[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's words you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 A.m.. If you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected]. Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Go ahead and turn your Bibles to Genesis, chapter two. We're going to start there in just a few moments as we were beginning to plan for this year and looking forward into the fall, and we knew we we're going to be doing this caring for mom and dad workshop, which I hope all of you will take advantage of. It's going to be a great thing whether you're at that stage or going into that stage at some point, whether you are in the fire right now or whether you are an elderly person that's looking to maybe find a way to be a benefit and help to your children as they're coming through this. It'll be a great day, and we look forward to seeing all of you here for that. As we were planning these things, we began thinking about what we could do to sort of enhance this study as we're getting closer to that day. And so we began talking about how we could do maybe some family centric messages. And so last week, Andrew started us off with a discussion about adoption. And I loved the personal story. I loved the connections and the heartwarming part of that story. I mean, all of us were moved when we thought about how Cam and Dawsey were brought into their family, how they adopted them into that family. But I hope that we also caught that Andrew was talking about the adoption that we enjoy as children of God, as his sons were brought into this family of God through the blood of Jesus. And that makes that relationship very special. So I hope that while we were drawn into and it wasn't just Andrew's story, in fact, he made the comment that this is not their story, it's God's story. God was working through all those situations. But in the same regard, we're going to talk a little bit about marriage today, and I want us to capture that it's a deeper thing maybe, than what we think about with regard to just the husband and wife relationship, that there's a connection that's even stronger and more important than even that relationship. So we think about the mystery of marriage, and when I think about that term, the mystery of marriage, there are lots of things that are confusing about marriage, right? There's lots of things that you're trying to learn on the fly that you're trying to figure out. And I think when I look back and think about this particular couple here this is Brandon and Cindy Presnell. May 31, 1996. Our wedding has just been completed. We've gone through the reception. We can't get out of Dodge quick enough. We're excited about our honeymoon and about just being together. And we're finally married after five and a half years of us dating together. This was just one of those moments. I mean, could there be another picture on Earth that says cheese more than this particular photo right here? We were so excited. And the way this happened is they decorated our car, and you guys know how this happens, right? But they wrapped our car, like, ten times in Saran Wrap, and then they put, like, all kinds of shaving cream, and they smashed Oreo cookies everywhere. They put stuff words all over the car there's probably shouldn't talk about. But they put a lot of different things on there that my friends did for us. And as we were about to go out to the car, we had someone walk up and said, here, you're both going to need these, and handed us a pair of scissors so we could cut the Saran Wrap and get into the car. Well, as we did, you know how this happens. We get held up at the car, we're trying to cut through that Saran Wrap, and everybody's just pelting us with birdseed and everything else. And then we finally get the car open, and I'm trying to shield Cindy as we're shoving her into the car. And then I run around the other side, and one of my friends gives me a wet willie. It's like it's a whole mess. And we get into the car, and finally our photographer knocks on the window and says, Roll the window down. And so Cindy rolls the window down. In comes another round of bird seed as everybody's hurling it at us. And then we snap this shot. And this picture is just a picture of joy. There is so much excitement, and there are so many things about this picture that I'm drawn to, because I know her, and I know what we went through to get to that spot. And I remember just us going to premarital counseling with Donnie Hilliard. And for those of you who don't know him, he was such a gentle man and just such a great counselor. And we talked about marriage, and Cindy and I, after dating four and a half years, decided to go through premarital counseling. And we did that thinking, we are about to ace this whole thing, right? We're just going to knock it out of the park. We had been best friends since middle school. We had dated through high school, all through college, and now we're here at the wedding time, and we just knew that we were going to take his little premarital assessment and knock it out of the park. So we get our little scantron and we're bubbling up that thing, answering every little thing that's being said, and we're thinking, we're about to get 100 on this, right? And what we discovered is that there was a lot that we still did not know about marriage, and there were things that we thought that we had talked about that maybe needed to be brought up again. And so the picture of this couple, I want you to know, while it looks happy and it looks like we know what we're doing, this is the picture of people who are absolutely clueless.
That's marriage, right? You go into marriage and we think of these images, like all the wedding day, the beautiful photos, the smiles on our faces. But marriage in and of itself, that's the wedding, right? The marriage is like another whole different thing. So we're going to talk about marriage, but I want us to think about it from the standpoint of how significant it is that we look back to what marriage really was. People have, for years and years, come up with different ways to say what marriage is and how it's confounding. It's confusing, and some of those things are pretty funny. I'll share with you a few. Marriage is nature's way of keeping people from fighting with strangers. I think that's probably right, yeah. But how about this one? Love is blind, marriage is the eye opener. Amen to that. I remember when we first got married that I had no idea that I did not know how to fold a towel. Okay?
I thought it was pretty simple. You take the towel, you fold it over half, half, and then you slap it into the little linen closet. Oh, no, that is not exactly how that goes. I discovered that there's a trifold system and that it's supposed to be, like, nice and rounded and beautiful. So when you put it in that linen closet that no one will ever, ever see, that it needs to look beautiful on those shelves. Did anybody else, any other man learn this skill? I did not know that when we got married. You know, I played basketball when I was in high school, and I would always shoot my trash in the trash can and in my dirty clothes. I'd always ball them up and throw them into the dirty clothes hamper in my house. Growing up, I did that all the way through until we got married. And when I got married, I'd shoot those things intoward the hamper over there. And I remember Cindy gently, after a while of being really frustrated at that, coming over and going, oh, look at how close you came to the basket today. That's really, really good. You're getting better and better, that kind of thing. So you would think that that made me go and pick it up more. Instead, it just made me shoot a little bit better. I'm really accurate now, by the way. Love is blind. Marriage is the eye opener. You're going to think that marriage is one thing, but as you get into it, you're going to find out that it's something different. Well, how about this one? Marriage is when you agree to spend the rest of your life sleeping in a room that's too cold, besides someone who's sleeping in a room that's too hot. Anybody else got a thermostat? Mine is my right leg. When I'm hot, I'll stick it out of the covers and let that air get on it and it kind of brings me back down. Otherwise I slide it back in. Good stuff, right? We can all identify with these things. Will Ferrell, that great theologian Will Ferrell says this before you marry a person, you should first make them use the computer with slow internet to see who they really are.
There's probably some truth in that one, right? When you think about it, we all need to be tested a little bit to find out. Cindy used to tell me, and I believe she's right on this is a theory. It's not tried and true, but I'm going to tell you she's right. She used to say to me, Brandon, I think everybody needs to date a year before they get married, because after a year, you start wrapping around to the same stuff you did before. You start patternizing things, and then you stop trying so hard to please the other person. You stop trying to be what they want you to be, and you just become yourself. And your guard goes down and people really begin to seeing who you are. Well, that's kind of what he's saying here. Go ahead and get to it. Well, Cher says this the trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing and then marry him. Right. That's funny. And unless you think that I'm just picking on the ladies. Jaj Gabor says this a man is incomplete until he is married, and after that, well, he's finished.
I agree, but it's not like Jaja Gabor or Will Ferrell or Cher or any of those. People need to be the ones that are giving us the guidance on how to be successful in our marriages. Right. If we really, really want to get to the nuts and bolts of it, we want to get to the very essence of what marriage is. It is really important for us to go where the Bible really initiates this, puts it into practice, sets it up for us, shows us how to do it and live that life out. Now, I also recognize that as we talk about this, that this is a sensitive subject. Okay. And I do not want to be insensitive. I know there are people who may have wanted to be married that are not married. There may be people who have chosen to be single. There may be people who have been in a marriage relationship and those things have faltered and they ended up in a divorce or whatever. I want you to understand something, and I think it's going to be really clear as we talk about this that this is not necessarily where God is saying that marriage is the apex of life's existence on this planet. No, the reality is our devotion to God is the thing that sustains us. Our love for Him has got to be that thing that drives us in our life. And we can't think that marriage is the apex.
Everything in our life. In fact, wasn't it Jesus who said, he who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me? The idea is not necessarily just father and mother, but any relationship here on this earth. When it takes the place of our relationship with God or it stands higher than that relationship with God, then we're missing the point. God is the one who sustains us. And so if we want to really get the clear picture of what God wants in this marriage relationship and to recognize what it really, really symbolizes, let's go to the first place. So Genesis chapter two, verse 18 says this, and I'll set this up just a little bit. Genesis chapter one is all of creation. Genesis chapter two. He begins by giving some instructions to mankind and what they need to do. And in the process of all this, god sees that something is not as good. Okay? He says it's not good for this. And this is what he says in verse 18. Lord said it's not good that man should be alone.
I will make him a helper fit for him. Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam was not found a helper fit for him. I want you to understand something God says, and he sees it himself, he detects it, that it's not good for man to be alone. The first thing that we need to notice about this is that God is not or we don't have Adam here who is walking around sulking and going, god, please give me somebody to love. Please give me someone that I can connect with. I want you to understand something according to just what I said a few moments ago, that having God as your relationship, having that relationship with Him is enough. In fact, it's more than enough. It's everything that you need. So if this is something that is a struggle for you, I want you to understand. We're supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind.
That is the requirement for us, and we are to give our lives to Him fully. So when we think about this, don't start by saying, well, God had to have marriage for mankind. Listen, man was just fine with his relationship with God. It's just God is saying, hey, there's another avenue in which I want to be a blessing to this man. So it says there was not a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Notice that God is giving the woman away to a man that he already loves deeply. This is incredibly personal for me. In about six or seven months, if we're still here in this earth, I'm going to have an opportunity to walk my daughter down the aisle and hand her over to someone else. And if you don't think that's a big deal, just wait.
And when you think about what you're required to do is to hand this child over. Everything that you've poured into them, everything that you've hoped in, everything that you've taught them, they are the product of their environment. You have invested so much love and so much prayer in them, and you're going to hand them to someone else and say, she's yours. You better love that person that you're going to do that with. I'm so fortunate that we have Caleb in our lives and that when that rolls around next May, that I'll have the opportunity to hand her over to someone that I know will love her just as much as I do. What a blessing that will be. And that's what's happening here. God is giving this woman to a man. He's the ultimate gift giver, and it is a perfectly suited arrangement for him. And so the Bible records exactly what Adam says in this.
He says I think it's in the Hebrew, it goes something like this.
Actually, what it says is, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Now, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
And so I want us to imagine this for just a second in my premarital counseling. And I spend so much time doing this because I think it's so important to help prepare us for what's going to take place in marriage. In the same way that Donnie Hewitt invested in me and Cindy, I have wanted so badly to invest in other couples to help them get themselves ready for what they're going to face in marriage. And we've come to this point in where the wedding ceremony takes place. And I imagine the Garden of Eden, how beautiful it is and all the canopy of the greenery and the sun beams coming through. And I see a stream, and I see maybe a waterfall and a pool of water that has mist coming out of it. I see butterflies. I see animals. I see all the colors that you can imagine of every plant and beautiful flowering plant that could be seen. I see that. And I see that as what we try to do. Because here's the situation. The man is falling asleep and God has taken that rib and fashioned a woman. And then it says that God brings that woman to the man.
And it's a person that he already has a relationship with, already has a love for that person. And I find our ceremonies are very much like this, aren't they? You see, everybody gets their special music. You got moms and dads, you got grandparents and you got bridesmaids and you got all this stuff. And in the middle of all that, the dude walks in, right? He's up here and he's dressed up. And we're like, hey, he looks pretty nice. He's nice and clean. But it's almost like he's back in the back taking a nap and eating cheesets. And he just comes out for the ceremony. And everybody else is getting this grand entrance. And then, of course, what happens when the bride comes in, doors fly open, angelic hosts singing, and there's fog and laser lights and all these kinds of things.
And you see her walk in and everybody focuses all of their attention on her. She is the star of the show. And that's what's happening also in Genesis, chapter two. This woman is the gift of all gifts. She's perfectly suited for the man. But notice what it says there. Notice that they were given complimentary bodies. God literally fits us together. And I recognize the audience that I'm in and I recognize that we have some young people in here. And I know what we're leading to as we talk about this because what it says that the two of them shall leave their father and mother be joined together and they'll be one flesh. It's talking about sexuality. And I understand that we want to be careful about how we push this and how we talk about this in a big setting like this. But I also want to remind us that God made these complementary bodies to show us the difference in the male and the female and that those bodies are joined together in union for a special and most blessed relationship that we can have here on Earth. And I think when we try to twist that story a little bit differently when we look at the agendas of the world today, I want us to be mindful this, that it's really important that we zero in on this and understand that God is giving us his plan for marriage in its purity and what we need. But it also says that they were in their nakedness, not ashamed. It says, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Again, understanding the room. Okay? And I'm going to try to be as careful as I possibly can here, but I want us to recognize that sex and the design of marriage is holy.
We don't need to run from this. We actually need to embrace it. We need to teach it to our children. Now, I recognize again that we need to be careful and that this is a parent's job. It's not my job up here to do this. But what I want you to understand is I hear sometimes, and it's kind of frustrating to me a little bit, as I hear from time to time, good Christian people who will say, why can't our kids just learn in innocence? Why can't they just be left alone? Why can't they just grow up? And when it's time for them and they can understand these things, we can begin talking about these things with our children. And what I want to say to you is we lived in a perfect world where no one was out to get your child. I would say that sounds like a great plan. Let's keep them innocent. Let's keep them pure of these thoughts. Let's don't bog their mind down with things that they don't quite understand just yet. But what I do want you to know is there is a devil. He's real. There are agendas being driven, and they're crammed down your children's throats every day, all day. And so we can sit back and we can pretend like no one's out to attack them, or we can recognize that we are at a time in life where we need to be on the front side of these things, talking to our children about this very thing that God ordains it honors, it loves, it in marriage. And I think, unfortunately, what we have done is we have told people no.
And then when they get married, they try to flip a switch, and it's not possible to do that.
So I'm encouraging all of us to open up our mouths and talk to our children. You may say, well, how far do we go? Like, what do we talk about? And start with an elementary level, okay, with a beginner's level. And when your kids start rolling their eyes and they're, like, wandering around the room and they're not listening anymore, that's a good place to stop and maybe start there next time. But you have an ongoing conversation with your children about these things because the world is teaching them, and it's happening earlier and earlier. We cannot watch a football game without that agenda being driven. And I'm saying, if we're going to honor God, if we're going to recognize marriage the way God does it. We have to get to this first source and recognize that in the confines of marriage, sexuality is a beautiful and wonderful blessing given by God and we need to teach it as thus. So how do we kind of put these things into practice? Let's move over to Ephesians chapter five in your Bibles.
Just to give you a little bit of context, david already did this really well. He's talking to them about walking in love. And part of the real crux of this is their submission, their willingness to put their aims and their dreams and all their things aside for the sake of living the way God has asked them to live. And so he talks about not being filled with things that are unwholesome for them, but to be filled with the Spirit. And they should be ready to submit to one another. So there's this whole theme of submission that comes into it. And so when you get to chapter five, verse 22 through 24, he zeroes that attention away from just overall submission to the submission that the wife has for her husband. So 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 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. So what is the wife's role? The wife's role is to emulate the submission to Jesus.
That's it.
It says as unto the Lord. The idea is that in the same way that all of my good deeds and everything that I do, all the hard work that I do, it says in Colossians chapter three, we talked about this in the Gospel at Work series, how everything that we do is for the glory of God. In Ephesians chapter six, it's going to say the same thing, that everything that we do is for his glory, not to please people, but to please God and to have that as our focus, that all of our submission is to Him. So in this situation in the relationship of a marriage, the wife's role is to submit to the husband as unto the Lord in that submission to Jesus. So what does that mean? It means God's design requires the wife to follow her husband's leadership. The term HUPO Tasso's, compound word, some people will say it's a military type phrase or what have you. But what it basically means is that this person is willing to place themselves under the leadership of someone else. Now notice it's the wife's responsibility to place herself in that position. It's not for the husband to say submit woman. That's not the attitude. And there is no equality in this. It is actually just the order in which God has brought this relationship together. And so he tells the wife to submit to the husband's leadership. Now let me say something real quickly. It's really important that you pick the right guy to marry. So girls, as I'm talking about these things, and as you find yourself maybe even struggling with this concept of submission, listen, everybody has to submit to the Lord. Every one of us are to follow what he has asked of us to do. But in this case, if you choose to pick someone and to marry someone that does not have God as their focus, that does not have a spiritual bone in their body, that he's just handsome and he has money, or he has all these things. If you choose that person, I want you to understand it does get hard to submit to that person.
So if you pick the right person who honors God and loves Him, so much easier for you to fall under the leadership of that person. And when you do that, it's going to be a blessing to you. So what's the husband's role? Verse 25 and following 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 and 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 us and cherishes it, just as Christ does the Church. Listen to this. The husband role is to emulate Jesus'sacrifice. And what exactly does that mean? It means that we're to love our wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her. So think about that level of sacrifice. The sacrifice of Jesus began when he left heaven. Right? He took Himself off the throne and he came down to earth and he put on not just human flesh, as John Chapter one, verse 14 says, but he put on the form of a servant. He became as a humble person. He didn't come with robes and a crown and everything else to tell everybody what to do. No, he came down to become a servant and he proved that over and over again. And with that came the rejections, with that came the bearing, the grief. With that became the abuse and the torture. And I think about Him going to the cross and the scourging that took place, that crown of thorns that was put on his head, the people spitting at Him and mocking Him, all the things that you could possibly do to hurt somebody, including taking their life. And Jesus willingly puts Himself on the cross to pay the price for the sins of mankind. As Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her, that's the level of devotion. The stewardship, the. Responsibility that's required for us husbands. So husbands, we got to get it together.
We got to recognize that this is an unconditional. It's a selfless. It's a volition. That means I choose every day to love my wife as Christ loved the church. That's a huge and enormous calling that all of us are required to do in this relationship.
So let's talk about the details of that if we just kind of break all this down caring for her, it means setting her apart. It means making her special. It means guarding her heart. It means making certain that we are putting the right things in front of her, that we are leading her in the right way, that we are ready to present her back to God, that we have this stewardship and we want to present our wives before God as people who are holy and without blemish that we have put them in the right circumstance to help them. It means that we have nurtured her as we would our own body. Guys, when we're hungry, what do we do? We go get some groceries, right? What do we do when we're tired? We go find a place to take a nap. We nurture and we cherish ourselves because we want to take care of ourselves in the same way we've got to be so dialed in to our wise needs, whether it be emotionally, physically, spiritually, or otherwise.
Now, first, Peter chapter three gives us a little bit more insight. And I love this text because it helps us see maybe a little bit deeper what this involves. And again, it starts out with likewise. And anytime you see that, you know that there's something that took place above it. In one Peter chapter three, the very first six chapters are talking to the wife in the same way that it talks to them in Ephesians chapter five that there's submission and that through that kind of devotion and that love and that gentle spirit, that quiet spirit that is before their husband respectful and honorable, that it begins to change the man inside and that it may have the ability to help him see just how powerful God is working in your life by that kind of behavior. So then it rolls over here to the husbands, and it says likewise in the same way that she's submitting, you're submitting to me, meaning God, in the way that you treat your husband. I mean, way you treat your wife. It says, likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. Let's break that down just a little bit. First of all, live with your wife. How many of us come home, find our phones, find a television show, and just escape? And we're there. We're in the room together, but we're not invested or we're not having conversation. We're not checking in on each other. We're not putting our hand on their hand. We're not sitting by and cuddling with them or spending time with them. Live with your wife. That's the first part of this. The next part of this is in an understanding way. Now, some men will tell me that that's the hardest verse in all the Bible, to understand women. Okay, maybe so, but it really doesn't say to understand all women, does it? It just says, understand your woman. You got one assignment, and that one assignment is to find out what makes her the very best she can possibly be. I think back to Deuteronomy 24 five, when Israelites had men that would go into war and if they were to get married, they were relieved of their military duties for one solid year. And the reason they were given that reprieve from their work was so that they may go and learn what makes their wife happy. We do these little honeymoons. But they were doing, like, a full year of investigation and ways that they could make their wives be happy, what they could do to help them and nurture that relationship. Know what makes them the very best version of themselves, know what their buttons are, the things that make them upset and hurt their feelings and those kinds of things. They were meant to spend time to understand their wife so they could be the very best for them that they could be. Goes on to say, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel. Well, we know what this means. It's talking about the physical structure. We're talking about the strength of the man versus the strength of the woman. You can take any bodybuilder man and any bodybuilder woman, and the bodybuilding man is going to have much more strength than the woman. It's just the way we're structured and built.
But if you look deeper into this, what I want to give you an image of is something that may connect with people my age and older. Maybe not so much with the youngers, but when we were getting married back in 1996, a very popular thing to do was to register with China. Y'all know what I'm talking about? China are like special plates, okay? They're like, really expensive. And you would get these place settings. It would be the plate and the saucer and the cup and the know. And it have all these different places. And you'd register for so many place settings, okay? And you'd get that. And those dishes were very, very expensive and they had like little beaded pearly things on them and stuff. Ours was called Hancock. I think it's beautiful, okay? But let me tell you what that Hancock dish does. It sits in a cabinet. Why? Because it's so expensive, right? It's not to be used. I wouldn't dare hand that to Nick and say, hey, Nick, throw that on the table. It's not going to happen. Right? We keep that in a special place. It's got little padding between each of the dishes. What am I getting at? As we look at this passage and we talk about the weaker vessel, what I want you to know is if you dig a little bit deeper, you'll find out that what God is saying here is that our wives are like that special, expensive. Not fragile, but priceless, dish. They should be kept in a special place of honor. They should be nurtured and carried. If we take those dishes out, it's two hands and it's walking very carefully, putting it down.
If we put it back up, we're putting it back up very carefully. We keep it in a delicate way. We hold onto it with love and nurturing. We're careful about it. And that's what's being said here. Why? Because there heirs with us in the grace of life. And we do this so our prayers will not be hindered literally. Understand your wife, honor your wife, protect her, being delicate with her, walk alongside her spiritually. And why do we do all this? So we don't lose our relationship to God. I just said that this is a stewardship that we have with our wives. We're supposed to take care of her.
Don't start abusing your wife and doing mistreating her and saying all kinds of evil things to her and being mean to her and not giving her the honor that she's due and then suddenly turn around and get spiritual and ask God for his blessings. Did he not give you that blessing to take care of and to nurture? And if we don't do that, why would God listen to our prayers? You understand how I treat my wife directly impacts my relationship with God. And all of us husbands need to get better at this.
So give her that place of honor. Well, what's the big mystery here? I think it starts out with this phrase. He changes a little bit of the tone. He says, we are members of one another, or we're members of his body. We're members of Christ's body. So he's pivoting. He's talked about marriage, but now he's moving toward this idea that we belong to Jesus. In fact, it goes on to say he pulls this verse back from Genesis two, which is also in Matthew chapter 19 and others therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. So he says, we're going to be members of his body. Then it says this concept that the husband and the wife, they leave their father and mother, they join together. They're one flesh. What he's saying is we're supposed to be closely and intimately connected to Jesus.
And he's transitioning all this because this is the mystery. It says it's profound. And I'm saying that all of this refers to Christ in the Church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let his wife see that he respects her husband. What am I saying? What I'm saying is that this is something that God planned a long, long time ago. In fact, in Genesis chapter two in creation, what God was setting up was something that would be revealed much later. When we think about mystery in the scriptures, it's not about mysteries and that we have clues that we unfold and all these kinds of things. It means that it was concealed at one point to us for the full revelation of it later in life. And so what we see is this mystery is that the marriage relationship was meant to help us see more clearly the relationship of Jesus to his church.
Connected, one flesh, close, intimate. That's why God hates divorce, because it means a separation of someone who has been in a relationship with him and that is done away with. It's why we're told in Matthew 19, as Jesus repeats these things, he says, let no man put us under what God has joined together. The idea is that we fight it out, that we stay together, that we work through these things and that we recognize this love and this respect, this submission and this ultimate sacrifice of one another and how that relationship begins to feed itself and make us stronger.
But also it makes us one with Christ. We're one in Christ. One with Christ. And you'll see this imagery, it's in Ezekiel, it's in Jeremiah, it's in Isaiah, it's also in John, chapter three, two Corinthians eleven, Revelation, chapter 19 21 22, where the church is referred to as the Bride of Christ.
Isn't it amazing that thousands of years before God planted this seed of marriage, one for us to enjoy as a blessing here on earth so we could begin to understand the connection that we're supposed to feel to Jesus?
I think that's pretty powerful.
So this love and respect model, and I'll kind of run through this as quickly as I can here, but in one Corinthians, chapter 13, if you were to start in verse four, you're going to find ways that we apply this agape, this sacrificial love, this unconditional love. We do things by recognizing that we have choices to make. And it says love is patient and love is kind. Listen, there have been a million times that Cindy has needed to have patience with me, okay?
We would be here 3 hours if I just started those things. But she's had to be patient with me, she's had to be kind to me. I know there have been times where she probably just wanted to knock me upside the head, but she was patient and she was kind with me. And I'll give you an example of this.
When we first got married and we had a disagreement, I wanted to duke it out right then. You know what I'm talking about. Let's don't let this sit, don't let your son go down on your wrath. We need to fix this now. And so I would go after her, and I'd just be marching around the house, talking to her child, giving her, hey, this is what I think about this. Why did you think that way? And I'm marching around, and I would watch her, and she would walk away from me, and she was doing this, which I took to mean, hey, close your pie hole. Okay? But that's not what she meant. What she meant was, I need a minute.
And eventually what I caught onto was that if she has a minute to cool down, to go into her closet and to say it all out loud to herself and think about what she's thinking, that it always ended up better for me. That when she came back to me, she was saying things to me that were kind and thoughtful and to our benefit as a couple.
I can't thank her enough for that level of kindness and patience and what a blessing it has been, as she's taught me how to be a better husband.
So love is patient and kind. It's not jealous or boastful or rude or demanding or irritable or keeping a ledger of wrongs, and we have too many people who do that. It's like every offense is a stackable offense, that everything someone does is going to be brought up over and over and over again, as if it just keeps mounting, and we never get forgiven of those things. Man, I'm so thankful that that's not how God works.
Love forgets those things and moves on and grows in that relationship. But also, it doesn't rejoice in justice. It doesn't give up. It doesn't lose faith. It rejoices when truth wins out. It exhibits hope, and it endures to the end. All of this is in one Corinthians, Chapter 13. And it's a beautiful message that if all of us will apply those actions to our marriage, we're going to see things change quite a bit. The bottom line is, when this really kind of settles in, what I want us all to get is this, is that within the marriage, we represent Jesus and the church.
Friday night, Cindy and I were on a little date night, and we were eating, and I guess I had a lot on my mind. I'm not really sure because we always try to grab hands and pray before we eat dinner together.
But there were lots of other things that were on my mind. Our kids, things that were coming up, people that I knew were hurting, things that we've got to do still, as it were, preparing for different things down the road. And I guess I kept praying, and, you know, how have you ever prayed with someone that you're praying long enough in a public place that you start getting the feeling like she's like, I got you praying. You're praying. And I guess I just kept praying a little bit too long, I don't know. But we finished up and we started eating, and we started laughing and cutting up and having a good time. And this woman, I had no idea who she was, but she was watching what was happening, and her name was Sarah. And I gave her my card because I hope that she's listening with us today or that she's even here.
But this woman said, how long have you all been married? And I said, 27 years.
And she said, I can tell you all are close because you all were spiritual together.
I've never had anybody say that to me before. And I can't tell you, I don't say that as a way of bragging. I say that as a way of I was humbled that she began to see Jesus and the church in our relationship, that she could see that spiritual connection that we have and that God was right there in the middle of us. And she talked about how she watched and enjoyed our exchanges and those kinds of things. That was an awesome thing, but it reminded me of what we're studying here.
But here's the biggest thing, this is the most important thing is God expects all of us to be the bride of Christ in submission and respect. So, yes, we model Jesus in the church in our marriage relationship, but also, each one of us individually are a part of the bride of Christ. And each one of us represent Jesus everywhere we go.
What an awesome responsibility.
So you may look at this and you may say, hey, that's what marriage looks like. We see a lot of pictures like this out in the prairie. People just nonchalant, it's so beautiful.
But this is a quote that I think is worth repeating. A good marriage isn't something you find.
It is something you make and you keep on making it. Our job here in this life is to keep pushing forward, keep growing in our relationship with God and then letting those things fuel our relationships with other people as well. But specifically in this marriage relationship, it's the thing that helps us. So you go back and you look at this group, whether you're that group that's walking out in the prairie in the meadow and beautiful, or whether you're this clueless bunch of whatevers right here, just understand that our job is to keep growing in our relationships together.
I've got this picture and it means a lot to me.
This was in our engagement photos and we were getting ready for marriage and we were excited and just goofing off and we got on the ground, I said, arm wrestle. And so we're arm wrestling. And you may look at that and you may say, well, that's really kind of more what marriage is, right? It's a little bit of an arm wrestling. And sometimes it can be where neither of us are giving one way or the other. We're not submitting to each other. We're at ODS with each other. But I'm always reminded as I look at this picture and it looks like we're going at it, if you'll look real closely, you'll see the smiles on our faces.
Because in reality, when I am in opposition to that person who I love with all of my heart, that smile should never leave my face. Because on the other side of that is the person I care most about in this life.
So what happens, though, unfortunately, and I see this from time to time, is the smiles leave and the struggle continues. And that relationship begins to lose the ability to love and respect, to sacrifice and to submit.
And when we do that, we reverse that trend and then we withhold things from one another. And then our relationship begins to fall apart.
God's pattern, God's plan is righteous. It's the way to go. And if we follow that, we're going to find ourselves with happiness. And guys, this is just for anybody who may need to hear this. I don't know who you are, but every once in a while, you got to let her win.
I'm thankful for what I have in my wife, and I know you are, too, and for your husbands. But can I say something to all of us?
Don't let it slip. You stay on it every day and you keep nurturing that relationship. You keep going on those dates, you keep having those deep conversations, you keep having those moments where you disagree and you work things out and you love each other in spite of those differences. And you find the way to continue to grow in that relationship. And then, folks, let me tell you this. More importantly, continue to grow in your relationship with God.
Be the bride of Christ this morning. If anyone here needs prayers, if you need to be right with God, if you and your marriage need prayers of this congregation, if there's anything at all that you need, I pray that you will come this morning while together we stand and as we sing.
