The Divine Design of Marriage

Amen. Welcome to Gospel City Church. Go ahead and grab a seat and grab your Bibles. It is great to worship the risen Lord with you here on Sunday morning. And you did a great job getting here early with the new time change, so thanks for being here. Go ahead and open your Bibles to Ephesians. Excited to ask you to turn back to Ephesians chapter 5. We’re going to read in just a moment verses 22-33. But then we’re only going to focus on kind of 31 and 32 today. But we’re starting a new series entitled “Divinely Designed.”

And I’ll tell you what. I had a dishwasher malfunction last week. And so I called my friend Steve and I said, “Could you come over and could you check out my dishwasher?”

To which he replied, “Could you send me the model number?”

So I opened up my dishwasher, I took a picture of the model number. I thought to myself, “This has a unique model number.”

And then he came over and he took the base of my dishwasher off and there was a plastic envelope hanging on the back of that.

And he said, “Now where is the piece of paper that’s supposed to be in that envelope?”

To which I said, “I have no idea.”

And he said, “That’s a pretty important piece of paper for guys like me, because it tells us everything we need to know about the dishwasher, how it cycles, how it runs, what parts are necessary for it. And I started to think to myself, “Boy, I have a unique dishwasher with unique parts and it has an instruction manual. And that manual is pretty important for how this dishwasher is going to work.”

Well likewise, as God instituted marriage and the relationships that come with it, marriage and children, we would be very foolish to not look to the instruction manual of the divine designer. Just as my dishwasher was uniquely designed, marriage and its relationships have been divinely designed by a divine designer ever since the beginning of the world.

So God created marriage, and we would be foolish not to look at the instruction manual regarding marriage, wouldn’t we? Only God gets to define marriage because He created it. And within marriage God said to be fruitful and multiply. And so we desperately need to know what God’s Word says about how fathers and mothers should raise their children and how children should honor their fathers and mothers.

But even beyond marriages and parenting, God has joined us together, all of us, from all different walks of life. He joins believers in marriage, but He joins us all together in the Body of Christ from all different places to be one. The dividing wall of hostility has been torn down and we are one Body with Jesus Christ as the head. And we need to understand how to champion that which God champions as we submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

It’s been a little while since we’ve been in the book of Ephesians. So if you remember, we went for ten weeks in a series called “One- United in Christ.” And we were looking at what holy conduct looks like in the Body of Christ. Yes, you’ve been saved. Yes, you’ve been given the wealth of eternity. But now your walk in Christ matters deeply if you’re going to claim the name of Jesus, if you’re going to claim to be a Christian.

And so we need to put off sin and put on righteousness. We need to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. We need to imitate God on the earth in everything that we do. And so the last ten weeks, everything that we’ve looked at so far in the book of Ephesians, was speaking to individuals, no matter what walk of life you find yourself in. whether you’re married, whether you have pain surrounding marriage, perhaps you’re single and you’re longing to be married. Maybe you’re a child in a home and you’re being raised and you want to honor God with your life. Everything in the book of Ephesians is addressing how we are to live if we have been changed and placed in Christ as our Lord.

But Paul, he’s just continuing his train of thought. It’s not like he stops in Ephesians to like give us a marriage series kind of like we’re focusing in on because it’s a necessary need in our church. But Paul, he’s just continuing the train of thought as he’s writing to the faithful saints who are in Christ in Ephesus, he moves to, ok, individuals, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. And then naturally, marriage and parenting and these kinds of relationships are within this Body and he wants to give us so much greater of a picture of what marriage is. It’s not just for your happiness. It’s not just so that you could make it in this life. Marriage is a picture of Jesus and the church.

So for the next three weeks we’re going to finish the remainder of chapter 5. Today I want to preach a message to you called “The Divine Design of Marriage.” And then next week we’ll look at the role of a husband. The week after that we’ll look at the role of the wife. But the big idea for today is this. When marriage relates the divine design, it is a picture of Christ and the Church. When marriage reflects the divine design, it is a picture of Christ and the Church. And I would love for you to get your eyes on a copy of God’s Word. I’m going to read the rest of chapter 5 just so that you get the context, and then we will hone in together this morning.

Everybody ready? Say, “Let’s go.” All right. Here we go. Ephesians 5:22. Hear the Word of the Lord.
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.
Verse 25. 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.
Verse 31. “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. (Ephesians 5:22-33)
So this is God’s Word for us over the next couple of weeks. But I want to hone in on verse 31 and 32 today. Look at it one more time. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

And Paul says, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

So already in the book of Ephesians we’ve seen Paul use this word mystery. You remember it was the word mysterion. It’s not a mystery that hasn’t been solved, but it’s a mystery that’s been solved when Jesus came and the Spirit of God has been placed in every believer. And in chapter 3 we saw the mystery of the new humanity as Jews and Gentiles are joined together and being built into this holy cosmic temple where we will reign with Christ in the new heavens and the new earth.

So to the church that’s here on earth, you are joined to a Body of believers and it’s merely reflecting, it’s merely a shadow, of what is to come as Jesus will come and set up a new heavens and a new earth and we will reign with Him on high forever. But now Paul, he’s using the same word mystery to refer to the union between a man and a woman, which is imaging a picture of Jesus Christ and His bride. When a man and a woman are joined in holy matrimony in the sight of God, their union should be a beautiful picture of the union that every believer has with Jesus Christ. It’s awesome.

So your marriage vows, you keeping your marriage vows, and you the believers who walk worthy, making marriage look awesome, you putting in the work to love one another through thick and through thin, you working hard to have a flourishing marriage is so much bigger than marriage itself: it’s so much bigger than your own personal happiness, because it is preaching to a lost world the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Your marriage is preaching a message that Christ redeems for Himself a Bride and that Christ loves that Bride unconditionally and that nothing can separate that Bride from Christ who loves her. So marriage is a profound mystery, Paul is saying, because it refers to Christ and the Church. We’ll see this over the next couple of weeks as we look at the individual roles.

But I wanted to hone in on verse 31 today because it takes us back to God’s divine design for marriage. Probably in your Bible verse 31 is in quotations. Is that true? You see quotations in your Bible there? “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother.” The beauty of this is that the root purpose, design, and intent for marriage is not some new concept that Paul is making up. Paul is not writing furiously, making up this definition for marriage. Everything in the Bible, most things, can be traced back to the creation account in the Bible. And that’s exactly where Paul is pulling from as he begins to define marriage.

So if you want, you can turn to Genesis chapter 2. I’m going to turn there and I’ll read some of it to you. You’re welcome to read with me. But in Genesis chapter 2 we see the beginning of creation. And God has breathed into creation everything over seven days. And it says this in Genesis 2:18: Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Now if you jump down to verse 21 in Genesis chapter 2, it says this: So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept 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. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” (Genesis 2:21-23)

Adam’s first recorded words to the first woman on earth. First pick up line in all the world. Are you sure you want to go with that, Adam? It seemed to have worked. But it’s really a hard translation, I’m told. But it’s as if Adam saw the first woman and he said, “Wow! That’s it! That’s what I’m longing for. That’s what I’m missing in this life.”

And it says in verse 24, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Because when you’re in right standing with God, and when God has joined a man and a woman together there’s nothing to be ashamed of as we stand before the almighty God. This was at the beginning of history.

Now a couple of things before we move into that definition, and we’ll go back to Ephesians chapter 5 in just a moment. But a couple of things. God created male and God created female at the beginning of history. God created a man and God created a woman. Two equally important individuals with distinct differences and with unique characteristics. God created two human beings with complementary parts, complementary roles, and complementary functions. Two humans were created, representing the divine design of a divine designer.

And I say this in church in 2023 because we live in a sweeping movement where culture is trying to erase gender. But gender is at the heart of what it means to be human. To abandon or to erase God-given gender is to give away a key part of our humanity and to miss out on thriving as who God has made us to be.

Psalm 139 says you were fearfully and wonderfully made by a righteous and holy Creator, a divine designer. And so you look at the world today, and one of the reasons that marriage is breaking down in our society is because we are losing sight of the fact that we are made male and we are made female. God didn’t get it wrong. God created two genders at the beginning of the world. Both are beautiful. Both are unique. Both are complementary. Both stand shoulder to shoulder in the kingdom of God. and we need one another for God’s design of marriage.

And when a society jettisons the Creator’s design, the creation pays a steep price. And man, we’re living in a culture that is experiencing the steep price, that is experiencing the consequences of the creation trying to get ahead of the Creator. And this is not God’s design.

That’s why I believe Paul takes the church in Ephesus, which had just as much sexual immorality in their culture, and he takes them back to the beginning of the world as he aims to define marriage for the culture.

So go back to Ephesians 5:24 if you haven’t turned back there yet. And the union in your marriage, it reflects Christ and the church, but the union in your marriage, it manifests itself in the three ways, ok? Three ways that your marriage manifests the union of Christ and the church. The first thing is you have to establish new dependence in marriage. The second thing, you have to hold fast to one another in marriage. The third thing, we become one flesh in marriage. So we’ll take them one at a time and I’ll give them to you in this form.

Here’s point number one. The dependence of marriage reflects Christ and the Church. The dependence in your marriage should reflect Christ and the Church. Look at verse 31 again in chapter 5. And Paul writes, “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother.”

So even at the beginning of the world, before there even was a father and a mother, which tells you that God created male and female so that they could produce children in the world. But even before Adam and Eve were a father and mother, God was establishing that in His design for marriage, one relationship would be left in order to start another relationship. A man would leave his father and his mother. A man would establish a new dependency upon God and with the woman that he is taking as his beloved wife. In marriage there is a dependence on God and a dependence on one another. Not a dependence upon your parents anymore.

So that does mean that you cut your parents out completely and totally? No. Does that mean you never have to go and see your parents anymore? Absolutely not. We honor our father and our mother. But when marriage begins, a new first loyalty has to be established. A man is now loyal to his wife, and a wife is now loyal to her husband. And together they have emotionally cut the cord of dependence from mommy and daddy in order to build their union and love on Christ, who is their rock.

Now all of that sounds a little bit easier said than done. And I think it’s the first piece of God’s divine design because He knew how sin could easily mar our ability as humans to establish a new dependency and to even let go of that which God has given us. But man, it’s a big deal to be raised by your parents for twenty-plus years and then go and start a new life, especially if you have parents who loved you and parents who modeled Christ to you and parents who took their time to show you what God’s Word says.

Now all of a sudden you have your own financial struggles to work through once you are married and on your own. And that’s a responsibility that you and your wife have to work through together. Now after a long day you come home and perhaps you love the way that your mom and dad sat with you at the end of a long, hard day and they listened to you and they “beared” your burdens patiently and compassionately and they prayed with you. And now you’re in a new relationship and maybe your husband isn’t as compassionate at the end of a long day. Maybe your husband isn’t as good at listening. Or perhaps your wife isn’t as good at helping with the stresses of life. And these things can start to create for us some tension in the marriage.

Another thing about leaving your father and mother is you’re leaving your beloved traditions and your hobbies behind and now you’re in a new household trying to create your own hobbies and new traditions only to be joined to a person who is bringing their beloved hobbies and traditions into the household. And all of that can be a bit of a tension point. You’ve heard the statement that opposites attract. But maybe you didn’t know that then they attack. And you might have experienced that in your life.

But Nicole and I, we’ve been married for going on sixteen years. Nicole is my wife. And we’re both the oldest of six children. And we have great families. Both families love the Lord. We have really fun families. We had really close families. And it was hard to leave our parents and our homes. But God, He moved us to Virginia right when we got married. So we had about six hours between us and our parents.

And we made a vow to each other that we weren’t going to run off the premises when we got frustrated. If we were living near our parents, the temptation would be when the going got tough, we could drive off the premises and drive to our parent’s house and get what we needed. But we were like, “No, we’re not going to do that. We’re not going to go to our parents to allow them to solve the problems in our marriage. We’re going to work through the hard, being dependent on God and dependent on one another.”

And so there we were. We were poor. I was in full time school. I was working midnight shift at Frito-Lay. My wife Nicole was being a nanny. And yet there was a beautiful thing happening as together we were making it because we were dependent on God and we were dependent on one another. It began to forge a dependence on the Lord as we stood firm in our marriage and trusted God and had faith.

And this is really the point of marriage. Marriage is really no doubt for the glory of God. But the point of marriage is not you being joined to your perfect missing half or you finding personal happiness. Marriage is two imperfect people exposing one another’s need for God together and staying committed to that end. I’ll tell you this about marriage. Marriage will expose what is inside of you. Marriage will expose your selfishness. Marriage will expose your desperate need for God. And though it’s hard, marriage can form and fashion you into the likeness of Christ.

In the earliest years of your marriage, you should be establishing new dependence on the Lord together. But as your marriage grows older, that dependence creates a marriage that is lasting and durable and able to weather the storms of this life. But equally as important as leaving your father and your mother for marriage is fathers and mothers letting go of their children to marriage. That’s a real thing. That’s hard. We are not helping the next generation of marriages if we are not willing to let our children become dependent and establish their own loyalties and rhythms of life.

So they used to always be at the table at the holidays. Now they’re always allowed to be there. They don’t have to be there. They’re allowed to be at the table. But that creates tension, right? And I know you’re all thinking, “That’s easy for you to say.” Listen. When my daughter, my thirteen-year-old daughter, is 39 years old I’ll be perfectly ready to hand her over to a perfect Chrsitan man, and I’ll experience it with you.

What’s the drama? What’s the drama that happens at the beginning of a wedding, right? The man is standing at the front of the worship center and the father walks his daughter down the aisle. And the first thing that is said is, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?”

And the father says, “Her mother and I.” Or “we do.” Or “I do.” We go through this drama, but it is not easy as parents to let go. I can only imagine. But hear this. It is part of God’s divine design for you to let your sons establish their own dependence and loyalties and to become providers and men of God who love their wives. And it is part of God’s divine design to give our daughters over to men who will love them and cherish them like Christ loves the church.

And the hardship of this is because sin has so marred the world. And so if we are following Christ, our greatest aim should not be so that our children have perfect marriages. It should be so that our children are disciples of Jesus Christ who walk in a manner worthy of their calling and imitate God as they walk on this earth. And they put off sin and they put on righteousness. And when we raise our children to be God-fearing disciples, beautiful marriages can happen.

So the leaving and the dependence in marriage is a reflection of dependent disciples who leave this world behind and follow Christ. And within the context of the home, we pray that we could make disciples of Jesus Christ and by God’s grace see generations of marriages that are dependent on Christ. And as a husband and a wife depend on the Lord together, He will strengthen the love that they have for one another. All of this dependence is a picture of Jesus Christ and His Bride, you the church being dependent upon the Lord almighty.

Now number two this morning is this. The permanency of marriage reflects Christ and the Church. Your dependence on God, on Christ, the dependence in your marriage, should reflect Christ and the Church, but the permanency of marriage reflects Christ and the Church. Look at verse 31. It goes on. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife.”

Anybody rocking the King James Version in the house? Anybody out there King James Version? Anybody? Oh hey my man. What word is there for “hold fast” to his wife? You got it? Might it be cleave? In the King James Version there’s this word cleave. I talked to my wife and I was like, “Could I preach the three points leave, cleave and weave for this verse? Because theologians have said that. My wife’s words were, “Blah, that’s churchy, dumb and gross.” A top five rule for me is to always take the advice of my wife, so I’m not going to preach leave, cleave and weave.

But cleave, man, is a good word. Cleave is the Greek. It’s a great translation of the Greek word, which is dbaq. And so this idea of holding fast to our wives is to cling to, to cleave to, to stick to. It’s a husband saying, “I am in this for a lifetime.” I’m not going anywhere. We are cemented in this life together forever.

And we saw what the drama was at the beginning of a wedding. What’s the drama at the end of the wedding? The pastor says, “What God has joined together, let no man separate.” So you’ve got to understand this this morning that marriage is permanent. And that permanence matters to God. And it shadows the relationship of the permanence of Christ’s saving grace in our lives. I love this. It’s a beautiful picture of the permanency of your salvation if you have truly been brought from death to life and joined to the Body of Christ.

SPLIT HERE

You understand what Ephesians has already taught us. Ephesians 1:13-14 said this. “In him.” Remember in Christ, the most important place you could ever find yourself this side of heaven. “In Christ you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.”

Aren’t you thankful that if you are in Christ you’ve been sealed with the Holy Spirit and that He’s your guarantee of getting to your inheritance? I love those words that He who began a good work in you, He is faithful to complete it in the day of Jesus Christ. You can guarantee it. You can take it to the bank that if you’ve been sealed with the Spirit your relationship to Christ is a permanent thing.

John 10:28, Jesus said, I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. We talked last week about how Jesus is Lord. He defeated death. He defeated the grave. If I am in the hand of Jesus my Lord, then I trust that nothing can snatch me away from Him. I trust that He’s got a grip on me that is so strong that this world can’t take it from me.

Romans 8:38-39. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God knows that the hardship of this world, that the enemy of this world, seeks to destroy the church. But nothing can separate those who have been saved, those who are blood-bought believers. Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So hear this. The permanency of marriage is meant to display the permanency of Christ’s grip on His bride that is the church. God has joined you to Christ and nothing can separate you. Therefore, what God has joined together in marriage, let no man separate.

And you might be thinking as you’re sitting here today, “Marriage might be permanent to God, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be going that way in our culture and in our society.” And I would say you’re absolutely right. I searched for some marriage statistics and if you do that you will find a plethora of bad news. Most marriage research seems to be bad news.

But Pew Research, it states that 40% of people say that marriage is obsolete today. 31% of those people are married people saying, “Marriage is no big deal anymore. It’s kind of obsolete. It’s kind of becoming a non-thing.”

The Washington Post asked the question, “Is marriage even reasonable today?” concluding that a reasonable reason for divorce is far more healthy than staying in a marriage. Yeah, if you’re not happy, if things aren’t going well, it’s way more reasonable to get divorced than to stay committed to your marriage. I read that the divorce rate in the U.S. in 2023 is around 39%. So 60% of marriages are ending in divorce. That’s one divorce every thirty-six seconds, 16,000 divorces per week. The average marriage ends in divorce within eight years. And the most commonly cited reason for divorce is a lack of commitment.

And the bad news, it just goes on and on and on as the culture moves further and further away from God’s instruction manual and from the way that the divine designer created it to be. And I could be in a really depressed mood as I look at these statistics about marriage, but I see many wonderful examples of Christ-centered, flourishing marriages within the Body of Christ, even among us here today. And here’s the thing. When marriage, when believers keep Jesus in His rightful place and put marriage in its rightful place and as individuals walk in a manner worthy of our calling, putting off sin and putting on righteousness and imitating God, our marriages can paint a beautiful picture for the world of Jesus and the church.

So your marriage thriving, the permanency in your marriage, is so important because it’s giving us a picture of the permanent love that Jesus has for every disciple whom He saves. But why are 60% of marriages ending in divorce? Number one, because sin has so marred the beauty of this parable and this dramatic picture of marriage that God has given us in the world.

But second, just because many have severed the commitment of marriage doesn’t mean that it’s less permanent in the eyes of God. Sure, we cut off our marriage vows all the time. It doesn’t mean that marriage is any less permanent in the eyes of God. No two people are the same after a divorce.

I heard an illustration this week. If you were to take two pieces of paper and glue those pieces of paper together, could you get them apart? You maybe could. You probably could. You could get a razor blade and you could kind of work the edges and you could slowly pull those pieces of paper apart. But no way are those two pieces of paper the same as they were before they were glued together. There’s tatters. There’s tears. There’s glue on each piece. There’s marring.

And I’d venture to say if you’ve been through divorce, if you’ve gone through this in your life, you’d be the first to raise your hand to say how hard it is. You’d raise your hand to say how painful it is or how complicated or how devastating it is not just to yourself but to your extended family, to your children if you had children in the situation. But praise God for His grace. Amen? Praise God that He can take terrible situations and redeem them for His glory.

But understand this. Marriage is for a lifetime for the glory of God and your marriage is so worth fighting for. And the hardship in your marriage, it should make you cry out to God in utter dependance. The hardships in your marriage should cause you to find meaningful help. At the church, sure. But if you can’t agree on finding meaningful help at the church, find it somewhere else. Your marriage is worth fighting for. The commitment in your marriage, the picture of permanency, is worth fighting for.

And I’ve seen so many marriages being fought for even at Gospel City Church. I’ve seen people come in and submit to counseling at our church and I’ve seen them walk out stronger. I’ve seen their marriages walk out healed. I’ve seen marriages and vows renewed for the glory of God because they’re submitting not to themselves but to the Word of God and what He has to say about the divine design for marriage. The hardship in your marriage should cause you to pray without ceasing.

God is serious about the permanency of your marriage reflecting the permanency of your union with Christ as a disciple of Christ, and divorce always distorts the glory of God and the covenant love that Jesus has for His Church. I was going to have you turn to Mark. I won’t have you do it, but let me just turn there for a moment.

In the book of Mark, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees. It says this. Get this. Jesus said this. So Jesus wasn’t confused on what God created at the beginning of time as the divine designer. He says, God created male and female

And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, get this. Jesus said this. ‘God made them male and female.’ So Jesus wasn’t confused on what God created at the beginning of time as the divine designer. He says, God created male and female. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

So these are not just words that we recite at a wedding, these are the words of Jesus. And Jesus was clear on the genders that God created. Jesus was clear on the definition that God gave at the beginning of the world. And Jesus is clear that marriage is for a lifetime for the glory of God. And this wasn’t true in the Pharisee’s culture. They were allowed to divorce for all kinds of dumb reasons. The women didn’t have a lot of say, but the Pharisees could divorce if their wife burned the food or if they didn’t find her attractive anymore. And all of it was stemming from a self-righteousness, a self-centeredness. And when you become the center of your marriage, its permanency will never remain a priority.

So I know I’m going after the deteriorating of the permanency of marriage a little bit. But I want you just to see the beauty of it. Lean into the beauty of the permanency of marriage for just a moment. A husband who holds fast to his wife is a husband who says, “I’m not leaving no matter what.” So he hurts with his wife and he cries with his wife and he’s beside her in her pain and in her joy and in her stress and in her sorrow. A husband who holds fast to his wife is deeply committed to her because he loves her like Jesus loves him.

And then understand this. As husbands, submit to Christ and become like Christ and model the love of Christ, your wife will cling to you tightly. She can become your greatest helper and your greatest supporter and your most trusted advisor. And she can bear your burdens as you serve the Lord together. And as you hold fast to one another, the spirit of God will fasten and forge your marriage for a lifetime.

And holding fast to one another will produce the intimacy necessary in your marriage to endure. Every marriage needs intimacy. Without intimacy in your marriage you will have oppression; you will have passivity. You’ll become just roommates passing by. Every marriage needs intimacy and it begins with honoring the permanency of our vows to the glory of God. So the beauty of a man leaving and cleaving to his wife for a lifetime is a profound mystery because it refers to the permanency of Christ and His love for His bride.

Number three this morning is this: the covenant of marriage should reflect Christ and the Church. The covenant of marriage should reflect Christ and the Church. Verse 31 goes on, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his father and hold fast to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh.”

So marriage, it joins two sinners together for a lifetime. You say, “How is that possible? How can two broken individuals get together for a lifetime and make it work?” It’s possible because God has elevated marriage to a holy covenant. And God has given us an example of His covenant love for us in salvation. And because God is our example and because God always keeps His covenants, therefore, we ought to keep ours. We are to be holy as God is holy. We are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

So marriage is a covenant and not a contract. Marriage is not a contract based on performance. Neither is your salvation, praise God. Right? If you were saved on a contract basis, all of us would be cut off every single time that we sin. Praise God for His grace. Praise God that He heals all our diseases, that He heals all of our sin, past, present and future, if we have been washed by the blood of the Lamb. But your marriage vows are a picture of this. It’s not a contract.

And if you’ve been married for more than a day, you know that you won’t keep up your end of the bargain. You know that you won’t keep the end of the deal. And if it was a contract-based thing you could cut it off immediately. But we allow the imperfections as believers to drive us to the cross for grace as we continue to depend on Christ, hold fast to one another, and become one flesh. This will only happen if we view marriage as a holy covenant. We are vowing before God to choose grace, to choose love, and commitment even when the other person falls short of expectation.

So we’ve got to guard this at all costs. Guard the covenant of your marriage. Be vigilant for the covenant of your marriage. Protect the covenant of your marriage. And honor God as you honor your covenant. If you do this you will be blessed, your children will be blessed, nations will be blessed, and we certainly see that in the commitment of marriage.

Zero in on this final phrase. The two shall become one flesh. You saw it as I just read it when Jesus said it in Mark chapter 10. But in the marriage covenant, two people are becoming one. Understand this. Two becoming one flesh doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not like the wedding night thing where that happens. Sex within intimacy in marriage, sure it’s a part of it. I’ve heard one author say that sex is the glue that will hold your marriage together. That means it’s a glue that doesn’t need to hold your non-marriage together. It’s something that doens’t need to hold your non-union together.

We talked about sexual sin. It’s like the fire outside of the fireplace. When it’s outside of the fireplace it causes a lot of damage, a lot of destruction, a lot of heartache. But within the fireplace, it’s a beautiful thing. So sex within the intimacy of marriage is a beautiful thing.

But more than sex, two becoming one flesh is a lifetime of honoring our marriage covenant and staying cemented to one another as we look to Christ. You’re not done becoming one flesh as you walk through this life. You do it together every day as you submit to one another out of reverence for Christ as a husband loves his wife and washes her with the Word, and as the wife submits to her husband and respects her husband. And together you move through this life, becoming one flesh, a beautiful picture of Christ’s covenant love for His bride. And He will come again to resurrect us all unto eternal life with Him.

So here’s the thing. You can’t have marriage without someone of the opposite sex that you have been joined to in covenant love by God. Marriage is not about individualism, but it’s about a union. Now watch this. Likewise, you cannot have salvation without being joined to the one Body of Christ through the covenantal love of Jesus Chirst for His Bride. Because salvation is not about individualism. Salvation is about a glorified Body of believers being united to Christ and becoming one with Jesus on the earth for eternity.

And that’s why verse 32 says this: “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Hear it today. Marriage is merely a shadow of what is to come. Piper said that marriage’s deepest meaning is a copy of Christ and the Church.

So get this. The oneness in marriage represents the oneness of Christ and His Body. The intimacy in marriage is meant to display the worship of the Church and their bridegroom. The permanency of your marriage portrays the guarantee of Christ resurrecting a chosen generation to reign with Him in glory. And the dependence in your marriage magnifies that on Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.

Jeffrey Bromley, he wrote this: “As God made man in his own image, so he made earthly marriage in the image of his own eternal marriage with his people.” That’s an awesome quote. Hear it again. “As God made man in his own image, so he made earthly marriage in the image of his own eternal marriage with his people.”

So I just want to close here asking you a couple questions that you can contemplate even as you leave this week. The first one, are you dependent on Christ as you are dependent on one another in your marriage? Are you dependent on Christ as the center, the focal point, of your marriage, as you go through this life together? You need to pray together. That’s a way of showing your dependence on the Lord. Worship together. Study the Bible together.

You know, my wife and I, we are often kind of doing our own thing. But there’s something really cool that happens when we start to listen to the same thing or we start to read the same thing or we start to pray the same prayers. Because it shows that we’re dependent on the Lord, but together. And so I don’t know how that manifests itself in your marriage, but what postures, what things, are you doing that show a dependence on Christ, who is the center of your marriage?

The second question I’ll ask: are you holding fast to Christ? I want to challenge you to guard the permanency of your marriage. Allow the hard times to forge a commitment to one another as you run to the cross together. We don’t use words like divorce in our household, separation in our household. When we fight, we fight fair. We maybe need to separate and repent of our sin, take the log out of our own eye, before we go and approach our wife with something.

But man, you’ve got to work through the hard. You’ve got to work through the arguments and get back to the center point. You’ve got to die to yourself. That’s the greatest verse for marriage in all of the Bible. Die to yourself that you might live to Christ. Pick up your cross and follow Jesus.

Here’s a challenge. Date your spouse. The most important relationship in your household is not a mother to their children or a father to their children. The most important relationship in your house is not you as parents to your children. That can get out of whack so quick. So you’ve got to guard against it.

Hey, this is mommy and daddy time. We’re seeking the Lord together. Hey, we’re going to go on a date and we’re going to talk about adult things. And we’re going to work out adult things and we’re going to pray with one another and bear with one another’s burdens. Your marriage will lose intimacy if you get those relationships out of order.

And the third thing. Are you treating your marriage like a covenant or a contract? One of the best ways to tell, are you willing to forgive one another? Are you willing to forgive one another in your marriage? Every marriage will have many minor instances for forgiveness. Some will have several major instances where you need to forgive. But you are never more like Christ than when you choose to forgive one another in your marriage.

So don’t keep a record of wrong on one another. 1 Corinthians 13. Go to 1 Corinthians 13. Check your marriage. Is my love patient? Is my love kind? Is my love rejoicing in truth? Is it keeping a record of wrong? This is the kind of love that’s necessary for a marriage that images Jesus and the Church.

And finally, have as high a view of marriage as you do for salvation, because that’s what it’s meant to reflect. This is all about Jesus, the center of the universe. Jesus is the center of your life. He needs to be the center of your marriage. It’s Colossians 1:18 that in everything Jesus might be preeminent.

So why don’t you stand to your feet. We’re going to pray and we’ll close just centering our eyes and our thoughts on Jesus Christ. I understand there are people from different walks of life in the room. There are single people in the room. All of this is pointing us to Christ, and so I hope that that’s what you’re leaving with even if you feel like our tendency is to feel like, “This isn’t a felt need of mine right now. And so I don’t need to apply this to my life and I’ll check out.” That’s a wrong way to approach the Bible.

Everything in Scripture is for your life and your godliness. And then it’s all pointing us to Jesus, who is the head, who is on His throne. And so look to Him. He’s full of grace and compassion and kindness in every aspect of this life. Let’s pray together.

Lord, we love You. We thank You for Your Word. Lord, we thank You for the deep picture of salvation and the perfect love of Jesus that You have on us as disciples that is modeled through marriage. And Lord, in a culture where marriage is broken and in a culture where we are getting ahead of the designer, Lord, would You forgive us?

And Lord, would You help us hold fast to the truth of what Jesus said, what You said, at the beginning of the world, that a man should leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? This is a profound mystery because it is a reflection, a shadow, a parable, of what is to come for all of us who have been joined to one Body, one faith, one Lord, one baptism. And we submit to one another out of reverence for Jesus Christ today.

So would you bind us together as the Body of Christ generationally from all different walks of life so that you would receive glory and honor and power and praise? All of our hope is in Jesus alone. In your name we pray, amen. C’mon, let’s sing this song.