I'll open up your Bibles to Ephesians 5. We're going to look at verses 31-33, the last part of this passage on marriage. And be reminded as you turn there that this is God's holy Word. There are no errors whatsoever in God's Word. And this is the only final authority in all matters of faith and practice. So be addressed by the Holy Spirit. This morning, starting at verse 31, it says, Therefore, 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. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank You as we come to this fourth week on the meaning of marriage as it is in Your Word. We thank You for it. And as You clearly in Your Word rejoice over marriage and sing over it, We want to do the same today. We want to exult in this gift that you have given us, this picture of the gospel of your son. And even as we have to turn our attention prophetically to criticize other views and culture, Even there, Lord, let us have hearts that are open and rejoice and invite in others. And maybe even here, believers, who maybe we've only, all of us, only scratched the surface of Your meaning that You've poured into marriage. Lord, let us come in. Let us see an invitation that You give us in Your kindness. Let everyone here have faith and see the invitation by the way of Your grace and by the way of Your Son into that great wedding feast that all of reality is driving toward. So, Lord, write this word upon our hearts, we pray. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. You may be seated. The title of this message this morning is One Marriage, Two Worlds. In the biblical narrative, in the biblical worldview, there was an old creation made by the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And in that same biblical narrative, there's a new creation rising in the Son of God. Now, the old world was made by God to speak about Him in general. The New World is made by God to speak more specifically about His Son in the Gospel. Now, thinking Christians throughout the centuries have understood this, they've seen this theme, and have sought to do various things with the tensions that it creates in real life. To live, in a sense, between these two worlds. And the biggest vision that won out, at least in the West, was that of Augustine. In his book, The City of God, which captivated the imagination of Christians throughout Western history, he argued that the Christian is, in a true sense, a citizen of heaven right now, and something like a pilgrim citizen down here in the earthly city. We're citizens of both. We live in both. But down here, we're like a pilgrim. We're passing through. It's not our ultimate home. And we can find many texts in Scripture that seem to teach us this, that we are in the world, but not of it. That Jesus does not pray to the Father for Him to take us out of the world, but to protect us from the evil one. And in Hebrews, chapters 11 through 13, about that city that cannot be shaken, the city that all the saints in the Old Testament looked forward to. Well, marriage stands in between these two worlds, too. In fact, marriage presents us with as many tensions as the state does or your job does or any of the other institutions in this world. What we're going to see in this passage is Paul wraps up his teaching on marriage and how marriage is a picture of the gospel. We're going to see three aspects that run the whole gamut here in these three verses. We're going to see in verse 31 what I call universal marriage. Secondly, in verse 32, we'll see what I call gospel marriage. And then thirdly, in verse 33, practical marriage. And these are not three different marriages. They're one marriage. Universal marriage, gospel marriage, and practical marriage. And our job as Christians with one worldview, that believe that truth is a unity, that all truth is God's truth. Our job is going to be not to fly off and forget that this is one thing that God is calling marriage. And here's the big idea if you get lost at any point, and that is this, that God defines all marriages, but opens up its gospel mystery through Christian couples. God defines all marriage and every single marriage, but He opens up its gospel mystery through Christian couples. So let's look at that first point first, and this will be our longest point, and that is universal marriage. Verse 31, it says, "...therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." With no advance warning. Nothing like, just as it is written back here, or anything like that, Paul lets Moses finish his sentence. Paul inserts the text of Genesis to be a conclusion to his inference, his argument here in Athenians. In other words, he said so far, husbands are this, wives are this, to tell about the gospel, therefore, continuous line of thought. That's an inference in logic. Now, a conclusion to an argument begins with words like, therefore, and that's what Paul's doing. He's letting Genesis That finishes argument. Therefore, and if we look at that word, therefore, I think we can make at least three observations about this conclusion. Number one, that marriage has to be the same object back in Genesis that it is up here in Ephesians. Otherwise, Paul's whole argument falls to the ground. Has to be the same object back in Genesis that it is up here in Ephesians. Secondly, we can observe that this man spoken of in Genesis, therefore a man, this man in Genesis is in the universal affirmative. In other words, all married men are to be one flesh. When he says, therefore a man, God is saying all men in marriage. Thirdly, We can observe that this statement is a moral truth and not simply a psychological truth, a moral truth, not just something about the woman being dear to the man's heart so that he holds fast to her. Let me quote Charles Hodge in his commentary on this verse to help me explain what I mean by that. He looks at this and he says, because the relationship between husband and wife is more intimate than any other, even that between parents and children, Therefore, a man shall consider all other relations subordinate to that which he sustains to his wife, with whom he is connected in the bonds of a common life." Now, Hodge isn't talking about the church at this point, or certainly not about God and about Christ. He's talking about in the old world, back in Genesis, a husband is to treat this relationship to be more intimate, and he's more bound to this than he's considered in any other relationship. And so what Hodge is recognizing here is a quality of the marriage relationship that is absolutely the same in Ephesians as it was way back in Genesis. And notice that God is the one doing the explaining in this passage. Now you might not know that because that's Paul talking over here in Ephesians, but he's quoting a passage where God is doing the explaining. And so by using the word shall, God is highlighting a moral truth. In other words, He's saying, in effect, Husband, this is what you shall do with marriage. And so it's an imperative for every single marriage, every single husband. This is what marriage is for. This is what a husband is for, God is telling us. And therefore, both marriages and husbands are morally obliged to be and to do exactly this. And conversely, therefore, they're forbidden to do anything that would run contrary to this. This is God speaking at the very creation of marriage. Now, of course, this citation is of Genesis chapter 2, verse 24. where God Himself was creating marriage. And the bottom line is this, and you have to settle this for yourself if you're just coming to this. Either Moses is telling the truth in that text, or he's lying. And if he's lying, then the whole Christian faith is utterly worthless. But if this is God's own Word, and Moses is speaking on behalf of God, and this is really God talking, with God telling us exactly what marriage is as a whole throughout history. And this is what we might call the creational covenant of marriage. And we call it that because this is God's ordination for man and woman, for all people, at all times. Now you say, is this still the view in the New Testament? Glad you asked. Jesus, who is God, says it is. In Matthew 19, verse 4 and 6, and you can see a parallel passage in Mark's Gospel, chapter 10, verse 5 through 9, Jesus, the Son of God, reaffirms that this was a divine action. where he answers the Pharisees on the subject of divorce. Matthew 19, 4-6. This is Jesus speaking. Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female? Who's Jesus talking about? Well, when He's talking about the Creator, He's talking about God. He who created them. Who's that? That's God. Created who? The marriage partners. The whole answer is in the answer to the question of divorce of a married couple. So, Jesus is saying two things so far. God created them, and he created this marriage couple, male and female. Then his next words are this. He who created them said, so stop right there, who's speaking in Genesis 2.24 according to Jesus? God. He who created them said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Let therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." Now, it might be objected here. Now, wait a minute. Jesus is really only talking about divorce here. He's not actually working on the definition of marriage. He's not restricting the definition of marriage here for all mankind to one man and one woman. And my answer to that is to read the whole statement and read its logic instead of twisting Jesus's words or torturing Jesus's words or trying to explain them away and reduce them. Because Jesus, like Paul, is directly quoting from Genesis 2.24, and He's reminding us that this is God's own covenant to all mankind at the beginning. And according to Jesus, in these words, there's a logical therefore. When He sees therefore in Genesis 2.24, He, like Paul, makes it part of His argument. is a grounding of their sexuality in this institution. A grounding of their being male and female for this purpose. And God is the one saying, this thing is these two. Notice it. God made them male and female, and therefore, this is a one-flesh union. This is Jesus' interpretation of Genesis 2.24. So let me cover the logic again. God made them male and female. He said, you are male and female, therefore, this one flesh union. And if that's not enough, Jesus expressly forbids anybody to undo that. See, that's not just something we say at the end of a wedding. That's not just the way... That's not just talking about divorce. That's not just talking about adultery. See, divorce is just a way to do that to one particular instance of a one-flesh union. But what should we think about a society that would use the force of law to dissolve the whole institution? To do what Jesus expressly says you must not do, because God said, I've made it this way. And while we're at it, what should we think about the recent craze for reality TV shows about polygamy? You watch it? Is that exciting for you? Oh, I'm not for that. I just think it's really, really interesting how they have four wives and five wives. But Jesus says you must still not do that. So the answer is exactly the same, what we should say to both. God says that these two, man and woman, shall become one flesh. And that's what a marriage is. And that will never change. Now, you might be into what Common Core calls accelerated math. Accelerated math. But in God's math, two means two. Not three. Not more. Not other than. But these two. By universal marriage, then, here's what I mean. I mean the law of God for marriage as a whole. Every single married man shall take one wife." Genesis says the universal meaning of marriage is not the more specific gospel meaning of marriage, which we're going to get to. The universal meaning of marriage back in Genesis is not the specific gospel meaning that members of the New Covenant enjoy. We enjoy more than that, but never less than that. This is the more general meaning that all members of the creational covenant are bound to. Who's that? That's everybody that comes from Adam. This meaning of marriage is a portion of what the old thinkers used to call natural law, before evangelicals came around and said that that was a dirty phrase. Shame on evangelicals. natural law. This is the law spoken of by Paul to the Romans, where he says in chapter 2, verse 14 and 15, that when the Gentiles, who do not have the law, namely, they don't have the law of Moses, when the Gentiles who do not have the law, by nature, do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. So, let me show you something in this chart I have here. What Paul is saying in Romans 2, this object, namely what the law requires, that's everything in the law. Now, our trouble goes beyond this, and unfortunately I'm not going to be able to get to it in the sermon, but evangelicals have a wrong view of what the law is. We don't even know what the law is. We have a wrong, unbiblical view of what the law means. Scripture tells us how to define the law and the most general category for it is Everything God requires of you is law the whole penitent according to Galatians 4 is referred to as the law and Romans 3 says that the law speaks to everyone who's under it what she goes on to say is all mankind So when you see law over here in Romans 2, God is requiring of all mankind certain things. So in this chart, you have what the law requires. Paul is saying that even the Gentiles, who do not have the Mosaic law, even if they've never read Genesis 2.24, God has written on their heart the same thing. That's what natural law means. And shame on evangelical teachers and even reform teachers for not understanding that and teaching otherwise. Because Jesus says in Matthew 5 that whoever takes the least part of this law and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. So nature here, in Paul's language, doesn't mean the physical world or the cosmos, he doesn't mean nature like that. Paul's using it in its primary logical sense. In this primary meaning, nature means the way something is, the characteristics of a thing, and such characteristics are objective. By saying that the Gentiles do the work of the law or what the law requires, He means that the Gentiles do what the law of Moses requires when they receive natural law. Paul is holding the moral obligations of God as a universal thing over the two particulars of natural law and Mosaic law. But the, thou shalt not consider marriage to be anything else, is the same over both. That's what's meant by nature. When God called the nature of a marriage and the nature of a husband at the beginning, what He calls them, that is their nature. That is what it is and everyone is bound to it. Now, that nature is made clear to our conscience. And that's what Paul means by nature. And that's what we mean by natural law. So, the fact that the law of Moses is more specific to Israel does not somehow make God's law in the Scriptures to be pertaining to something other than nature. For the Scriptures to be talking about something parochial, small, for just you cute little Christians. Something other than reality. Something apart from the nature of things. Apart from the shared moral universe. Something other than or different than the covenant that God made with all mankind. to divorce natural law from God's law and scripture assumes a pluralistic worldview, multiple realities that have nothing to do with each other, two different worlds that never cross paths, and we call that relativism. It's not a biblical worldview. And so, consequently, when Paul, in that same letter to the Romans, condemns homosexuality, He does not do so in some parochial, little, corner-of-the-world sense that is meant only for Christian consumption. He says this in Romans 1, 26-27. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to the gospel. He doesn't say that. That's true, but that's not what he says. He says, for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty Notice the language of Paul. It is not that it is contrary to the Gospel. That's true too. And that's serious. It is not that it is contrary to the New Covenant, or that it rules in the Church. And that would be true too. But that's not what he says. It is that it is contrary to nature. It runs contrary to the original creation. and therefore to all the ordinances and requirements therein. And that means that homosexuality is contrary to nature psychologically, contrary to nature sociologically, contrary to nature biologically, contrary to nature anatomically, and yes, contrary to nature politically. Because the commonwealth shares an objective nature with the objective nature of everything else. It's not like God made the world, but that the political realm was the one place where there is no nature. That's a world separate, where anything goes. That is not the biblical worldview, and that is not what we are bound to accept. Now, if anybody wants to go deeper on that, and I challenge you to do so, I'm planning on doing a Sunday school class pretty soon. which will show all of that, among other things, and I'm going to call it the Law of God in the City of Man. We're going to do a study of natural law in Scripture, so that we can make the connections about a lot of these things. Let's go into the deeper end of the pool, which is our shorter point, because I think Paul's already been unpacking that, and that is Gospel. Marriage. Paul's next words in verse 32, notice he talks about it in a way where he's still talking about the same thing. He says, this mystery is profound. And I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The first thing you have to ask yourself if you're reading the Scriptures here is this mystery. What mystery? The mystery of marriage. This one thing with a nature called marriage, this one thing back in Genesis that is still the same thing, is both a discernible thing and it's a mystery. It's the same for everyone and it's deeper for some. It's both. It's one thing in one sense and it's another thing in another sense, not a contradiction. It's a paradox. Now, here's what's meant by this mystery being profound. It's just another dimension of that very same mystery that Paul has already spoken about in this letter. And remember, every time he said the word mystery, he means the gospel. Here's two samples. Chapter 1, verse 9, God is making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose. which He set forth in Christ. Chapter 3, verse 6. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. The mystery, in other words, is just a euphemism for the Gospel. The good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, which as we go from this part of the Bible to that cover, becomes more. You wouldn't say about a flower that's blooming that that stem or the roots is fundamentally a different thing than the petals, would you? No, it's the blooming. It's the fruition of the exact same thing. But the view isn't for everybody. He answers, if you were to ask him, wait a minute, Paul, what is this profound mystery of marriage? He says, it refers to Christ and the church. So this thing that is natural law, the Holy Spirit is going to make it blossom. It is going to make it be in the view of Christians. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. Or to put more flesh on it, marriage is a gospel referent. Marriage is a gospel sign. It's a gospel story. It's a gospel dramatization, if you want to say it that way. And notice again that this is the exact same object called marriage as it was all the way back in Genesis. So is he saying, in the New Testament, I'm going to make it something more than that? No. It was always that. Marriage from the beginning had a gospel DNA. Every marriage refers to Christ and the church from the beginning, even in the most hardened skeptic, even in those who distort it. It is always patterned. after the covenant-keeping love of Christ to come. So let's review our big idea a little bit, just so we can keep sanding off the rough edges of some bad ideas. We said, if you remember, that God defines all marriages, but he opens up its gospel mystery through Christian couples. So notice that what Christian couples get out of marriage, we're not saying that Christian couples get something different out of it, and you can get that out of it. So Christian couples are going to receive from it, are going to believe about it, something more, something different than what non-Christian couples get out of it. We believers have this mystery by grace opened up to us. It will only listen to the Scriptures. But it doesn't follow. That does not mean that those who don't have it revealed to them can just go off and make it whatever they want to make out of it. The child who cannot swim to the depths of the pool doesn't disprove the water in the whole pool, does he? It's the same objective substance throughout. And it's the same thing here. in a distortion about marriage. Because it refers to Christ in the church. The more you distort it, the more you lie about Christ in the church. But you can never, ever, ever make it something other than referring to Christ in the church. The depths are simply the depths of the same thing. So, how is it that every marriage refers to Christ and the Church? Or in another way of saying it, in what sense to those who are ignorant of Christ and the Church? How can they speak about Christ and the Church? Well, I could list lots of ways, but let's just go most general. Because in the first place, the Scriptures teach us in Romans 11.36 that from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. is outside of that? Or is marriage one of the things that God ordains, cultivates, and makes glorify Him? Brings back to Him? All marriages are ordained by God, and all marriages will bring some form of glory to Him. Even if it's injustice for His anger at having distorted it so much, God will get His glory. God will show it referring to Christ and the church in every single marriage that takes place or is mocked in a pseudo-marriage. Secondly, when even an unbelieving couple remains faithful for life, they are unwittingly... they may have the wrong motives. They may do it out of fear. They may do it for money. But every single marriage that remains faithful for life, even the unbeliever, is unwittingly bearing witness to the covenant-keeping love of Jesus Christ. Now, on the flip side of that coin, that is exactly why adultery and prostitution and divorce tell a false gospel. Because Jesus never that marriage violates the covenant to His bride in that way. And Jesus never does marriage in that way. And by the way, that's one reason why marriage can never be defined as a covenant. Because then that just means that marriage is prostitution. It's just suburban prostitution. You're agreeing for money, right? That's not what marriage is. And we're lying about Jesus Christ when we define marriage than what He says it is. And so Paul says to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6, 15-17, Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one with her? For as it is written, The two will become one flesh. There it is again. Paul's using the same thing. He's using that as an argument. You notice that Paul and Jesus treat God's speech in Genesis 2 everywhere as this sort of spring-loaded, DNA-packed argument that was there to solve all these other cultural issues, even prostitution. Because, he says, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Now, it's exactly from this deeper mystery type language. It's exactly from this movement of language from the Greek and the Greek word musterion that's used here to its Latin cousin sacramentum. It's exactly from that flow of language that the Roman Catholic doctrine of marriage as a sacrament of the church takes form. And after all, doesn't Paul say right here that marriage is a mystery? And beyond that, that it's a gospel mystery? It symbolizes what Christ does in the gospel. But my answer to the Roman doctrine there is, yeah, that's all true, but that logic only holds up to the end if we start with the assumption that marriage begins in the New Covenant. That it begins in the new creation rather than in the old. at the beginning, only if we start with the assumption that God's law for marriage is a law of the church, a law for the covenant of grace. In other words, a law for Christians only, instead of a law of the covenant of creation for all mankind. But that, as we've seen, is a false assumption. We've already shown from the Scriptures that marriage is principal among all the social orders back in Genesis. It is first of all the social orders back in the old world, not of the new world. And we saw last week that Jesus clearly says to the Sadducees in Mark 12, it's not going to be there in the new world. It's a shadow now for something greater in the new world. And therefore, the Roman doctrine of sacramental marriage falls to the ground. But I would say, watch yourself. If you have an Enlightenment view of marriage, and it's just a contract that we consent to, and if you try to give a spiritual meaning of it for everybody, that's a law of the church. You pretty much agree with the Roman Catholic view at that point. And legalized, sanctioned by God, prostitution. So let's be consistent here. Ask me afterwards if you want me to connect those dots again. Thirdly, practical marriage, our last section. Notice first of all, before I read this verse, verse 33, as you look at this whole passage, verse 22 through 33, that the marriage of Christ to the church is not first and foremost, a picture or a set of practical principles for how we can make better marriages down here. Now, it's going to accomplish that. If I want to know how to be a husband, I look to Christ. It's going to accomplish that. But that is not Paul's flow of thought. It's just the opposite. The earthly marriage of a man and a woman is an analogy. It's a copy. It's a moving picture of the real and lasting thing between Christ and the Church. Even when Paul gets practical, he says, do this like this, because this, Christ and the Church, is what the whole thing is a picture of. So even if you want to get practical, you can never do it without the theology of it, or you misunderstand the thing you're handling. If you're the kind of person that looks at this and says, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true, but show me how to relate to my spouse. You don't know what a spouse is if you're saying yada, yada, yada to that stuff. Paul's screaming at you. You don't even know who you are. You don't even know what a marriage is. Practice what? What do you want practical principles for? Something other than what Paul's saying marriage is? If you won't accept that first, You don't understand anything that you're saying. Paul's trying to graduate us here, to this whole world. Theology always, always precedes morality. I'll say it another way. Who God is, and what God has done, always defines the practice of everyday life. Otherwise, you have legalism and not gospel. Just give me another list. Tell me what to do. Make it practical. Put some flesh on it. In other words, put the chains of the law back on me and make God my judge and not my father. That's what you mean. But if you put who God is and what God has done for you in Christ first and make all the practice to be a practice of that, then you've got yourself a gospel and not legalism. Theology always precedes morality. And yet, it is just when we surrender to that, just when we admit and confess and surrender to God, and admit that all is for Him and all is about Him, that all of the secrets of practical life are unlocked to us and lit up for us in Scripture. So what do you think Paul's going to do to our practice here at the end? Think he doesn't care about it? You think he's just going to leave us hanging as husband and wife to figure out how to do it on our own? Not at all. He ends out this section by reminding us. He's saying, it's about Christ and the church. Don't forget that. However, verse 33, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. That command at the end is not new. It's the command he already gave us throughout. So he's not departing. He ends with the practical. But maybe, maybe not how you think. So test yourself. This is not a getting on with practice. This is a reiteration of the practical commands that Paul had already made. And he made these practical commands an analogy of Christ and the Church. So when I say, however, do this this way, that's still, you won't understand it to the degree that you don't get, that this is an analogy. This is a picture of Christ and the Church. And therefore, Paul's use of the word, however, is not some kind of a, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Verse 22 through 33, that is so mysterious. That is so theological. Wow, that is neat. But for the majority of you Christians that are practical, that need to get a handle on the real world, No. That would be to take back everything he said. Paul is not turning the corner to a different world called the practical world. But rather he is making the practical, husbands do this, wives do this, he's making that a punctuation. He's making that an exclamation point of what he's already said. He's saying in effect, husbands your loving of your wife and wives, your respecting of your husbands is the punctuation or the accentuation of the very same gospel that we've already seen that it is. You better believe that gospel or you're not going to know what you're handling when you handle even yourself. Whether you lived it out or not, you doing the practical is gospel or you don't even know what you're asking for. So live it out. Live out that Gospel. Live out that picture. And so, just as in everything else, so also in marriage. James would tell us in James 1, verse 22, But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, He is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. You see the language of that passage? It prevents us from going to either extreme. He says to us who would see the picture but want to keep it over there and not live it out, he says, be doers of the Word. Don't be a hypocrite and hide behind doctrine. But then he says to the pragmatists who would say, exactly, exactly. He says, be doers of the Word. Not doers of doing. Not doers of nothing in particular. Not doers of your own subjective opinion and what you think works. but doers of this picture. The divorce of the theological and the practical. If you want to divorce those worlds, theory, practice. Gospel, doing. The divorce of the theological and the practical is the denial of the theological and the death of the practical. Let me say that again, because you won't just be killing theology if you do that. You'll be killing practice. You'll be killing the very thing you say you want to get on with. Come on, God, just make this about what I'm already doing, which makes you God and not have to change. When the Bible would confront you and say, that world that you think is real, that you want God to give you 12 practical tips in, you're an idolater. And all that stuff is the stuff that I'm coming to turn over in your temple. The divorce of the theological and the practical is the denial of the theological and the death of the practical. By saying, which is what you're saying if you do that, by saying, God, this has nothing to do with You, we are in effect preparing ourselves to do nothing as unto the Lord. It would have no meaning. The consistent Christian and the pragmatic, obsessed Christian simply do not believe in the same world. And that's the problem. You may be genuinely saved, but you don't tend to live in the world that is painted in the Scriptures. The consistent Christian, the Bible-believing Christian, and the pragmatist Christian do not believe in the same world. And therefore, we do not believe in the same thing to be doing, which is why we're doing two different things and tend to live in two different worlds. You see, Christianity is utterly opposed to pragmatism. Christianity is utterly opposed to having people come to the church and saying, put some flesh on it, meaning, bring it to the bottom shelf, meaning, give it to me where I'm at. Where you're at and where I'm at is idle land. We would distort these truths. We would make it about ourselves. It's left to ourselves. And so God doesn't leave us to ourselves. He says, drink deeply of my gospel first, and then you'll know what to practice. Christianity is utterly opposed to pragmatic obsession. You may say, well, if it works, do it. Or how do I use this in everyday practice? I don't see how it works. But we must say to you at this point, works for what? Practice what? Who has given you every day? Who has given you your spouse and your children and your home and your calling? And for what? You see, there's no such thing as practical as you mean it. There is no such thing as practical that is not the practice of theology. Or else you do not know God. Because theology just means the knowledge of God. There is no such thing as practice that will practice you all the way into heaven that is not a practice of the Gospel. All of life is the practice of God's glory. Because He ordained every single thing. And especially marriage. He ordained every single practical thing to always and at every point say the right thing about Him. And you are not practicing anything worth anything if you are not asking, what does this say about God? which you first have to say, who is God? And how can I be reconciled to Him? So, one more time on this last verse. Why is the husband told to agape his wife, to love his wife? And the wife told to phoba, that's the word we get, the English word phobia, which might give you a phobia of what I'm about to say. It can be translated respect, and some translations will even translate it fear or reverence. And again, what should tip you off is that the Bible talks about there being a healthy fear of God, and it doesn't mean a dread. Not for the Christian. Not for someone who's been reconciled to Him. But again, the husband is not Christ. He's as Christ. This reverence is going out because of what it says about Christ. Why is the husband being commanded to do that, and the wife being commanded to do that? Well, it's because the thing commanded, on a practical level, is what the other needs, and it's what your sinful nature cannot give for anything. You've got to do it this way, because this is the machine. This is the way God built it. And 1 Peter 3 seems to be giving us the flip side of the same coin. 1 Peter 3 spends six verses telling wives, it doesn't work like that. You may fear that your husband has no clue what he's doing. And you might be completely right about that. But even if he's a disbeliever, even if he disbelieves and he's an unbeliever, Even there, what's going to melt his heart is a quiet, submissive disposition and not nagging. 1 Peter 3 is not against girl power. It's saying, you don't know what it is. That doesn't work and it never will. And then in verse 7, domineering, neglecting. That doesn't work. And he's saying in effect to men, I won't even listen to your prayers. That your prayers may not be hindered. I won't even let you lead. because you neglect the love of your wife. He's saying, in 1 Peter 3, the flip side of the coin that he's saying in Ephesians 5.33. In Ephesians 5.33, he's saying, this is what the other needs, and so I've commanded of you. In 1 Peter 3, you're delusional. That doesn't work. See Ephesians 5.33. If you don't think that's practical, You're in rebellion against God. You're out of touch with reality. God's telling you, I made the machine and I know how you fail. It doesn't work like you think it works. It works by doing this. And here's another thing to remember while you're remembering that that's a command from God. While you're remembering that, remember that if you have ever been loved by the other that you will be getting treated better than you deserve. Because you are in that class of people that Paul talks about in Romans 32, that those that do these things deserve to die. Do you know what you deserve every morning? Same thing I deserve every morning. You deserve death. And more than that, the eternal death. And so all that we get from anyone is always better than we deserve. Do we think that marriage and the other person in marriage is the one exception to that? Absolutely not. In fact, I would argue it's the place where God wants to show us that the most. Remember that all these things in marriage are from God, or else you'll never get the practice of marriage right. The theology, the gospel, comes before the practical tips. social area of life, and then we'll look at the gospel. This is sort of a wrap-up of the whole section. But there's three dominant visions of marriage as an object that have shown up in the modern West. Three different views of what marriage fundamentally is. And according to one scholar, Andreas Kastenberger, in his book God, Marriage, and Family, These three can be described as the sacramental position, the contractual position, and the covenantal position. In other words, the idea that marriage is fundamentally a sacrament, secondly, that marriage is fundamentally a contract, or thirdly, that marriage is fundamentally a covenant. Now, the first, that marriage is a sacrament, is the Roman Catholic position. And we've already briefly explained what's wrong with that. But notice, if you held on to that, that the second position that marriage is a contract is going to be wrong for the exact same reason, except that they secularize it, whereas the Roman Catholic Church sacredizes it. I'm sure there's a word for that that I just can't think of right now. But it's going to be the same fundamental thing that's going on there. And there's other problems with the contractual view. But the contractual view of marriage comes out of the Enlightenment, so we're talking 17th, 18th, 19th century. And particularly, from that strand of modern thought, that begin to view all social spheres. When I talk of a social sphere, I'm talking marriage, education, field of labor, even things in nature, but social, we're mainly talking about human orders of creation here, the state, and then in the new creation, the church. But in the old creation, that's what we mean by a sphere of creation. The modernist worldview, getting away from the biblical worldview, started to view all social orders, like the family, as the creation of individuals giving their free consent. You see that in all the state of nature theory about how governments arose. Individuals get together and they sign a contract. In other words, God didn't do it. Individuals did it. And that creates a problem. Lots of them actually. But that's the idea. Marriage is the creation of individuals giving their free consent. Now, at first glance, it might seem to us that the idea of a contract and the idea of a covenant is a distinction without a difference. Maybe it's a mere semantics issue, but that is not the case at all. The one is secular and the other is sacred. In other words, one of them starts in the secular, the other starts with God. And now the Christian worldview recognizes a distinction between those two worlds. A distinction between the sacred and the secular. But we recognize no divorce between the sacred and the secular. In the biblical worldview, everything secular is sacred first. In other words, we like secular things. Your job. And your marriage has a secular dimension. And by the way, may you give consent in marriage, totally against arranged marriages. But that's not where we start. We do not divorce the sacred and the secular. So pay attention, church, because here's what makes the difference between these two worlds. And by the way, we're not against contracts. But we insist that what God has joined together does not start in a human contract. Whereas the modern world divorced the sacred world and the secular world, the biblical worldview places the secular inside of the sacred. Everything in God's world is God's property. Everything big He designed, He told you what He was designing. And everybody in that covenant is bound to that covenant. And we are disobeying that covenant if we don't hold others to that covenant in exactly the way the Bible says, you shall and you shall not. And what that comes to mean about marriage is that the whole idea of marriage, and every single particular marriage, is a sacred covenant made primarily by God. That's what Jesus said in Matthew 19. God, who made them male and female, said this about every marriage. God binds every marriage. That's why you have a preacher there. He's representing the activity of God. And everybody else is witnessing what God has joined together. A sacred covenant. which binds one man and one woman together in one thing with a discernible nature. A thing and a nature that was there before that couple got there and will be there long after they're gone. They may consent and they may not. They may be faithful or they may not. But the consent or the faithfulness or the viewpoint of either human party does not make anything about marriage what it is. It refers to Christ and the church from the beginning to all mankind. That's the whole flow. Secondly and finally, God made you married, if you're married, to reveal the mystery of His good news to you. God gave you the exact marriage that He did. In fact, in Acts chapter 17, He says He allotted to every single person their exact boundaries in their dwelling place. God gave you your house, your job. God gave you the exact spouse that you have to show you the gospel. And let me immediately lift up anybody who would despair this exact thing because you've either been divorced or because your marriage is right now not what it should be. Because the mystery of the good news through a Christian vision of marriage does not finally depend on your performance. And by the way, all the people who are still married are married by God's grace. because lots of people have been divorced for a lot less than all the stuff that you know that you are guilty of. So we have nothing to boast in. Nothing whatsoever. The mystery of the Good News does not depend, finally, on the performance of either party. Now, how we speak about Christ in the church will communicate Gospel, and so it's important. It will communicate either a true Gospel or it will communicate a false gospel. But the hero in that gospel is not your performance. The hero in that gospel at the end of this mystery is never us anyway. But God gave you the exact partner in marriage that you have right now to expose to you your great need of His mercy, the weakness of your flesh, the sinfulness of your sin, and how to sacrifice all the things that really don't matter for the people that do matter. And you and I cannot do any of these things that a gospel marriage requires. And in marriage, we are more aware of that fact than in any other area of life. See, everywhere else we can fake it. But in marriage, like I said last week, God has ordained our spouse to be both law and gospel to us. And you know what will fix your marital problems even before you get to the love of God? And I mean the ones that you bring to the table. The marital problems that spring forth from your heart. Before you get to the love of God, have you considered the wrath of God as a marriage counselor? the wrath of God. Has it ever occurred to you when you have wrath toward your spouse? Has it ever occurred to you that when you have a grievance against your spouse, oh, but this grievance stretches back all these many years to infinity. Well, so, unlike the infinity of the offense that we've committed against God, to drop in the bucket by comparison. Have you ever considered that when you are angry at your spouse, that a much greater sin than the ones that you're aware of, a much greater sin than you see at the surface in your spouse, all of that sin is all against God and not against you. And yet, He poured out His anger that He was righteous to have against those sins. And you know He poured it out on? He poured it out on the One who was truly His Beloved, instead of on your spouse. And you and I have the audacity to harbor unforgiveness against our spouses. And we don't know the Gospel. And we don't know the thing we need to know before we'll ever hear the Gospel. Namely, the wrath of God against our sins. Now, if that's you, and if you think you have a good argument against that, then you do not know either God's grace or His righteous wrath as you ought to. How can you receive God's gift of salvation? How can you receive God's forgiveness for the kind of sins that you committed if you think that the greatest offense in the universe is the one against you? How can you hear God ready to pardon you in His kindness if that's the kind of wrath that you measure things by? Colossians 3, verse 12 and 13, Paul admonishes us saying, 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." He's not saying that your grievance is unintelligible. He says, if you have a complaint, to forgive and not to harbor it and to pretend that it's your property. is only opened up for those who see Jesus paying for all of these offenses that were against God. To anyone who will have Jesus as the hero of their marriage. To anyone who will have Jesus as the thing you see when this mystery is opened up. In other words, for anyone who would see Him as God's Beloved. And yet, Him, Him alone, the One who is faithful, who alone made amends, who alone reconciled the offender to the true offended party, who was God. To anyone who will have this mystery as it is in Scripture, He gives eternal life. And He gives it now and He gives it full. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank You for the mystery of marriage. We thank You that ultimately, these things called marriages now, though we've only scratched the surface, refer to Christ and the Church. It must be a surpassingly beautiful thing if you open up Your Word like that and if you close it with the Bride fully radiant, descending upon the new world. And that all glory is a reflection of the true Bridegroom. We pray, Lord, that His sinless life, that His sacrificial atoning death, and that His resurrection for our justification, that You would send the Holy Spirit and You would emblazon that love that is stronger than death upon our hearts. We pray that you would make it real to us. We pray that we would live it out. But as we see that we will fall, we pray that we would see in it the only hero of this mystery, Jesus Christ. So let us praise him now and accept this praise as a delight to your ears because of what he has done for us. And we pray it all in Jesus name. Amen.