Jerry and Michelle asked me if I would be willing to share a few words with you today. I am so thankful to be given this privilege. I have known these two for some time and I deeply love them both.
The best thing I know about Jerry and
Michelle is their deep love for God and their desire to serve and know him
more. If you have spent any time around them, you have hopefully seen this love
as well. In fact, today is not primarily
about Jerry and its not primarily about Michelle, it is about bringing God
glory through this relationship. I suspect those words may be shocking to some
of you, but I know these two will agree. I hope you could hear the centrality
of God in the “opening” hymn we just sang together. Christ is their center, their vision.
They asked me to talk about how God
reveals himself to us through the marriage between a man and a woman. I pray that wherever you might be spiritually that here today you may understand
the God of the Bible better and be drawn to Him through the picture of the
marriage relationship.
Ephesians 5, the passage that Daniel just read, helps
us to see why marriages reflect God and his love for the church. This chapter
is about human marriage but it is also about the marriage between Christ and
his church.
But before we get into it, we need to
understand that our God is relational. The Father, Son, and Spirit have always
existed in perfect relationship with one another. Their relationship has always
shown perfect love, peace, mutual submission, intimacy, cherishing, and
commitment. For the benefit of my friend Jerry, because he and I have talked
about theology many times, I am going to use the word perichoresis. The Trinity
is a perichoretic relationship. Perichoresis
refers to the divine dance between the Father, Son, and Spirit, the way in
which they are part of one another, interpenetrate one another, and move
together perfectly as three in one. This is a mystery, but it starts us on the
way of understanding how our God is eternally and perfectly relational.
Yet, God also desires relationship with
you; He wants to dance with each of us too and he sent his son, Jesus Christ,
to make a way for us to join in the dance. In our natural state, we all stand
outside the party and there is nothing we can do to enter the dance on our own. We are wallflowers, but God is inviting us to
dance, Jesus is offering us his hand.
We just heard the reading of Ephesians
5, which paints for us a beautiful picture of Jesus’s love for his church,
which the Bible calls His bride. Jesus love for His bride is perfect. He poured
himself out completely, he came to earth as a man, and died a brutal death
because of his love for his bride.
Christ cherishes his bride, the church.
He loves her so much that he did exactly what was required to draw her back
into relationship.
He purifies his bride. It says that he
cleanses her so that he might present her in splendor. One interpretation says it this way, “Husbands,
go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a
love marked by giving, not getting. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His
words evoke her beauty. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the
best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness.
And that is how husbands ought to love their wives.”
Christ sacrifices, and he cherishes,
and he purifies and he loves all out.
Finally, we learn this, “’Therefore a man shall leave his father and
mother and hold fast to his wife, and
the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that
it refers to Christ and the church.” Christ holds fast to his bride. In other words, he will never, never, never, never
leave her. Christ will never leave his
church. God says, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Never.
In turn, the bride submits to the
husband. In other words, she is devoted to him.
She shines a light on his character and goodness. She treats him with
respect. She loves him and is joined to him.
You see, those who make up the church submit to Christ, they are devoted
to him. I once had a conversation with a young woman who was about to be
married and she was excitedly telling me about how their marriage would be 50/50. I responded by saying, “You give 100 percent and
don’t worry about how much he gives.” Christ, who is our model for marriage, gave 100 percent.
Hear the gospel message: every one here
is invited to the wedding feast. Jesus, the perfect bridegroom says to each of
us, “I’ve made all of the arrangements, I’ve done everything necessary, I’ve
paid the price in full. I've removed the veil. Come and let’s dance”.
No comments:
Post a Comment