness, this unity is coming through the Messiah, through Christ Himself, who in the fullness of time, when it was just right, through the powerful working of God, is going to unite all things in heaven and earth through him and in him. Paul expounds upon that with a few different examples. The mystery of Christ in the book of Ephesians, it’s not always the same message in every book. The mystery of Christ can refer to some related but different things throughout Scripture. But the mystery of Christ in the book of Ephesians is always about unity. Always. So in chapter 3, verse 6, the mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise in Christ through the gospel.

It’s bringing people together. That’s what Christ is doing. Right? And we could talk all about that, but what I really want you to get is chapter 5, obviously, in this section about marriage. Where he’s talking about these relationships within the body. And he’s making a point about husbands and wives, and he brings in, he stops. There’s a lot of discussion about all kinds of other relationships, but here he stops and he makes this point about Christ and the church. And I want to go back in a few minutes and read some of these other aspects of this, but at the very end of this text, in verse 31, it says, it quotes really from Genesis therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Now notice the next statement.

I’m 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. It is no mistake. That just following saying the two become one flesh, he now refers to the mystery and how this connects with Christ and the church. The mystery is about unity. It always is in the book of Ephesians. The point here is that Christ is uniting all things. He is the one that brings things together. And he talks here because this is what Paul dealt with frequently about Jew and Gentile. That’s a main concept he’s having to work through with the people then in his day, is they’re brought together into oneness. That’s the gospel.

But the gospel is also told through marriage. And so he’s illustrating this by talking about the roles of wives and the roles of husbands and how this all works together. And the reality is marriage tells the story of Christ and his church because both stories are about two becoming one flesh. Christ is the head of the body, the one body.

Chapter 2 of Ephesians, and he’s making one new man in Christ. It’s about oneness. And so our marriages are walking examples of the gospel message. And in our marriages, when we’re living them out in accordance with Christ and the church, they’re telling the same story. They’re telling the story of how God can take brokenness and he can bring it back together into oneness, into unity. And this happens by following the pattern that God gives.

That this is actually even true when you have an unbelieving spouse. The power of the unity of Christ and his working means that the holy and the unholy can touch, and the unholy is purified. That never happens with anything else. Now there’s a lot more depth to this that we can’t get into. And it’s not saying that the husband or the wife who is a non-believer is then suddenly saved. That’s not really the point. The point is they can have offspring, they have children and they’re not unholy. They’re still holy children. Or in 1 Peter 3, that even without a word, when she’s fulfilling her role in the marriage, she may take that disobedient husband and may turn him to the truth by doing things in God’s ways.

2. Marriage Is a Story of Restoration

We don’t know, Paul says, How do you know whether that unbelieving spouse may or may they may not, they may take off. And that’s that does happen. But the power of the gospel is a believing spouse can even at times change an unbelieving spouse. That’s the power of Christ’s unity and what he can do in the world. So there’s more there of that, but I gotta move on to the next idea. That is that the marriage story, what we see in marriage, it is not only talk about unity, it’s not only a message about unity, but it’s also this other aspect which we’ve already touched on, and that is one of restoration. It is about wholeness, and this happens when husband and wife fulfill their role.

So now I want to go back to the earlier part of chapter five that I didn’t read, beginning in verse 22. It says, 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. So we’ve got to start with this point. And that is that none of us can do this like Christ did for the church. It’s just not reality.

However, our goal is to do this. Our goal is to be like Christ, husbands, and to fulfill the role that he had in his relationship to the church. And our role, the wives who are here, the role of a wife is to fulfill that role of the church in submission and respect. And we may look at some of these roles and think, oh, why do we have to do it this way? Well, the first answer is because God says so. But I think there’s some more significant reasons why this is really important. It’s really vital that we go about marriage in this way because it’s not really just about us, it’s about something bigger than us. It is about Christ in the church. It is about and always has been about God and his relationship with his people.

And when things go wrong, it’s because one or both are struggling with the roles that we have right here in marriage. We recognize that.

Well, we can all think about what our spouse did wrong, right? But think about what we did wrong. What is it that I did wrong in that moment? Was I really fulfilling what God wants from me as he explains it here in Ephesians chapter 5? Now let’s break it down and talk about what that is. Wives, on paper, it’s just so simple for you. We know that’s not reality, though, in life. And some of this goes back even to Genesis 3, right? Her desire will be for her husband, but he will rule over her. God is actually putting us in places that’s supposed to actually help us grow and become stronger and better. But it’s very simple in the stated form. Wives submit to your own husbands.

See to it that you respect your husband. I was trying to think of some way to put a chart up here, but it just wasn’t working, and this was not gonna. So I’m just gonna explain it, okay? There’s two things that are mentioned here for wives. You submit and you respect. Now, husbands, on paper, we’ve got a lot more going on here. And maybe we should think carefully about that. But I want to try to break it down in a way that I think will help us make sense of what’s taking place in the text. Because sometimes, and I’m not trying to excuse the behavior of a wife who doesn’t do what she’s told to do here, but sometimes the problem is that we’re not doing what we’re supposed to do as husbands, which makes it very difficult for the wife to submit and to respect.

And I do notice at the end of this text, and it’s been pointed out many times before to you, but I think it’s a valid point, that the message here through Paul by Christ is inward. That I see it to it that I love my wife, and she sees to it that she respects me. It’s not my job to go around telling her to respect me, or for her to go around telling me to love, for that’s gonna lead to all kinds of negative things. But I have a personal responsibility to fulfill my role in this marriage. And to the extent that I do that, I am proclaiming the oneness, the unity and the restoration that can come as this story of marriage unfolds and connects to the gospel.

And so, husbands, here is our role within marriage. We are to lead and love. We are to lead and to love, which is why I love the words of that song we say, more like you. Draw me in your presence. It’s why we love the love stories. Isn’t that what you like, ladies? You want that man to draw you in. He’s supposed to lead. He’s supposed to love in this way because that models the love of Christ. As humans, we’re not creating these things out of nothing. We’re getting them somewhere. There’s a reason why we like this. Because it’s the model from the beginning. As husbands, we are supposed to lead. We are supposed to love in this certain way. And that leading and loving is supposed to then lead to sacrifice.

But the sacrifice is not just to make her happy. It’s not just to mitigate problems or to create some sense of peace, because we don’t want to actually deal with conflict. That’s not what actual sacrifice is. Notice what it talks here about in this text when it’s referring to Christ and the church. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, not to make the church happy and give the church the things the church wants. That’s not what it says. He sacrificed, he gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her and cleanse her.

And we know as humans, sometimes the things we want are not really the things that we actually need. And it is the role as the leader, as the one who is to love his family, to lead his family, and to love his family in such a way that is leading them toward Christ, even when that may not make everyone in the family happy. But is the sanctifying work that Christ does for the church? That’s the same model that husbands are to take into the relationship with their wives. They are to purify them. And here’s the point of this. So you lead and you love, which means sacrifice, and you sacrifice for sanctification and holiness, so that you present your wife in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, so she will be holy and without blemish.

What does that mean? Well, I don’t know if I can tell you the fullness of what that means, or if I understand the fullness of what that means, but I will tell you this, husbands. What it doesn’t mean is that we crack on our wives all the time and point out all the negative things about her to everyone around us. You know, she’s gonna have weaknesses, and I’m gonna have weaknesses. All of us have weaknesses, and what we don’t want to do is go around exposing all of those to everyone. But we live sacrificially, we lead and we love in such a way that our goal is to purify, to sanctify. If there are weaknesses, the goal is to drive those out, to cleanse them, to make them better, both in ourselves and in our spouse.

With the ultimate goal that we then can present them in purity and holiness. That’s what Christ does. I mean, could he not take me in my life and expose all the problems and weaknesses and all the things I’ve done wrong and say, pfft, look at who you are. You always mess up. Yeah, he could do that. As a husband, if I wanted to do that with my wife, could I pinpoint all the mistakes and all the errors and all the issues in her life and present those? What’s the point in that?

The point is not to lead in love sacrificially, it is to elevate myself if I do that. Which, of course, is just bringing brokenness into the relationship. But at points, we imagine that’s the way to do it. We elevate who we are through breaking down another. This is not just restricted to marriage, this can be in other relationships as well. We imagine that’s going to be what makes us look good. But you know what really makes us look good is making other people look good. And that’s what Christ does with the church. His goal is to purify, to sanctify, to make holy so he can present something that is washed that is clean, not because they do everything right and are perfect, but because his own sanctifying work makes them that way without blemishing.

Now he can present them. It’s not that our marriages are going to be perfect and that we’re never going to make mistakes, or that we have to fake it and act like everything’s always good all the time, or anything like that. The goal is, though, that we lead and we love in a sacrificial way so that we do sanctify that relationship and we can present our spouse in a holy and unblemished way before others. Because it is the gospel being lived out. It is supposed to be modeled after Christ and the church. But here’s the end result of that. When we present our spouse in splendor and holiness and sanctity, we also give proof that the relationship is nourished and cherished. Oneness. See how we’re coming full circle.

The very thing that Christ does for us. It is one body. And so this is what restoration is all about. Yes, Christ could He could lay everything out there, all of our mistakes and all of our errors and show how horrible we are, or as he does sacrificially, he can lead to holiness and sanctity and bring us together and restore and make one body one flesh. That’s why he’s telling the story this way in Ephesians 5. That’s why he’s making the point back and forth about the wife and the husband and Christ and the church, and then he finishes it off with the statement at the end that the two shall become one flesh, and he’s really speaking about Christ and the church here, because it’s the same story.

3. What Is My Marriage Saying About God?

It’s a story about oneness, it’s a story about restoration. It’s a story about God taking the things that are broken and uniting them again through Jesus Christ. And so our marriages demonstrate that. They should demonstrate that. And so the question this morning is what is my marriage saying about God? It’s similar to fathers, what we say about God as fathers. The way that we parent our children. It says something about who God is, either negative or positive. My child learns what a father is by the way I treat them. Am I merciful? Am I graceful, gracious, am I firm about what truth is? Am I expecting them to follow truth and yet at the same time loving? Or am I domineering and oppressive? That’s the picture they’re gonna get of God, if that’s what I am.

And what I want us to see this morning, if we are ambassadors for Christ, if we’re proclaiming and imploring people to be restored to God, are they seeing restoration in my marriage? Are they seeing a marriage that proclaims unity and oneness? Are they seeing a marriage that shows the things that are broken coming back together? Because that’s the gospel. And people are going to be led and guided by what they see much more than by what they’re told. And if they’re being told to be reconciled to God, if they’re being told how important it is to have unity and oneness with God, and that God can restore, and yet in my marriage they see selfishness, greed, unwillingness to budge, lack of mercy, no grace. That’s the story of the gospel I’m telling them.

What marriage should tell us is that God desires intimacy. God desires the oneness that is supposed to be there in our marriage relationships. And our marriages, if they are what God wants, are microcosms of God’s plan. The union of husband and wife is like that uniting of all things in heaven and on earth. And those of you who are married know what I mean. The joy of covenant loyalty between man and woman is meant to illustrate what that bliss is like with God. All of it ties together. He wants us to understand what true intimacy and closeness is, being naked and not ashamed, like Adam and Eve in the beginning. He wants us to have that idea because that’s what he wants with us. That’s what my marriage should proclaim.

And of course, as humans, we fail in that, but that’s our goal is to grow and to build in that relationship. To demonstrate that more and more. Does my marriage demonstrate that God is faithful? Am I looking for ways to lift up my spouse, to elevate her, to cleanse her, to sanctify her? Is she looking for ways to do that with me? Or is it a free-for-all to show who’s better?

Because if that’s the way our marriage is, it’s telling a story about God that is not true. And so it’s a very important message that we’re giving. And marriage should illustrate that God loves sacrificially.

The husband does this by leading and loving. He doesn’t always want to do that. He doesn’t always want to lead the way he needs to lead. But if we’re sacrificial men, we’ll do that. Because that’s our calling. That’s how we love sacrificially. I’m not a woman and I’ve never been a wife, but I’m pretty sure that it’s hard to submit at times and to respect, even. But you know, that’s how wives love sacrificially. And ideally, if we’re both giving of ourselves sacrificially, again, it tells the story of the gospel. It’s what it’s supposed to be. The problem is when we don’t do that. And we don’t have time to get into all the things about that. That’s a reality, and we have to deal with that at times and work through that.

But we’re talking about now is just the concept itself and what marriage is meant to say. And whether or not I’m doing that in my marriage. That’s what I’ve got to ask myself. Whether my spouse is or not. My spouse could be selfish. They could be focused on the things they want to do. They could not have a desire for intimacy or faithfulness or anything, but that doesn’t take away my responsibility to do these things in my marriage. I can demonstrate the gospel on one side of this. If I’m following the will of God and doing the things that He says to do, that’s a possibility. And sometimes that’s what we’ve got to do, unfortunately. But it is a powerful story to demonstrate what God’s love and what God’s desire for union with us is all about.

Conclusion

And so, what does your marriage say about God this morning? Hopefully, it says that God loves us and he wants to be with us for all eternity. And he has gone to great lengths to make that happen. And that’s all true. That’s the true story. And if you’re single this morning, that’s okay. You can still learn from all these messages about how important marriage is. And not that you have to be perfect, but that through imperfection and through failure, we’re still having, we have this opportunity to demonstrate the power of the gospel and the healing that comes from brokenness if we’ll do things in God’s ways. And maybe for you this morning, that healing from brokenness is that you come to Jesus Christ. You realize your life is not right.

There are things that are amiss, there are things that are wrong. And we were talking this morning in the class upstairs about how when men try to do things themselves, it does not work. We try to go about things our own way, and we think we can figure it out ourselves, we just dig a deeper and deeper hole. And what God is doing is He’s reaching out. He wants us to come to Him. He wants you to come to Him. He has answers. He loves sacrificially. He desires intimacy with you. He wants you to be a part of Him. You can do that this morning. You can sacrifice yourself. You can become part of His bride that He willingly died for so that the two could become one flesh.

Can we help you this morning? Why don’t you come now as we stand and we sing together?