Now we're here together not just this afternoon but over this course of three days to consider the family, the families in our homes, the family that is our church. And in the time that we have together this afternoon here specifically, we want to consider how the family and the gospel sort of bleed over into each other. What do our families tell us? What do our families tell others about the gospel of Jesus Christ? And what does the gospel of Jesus Christ tell us about our families? Now, for our purposes this afternoon specifically, we're going to be focusing on one very particular aspect of the family, and that is marriage. You're not parents and children, but husband and wife. You know, this is the foundation from which the family of children and grandchildren springs. And it's a relationship into which the scriptures give us some really staggering insights. So we'll just kind of settle in and deal specifically this afternoon with marriage. And we know what marriage is. We find it first described, in fact we find it instituted, we find marriage itself created by our good God in Genesis chapter 2. There in Genesis 2 verse 18 we read, and the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a help meet for him. Now, at that point, if you've been reading through Genesis starting at chapter 1, verse 1, these words of chapter 2, verse 18 can be a little jarring. Particularly in Genesis chapter 1, as Scripture tells us about God creating all things out of nothing, there are a couple of different refrains that emerge. Every time that God creates anything, the seas, the dry land, the stars, the planets, the fish. Every time that God creates anything, He looks upon what He has created and He declares that it is good. God is creating, He's bringing into being things that were not. He is the alone, omnipotent agent of creation and everything that our infinitely good God makes is good. Except for the solitude of man. Genesis 2.18 tells us that it is not good that man is alone. So God will create woman. She'll go on to be named Eve. Initially, the scriptures just refer to her as woman. Now, why is this? Why is the solitude of man in need of this remedy? Why is the solitude of man, even when it's the solitude that is a solitude in the midst of the Garden of Eden, with abundant provision of every good thing, seemingly immediate communion with God himself, why is that kind of solitude not good? Well, the Scriptures don't say directly, but they do give a hint. They give some indications of the reason why that solitude of man is not good. Now, at this point, we need to appreciate something about the structure of Genesis 1 and 2. Hang with me, it's not that detailed. In Genesis 1, really into Genesis chapter 2 verse 3, Scripture gives us this sweeping account of God's creation of all things in the space of six days and then is resting on the seventh. It gives us the entire creation week. Then, beginning in Genesis 2 at verse 4, the Scriptures sort of go back And having covered the entire creation week rather quickly, Scripture zeroes in on the sixth day, the day in which God created man specifically. And it's in that more specific, more focused account that we read about God's dissatisfaction with the solitude of man and God's remedy for that lack. But back in Genesis chapter one, when we're just dealing with kind of the bird's eye view of creation, some of those details are omitted. The dramatic development is absent. And we read simply this. This is back in Genesis one, verses 26 and 27. And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, created he him. Male and female, created he them. As you can see here, the creation of man, and specifically the creation of man as male and female, it's all sort of collapsed together. And mankind, male and female, is created as God's image-bearer. Yes, man and woman are image-bearers, but they're also together the image-bearer. The image of God is born by men, The image of God is born by women. The image of God is born by men and women. And there's a hint of why that is. As you may have noticed, or you may anticipate, in verse 26, God, speaking of himself, to himself, by himself, he speaks in the plural. Let us make man in our image. Now, if this is all that we had in the Bible, I'm not certain exactly what we would make of that, but that's not all that we have in the Bible. And from what we find revealed in the rest of the scripture, we know what's happening here. The triune God, the God who is one God in three persons, is speaking in and out of the fullness of his triune being. Mankind is being created in the image of the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He's being created in our image. And with that detail disclosed in Genesis 1, we can make some sense of why, in Genesis 2, it's not good for the man to be alone. In his isolation, there is something of God's plurality in unity that Adam can't reflect, that he just simply cannot image. And so God takes part of him. He takes part of the one man, and God makes woman. According to Genesis 2, 21, God causes his deep sleep to come over Adam. God makes woman out of Adam's rib. In verse 23, an awakened Adam sees this woman and he sings. And you can't really tell it well in English translation, but verse 23 is written as poetry. Adam is enraptured with this woman that he sees and he's singing. This woman, distinct from him, is yet still part of him. And for that reason, God tells us in verse 24, for that reason, because of the oneness of the two, the man will leave his father and he'll leave his mother and he'll cleave to his wife and they shall be one flesh. That's marriage. According to Jesus, speaking in Matthew chapter 19, for example, It is in this very moment, with these very words, speaking of the two becoming one flesh, it's with these very words that God creates marriage. In the two-in-one image-bearing of man and woman, God creates marriage. Now, in Scripture, obviously, God reveals Himself to us. He tells us truth about who He is. And one of the most beautiful things that he tells us, one of the things that gives us the most penetrating gaze into the bottomless mystery of God comes in 1 John 4, verse 8, and again down in verse 16, where we read very simply, God is love. John doesn't tell us that God is loving, although certainly He is. John tells us that God is love. God himself in himself is love. Perfect, eternal, boundless love. How can that be? How can one God, our God, be love? Doesn't love require both one to give the love and one to receive it? Does it not require both a lover and a loved? Does love not require more than just one? Well, it does. And our God is triune. And in Himself from all eternity, before He even created time, the Father perfectly loved the Son and the Spirit. The Son perfectly loved the Father and the Spirit. The Spirit perfectly loved the Father and the Son. Love perfectly given. Love perfectly received. Love perfectly returned. Jesus speaks of that eternal bliss in our world. In John 17 verse 24, when he's praying to his father and he says, Thou lovest me before the foundation of the world. Before the foundation of the world, before there was anything outside of God himself. There was this perfect love amongst the persons of the Trinity. And in this intra-Trinitarian love, the love of another and the love of oneself become one. They're the same. When the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, He's loving others. He's loving the Son. He's loving the Spirit. And He's also loving Himself, because the three are one God. When the Son is loving the Father and the Spirit, He's loving others. And He's also loving Himself because the three are one God. When the Spirit loves the Father and the Son, He's loving others. And He, at the same time, is loving Himself because the three are one God. That is the perfection, the bliss that just is the iridescent glory of the triune love. Now, in just a minute, we'll have occasion to spend a little bit of time in Ephesians chapter 5. but we need to sort of sneak a peek there prematurely. In Ephesians 5 verse 28, Paul writes, so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. Husband and wife are one flesh. They're one with each other. So when a man loves his wife, he's loving another, and he also is loving himself because the two are one flesh. When a wife loves her husband, she's loving another, and she also is loving herself because the two are one flesh. In marriage, we receive the dimmest shadow of an outline, of a silhouette, of the beauty of the intra-Trinitarian love. the greatest love, the highest love that can be shared by two finite beings on this side of the realm of endless day. What does marriage do? What glimpse does it afford us of the gospel? Well, it whispers to us of the inter-Trinitarian love, a love where, between love of other and love of self, there's no longer any distance. But Scripture isn't finished with marriage. In fact, as you read through the Scriptures, what becomes most prominent is the truth that marriage represents to us the relationship between God and His people. You see that repeatedly in the Old Testament, even if it isn't always in the most positive of lights. It's bracingly prominent, for example, in the book of Hosea. In the book of Hosea, as you all likely know, God commands the prophet Hosea to take to himself Gomer, a prostitute, as his wife. And the purpose of that peculiar arrangement is to show in the real time pain of Hosea's life and witness To demonstrate God's love for his unfaithful people, imaged in Hosea's commitment to Gomer. And also to show the sickening betrayal of God by Israel, demonstrated in Gomer's repeated betrayals, repeated infidelities. That's clear from the opening of the book. In Hosea 1, verse 2, we read, And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms. For the land hath committed great whoredom departing from the Lord. Israel, God's people, are to him what Gomer is to Hosea, an unfaithful wife. However, just as Hosea always goes and tries to bring Gomer back, so God never relents in His pursuit of His people. He pursues them until the day when, as God says to His people in Hosea 2, verses 19 and 20, I will betroth thee unto Me forever. I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord." In spite of all of her betrayals, there's coming a day when the Lord will initiate this unending, unbroken marriage to His bride Israel. No longer will she be unfaithful to Him. Again in Hosea 14, 4, I will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely for mine anger is turned away from him. This loving relationship will be renewed. It will be secured by the Lord in his time. Israel, both in her unfaithfulness and in this divinely restored faithfulness, is the bride of the living God. She's married to him. Now, maybe the most extended use of this imagery comes in Ezekiel chapter 16, where again, Israel is held out as the unfaithful bride of the living God. God finds Israel dead and brings her to life. And she's unfaithful to him, an unfaithful bride. And yet the Lord is relentless in pursuing her and bringing her to himself. You have also things like the Song of Psalms or the Song of Solomon, where there's extended use of marital imagery. The king, as God, is pursuing in love the Shulamite woman who is his people. Time and time again, Israel, God's people, is held out as his bride. That same idea comes into the New Testament. In John 3, verse 29, John the Baptist is responding to repeated questions about whether he himself is the Messiah, whether he himself is the Christ. And John the Baptist says, back in John 3, verse 28, ye yourselves bear me witness that I said I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. But the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. This my joy, therefore, is fulfilled." There in verse 28, John says, somewhat paraphrasing, I'm not the Christ. Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Messiah. And why is that? Because, as John says in verse 29, he has the bride. And the one who has the bride is the bridegroom. Jesus is the bridegroom. So the promised deliverer of Israel, the one who long had been promised, the one who had been promised that he would come to regather his unfaithful bride, that one is Jesus. Jesus is the one whose bride is the people of God. Now, throughout the New Testament, that connection is made all the more explicit. In 2 Corinthians 11, verse 2, the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy. For I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you to Christ. Paul very clearly speaks of the church as the bride. Christ as the bridegroom. The church is the bride of Christ. Call it Israel in the Old Testament. Call it the church in the New Testament. The people of God is the bride of the living God. That imagery continues all the way into the book of Revelation. For example, in Revelation 19, verse 7, we read, Here, the church is made ready, the church is perfected in the end, and all of it is in anticipation of what verse 9 describes as the marriage supper of the Lamb. The church, perfected at the end, is the bride. And she's brought in for celebration, in for feasting, at the wedding feast of the Lamb. Throughout the New Testament, throughout the Old Testament, there is this pervasive imagery that the people of God, the church, is the bride of Christ. Now, what does that do? What does that connection between marriage and God's relationship with His people, Jesus' relationship with His church, what does it do? Well, to begin, it ought to make us sick. It ought to make us viscerally sick over our sin. You know, few things shock people anymore. Few things scandalize. But the thought of a bride slipping away from her husband and being with another, it ought to sicken the heart. Brothers and sisters, that's how God sees your sin. The sickness in the pit of your stomach at the thought. It actually may be the nearest approximation you have of how God sees your sin. Why do you not hate it any more than you do? Why don't I hate it any more than I do? But think about the comfort. You think of what all this marriage imagery shows us. It shows us that the Christian life isn't just about believing a set of doctrines or subscribing a group of confessions. The Christian life, the life of the bride, about loving and being loved by a person. Not a list of truths or a list of doctrinal assertions, but a person who binds up all of those truths and all of those assertions and makes them radiantly beautiful. I have a particular interest in an old Scottish theologian named Ebenezer Erskine. I could tell you a lot of facts about Ebenezer Erskine. I could put you to sleep. Where he was born, when he died, where he ministered, sermons he preached, I could prattle on the whole time. I know a lot about Ebenezer Erskine. But I love my wife. In your relationship with the bridegroom, Do you know a lot about Him? Or do you love Him? Because if we are His bride, He's not calling us to fill out information about Him. He's calling us to love Him. And that's what the Christian life is. It's about loving and being loved by a person. But the Scriptures still aren't finished with us yet. Maybe you've wondered at a certain omission. Here we are. We're considering marriage and the church and Scripture. We briefly mentioned Ephesians 5, but we never have returned to it. Well, in Ephesians 5, specifically in verses 25-32, the Scriptures lay before us a depth to our understanding of the relationship between Christ and His church and how that's related to marriage. The scriptures lay before us in understanding they're unparalleled in the rest of the scripture. In Ephesians chapter five, verses 25 through 32, we read this. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies, He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery. but I speak concerning Christ and the church." Now, from the beginning of the passage, up in verse 25, we're told that the church is the bride of Christ. Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves the church. What does that make the church? Well, it makes the church Christ's bride. When we think of the relationship that exists between Christ and His people, The nearest human relationship of which we can conceive is that of marriage. The church is the bride of Christ. Now, that really is driven home if you look at kind of the broader setting here in Ephesians. In Ephesians 5, Paul is starting into what sometimes gets called the household codes. He begins by discussing husband-wife relationships. In chapter 6, he goes on to talk about parent-child relationships. He then goes on even to deal with master-servant relationships. Paul's dealing here with an array of human relationships. And here in the husband-wife section, he draws heavily on this parallel between husbands and wives and Christ and his church. Just think about what that means. If you want to understand the nature of the church, if you want to have some handle on the posture of the church before Christ and Christ's posture toward His church, don't think of a relationship between master and servant whereby one serves the other out of subjugation, be that subjugation however easy or gentle or pleasant. And don't think about a parent-child relationship wherein there's always this unavoidable hierarchy, however that hierarchy be leveraged. Think of the relationship between groom and bride, a relationship of love. Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, Ephesians 5 verse 25 is the only time that the New Testament specifically mentions Christ's love for the church. So when the love of Christ for His church is to be spoken of in the New Testament, it's spoken of not as the love of a parent for a child, but of a husband for his bride. Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. In fact, Paul even goes on, still in verse 25, to tell us how Christ loved the church. As we read in verse 25, Christ loved his church by giving himself for it, by offering himself willingly out of strength and self-offering, not out of weakness or coercion, offering himself in strength on the cross. Now, why did he do that? Why? Loving the church and out of love for the church. Why did Christ give himself for her? Paul tells us verse 26. Jesus gave himself for his bride that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. Jesus gave himself for the church. In order to sanctify it and to cleanse it. The verb that Paul uses there is the verb for sanctify. It speaks to the setting apart of God's people. Jesus calls his people out of this world. He sets them aside as his people. He gave himself in order that his people could be taken out of the enemies of God column and placed under the banner of the people of God. the bride of God. The verb that Paul uses for cleanse speaks of purification. Not so much a setting apart, but a cleansing. So Jesus has given Himself for His church in order that He might set her apart to Himself in purity. How has He done that? Well, He's done it with the washing of water by the Word. There's been all manner of disagreement over the years about what that means. Sometimes people will say, well, this is referring to baptism. But the vocabulary used isn't the vocabulary for baptism. The vocabulary that's used in verse 26 normally is used for ceremonial baths. Ceremonial baths that were used to represent or to achieve purification, cleansing. Specifically, prior to a marriage ceremony, it was quite common for both the bride and the groom to have a cleansing bath to symbolize purification before they entered into marriage. We find the same imagery being used of God's people in the Old Testament. For example, in Ezekiel chapter 16, What we find described here is Jesus cleansing His people and making them clean, making them pure. And we're told that He does this by the Word. Now, the Word that Paul uses here speaks of the proclamation of the Gospel. When Paul uses the words that he uses here, he's using them to speak of the proclamation of the gospel. God's people have heard the word proclaimed. They've heard the gospel. That gospel has set them apart and has made them pure. And he does this according to verse 27. that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. Christ is purifying his bride, the church, in order that she might be perfect at the end of the age. She might be without spot, without blemish. This is the church in sinless, radiantly righteous perfection. This is the church become precisely what she was intended to be, the very mirror of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. In Revelation 21, verse 9, an angel approaches John. and tells John to follow him, and he will show John the Lamb's wife. As you can imagine, John follows, and he sees, in verse 10 and following, not a woman, but a city. And he calls it, in verse 10, the Holy Jerusalem. And John sees Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ, the Bride of the Lamb, in verses 10 and 11, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. His bride having the glory of God. This, the bride in Ephesians 5, is that wife of the Lamb. She has the glory of God. The church, Jesus's bride is a people bound for eternal glory with the bridegroom. Now, we'll skip ahead a little bit here in Ephesians 5 down to verses 29 and 32. Kind of refresh our memories there. Beginning in verse 29, we read this. For no man ever yet hateth his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord, the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery. but I speak concerning Christ and the church." There in verse 29, Paul's in the midst of talking about husbands and wives loving each other, taking care of each other, and he points out how each man cherishes his own flesh, meaning he takes care of himself. And then Paul begins into this digression. Having said that a man cares for his own body, Paul pulls in Christ and his church. He says that a man cares for his wife just as the Lord cares for the church. Why is that? Why is a man's care for his own self set in parallel with Jesus caring for the church? Because in verse 30, Paul tells us that the church is part of Jesus's body, part of his flesh, part of his bones. And then in verse 31, To support what he has said, Paul quotes from Genesis 2 verse 24. We were there already. When Adam sung with rejoicing when he first saw a woman. When Adam had sung that she was flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. Now this is getting a little technical. But when Paul quotes from Genesis 2 verse 24 there, he changes the first word of the quotation. He changes it to make it stronger, to give the word a stronger causality. Paul is saying in verse 31, that his assertion is the reason why a man is to leave his father and his mother and to be joined to his wife. The reason that the man is to do this, the reason that the man is to marry, is because of this. So what's the this? What does Paul have in mind? Why is it that a man is to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife? As Paul says in verse 30, well, I guess there's two possibilities. It's Paul saying that Genesis 2.24 says what it says, because husbands ought to care for their wives. Are husbands to leave their father or mother and cleave to their wife because they're supposed to take care of their wives? Or is Paul saying that Genesis 2.24 says what it says, because the church is united to Christ, which he just had written in verse 30? Is a man to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife because the church is united to Christ? Which is it? Well, I think Paul makes the answer pretty clear in verse 32. where he says his whole point in the entire argument has been to speak of Christ and the church. Think about what that means. If this is correct, and it certainly is, Paul is saying in Ephesians 5.31, that God has instituted marriage because the church is Christ's body. The union of husband and wife in one flesh was originally intended from the beginning to illustrate, to hold before mankind, the union that Christ now has with His church. In other words, the entire purpose of marriage all along all the way from Genesis 2, 24 on down, the purpose has been to signify Christ and His church. It's not just that marriage symbolizes Christ and His church. We know that well enough. It's something stronger than that. Symbolizing the relationship between Jesus and His church hasn't just been an aspect of marriage. It's been the core point of the entire thing. It's the reason for the institution. That's a much stronger claim. Still in verse 32, Paul says, this is a great mystery. And when Paul speaks of things being a mystery, as he does a number of times in a number of his letters, he doesn't mean that it's just hard to understand. A mystery, as Paul uses the language, refers to something that has been hidden that now is being revealed. The mystery of redemption. Things that have been hidden in God's purposes and then gradually, through the course of the Scriptures, is being revealed. And Paul is saying that this great mystery is the meaning of marriage. Hidden in marriage all this time and now brought to clarity in Paul's writing in Ephesians is that the core point of marriage all along has been to hold out the love and the union that there is between Christ and His church. That's not incidental to the institution. It's the very purpose of it. Now, there's a great deal that that means, but I think at least a couple of things present themselves most clearly before us. How clearly, how majestically does this set before us the love of Christ for His church? As Jesus' church, we are the ones whom He finds beautiful. We're the ones whom He Himself makes beautiful. Marriage is that institution. Marriage is that reality that most vividly embodies committed love, devoted, unwavering, unwavering love. And that is the dimmest shadow that we're able to conceive of how Jesus loves His church. That's the dimmest shadow accessible to your mind of how much Jesus loves you. Jesus loves his church. He doesn't begrudgingly tolerate her. He doesn't use her as some tool for his purposes. He loves her. From before the foundations of the earth, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have loved the church. and of purpose to make her His own. But then secondly, how much does this reorient or how much ought it to reorient our understanding of the central point of marriage? We all know that marriage is supposed to point to something about Christ and His church. That's nothing new. But it's not as if marriage is there for all of these various purposes, and among them there's some sort of illustration of the love of Jesus for His church. No, that's not it. The point of marriage is to point to the relationship between Jesus and the church. All the rest, while it's important, is secondary. But then thirdly, I think this helps us come to terms with, perhaps, the end of marriage, the end of marriage in the New Jerusalem. In places like Matthew 22, verse 30, Jesus says that in the resurrection, people neither marry nor are given in marriage. Marriage, in some way, it would seem, will end in the New Jerusalem. That can be confusing, for what it's worth is something that I personally struggled and wrestled with for a long time. It can be achingly hard for Christians who have lost their spouse to consider that marriage has some end. Perhaps that's you. Perhaps that's a parent or someone near to you. Whatever the state of our human marriages, whatever our connection with our spouse, in glory, it will not be one of diminishment or impoverishment. It will not be one of loss. It will be one of perfect fulfillment. The perfect, delightful partaking of what marriage had held out to us only in shadow form in this life. Now, can I tell you exactly what that is? No, I absolutely can't. But I know that it will be glorious. See, if we envision marriage as being all of these things, companionship, love, et cetera, and also teaching us something about Jesus's love for his church. The thought that all those other riches will fall away and will be left only with whatever part pointed to Jesus and the church, that can feel like a diminishment. At the very least, it's confusing. But when we realize that the sole centering point of marriage has been to hold out Christ and His church. And then we're told that in glory the perfect fulfillment has made the shadow flee away. That's a change. But it's the change that comes with the movement from symbol to reality. The things that are gone are gone not because they've been lost. but because the coming of their perfection has made them irrelevant, made them even empty. Now again, can I explain what that will be like, how that'll be, what it'll feel like? No, absolutely can't, of course not. But one day, we'll meet on the shores of the river of life and we'll know what it means. and will wonder why we ever wondered. But then fourthly, how do we serve, how do you serve as a Christian witness to your children? How do you serve as a Christian witness to this world? How do you serve as a Christian witness to your neighbor with whom you just can't quite strike up that right conversation? Well, you have a good marriage. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved His church. Wives, love your husbands as the church loves Christ. Husbands and wives, all the love, all the grace, all of the patience, all that you have found in Christ, pour it out on your spouse. And watch your marriage become an ornament to the gospel. to the children in your home, to the friends next door, to the friends at church. But then fifthly, and lastly, maybe mercifully so, if you've been keeping up, it can appear that I've said two different things in the course of this time. I've said that marriage gives us a glimpse of something of the inter-Trinitarian love. And I've said marriage shows us the love that is between Christ and His church. But which is it? Which of the two is it? How can both be true? Well, I must confess, I'm not entirely sure. They're both in the Scripture. I'm not entirely sure how both can be true. But I do have a suspicion. I have a suspicion that it has something to do with what our blessed Redeemer said in John chapter 17, verse 23 and verse 26, praying to His Father when He speaks of I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me. And I've declared unto them thy name and will declare it that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them. I suspect it has something to do with that great day when we all shall be one in Him and in His perfect love. That blessed day when the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will be our light and be our life through an endless age. That's something of the mystery of marriage. It's held out to us in the Scriptures. and it ought to lead us out to love and to worship the God who has set His love upon us. Let's pray. Our great God and Father in heaven, we do indeed marvel this afternoon that Thou has set Thy love upon us, that Thou has loved Thy people with an everlasting love, and that Thou hast even given unto us this blessed institution of marriage. We ask, O Lord, that Thou wouldst be with us in all of the marriages that are represented here in this room. We beg, O Lord, that Thou wouldst grow us in our love for our spouses, in our selflessness in showing that love to them, We long, O Lord, for the world around us to look upon our marriages and see something of the love of Jesus for His church, to see something even of the love that Thou art. A work, O Lord, that even in our marriages Thou might get all the glory. And even through our marriages and through our love one for another, Thou wouldst be pleased to draw others unto Thyself and into that perfect love. Lord, be with us in the hours that remain today. Give us a refreshment and then continue, oh Lord, to nourish us on Thy Word and on Thy truth. Do what we pray, for we ask it in Jesus's wonderful name. Amen.