It's a great blessing to have my wife's baby brother come bring the Word. It's always a great joy to have fellowship with my brother-in-law and appreciate his ministry, his faithfulness to God's Word, and we've had a great weekend together. I believe the messages were all copied or recorded, so there's handouts, and if anybody would like They could go to our sermon audio account, it's there in the bulletin, and get the handout from Lana in the office. And we'd love to help you catch up if you missed. It was a wonderful time. And now, Lane, come preach the message once more and bring it all together. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. It's always a privilege to be with you as a people that I know loves the Word of God, and I trust, more importantly, loves the God of that Word. I couldn't help but contemplate Some of the songs that we were singing, as the Lord often does, He checks my spirit because I find it true in my life, and maybe in your life also, that too often we can just join in with whatever is happening, even good things, and yet it be devoid of the significance and the meaning. And my point being that it's very easy to sing some some wonderfully truthful, powerful songs and get done with the song and not even realize what we sang. One of the ones that I was unfamiliar with by the Gettys, maybe I've heard it before or not, but I will wait for you. My heart as I was singing that In fact, I said out loud as I was singing, Lord, come quickly. I do long for his return to set everything in order. And then that last song that we sang by Sovereign Grace Ministries, Bob Kaufman and others, I was again moved and it is my prayer and I trust that it will be your prayer today. All of these songs fit so perfectly with the theme of this weekend and the theme of this morning about marriage from the eternal perspective and also from the temporal perspective. But the chorus says, show us Christ. Show us Christ. Oh God, reveal your glory through the preaching of the word until every heart confesses that Christ is Lord. Can you say that last three words with me, Christ is Lord? Can you say it with me? Christ is Lord. Now He may not be your Lord, and He is obviously not Lord to many around us, But He is Lord. That does not change. It is not dependent upon my view of Him or anything else. It is our privilege and our responsibility to come and submit ourselves to Him as Lord. And for those of you that were able to attend the last couple of days, Friday night and yesterday morning and to the early afternoon marriage conference, I and my wife both had great delight in that privilege and we love sharing out of our own lives a journey that we've been on as it flows out of the Word of God and how that has transformed us and continues to transform us in a never-ending journey of sanctification. that we are all on who belong to Christ and even though it is sometimes a painful sanctifying process, it is nevertheless necessary and ultimately a great joy and delight because it makes us to be, it constrains us to be more like Christ and there is no other that we should adore more than Him. Over the past couple of days we have spent time again looking really at marriage, earthly marriage, between a man and a woman as a number of you who are couples came. We have looked at the theological, the philosophical, the practical aspects of marriage, what it means, what it looks like. Our theme verse was Hebrews 13.4 for those that were unable to join us or are not married or for various reasons weren't there. But Hebrews 13.4, a rather obscure verse about marriage, which simply says, let marriage be held in honor by all. and let the marriage bed be undefiled. and the seriousness by which we must take marriage and we must hold it in high esteem like the Lord commands us to, for it was His institution, it was His idea. We didn't think it up. And so we have been considering those things. Marriage is His idea, it originated from Him, we see it at the beginning in creation. It is the basic building block of every society and is essential for a society to thrive and to grow and to expand. That is why we should all have great concern on the growing dishonor of marriage within our society. And unfortunately, even within the church, for some of the statistics about marriage and one's view of premarital relationships, living together prior to marriage, one's view of pornography and a whole host of moral issues. The statistics of those in the church, particularly the younger generation, very much correlates and coincides with the statistics that are in the world as far as our view of those things. It's extremely distressing. And why, as I have shared here in this pulpit before, I continue to carry a great burden for revival and awakening that God might awaken his people to his holiness, to his standards, to a love for Christ that would constrain us and compel us to say yes, Lord, in everything that he puts before us in his word. And we desperately need him to do that. So as we begin again in a consideration of Christ, and his bride and us and our brides. Pray with me. You are so lovely, God, King, Lord Jesus, our husband. Help us to stand in awe of who you are and what you have done and what you have given to us. The great privilege to be part of your household, your family, when we were nothing. Grant us this morning to fall more deeply in love with you with our affections at our deepest heart level and our mind, our body, soul and spirit. May they be given more fully to you this day as you are deserving of and may even that be applied to earthly relationships in ways that it should be that we might be an accurate picture of your beauty. And so we thank you now and ask that through the preaching and proclamation of your word and the consideration of it by our feeble little minds, oh God, that you should grant us to think more highly than we are actually capable of. By your help and by the work of your Holy Spirit, we invite you and ask you to minister to us in the name of Jesus. Amen. Marriage, of course, was introduced to us in the Old Testament and it is hard to imagine that in the Old Testament they ever could have seen. In fact, I am quite convinced they did not see in any fullness at all that marriage was going to have a much bigger significance and picture of God and his working and redemption in humanity. Look with me at Ephesians chapter 5, a text. that I'm quite sure almost everyone, if not everyone in here, is extremely familiar with. It is the quintessential text that we tend to go to as it relates to marriage. We read it this morning, or at least part of it, in Ephesians 5 and 6, and we're just going to be in part of chapter 5 this morning. We looked at it over this weekend already, but I want to take everything that has already been discussed in the last two days in very practical nature. and really come back and take a much bigger worldview or biblical view of marriage from an eternal perspective and also, as we've been looking at, but as a secondary issue this morning, from the temporal. In Ephesians chapter 5, I begin with verse 21. And be subject one to another in the fear of Christ. And this is a command to everyone in here. There is no one left out apart from those that are not presently in Christ. But for all that are in Christ, we are commanded to be subject to one another. That is to consider others as more important than ourselves. As we looked at yesterday, one of the practical points is that marriage can only be healthy to the degree that we are selfless in that marriage instead of being selfish. But that goes against everything in our humanness and our flesh because we are not interested in daily getting up merely to die. But that's exactly what He calls us to. He calls us to daily death to self. Be subject to one another. but particularly as that is applied within the home, which is the organisms that make up the church. Wives, be submissive or subject to your own husbands as you are to the Lord, as a follower of Christ, as part of the bride of Christ. That's the picture. As a husband is the head of the wife, the leader, the one that oversees, protects, guards, all kinds of functions that are in there. But as the husband is the head of Christ, just like Christ also is the head of the church. More specifically, what does that look like for Christ? He himself being the savior of the body, the savior of the bride, the savior of the church, which is the body, the bride of Christ. Different analogies that scripture uses, all one and the same though. And as the church is subject to Christ coming up under him, submitting to him, obeying him, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands and everything. Now as we've considered over the weekend when we just merely view this as a practical matter in the matter of temporal marriages that we have here on this earth, these words are very much dishonored today Certainly in the world, there is no place for Christ as Lord in our society and world. And unfortunately, in a great deal of teaching and certainly in practice in the church in this nation, the church that exists in Laurel, Mississippi, there is a great deal of dishonoring of these truths. and only to the degree that I as a husband and my wife as a wife and the way that we lead our family, only to the degree that we submit to this teaching and those that make up the whole of the church submit to that teaching is to the degree that I believe we will see the grace and the power and the fruitfulness that should be born out of our obedience And again, I've been in, I don't know, 200, 250 churches over the last 20 years, and I am heartbroken over and over and over and over to see what seems to be the absolute dysfunction among the large majority of church members, among the large majority of husbands and wives. I often went into churches and asked a pastor, can you name for me family units where there is a husband, a wife, and the children that they have been raising, that you would say as a pastor or exemplary based on what the Bible says a family should look like, that we could encourage others that maybe come to us for counsel during these days that we're here and say, go and speak with your pastor or go and find this couple, this family, and imitate them. Now we went into churches of all different sizes, anywhere from a hundred people to two or three thousand people. And I didn't ask that every time, but I don't remember ever asking a time where it did not take quite a little while for the pastor to contemplate Where do I have a family where there is a loving husband spiritually leading his wife in his home and there was a wife that that was beautiful on the inside that was submitting to her husband and was serving Christ and raising their children and where they had children under them that were walking with Christ and submission to their parents and all that? I never remember hearing a pastor ever give over one handful, and sometimes they were hard pressed to find one or two. Verse 25, husbands, love your wives. How? Just like Christ loved the church. And in order to find out what that looks like, you have to read the whole New Testament, particularly the Gospels. And everything that we see there, the way that Christ came, lived, died, suffered, sacrificed, taught, all those things. Husband, that's what you and I are supposed to be like. And if that does not bring us to our knees and humble us, then we're not seen straight. But it's what he calls us to. It is the standard. He is the standard bearer of what husbandry is to look like. He loved the church, gave himself up for her, verse 26, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless. Our wives should be holy and blameless, the church should be holy and blameless, and I as a husband, as Christ has done for us, the bride, I as a husband am responsible on this human level, on this temporal marriage. to relate to my wife and to my family in ways that they are sanctified because one day I hope that they, along with myself, will be presented as blameless and as clean as we possibly can. And certainly we will be blameless because we're covered perfectly by the blood of Christ positionally. but even practically in sanctification, fully justified, yes, but this process of growing sanctification, surely, for those of us that know Christ, we want to be as much like Him as we possibly can, and this is very clearly defined and described to us how that's lived out in the home. in our marriages, in our families, in the husband and wife relationship. Verse 27, that he might present himself to the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies, because he who loves his own wife loves himself. No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, implying that just as Christ also, as we nourish and we feed ourselves, we take care of ourselves, we do things that we enjoy, we like to be happy in this world. Well, how much more so in a perfect sense does Christ do that for his bride? And in the same way, I, as a husband, am also to nourish and to cherish my wife. to give her what she needs in order to grow and advance and mature in this life and for me not to be an obstacle or a hindrance in that. For this cause, and then he quotes, Verse 30, we are members of his body. Just as Christ does the church, we are members of his body in verse 29 and 30. And then in 31, he quotes from the old covenant back in Genesis at the beginning of where marriage was defined. He said, for this cause, a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. Now it would be very easy just to put a period there. This is a good summary. This is a powerful teaching on a husband and wife. But he adds this. This mystery, this mystery is great. It's not a little mystery. It's not a small mystery. It's a great mystery. But I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Whoa, even Genesis, for this cause of man shall live. The whole teaching that we just read, this is about Christ and the church. What we see is Christ and the church, but I thought this was really just about, yes, yes. There is a mystery in this correlation and the symbolism that I believe we get from this text that obviously God intended in the book of Genesis when he first spoke the world into existence and created Adam and Eve. That didn't just come to God and think, oh, maybe I should do it this way. Obviously, God is not like that. He's perfect in His thinking and how He works things out. He perfectly just put a man there for Him to see all of the animals, male and female, and realize that I don't have somebody like me. And so the Father said to him, you know what? It's not good for you to be alone. I'm going to make you a helper, completer, suitable, one like you. And so he put him to sleep, took out a rib, fashioned, no doubt, a beautiful woman, Eve, and gave her to the man. And they were the first marriage. And all of us have a bloodline that go back to them. Unfortunately, that bloodline is tainted because in a spiritually genetic way, because of the fall, we are now born at enmity with God. not seeing straight, not being able to process things rightly, not loving our Creator until there is a conversion and a transformation, a redemption, a changing of our heart and our mind and all those things. You have in your bulletin, there's a first sentence and this is my primary sentence. If there's only one thing that you get, dwell on this statement. The Christ-Church relationship, the Christ-Church relationship provides a model for our marriage in this world. And our marriage is to provide a picture of the Christ-Church relationship. There is only a brief time to consider the summaries and considerations of this great mystery. We see in Scripture and our own experience the beauty of the relationship of Christ to His bride. We read about it. We who are believers have experienced that and continue to grow in our understanding of that. And let me paint a picture here that I believe what we see is that we can glean in ways that we understand in this temporal world, we can see that God, that the Trinity, that Christ has done the same for us in that we see these three things. We see courtship, we see engagement, and we see a wedding feast. The first point that I want to consider is the courtship of Christ. The courtship of Christ. One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament is when it comes time for Isaiah or Isaac to have a bride and his father Abraham is in charge of this task. And if you remember what he does is he sends a servant to a distant land, his homeland among his people, because he didn't want to pick a bride out from the people among whom they lived. He wanted to be one of his people. And so Abraham sent his servant and gave him very specific and direct instruction on what he was to do and to go to that land. And if you remember, then he found that wife for Isaac and the family agreed to let her go with this stranger. And she goes back with the servant and as she comes up on the camel or the horse, I don't remember if it even indicates which it was, and as Isaac was in the field and he saw her, immediately it talks about, and he loved her from that day forward. Wow, that's a beautiful story. It's a short courtship, right? In the picture that we have of Jesus, though, we don't have a servant being sent. We have the Son Himself coming from a very distant place. that we understand as heaven, the place where God resides and where there are angelic hosts that cry out day and night, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The earth is full of His glory and the temple that fills with smoke and the thresholds that tremble as Isaiah describes that place. And the one who is the eternal God, one God in three persons as we consider the second person in that trinity, left that place himself to come to a distant land, one that he had actually made and created, in order to find a bride for himself. A rebellious, idolatrous people, not a beautiful bride. Not a blameless bride, not a bride that had maintained purity, but a bride that, since the very foundations of its beginning as a people, was rebellious over and over. And as we see Jesus come into the fullness of His ministry and walk among the peoples, we see Him walking on the seashore in different places, and we see Him handpicking what was to become the first members of His bride. And we have them listed as apostles, 11 of those 12 that were of the elect that he handpicked that you come and follow me. You belong to me. And they dropped everything and they followed him. And so for three years he taught. What did he teach? Well, let's just look at a quick example of what he taught. Look with me in the book of Luke. Turn with me to Luke chapter 9 and then we're just going to flip through two or three passages there. And again, these are going to be familiar texts, but I want you to see these texts in light of a bridegroom that is coming to find his bride and what he is calling forth to the future bride, those whom would come and agree to his terms. In Luke chapter 9 verse 23, and he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to come after me, then let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and yet loses or forfeits himself?" In other words, you are continuing on your path of self-centeredness, doing as you please, which is really nothing more than idolatry and sin and everything that I'm opposed to, but I am offering something to you. If you will deny yourself, if you will leave your adulteries, if you will leave your fornications, if you will leave your sin and your self-centeredness, I will make you mine and you will be my bride forever and I will cover you and take everything that is needed from my household and give it to you for all eternity. In Luke chapter 14, there are many along the way that would willingly be His bride if they could come as they were and stay as they were, but we find Jesus, this bridegroom, continuing to draw some very clear lines in the sand. I mean, there's not anybody in here that's married or in the future hopes to be married from a man's perspective. Let me just take it as a man's perspective that you're going to go and you're just going to walk the streets and just pick any woman and say, hey, come and marry me. You first want to court her. You want to lay some things out. You want to find if she's willing to have the same convictions that you do. You're wanting to find out, is she willing to submit to you? You want to find out, is she going to Head to the same place that you're headed. Can she be a completer and a helper to you? And is she someone that you will give yourself to? And all that relationship is building. And often you find out, you know what, we're not on the same page. And unfortunately, even worse, is that sometimes they go ahead with that marriage and somebody wasn't whom they seemed that they were. And it ends in divorce and tragedy and things. Because we find out that either somebody's not willing to lead or somebody's not willing to submit. And so they go their separate ways. But Jesus, Jesus is not okay with saying, come be my bride and you just make up your own rules. No, he has some very difficult things to say. And in Luke chapter 14, again we see this in verse 25, again we're talking about a great multitude that was following Him. They liked what they had seen. This is a good man, let's follow Him. But to this degree, and Jesus says to them in verse 26, if anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brother and sister, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down, calculate the cost, see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to come by and ridicule him, saying, this man began to build, he wasn't able to finish. What a shame that is. Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, doesn't first sit down and calculate, can I do this? Can we win, right? We have this many men, they have that many men," or verse 32, or else while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace because he's not at all convinced that he can actually win this battle, so let's try to make a deal, all right? His point in both of these illustrations is simple, that in both of these illustrations, whether you're building a house or a building or whether you're going out to war, there is up front a calculation, a cost. Say, am I willing to give to this situation what is needful to complete it? And Jesus is drawing a line and saying, I know thousands of you are following me right now, but there will be many of you that will turn away as soon as you don't get your own way, and many of you are following me for the wrong reasons, so let me make clear the gospel And that is that unless you're willing to hate your father, mother, brother, sister, wife, your children, even hate yourself, you cannot be my disciple. You cannot be my bride. You see, what it really is, it's a call, just as I would make a call to my wife when we were getting married and say, you know what, you've had other boyfriends, maybe you've even had other lovers, maybe you've been involved in this or that, But I want to marry you. Come and join with me." But that also means that you have to forsake and never go back to any of these. And if she does, If I'm a gracious, loving husband, I will desire to forgive her and work through that with her and come as Hosea did with Gomer, as the father has done with Israel and Judah over and over, as Jesus does with us over and over. But nevertheless, let's be clear. Let us not be presumptuous upon the grace of God and somehow excuse our adultery and our idolatry and our fornications in a spiritual sense of relationship with Christ, just as none of us would be okay with excusing that in our husband or our wife. We wouldn't be okay with it. Even though we want reconciliation, we were not okay with this. This is wrong, right? And Jesus is just letting them know up front. He didn't want them to come and follow and then later on say, whoa, whoa, what's going on? I didn't know it was going to cost this. Yeah, Jesus says if you join me, you're going to get life, but you're going to lose it too. And unless you're willing to lose it first, you won't have it. You won't get it. And I'm the only one that can give it. Then in chapter 18, we see it's not a crowd now, not a large gathering, just one. Just one that we have come to know as the rich young ruler. 1818, and that certain ruler questioned him saying, good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? I mean, whoever loves the gospel in here, would you not love for someone to come and ask you, what must I do to inherit eternal life? This is not one of those trick questions by a Pharisee. This is a man that I believe genuinely wants to know, what must I do to get to heaven? What must I do to live forever, to have eternal, forever life? And Jesus gives him the law. He says, why do you call me good? Don't you know that no one is good except God alone? You know the commandments, do not commit adultery, don't commit murder, don't steal, don't bear false witness, honor your father and mother. And then this man had the audacity and the presumption and the pride and arrogance to say, all these things I've kept from my youth. He obviously didn't fully understand those commandments in the depth that they're more than just some externals. They are internal and external. They're heart issues, not just actions and activities. And even in that, there's no way that he had perfectly done all that perfect in the actions. And that's why Jesus says there's no one good except God alone, right? And Jesus does not react to his false, his self-deceptive answer. He just presses him a little bit further into what would be required if he wants to join, come and follow Christ, if he wants to be part of the bride of this bridegroom. And Jesus says, well, one thing you still lack, sell all that you possess. and distribute it to the poor and you shall have treasure in heaven and come and follow me." And we know that he went away grieved because he was a very rich man and he, bottom line is Jesus knew what his idols were. Jesus knew what he loved. Just like the other big group, he knew what most of them loved. That's why he said, unless some of you hate your father, whom they adored. Unless some of you hate your mother, I love mom, I want to be just like, she's whom I'm living for. Unless you hate your wife, we spent, I've even said it today, right, but we spent Friday and Saturday talking about husbands loving your wives. What is this that Jesus is teaching? Is this heresy from God himself? Unless you hate your husband, in fact, unless you hate yourself, well, this doesn't fit into psychology of today. You're okay, I'm okay. I mean, on and on we go. This is really negative, isn't it? No, this is gracious. This is gracious. Would it be kind for me to call my wife Janet into relationship with me to be my wife and say, I'm going to love you, but I just want you to know I have a bunch of other women on the side, but I'm going to marry you. I'm not going to marry them, but I'm not going to give them up either. Or if she came into this marriage and said, you know, I've got a lot of things, Lane, I want to do. I want to marry you. I want a lot of what you have, but some of your ideas are a little bit too strict for me. But I'd still like to marry you for what I can get out of it. And then I'm going to do what I want to on the side. That is not gracious or kind. That is miserable for everybody. There's no constraints. There's no guidelines. We're not talking about law here. We're just talking about the health of a real relationship that requires certain things from each of us. And Jesus was laying those things out clearly so that people would not be deceived. Now, we have not done so well, have we, in the gospel that we have shared in this country over the last two or three centuries, especially in the last few decades. The gospel that we have preached, not here, but largely in our society, has been one that is very watered down, is very non-committal, is very easy for anybody basically to raise a hand or walk an aisle or pray a prayer and say, I want to go to heaven, I want eternal life, I want what Jesus has to offer. But we do not say, are you willing also to give up everything in this world, either someone or something that you love and find that Jesus, this groom, is the most valuable one and you give up everything so that you can follow and submit to him. And so we have preached a gospel that has invited people in without the understanding of the marriage contract and the covenant that this groom is mandating from us. And he requires full submission and obedience to him. Before I leave this point of courtship, though, this is not maybe the courtship that you thought. It wasn't just a sweet courtship, but I haven't really dealt with that. No man comes lest the Spirit of God draw that man. And what you have found in your life, I trust, as I have found in my life since my earliest remembrances, is day after day, week after week, month after month, and now year after year, the wooing, the wooing of Jesus into intimacy and relationship with Him, that I have found Him to be beautiful, I have found Him to be true, I have found Him to be lovely, and the more I get to know Him, the less I want to do those things that might offend Him, Not out of some legalistic commitment, but because of this love relationship. He has my affection. I love to sing to him. I love to speak with him. I love to honor Him. I love to do what He says. All of that is His mercy upon me that keeps me now in this constraint. Not perfectly so, obviously, and He is a good God to break me and convict me that leads me to repentance. That is His kindness also. But He is that lovely and He deserves everything from us. And it is ultimately, there's my last point. The gospel is the proposal. of this groom inviting people to be his bride. Not a bunch of brides. He's not a polygamist. He has one bride, one church, even though it is made up of a bunch of individual churches that we are part of, but we all make up merely one bride from every tribe and tongue and nation, millions of us that will be before the throne one day to worship him as our husband because he has been a perfect one. The gospel is that proposal. Come to me and I will give you rest. Turn from all the other loves in your life that you think will satisfy you because they will not but I will give you everlasting life and water so that you will never thirst again. Come to me. The proposal of a husband. The second thing that I would say and want to briefly look at is the engagement of Christ, the engagement or betrothal, if you would rather put that as a Jewish term, the engagement or betrothal of Christ to His bride. I want you to look with me at John chapter 14. It would have been typical in Jewish society for there to be this contractual signing and covenant of a man being married to a woman before there was actually a living together and a consummation of that marriage, but legally binding so that there would have to be a divorce. And we see this example in Mary and Joseph. She had not physically become his wife yet. but he was going to secretly just give her a writ of divorce because they were already in covenant contract as was working with them. And what would often be the case is even though now this man and this woman, often young, had come into covenant contract, the man isn't quite ready to receive and take on the full responsibilities of that woman as his wife, and so he would go and he would continue to work. He might go and build a house, a home. He would prepare a place so that when all of that was done, when he had his account settled, then he could come and get her and they would celebrate and they would go consummate that marriage and be, as we would understand in our term, more officially married at the wedding. But this engagement period was extremely committed as similar to our engagement periods, even though it's not contractually binding. It is obviously a step of, we have both agreed and believed this is where we're headed, so now this is a preparatory time before the actual wedding. In John chapter 14, I think this is exactly a picture that we see. Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me." Is he speaking to the disciples? This is right before he's about to go and leave them and be crucified. He's about to leave this bride that he's been proposing to. And those that he has proposed to, he is about to leave in charge of making that proposal to others. In my father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. But I'm going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, you may be there also. And you know the way that I am going. You know what he goes on really in the beauty of chapter 14, 15, and 16? What is his primary discussion then of what's going to happen in his absence when he goes to prepare the place for his bride? He's leaving someone, who? The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, that he begins to articulate exactly what he does. He will remind this bride of everything that the husband has said. He will lead this bride to prepare, to get ready for, to put on the wedding clothes. to make the groom appear and look beautiful to all those around her, waiting, as we sang earlier, waiting for His return to get us so we can actually go to the wedding feast. Oh, we're absolutely in covenant relationship already, but the fullness of that won't be seen until we're glorified one day. But the reality of it is ours now, and it's here. I want you to look with me 2 Corinthians chapter 1. It is easy to see why Jesus would have said, don't let your heart be troubled, because they were about to be troubled. Jesus was about to leave. They had given up everything. They were following Him, but He's about to leave, and they're distraught. And even after his ascension, for the next 10 days up until Pentecost, they're in the upper room. They don't know what to do. They don't go anywhere. They're just praying. What do we do? And then we see the fulfillment of what Jesus talked about in 14, 15, and 16 come and take place in the book of Acts at Pentecost, the beginning officially, we might say, of the church age as the Holy Spirit comes and now fills those that were initially part of his bride, and that bride has been growing ever since then. But specifically of the Holy Spirit, here there's two texts that I go to, 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 21 and 22. Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us in God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge, as a down payment, as an engagement ring. of surety, a seal as a king would stamp with the wax and put his seal upon it, a pledge, a seal, an engagement, those were different uses of that word throughout a period of time. There is a very real sense that I believe would be in line with Scripture in these texts to say that the Holy Spirit is that ring of promise and also a symbol that I belong to one. No one else can have me. I belong to Him. He is mine and I am His. The same thing we find in Ephesians chapter 1. Look over in Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 13 and 14. in him you also, in Christ, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel, that proposal of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him, sealed in Christ, with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge, same word that was used in Corinthians, as a pledge of our inheritance to the redemptions of God's own possession, to the praise of his glory. John MacArthur says, the Holy Spirit not only guarantees our inheritance in Jesus Christ with His seal, but also with His pledge. A pledge originally referred to a down payment or earnest money given to secure a purchase, which clearly is another whole illustration of what Jesus did and which we even see right clearly in Ephesians 5, that He laid down His life. He purchased us off the auction block. dead in our sins and trespasses, nothing but slaves to sin. And he put a pledge down, he purchased us for his own redemption and put a ring on our finger and said, I'm going to make her my wife forever and give her all of my riches. In all of our unworthiness, he makes us worthy. And then he calls us to begin to live that out and to look more and more like a bride waiting for the bridegroom, blameless. Anyway, MacArthur goes on to say, later this word came to represent any sort of pledge or earnest. A form of the word even came to be used as an engagement ring. The Holy Spirit is the church's irrevocable pledge, her divine engagement ring, as it were, that as Christ's bride, she will never be neglected or forsaken. He has courted us. He has proposed to us with his gospel. He is away right now preparing our place that he's going to bring us to one day. And thirdly, we look with the great hope in heaven of the wedding of Christ. The wedding of Christ. We are presently in a time of waiting. We're in a time of preparation. The bride and her ladies, make sure that you have enough oil in your lamps. We don't know how long the wait is going to be, but we must not grow weary. He could come at any moment, and we must be ready. We must be ready. This is a time of sanctification. It's a time of ongoing consummation for us, of committing ourselves over and over and over to our wedding and to union with Him. And we see just a brief glimpse of this in Revelation 19 beginning in verse 1. And after these things, after the horrible things that we see and the wrath of God being poured out and the horrendous things that are going to happen upon the earth and to mankind, after these things I heard, as it were, a loud voice of a great multitude already in heaven saying, hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God. Because His judgments are true and righteous, and He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and He has avenged the blood of His bondservants on her." And a second time they said, Hallelujah! Her smoke rises up forever and ever. And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on His throne saying, Amen, Hallelujah. And a voice came from the throne saying, Give praise to our God, all you His bondservants, you who fear Him, the small and great. And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, and as the sound of many waters, and as the sound of mighty pills of thunder, saying, Hallelujah, which hallelujah means praise ye the Lord, for the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come. and his bride has made herself ready. And it was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And he said to me, write, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. And he has said to me, these are the true words of God." What a day. What a day. It is interesting that in this context as he is preparing and we see this picture of the wedding feast. You know, this wedding feast isn't going to be just a few days long. It's gonna be forever and ever and ever and ever and we shall never get tired of adoring our husband and falling before him and worshiping where there is no more sun, no more moon that is not needed and yet it is absolutely brilliant and bright because light emanates from God himself in the throne room and from our husband in whom he has been willing to embrace us and clothe us with white robes of linen preparing us for that day. Is this not a serious consideration and motivation for us to love Him in this world as we prepare for that day and for that wedding feast? And to do all that He has said, which includes me loving my wife and my wife submitting to me and our children following us and all this related to that because this is a picture of that? There is something much more at stake in our marriages than what you and I think about it and how you and I feel. It is a picture, as we've seen clearly in Ephesians, it is a picture of Christ and His bride. And you say, well, I'm not married, I don't intend to get married. Fine, you are still the bride of Christ, and all of this relates to you. Are you found submissive to Him? Are you found loving other things or other people more than Him? Because that is adultery. It is interesting to note that in this context of the marriage limb, that what do we see the smoke rising from? What is the judgment particularly on at this point in the text? The great harlot and all of her adulteries. Whoever, whatever that is, they have not bowed their knee to Christ. They might have been religious or not. but they are not part of the bride and they, unfortunately, shall pay for it forever. And you and I have the task of the wedding proposal to spread that because we want as many there as possible. Let me just briefly, that is the main part of the message, let me just briefly talk about the temporal for a moment. Turn with me to Luke chapter 20. Because what we just considered is the story of all the elect from every tribe and tongue and nation of which I trust most of us are a part of and my hope that all of us would be. But I want to go to something that might actually be a little disconcerting for some if you've not studied it, read it. But in Luke chapter 20 verse 27. these sad, these very sad Sadducees, and they're sad because they don't believe in a resurrection. They had to be sad. They don't believe in any kind of resurrection. Life is just about here. And so they question Jesus, as the Pharisees had often done. They're always trying to trick Him, trying to figure something out. And this wasn't necessarily a trick question, but they're trying to test Him. And they question Him, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife, and he's childless, that his brother should take the wife and raise up offspring to his brother. Now stop there for a minute. Go back and read sometime on your own the context of Deuteronomy 25, 5 through 10 and he gives the details of that there. If brothers live together, the text says back in Deuteronomy, if brothers live together and one of the brothers marries a wife and he dies without her having child to carry on that family name, then it is the responsibility of the next brother in line to marry her and take her as his wife so that she can have offspring and so forth and so forth. That was under the law. It was important that family names be carried on, the burying of children, and all of that through the sons, etc. And so they ask him this specific question. Lord, what if this were the case? There were seven brothers and the first took a wife. died childless, and the second took her, and the third took her, and the same way all seven died, leaving no children. And let's stop for a minute. This is a ridiculous scenario, because at some point, if I'm one of those brothers, I had rather be shamed and not take this woman, because she must be killing them, right? She must be poisoning them or something, because she's still childless. That's where the mandate is. You take her so she can have a child. Take her as your wife so she can have a child. She goes through all seven brothers. Now this is a legitimate question though of what they're asking. And then finally, the woman died. In the resurrection therefore, which one's wife will she be? For all seven had her as their wife. She legitimately, biblically, was the wife of seven different men. We're not talking about divorce, we're not talking about, it was, she got married to seven different men, all in the same family. It's a pretty sad family, but all of them married her and died. In heaven, who's she gonna be with? Number one, two, three, four, five, six, or seven? Interesting question, isn't it? And Jesus' answer goes right to the point and might be for some a little difficult. And Jesus said to them, the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to the age and the resurrection from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage. For neither can they die anymore. They are like the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. He goes on, he's making a point about the resurrection, but what he says here is that for those that attain to life that's going to be in heaven with him in eternal life, that's going to be at the wedding feast, it's not going to be about these relationships. I have often heard it said, and I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings in here because maybe you've said it, but I have often heard an older couple, the husband and the wife has died, and now in the latter years of the widow or widower, they make a statement, something to this effect of, I'm so looking forward to going to heaven and being with so-and-so, my spouse. If your hope in heaven is to be with another person, including a marriage spouse, you're going to be sorely disappointed because that's not what heaven is about. You are only going to be concerned about one husband, and that is Christ. If my wife were to die and I were to marry another woman and she died and I marry another woman, when I get to heaven, it's not going to be which house are we going to get? Am I going to be with all three? We're going to be together, millions of us from every tribe and tongue and nation, and we will all be at that point brothers and sisters, and more importantly, you and I will be the bride of Him. Marriage is a earthly relationship, period. We don't need it in heaven. All of our needs will be met by that relationship. That is not a slap against marriage here. That is not to say, well, then, man. No, because everything we do here matters there. This is a reflection of that. As we have looked at over the weekend, I've got three points there. It should be four. As I was going over it this morning, I'm going to add a point, but this is going to be very brief. What is this earthly temporal marriage about? Marriage is an earthly covenant relationship. It's an earthly covenant relationship. As we looked at over the weekend in Matthew 19, till death do us part. Let no man put us under. Let no man separate. This is till death do us part. The covenant is broken only at death. And then we're free to remarry in that. as the covenant with Christ with us is permanent, so is this earthly marriage supposed to be permanent. Now I know it doesn't always work out like that. And this is not a statement to make anybody else feel guilty in whom that has not worked out. As I said yesterday, our father and our husband is extremely gracious and forgiving when we come to him with a broken heart over where we have not kept the standard, okay? But it is a permanent relationship. Secondly, it is God's means of companionship in a very special way. It is God's means of companionship when he said, it is not good for man to be alone. And just as I shared over the weekend that my wife is clearly, and I believe always will be, until death do us part, she is and will be my best friend. There is no one I had rather do anything with or go anywhere with or have a conversation with than her. And that doesn't mean I don't have other friends, she has other friends, but we are growing into this friendship and it's become more and more valuable and I'm so grateful for it. In relationship to Christ, that relationship is also growing as I spend time with him, as I cultivate that relationship in his word and in prayer, that is growing into deeper and deeper communion and companionship. But he created that for us here to have, it's wonderful. Thirdly, the physical fruit of marriage is in childbearing or consummation. The four points I brought up yesterday, what makes a marriage is it's a covenant relationship, it's a cleaving, it's a companionship, it's a consummation. And so I'm going to add that fourth point. These are not in the same order that I would give them yesterday, but as I've contemplated this. Anyway, I have put here childbearing as opposed to consummation, but you can put either one. It is through the physical sexual relationship in marriage that God has brought forth children. I know that all can't have children, et cetera, and so there's adoption and everything. But as the normal means that God set it up in a perfect world society, right? A man and woman get married and they bear children. And that's what we talked about over the weekend, that the two should become one flesh. The beauty of this is really beyond my ability to comprehend because I'm not a biology major, but the oneness as it is seen in a child is really unbelievably glorious because a child that a man and a woman have is the genetic DNA makeup of both the husband and the wife coming as one being now. And the oneness of sexual consummation and marriage as it comes forth into a child is a perfect representation of two becoming one. It's just an unbelievable illustration. Likewise, even though we've, and the illustration breaks down at various points, but I want to say that even though Jesus has left, we're still His bride, and we're waiting for Him, and we have His engagement ring, His Holy Spirit, and we have the proposal that He's given to us that He says, go and give that proposal to others. And in so doing, we are even now bearing fruit spiritually in this world through the gospel and others being converted to join us so that we can all be one big bride one day. to worship him forever and ever. But on this earth in the temporal, obviously, one of the reasons God created marriage is to be fruitful and multiply in that. And so then the fourth point that I would add is a cleaving that we talked about yesterday. Marriage is a cleaving. It's for this reason a man shall leave his father and father and his mother. Jesus was willing to leave heaven, as we talked about, to come get His bride and to forsake all that He had at that point. And the Father has gladly given Him back everything of which you and I are joint heirs with that. But here's how I want to conclude. I've got a question mark there. So how are we challenged in our temporal marriage by this mystery? I did not read the last verse, but you know it. And let me just read it to you, back in Ephesians. For this mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ in the church. Nevertheless, let each individual among you also love his own wife, even as himself, and let the wife see to it that she respect her husband. All right, so here's, I wanna ask you to write this down, because I want you to contemplate and think through this later. I want you to write down these three things, spiritual, physical, and emotional. Spiritual, physical, and emotional. With those would be related, or you can write down these three words because they're gonna coincide with these three. Spirit, body, and soul. Or typically we say it body, soul, and spirit. Those are the three areas. Body, soul, and spirit. Spiritual, physical, emotional. Everything that makes us up. Here's what I wanna ask you to do. and contemplate this later as I ask you who are here over the weekend to do several things and evaluate your marriages and various tasks. I would ask you, for those of you that are married, I wanna ask you to do a very similar evaluation we did over the weekend, just do it again, with these three things, body, soul, and spirit. How would you rate your physical, your temporal marriage, if you're married, your temporal marriage on those areas, on the spiritual oneness in your marriage, on the physical oneness on your marriage, which we spent the last session dealing with yesterday, and the emotional oneness of your marriage? And I didn't get to the end of that yesterday and don't have time to now other than if you remember if you were here I talked about how I had emotionally detached from my wife because of those early years of hurt and the sharp words that she had talked about before God broke into her life with that. But all these things had accumulated in my own life and I had become closed up at an emotional level with her. And it was straining our marriage greatly and it was causing me to neglect what she needed. And God was gracious at a point about 10 years into our marriage, after all these things have been accumulated, about 10 years in our marriage, there was a day, I remember it vividly, when God broke me in that. And He made me to see and realize that I am not communicating, I'm not loving my wife as she needed, which included me being something and doing something that wasn't real easy for me to do anyway. That is simply really share what's shared. That's not a God word, that's what women do. They share with one another these things. No, God is calling me, He's calling a husband to share our innermost being, our heart, our self, our total self. Body, soul, and spirit. Emotionally, I'm not just to pray with her and lead her spiritually. I'm not just to have physical relationship with her. I'm to be her friend. I'm to walk with her. I'm to talk with her. I'm to share life events and things I'm struggling through and all that. She didn't know me because I didn't open up and tell her those things. And for the last 20 years of our marriage, that's been an ongoing process of me learning more and more, and it's become much more natural for me to do that now, but I still have to work on it every once in a while. She has to prod me a little bit, because I'm not talking a lot. When she asks me a question, it's a yes or no from me. And she needs more than that, right? So that's in that emotional area on the temporal marriage. For everyone in here, though, that claims to be a believer, and you wrote those three things down, you're not, for those that are not married, So I want everybody to do this. On a scale of 1 to 10, I want you to rate how you're doing in relationship as the bride of Christ. Is your body given to Him as His temple? Are you doing things with your body that dishonors Him? on a scale of one to 10. 10 saying, to the best that I know, the way I eat, the way I view sexual relationship and moral issues, the way that I take care of my body, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to the best of my knowledge, I am presenting my body as a living sacrifice to Him. And it's His, it's not mine. And it's not the case for many in here. And maybe you're a 5 or 6 because there's some areas that are not His, or your body doesn't belong to His, it belongs to you. And maybe the lust of your flesh. And spiritually, that's just the overall spiritual development of communion with Him, of seeking Him, of praying in the Word and all those things, all the spiritual development that is with that. On the soulish, emotional level, how would you rate that in relationship with Christ? Well, again, that's all kind of intricately tied together, we might say. But is your body, soul, and spirit belong to Him? Let me ask you to bow your heads, would you? When you consider what Christ has done and what a husband is to do, He loved and loves, He sacrifices, He leads, He protects. And we go on and on. Exalt Him for that, but as a husband, are you doing that? And all of us who belong as a body of Christ, the church, and to any wives in here, are we found submissive and obedient? Are we discipling others and raising children in ways that will honor him? Are we faithful and fruitful in line with God as his bride and as a wife to a physical husband in this world? All these things may be unpopular in our world and our culture, but we must love them. And so, Father, in the name of our blessed Lord and Savior and our husband. We thank you for coming to get us and find us and invite us to be your bride, and we love you for it. Please continue to remove the idolatry, the adulteries, fornications, the lusts, the immoralities, the distractions, all the things that keep us and allure us from having and giving You our full affection, O Lord. Would You please reveal those things to us and grant us a gracious conviction that will lead us to repentance? And help us to continue to wait for you and prepare for that wedding feast that you are preparing for. And we say quickly, and we say to you, Lord, come quickly to get us and receive us unto yourself. And until you do that, for those of us that are married or will be married prior to your coming, would you grant us to give others a vivid and real and passionate and holy picture of what you and your church is like by and when they view our marriage on this earth, oh Lord. Help us, God. We're in great need. In the name of Jesus. Amen.