Because of the brokenness in our own families, when my knight and I were engaged, we had conversations at length about words like covenant, commitment, forgiveness. While I feel like our understanding of those concepts has by God's grace deepened and expanded, I am so grateful we knew enough then to even to talk about those things. At our wedding, we asked a gentlemen who had been a mentor and friend to us both through college to officiate the ceremony and more specifically to talk about covenant. Well, much to our dismay, he "just" shared the gospel and at the time I thought, really?? But now, I thank God for the message that was spoken. Mainly, because I know now that marriage is but a picture of the gospel.
As the years have gone by and we've watched the marriages of friends and family members crumble, my heart aches because I believe that not only do they not understand marriage but they have a limited understanding of the Gospel, of God's covenant-keeping love for His people.
We are gathered today to be a witness to something greater than two attractive people’s relationship, greater than a swell party, and greater a than feel good talk about marriage. We are witnessing the joining of a young man and woman in a way established from the beginning of time. In the first pages of the Bible we see God proclaim that a portion of his creation is not good… yet. Genesis tells us
“It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him… So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which HE had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
So the man responds as you can imagine any man would seeing a woman for the first time, just like the groom wants to do now, he responds with poetry like bursting into song.
The man said, “This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of man. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”
Today we see two people leaving the primary care and support of their family, to begin their own family together... The term wedlock comes from the gaelic word for “to pledge”and to “lock”. In a few moments you will be making a “locked pledge” or a “binding covenant” with each other before God and these witnesses.
This covenant is no small thing.
God created the covenant of marriage that we just read about to tell a story about himself. This story is about God’s plan to redeem for himself a people who had committed treason against him. Again going back to the first two people, we see the beginning of the rebellion when Adam and Eve disobey God in the Garden of Eden by eating the forbidden fruit. When they ate this fruit it changed their nature to a state of constant rebellion, a nature that now courses through your veins and the veins of everyone in this room. This nature separates us from God and ultimately leads to death. But remember, this story is about redemption and binding covenant. God became man to redeem us from our rebellion. He did this by sending his Son Jesus Christ, to live the perfect life of obedience to God that Adam could not and we cannot do. In an attempt to mess up this plan of redemption and covenant, Satan used people like you and me to kill the only person who didn’t deserve to die. In this death Jesus died the death that we deserve because of the guilt we inherited from Adam...
He asks that we trust that it is only by Christ’s sinless life and atoning death that we may be reconciled to God. That is the Good News of God’s redemption of his people. And there is even more Good News and that is of this covenant. God promises that if you trust him for this redemption that he will never take it back and never turn his back on you. The result of this awesome story that you trust in, is an amazing peace, because you trust in something beyond yourself, something that God has done, that cannot be taken away and you don’t have to earn.
So this is great news. It is something to trust and believe in. It will affect the rest of your life, especially the marriage you are about to enter into. I say especially because the Bible tells us through the Apostle Paul that this love between a husband and wife is an image of the love that Christ has for his bride, the church, that we just talked about.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,… In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:25,26-32 ESV)
We are now going to look at this parallel picture of the love of Christ and the love found in marriage from three different perspectives. If you remember back to the great news about this remarkable story about God, there were two recurring themes and one resulting theme: Redemption and covenant resulting in peace.
Soul redemption can only be found in Christ’s life, death and resurrection. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
But to show a picture of the gospel the spouse is to lay down their life for the other, even when that person does not “deserve” it or even may be in the midst of blatant wrong-doing. One way to picture this is to think about marriage not as a 50-50, give-and-take relationship, but rather as a 100-100 relationship. Having this heart attitude, each person is serving each other fully before they are looking to themselves. This is completely contrary to what our culture will tell you today. A a wife, the world will tell you that you have to be independent in your marriage and completely self-sufficient with or without your husband. As a husband, the world will tell you to work hard five days a week so that you can build a man-cave and drink away your life as you watch football and play video games on the weekends.
Instead, God gives us an incredible picture of the sacrifice of one’s desires for the benefit of the beloved. In the Garden of Gethsemane before Christ was to be crucified, we read of him praying in so much distress that he is sweating drops of blood, not because he did not want to redeem us, but because the human part of him wanted it to be able to be done in an easier way.
Your marriage will be full of opportunity to practice this sacrifice of self, just ask anyone who has been married a little while. There will be times when one or both of you will be hostile to the other, just like we were once hostile to God. But you must not let that be the status of your marriage, whether you are out to eat or in the privacy of your home. If the root of your marriage is not displaying this love of Christ when the curtains are drawn or when things get tough, the tree that is your marriage will be diseased at the root and it will either die or it will bear no fruit. In your marriage you have the opportunity and responsibility to display the redeeming love of Christ the way that he does, or you can distort it and display a false love. This does not mean that things will be perfect or that perfection is expected. This side of heaven we will never get there. But what will be the disposition of your marriage? This is how the Bible directs us:
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:12-14 ESV)
One of the qualities of this love that Christ has for his beloved is found in his own steadfast commitment to His bride, the Church. So this love that Christ has for his beloved cannot be lost or taken away or earned. The Bible tells us this, about the covenant that Christ has with those who believe:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 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. (Romans 8:35-39 ESV)
The word covenant has been severely distorted thanks to things like neighborhood covenants, where you do the bare minimum to keep from receiving a fine. Even the word promise today only means that you’ll keep your word until it is no longer convenient or “best” for you. This is not how God views covenant and this is not how you should view covenant. In just a moment you will pledge your lives to each other “in sickness and in health” or should we say “in tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger or sword” “til death do us part”. You are making a covenant with your words before God and these witnesses that you will never abandon each other or forsake loving one another. That is no small thing. In doing this you are identifying your covenant keeping with the covenant keeping of Christ. Again, you have the opportunity to display the covenant-keeping, redeeming love of Christ the way that he does, or you can display a false, covenant-breaking love. Hear the words combined now, covenant-love. This is not a picture of two people living separate lives in the same house with the only thing keeping them from being divorced is the paper work. But don’t be arrogant and think that the millions of marriages out there like that one started with that as their goal.
So take heed and firmly establish your root system in the love that Christ has for you and bend that love toward each other. Establish those roots deep so that when all the difficulties of life come, the tree that is your marriage will not be blown over. Again we look to scripture to encourage us in this:
Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:4-5 ESV)
A preacher once said that the best way to be in love after 50 years is to remain in this covenant keeping love with your spouse for all those 50 years. In this he is referring to a result of the two themes of the story, and that result is peace. In God’s story this peace comes from having a love and redemption that cannot be taken and cannot be earned. Likewise in marriage, peace comes from a marriage rich in covenant keeping, redeeming love. Your spouse is the closest to you by pure proximity. Because of that, your spouse knows your weaknesses and faults better than any other person. But where is the peace in that you might ask? The peace is in this: that despite your weaknesses and faults, your spouse is committed to loving you with Christ-like love until you die.
Let’s go back to the beginning of our story for a beautiful picture of this. Before their rebellion, Adam and Eve knew nothing but the covenant keeping, redeeming love of God. And the result was that they were naked, and not ashamed. Nakedness is complete vulnerability, and they had no worries or shame in that vulnerability. What amazing peace must have reigned in their hearts and souls! How blessed are we that God has given us something similar in a marriage that knows nothing but the love of God. When this kind of love abounds in a marriage there is no shame in complete vulnerability. Physical, emotional and spiritual nakedness hold no shame in a marriage filled with the covenant-keeping love of Christ. You are loved in whatever state you are in. Nothing can separate you from each other because your covenant roots are deep and those roots are full of life from the redeeming, self-sacrificing love of Christ.
The result of this kind of marriage is one that is like a tree that bears much fruit and survives through the hurricanes, the deep freezes and the scorching famines. This marriage is full of love for each other and that love overflows to all those around in ways that only God knows, because its origin is in God.
What a grand picture that marriage paints of this love that Christ has for his bride. This grand picture is often daunting, and your only hope is to trust in God’s grace to see you through the good times and the difficult times. So I encourage you to trust Him. Proverbs says
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Knowing that it is by God’s grace alone that you will be able to fulfill this calling, are you ready to enter into this covenant with each other before God and these witnesses?
They proceeded with their vows and toward the end they were reminded of these words:
The German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer expounds on marriage and the giving of rings:
“As you gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage sustains your love.”
It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage sustains your love. Covenant-keeping love. While marriage is but a picture of the gospel, it is a picture God gave and speaks so loudly (whether we realize it or not) of the reality of Jesus Christ, laying down His life for His bride.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:25-32)
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