Marriage Sermon

Today is a day of rejoicing. It is a day of reflecting. It is a day of remembering. Remembering that marriage would not be possible if it were not rooting in eternity. In the pattern of God’s love for His people. Usually when we hear about marriage wedding ceremonies it is limited to a discussion of the nature of love as described in 1 Cor. 13. God’s definition of love. And this is true. But let’s go a bit further. Let’s look at God’s definition of what marriage is really meant to do. Not just how we are meant to behave towards one another but why we are to behave and why there are defined roles within marriage. Roles within marriage are rooted in the Godhead itself. Look with me at Ephesians 5: 25-33. When Paul gives instructions to a man and his wife regarding how they are to relate to one another, he immediately directs us to the example given to us by Christ. As Paul is describing how the husband is to lead his wife in a self-sacrificing way and how the woman is to reflect the church’s submission to Christ, he says in vs. 32 that he is speaking of a mystery. And this mystery is the marriage of Christ His bride the church. How can two entities, completely different from one another, completely separate in substance and form become one flesh. It is more than a physical reference. It is a spiritual work done by God Himself.

Marriage itself is an act, a covenant which is meant to drive us to God. To point to His pursuing relationship that He has established with his people to manifest His tremendous love towards us. When we attempt this endeavor called marriage it will at some point lead us to a crisis. A crisis of emotion, of will and of desire. Because within all of us are wandering hungry hearts. Hearts that are on a constant journey of fulfillment and wholeness. And somewhere along the line we find someone who promises to help us achieve this. However, in the process we find that they are also on this journey of self-fulfillment, and wholeness. And many times our journeys collide in painful and harmful ways in our marriage. Simply for one reason. We cannot sustain our own marriages any more than we can sustain our relationship with our creator God. He must do a work. And He designs and orchestrates circumstances and states in our lives such as marriage to drive us to this crisis of realization. 

This awareness that we are fundamentally inadequate. That we cannot live the way we want to and we cannot behave in loving ways on our own. Because we find ourselves driven by our own needs. And those needs are infinitely cavernous. They are voids which finite things, even marital love cannot fill. This crisis is meant to bring us to a point of brokenness. A place of humility. A place of realization that we have been designed, we not simply a mass of randomly ordered chemicals. We are not simply creatures of the here and now. Because there is an ache in us that points to something beyond all that we can see and all that we know in our physical bodies. There is a part of us that is rooted in eternity. And the remedy for this ache is itself eternal. For this remedy is the eternal love of God. We can strive our entire lives to fill this void and we will find but one truth, that it always outchases our efforts. It always outruns our pursuit of its fullness. Because it takes an infinite source to fill it. And that source is the person of Jesus Christ. He is the hope that is offered to the world. Listen to what Isaiah the prophet said, “Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress…the people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned…For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:1ff). How blessed we are to celebrate our marriage around the season which celebrates God’s gift of love to mankind. His Son Jesus. And it is by relationship with Jesus that we can have fulfillment that our hearts so long for.

Listen to what He says in Isaiah 55 “Come all you who are thirsty come to the waters; and you who have no money come buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you…Seek the Lord while He may be found; call on Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts… Let him turn to the Lord and He will have mercy, and to our God for He will freely pardon….

When we grown tired of seeking our own fulfillment we find that He is there. And He as the author and sustainer of love can give us what our hearts so desperately crave. A relationship that is not based on our ability our perfection or our past actions. It is based on His nature, His character and His love. And this is offered to us as a gift. A free gift to us, even though it cost Jesus His life. There is nothing we must do to receive it other than to accept that we cannot earn it; we must simply accept His gift of salvation, the expression of His love in Jesus Christ. And when we do something happens. We have a source outside of ourselves. And eternal unchanging, unalterable love… And this love frees us to love each other. It is from our relationship with God that we can love each other. That we have anything to offer our mates.

It says in I John 4: 7-18, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed His love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. 

This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love each other God lives in us and His love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. Love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in the world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The man who fears is not perfected in love. We love because He first loved us.” The apostle Peter says it this way, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption of the world caused by evil desires.” I Peter 1: 4.

The stability of marriage, the act of marriage is meant to drive us again and again to the fact that our lives, our love our ability to serve comes from God. We cannot give that which we have not first received.

My friends want you to know that: it is the deep longing of our hearts and the constant prayer to God on your behalf that you, our friends and family experience this love relationship with God that He we have been blessed to experience. And it is from this primary relationship with Jesus that we offer ourselves to each other today knowing that only by reliance upon God’s great mercy and His sustaining love that we can enter into our covenant of marriage today. May our lives and our love for each other be a picture of the love God has for us.