"Why God Uses Marriage" Ephesians 5:32-33 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning we'll look at Ephesians 5 verses 32 and verse 33.

Ephesians 5:32

However, there are some antecedents in those two verses.

It begins with this mystery.

And so I want to read the whole paragraph that leads up to the two verses this morning.

So I'll begin reading in Ephesians 5, verse 22.

Ephesians 5:22

I'll read to the end of the chapter for the sermon.

We'll just be looking at verses 32 and verse 33.

Ephesians 5, verse 22.

Ephesians 5:22

Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.

He who loves his wife loves himself.

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

One of the key themes in the Bible is indeed marriage.

The Bible begins with marriage.

God creates the world and creates it good, looks at Adam, declares it not good that man should be alone, remedies Adam's deficiency by creating Eve, a help meet suitable to him.

The two are joined in marriage.

Then Moses declares, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, the two will become one flesh.

This is God's design for mankind.

The creation account in the Bible begins with marriage.

The Bible also ends with marriage.

Revelation 19, and again in Revelation 21, John says, I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully adorned for her husband.

And so the Bible is, in a literal sense, bookended by descriptions of marriage.

And in between, it is littered with descriptions of marriage.

Israel, perhaps more than any other metaphor, is declared to be a wife, a wife of God.

She is personified as a wife, usually, generally, an unfaithful wife.

A wife who is supposed to be wed to Yahweh, but who goes after other gods.

Hosea chapter 2, for example, Isaiah chapter 62.

Hosea 2 · chapter mention Isaiah 62 · chapter mention

Sometimes Israel is described as a bride that is beautiful and adorned and cherished by her husband, such as even Ezekiel 16, how the husband cares for her and nurtures her.

In the New Testament, Jesus inaugurates his ministry with a marriage.

His first miracle is at a wedding ceremony.

Of course, back in Genesis, God designed marriage, God ordained marriage, God performed the first marriage.

That's not just an Old Testament illustration.

The New Testament likewise begins Jesus' ministry with a wedding where Jesus sanctifies and brings the concept of marriage right into the New Testament and into the church.

John the Baptist often uses wedding illustrations.

Remember, he was asked, is he disappointed that Jesus has bigger crowds than John?

What a question.

John, how do you feel that Jesus is selling more tickets than you?

John's answer was outstanding.

Remember, he says, just as the groom must go greater, the groomsman grow lesser.

In other words, nobody goes to a wedding and sees the groomsman and says, Oh, Mr.

Groomsman, best man, excuse me, best man, are you upset that the groom has a better tie than you?

You know, the groom's suit stands out from the groomsman.

The groomsman all have the you know the matching Joseph Banks Reynolds or whatever.

But the groom, man, that guy looks dapper.

Are you upset that he has a better tie than you?

Of course not.

You know, the people will line up to take a picture with the bride.

Does the bridesmaid feel cheated?

She's like, hey, how come everyone wants a picture with the bride?

How come not me?

You understand that concept.

John uses that to teach us the priority of Jesus Christ.

That even the greatest prophet in the scriptures, John, all the prophets prophesied until John, he says, I'm going to grow less because Jesus is growing greater.

Just as the groom, the wedding is about the groom, not the other dudes lined up.

In fact, John the Baptist sends messengers to Jesus to ask him if he's the Messiah.

Jesus declares that he is by healing the sick and whatnot, and then turns to the crowd that is out there, the crowd that was out there to see this, the crowd that John had been asked about, or you're disappointed how big Jesus' crowd is.

Jesus turns to them because some of them liked John but weren't receiving Jesus.

And Jesus asks them or compares them to guests that go to a wedding and yet don't celebrate.

I don't approve of this marriage.

I brought a gift and signed the guest book, but I don't approve.

Jesus says, that's ridiculous.

You go to a wedding to celebrate.

You go to a wedding to rejoice.

So if you're out there because you like John the Baptist, but you won't embrace Jesus, what's going on in your head?

It's an illustration the New Testament uses repeatedly.

Jesus, in fact, compares his second coming, Matthew 25, to that of a bride waiting for the groom, and the groom will come, like Revelation describes from heaven to fetch his bride.

But the most significant New Testament teaching on marriage is, in fact, Ephesians 5, the passage that we just read.

And as we read it, we understand that it is marriage is not a picture of redemption necessarily, as much as it is of union of the church's relationship to Jesus Christ, us being united in perfect union to the Savior.

That's what marriage represents.

It's a picture of how Jesus not only dies on the cross for the church, resurrects from the grave for the church, but more than that, how Jesus is now joined, united.

We have real mystical union with the Lord.

We are one with Him, hidden in Christ.

Marriage is a picture of that union we have with Christ.

It's a picture of the gospel that crescendos with our union with Christ.

This, by the way, is why so many people are antagonistic towards marriage.

Because they're antagonistic towards the gospel.

This is why the devil assaults marriage.

Because the devil is antagonistic towards God.

The devil rejects Jesus Christ.

The devil rejects that humanity has dominion over the earth.

The devil rejects the picture of redemption.

The cross would be the focal point of God's self-revelation.

The devil rejects all that.

And so he brings out his victory all on marriage.

The devil not just doesn't want to just tempt Adam and Eve to sin, but wants to tempt them to sin in the exact area of marriage.

Paul makes this point clear in 1 Timothy 2.

The devil went after them in the context of marriage because the assault is on God who reveals himself through marriage.

An illustration, perhaps, will be helpful.

We live in a country where people protest Chick-fil-A of all things.

Why do people protest Chick-fil-A?

Do they not like pickles on chicken?

People don't protest Chick-fil-A because they don't like the chicken sandwich.

They protest Chick-fil-A because they don't like the god of the chicken sandwich.

I mean, right?

You don't have to think about it for more than two seconds to figure that out.

Or a different illustration.

Why do people burn the American flag?

Do they not like the color scheme of red, white, and blue together?

The stars really clash with the bars, you know?

No, they burn the flag because they reject the notions of our country and what our country stands for that the flag represents.

But they can't get their arms around the neck of the country, but they can burn the flag.

This is why people attack marriage, because they would like to attack God, but they can't get their arms around God, they can get their arms around marriage.

And so you see this in all kinds of attacks on marriage, from redefining marriage to devaluing marriage, all the way just to sexual intimacy outside of marriage.

The idea that you can do what you want to do before you're married.

After all, what does marriage even mean?

It's nothing.

It's just something formal.

You file paperwork with the court, who cares?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's an assault on God and God's own self-revelation of marriage.

People want to live for their sin, not for the Lord, and that's a great way to live it out: to attack the holiness of God, right at the foundation of marriage, to devalue marriage.

It's not that people hate marriage.

Of course they wouldn't say that.

They just hate the God that's behind marriage.

In contrast, God gives his church marriage to help us understand the gospel.

The marriage is a picture of the gospel.

Again, not just the redemption of the gospel, but the union we have with Christ.

Marriage is designed to teach that.

Paul says in verse 32, this mystery is profound.

And I'm saying it refers to Christ in his church.

Now, the word mystery in the book of Ilan, the New Testament, but specifically in Ephesians, but in all the New Testament, the word mystery means something once hidden, now revealed.

Something that was obscured in the Old Testament, revealed in the New Testament.

So that's what the word mystery means, a little bit different than we often use it in English.

In English, we might use it as a mystery, you've got to figure out, you know, who done it kind of thing.

When the New Testament uses the word mystery, it's something that was hidden in the rearview mirror.

In the Old Testament, it's hidden.

The New Testament, it's been revealed.

Now, the mystery, most uses of the word mystery in the New Testament are about the same thing: the union of Jews and Gentiles in the church together.

The Old Testament, that was mysterious.

It was hidden.

In the Old Testament, you know that God is the God of Gentiles and of Jews.

He's the covenant God of the Israelites.

He calls the Gentiles to conversion.

Israel is a light to the nations, but it is mysterious how that will work out.

You see widows saved from Gentile lands.

You see the Queen of Sheba who makes a profession of faith and declares the greatness of Yahweh, but then she goes away.

There's no ongoing covenantal activity from Ethiopia to the temple.

If you're living outside of Israel, you don't have access to the Levites or to temple worship or the sacrifices.

So it is very much hidden in the Old Testament.

How can God be the redeemer of the Gentiles as well as the Israelites?

Remember, we in Ephesians 3 we talked about this that the Old Testament is a wall that is built to separate clean from unclean, Jew from Gentile.

It is a dividing line.

It's a block.

And the New Testament tears that down.

This is the mystery that in the church the Jews and Gentiles are united in the same redemptive body together.

So Paul is saying that marriage is an indicator of that, but not just that.

Paul goes even deeper here in Ephesians 5, verse 32, to refer to Christ in the church.

Ephesians 5:32

So not just the union of Jews and Gentiles, it is that, of course, but it is more than that.

It's the union of Jews and Gentiles to the Savior, to Christ.

That's the profound mystery.

Hidden in the Old Testament.

Even the concept of union is hidden in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament did not have a real lived-out understanding of what it meant that through faith you had union with the Savior, with the Messiah.

Of course, that's because the indwelling of the Holy Spirit didn't begin until Pentecost, until God sends the Holy Spirit into believers' lives to seal them.

Jesus prophesies it, of course, to the disciples, and he breathes on them, but it is fulfilled in Acts chapter 2, where the Holy Spirit comes.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And this is the beginning of a real union between those who are redeemed and their Redeemer, seen through the church.

This is a mystery.

It was hidden in the Old Testament, revealed in the New.

However, marriage is revealed in the Old Testament.

You do learn about marriage starting in Genesis 2, all the way through the Old Testament.

So do you appreciate that God spends thousands of years teaching the world about marriage, illustrating marriage, having it be the foundation of society, people experiencing it, making it ubiquitous, everybody's aware of it, so that when the Savior comes and there's a union between Jews and Gentiles and their Savior in the church, we have a ready illustration.

We can learn about that mystery from something that's been in the world for thousands of years.

Now it's important, I think it's important to understand that God designed redemption before marriage.

God did not stumble upon marriage in the world.

So there's marriage in the world, God doesn't encounter marriage in the world, and then can reverse engineer redemption.

Like, okay, here's marriage.

Wow, look, people are getting married, they like it.

You know what?

That could work as a pretty good illustration for what how I'm going to save people.

It goes the opposite way.

God first designs redemption, then he designs marriage in order to illustrate redemption.

You have to have this order correct, I think, to understand what Paul's talking about here in Ephesians 5.

And this is important for salvation, for you to think about salvation as well.

You understand that salvation was not designed by God after the fall.

The fall did not catch God by surprise, in other words.

God didn't make the world good, perfect, then sit back, then the devil comes in the world, people sin, fall into sin, God curses the earth and mets out his punishment for sin and then says, now I've got to do something.

What's a good plan?

I know Jesus, the gospel of the cross, let's do it.

No, the revelation describes Jesus as the lamb slain from before the foundations of the earth.

So the last book of the Bible describes Jesus as slain before the first book of the Bible.

Before the first day of creation, God had already purposed redemption.

It was designed in his mind.

Now, in creation, it's not good for men to be alone.

God designs marriage.

God didn't stumble upon marriage.

God designed marriage in light of his predetermined plan for salvation.

That means that marriage becomes a very effective illustration about redemption and about union with Christ.

More effective than if God had already had marriage and then tried to figure out how to make redemption fit into it.

It's the other way around.

That's why Paul can really say verse 32, this mystery is profound.

So how does marriage, how does the mystery of what he's describing in verses 22 through 31 reference, refer, illustrate, illuminate the union of Christ and his church?

I'm going to give you an outline.

I've got seven ways.

I've used much of my time already, but that's okay.

These seven will go fast.

Seven is the number of perfection, completion, so we're not going to cut this short.

And you could come up with a bigger list than seven, but this is not an exhaustive list.

I'm going to give you seven ways that marriage is illustrative of our union with Christ, of the gospel message.

You could add more to this for sure.

And this is just to get your mind started thinking.

And again, to remind you, when I'm calling this a mystery, I'm saying this was taught in the Old Testament.

It was taught, but it was not revealed in the fullness of Christ.

So marriage, of course, taught, but Pentecost and the fullness of Christ and the revelation of the church and all that is what takes the sheet off of the mystery, and now we can see it in all of its fullness.

It was there in the Old Testament, just covered.

And now it's revealed.

And so perhaps some of these lists will help you see that.

First, relational.

Marriage is relational.

So my list, these seven points, will all be descriptions of marriage.

When you understand how marriage is these seven descriptors, you will have a better understanding of how the gospel is those things as well.

So, first of all, I'm saying marriage is relational.

You get this from Ephesians 5.

Husbands are loving their wives, wives are submitting to their husbands, wives are respecting their husbands.

Down in verse 33, there's a relational dynamic to marriage.

Husband pursues his wife, he proposes to her, he marries her, and then he lives with her.

And that's not just a technicality, it's not just a shared address.

They actually live together, they do life together, they have conversations together, they interact with each other.

That's how marriage is designed.

It's a relationship of unity.

Your money merges, your name merges, your family merges.

You now have an actual relationship.

And I'm, it's not, I want to repeat, it is not a technicality.

It's not just paperwork you foul to the courthouse.

There's a real relational union that comes in marriage.

It's a relationship of unity.

It's not simply technical, but it is personal.

Let me give you an illustration.

There was a guy at Emmanuel who's in heaven now, which is why I feel that it's acceptable for me to use this illustration.

If he were alive, I wouldn't still use this illustration.

But he had been married for decades before he'd gotten saved.

He was married as a non-Christian for decades.

He was married, but he didn't live with his wife.

They moved out from each other early on in their marriage, but they would meet every Saturday morning at the McDonald's across the street for coffee.

Once a week they met for coffee.

Didn't get a divorce.

That's their marriage.

Coffee Saturday morning at McDonald's.

Does that count as a marriage?

I don't think so.

There's no relational dynamic there.

There's no living together.

There's no personal relationship with that.

The gospel is not like that.

It's not that you have an official technical relationship with Jesus Christ, that you signed the card, you said the prayer, you made a decision, you made a commitment to Jesus Christ, and now you are, you know, in a relationship with Jesus Christ that is just technical.

You're supposed to actually have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

You're supposed to actually pray to him and hear from him and serve him and worship him and have communion with him through his word.

And let me illustrate this the same way again.

When I described the guy whose marriage consisted of coffee at McDonald's on Saturday morning, some of you laughed out loud, and most of you probably laughed in your hearts.

True.

But I wonder or fear that some of you have a relationship with the Lord that might be similar to that.

You see the deficiency of that when it comes to marriage.

Marriage can't be coffee once a week.

But do some of you approach your relationship with the Lord like that?

Instead of coffee at McDonald's, it's the same intersection.

You just go to church once a week.

Here you are for an hour, hour and a half.

Then you go home.

Check, don't worry, I'm totally a Christian because I'll be back next week.

That's not a relationship.

That's not a relationship with the Lord.

That's absent personal communion.

That's absent any kind of real union with Christ.

You recognize that a marriage that looks like that is a sham marriage.

Probably not even, probably legally, it could be annulled.

I hope your relationship with the Lord could not legally be annulled.

I hope it is more complex and rich and diverse than that, because that is how it's designed.

It is supposed to be.

Your relationship with the Lord should be more like a marriage than it is like a business relationship.

It should be more like an actual marriage relationship, a healthy marriage relationship, then it should be some kind of technicality that you're a Christian because you said something once or prayed something once or walked an aisle or signed the card.

No, the union you have with Christ is relational, it is robust, it's complex.

You relate to him as a person.

To his father, or as a wife relates to her husband, that's the design of marriage.

That's the design of the gospel.

They overlap in that area.

When you understand the healthiness of a personal relationship in marriage, you understand how it can point you to Jesus Christ through the gospel, having a personal relationship and personal union with the church.

Secondly, marriage is personal.

Not just is it relational, but secondly, it's personal.

Jesus saves people one at a time.

When you enter into marriage, you are entering into it as a person, not as a corporate entity.

Corporations can't get married.

They can merge, but they can't get married.

One business buys out another, they don't walk an aisle with bridesmaids and groomsmen and you know have a pastor there and then make a covenant to merge their relationships equitably.

You have Macs, we have PCs, we'll make it work.

No, marriage is not like a business merger.

It is a personal.

It is two people that are entering into an exclusive relationship with one another.

They're making a commitment and a covenant.

By the fact they're joining to each other, it means they're not joining to others.

It's exclusive.

When Deedra said yes to me, she said no to 3.8 billion other men.

Do you follow that logic?

When I get married to Deedra, I am not getting married to 3.8 billion, give or take.

Other women in the world.

I was bored this week, so I did some math.

If I were to propose to every woman in the world, and she were to say no, let's say I got this down fast, like one second each.

Will you marry me?

No.

Next.

Will you marry me?

No, next.

3.8 billion women, it would take me about 120 years to work through the whole, the whole world.

And but then I remember like other people are being born, so my mouth gets totally thrown off at that point.

That would require like calculus to figure that one out.

But the second she says yes to me, now it's exclud I don't get to ask other people now.

She said yes, what a time saver.

Now we're united in a personal relationship one to another, not to other people, but to each other.

It's personal, it's exclusive.

I don't say friends with older girlfriends on Facebook.

I don't want to give you an extra biblical rule and say you can't be friends with former girlfriends or boyfriends on Facebook, but listen carefully.

You cannot be friends with former girlfriends and boyfriends on Facebook.

It's totally weird and completely unacceptable.

So there.

That's Proverbs 32 says it so clearly.

Because you enter into an exclusive relationship and friendship with this person.

The Israelites didn't understand that basic principle.

They enter into a covenant with Yahweh, but they bring along Baal also.

They bring along Molech and the Asheroth and the other gods.

Listen, they need rain, and they know that Yahweh says he'll send rain, but also there's that rain god that's kind of attractive too.

The other nations seem to like him.

Why can't we have him also?

That's the story of the Old Testament.

Paul gave them marriage, or God gave them marriage to convict them and confront them.

That's why God uses that illustration so frequently in the Old Testament.

It wouldn't work in marriage.

That's why God continually calls Israelites an adulterous people for taking that approach to marriage.

Now you jump to the New Testament.

Paul uses the same principle to teach us about the exclusive nature of our relationship with Christ.

You shouldn't be frenzies with other religions.

When you come to faith in Christ, you are saying no to every other no syncretism.

You're saying no to every other religion.

You don't dabble in it, you don't keep it on the side, you don't, you know, come to Christ but still participate in a little bit of works righteousness.

A little bit of works righteousness here or there.

It's an assault on the integrity of marriage.

It's an assault on the integrity of the gospel and the union Jesus has with his church.

Jesus pursues his church.

And then he wins them.

And now you're in a personal relationship with him.

God doesn't staff out his worship.

Do you know that?

He doesn't hire people to come worship him in like a professional capacity.

No, he saves individuals one at a time that are added to his body.

I know we're all members of the same body, and the analogy is not perfect because we're a corporate body.

A corporate means, you know, made up of different parts, but the point is the corporate means we're made up of different parts.

We are a corporate church.

We gather for corporate worship, different pieces of the body together, different members of the body together.

But those members are individuals that are saved one at a time, and they approach God as individuals.

Even when they do so corporately, we approach God as individuals with the congregation in a unique, personal, and exclusive relationship with Jesus Christ.

Thirdly, marriage is physical.

Marriage can be physical.

So far, the things I've said could sound academic or ethereal, abstract even, but God makes marriage in a very physical and non-abstract way.

Marriage might be abstract, an abstract concept to you if you're single.

But once you're married, it ceases being abstract.

You have physical contact with this other person.

You hold hands with this other person as kind of a token of your physical affection.

You know, bump into each other in the kitchen.

You're unloading the dishwasher, and there are two people trying to occupy the same space.

So I better leave the kitchen just to be safe.

No, you're you're you bump into each other.

You hold hands with each other.

Listen, married people might even kiss.

My kids catch Dieter and I kissing.

Two of them will like try to pull us apart and yell at us, and one of them will clap and cheer.

If you know my girls, you can figure out who is who in that pretty easily.

Marriage involves physical contact because there's two people that are in actual union with each other.

Now, this has so many implications in the gospel.

The gospel is not academic, it is not abstract, it is real.

Jesus really came to earth.

He was really born on that Christmas morning.

He had a real body, his side was really ripped open by a Roman spear.

He had the real crown of thorns put on his head.

He really bled.

He really died.

He was put into a real grave with a real stone rolled in front of it.

And then he really resurrected to the point that he can tell Thomas, touch my skin, and Thomas could touch the nail holes and see the authenticity of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I've heard people say, it doesn't matter if the details of the gospel are true, if Jesus really died and resurrected from the grave, as long as you believe it and it works for you and it makes you a better person and gives you hope and joy in life.

That's all that counts.

Does it matter if you're really married?

Of course it does.

Of course it does.

You have to actually be married.

It really matters if you're really married.

Of course it really matters if Jesus came to earth.

We take communion with real bread and real wine to underscore that same point.

There's a reality, a physicality to the gospel.

But the point goes beyond just the veracity of the incarnation and the crucifixion and the resurrection.

It gets to the union we have with Christ.

Because Paul uses the same kind of logic somewhere else.

1 Corinthians 6, verse 16.

1 Corinthians 6:16

You can turn there, you can listen to it.

I'll just be there very briefly.

You can listen to me as I read it.

1 Corinthians 6, verse 16, Paul says, Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one flesh with her?

1 Corinthians 6:16

He's quoting from Genesis 2.

He who joins to a prostitute becomes one flesh with her.

Because as it is written, the two will become one flesh.

ESP puts quote marks around it.

He's actually quoting from Genesis 2.

But then where he goes next is surprising.

The next verse, 1 Corinthians 6, 17.

But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one in spirit with him.

So here Paul leaves the prostitute behind, but holds on to the physicality of it, holds on to the union of it as seen in marriage.

So he's saying sexual immorality is bad because you're becoming one flesh with the person that you're not really married to.

That's bad.

Side note, tangent about this, by the way, the fact that that is taught by Moses in Genesis 2 is a great illustration for the fact that when you come to faith in Christ, the contrast, unlike the sexually immoral person, the contrast is that you have union, real union with Jesus as his spirit dwells in you.

He's referring to the third person of the Trinity as representative of the second person of the Trinity here, is the spirit dwells in your heart, gives you an actual union with God.

Not a symbolic union any more than the person symbolically slept with a prostitute.

But a real union with God, an actual union with him, joined to the Lord, one spirit with him.

You understand how that's true in marriage?

It serves as an apt and ready illustration for the gospel and the union that Christ has with his church.

Fourthly, marriage is sacrificial.

Marriage is sacrificial.

You see this all over Ephesians 5.

The husband is making sacrifices for his wife.

He's caring for her, he's nourishing her.

Paul even says as he nourishes his own body.

You understand how that sacrificial sacrifice is implicit in that.

There's a one piece of cake, you want it, your wife wants it, you give it to her, she gives it back to you, you cut it down the middle, each of you gets half less than you probably wanted a second ago.

That is the cheesiest and lowest level of sacrifice imaginable in marriage is that you split that last piece of cake with each other, but do you get that it's a sacrifice?

Because you're, to use the analogy, feeding, Paul says you're feeding your own body.

You're really getting the whole cake.

Only though you're eating half of it, she's eating half of it.

It's all one flesh, though.

Sacrificial.

And of course, your whole life is punctuated with those choices.

Your whole life is punctuated with that kind of sacrifice for your wife or for your husband, for your kids.

Kids can't really make sacrifices for their parents so much.

But the kids' life is dotted.

The whole life is filled with examples of sacrifice the parents make for the kids over and over and over and over and over again.

That's their life, the recipients of those kind of sacrifices.

That's the way that marriage and family is designed.

You get that.

To have a happy marriage, it requires both of you sacrificing all kinds of things that did not come out in premarital.

All kinds of things.

But when you sacrifice your own rights, you sacrifice your own wants, you realize that's the pathway to happiness and true union in marriage.

Do you see how that reveals the gospel?

God designed the gospel in such a way that sacrifice was required.

From Abel's first sin, where the animal died.

Abel is willing to br to bring a sacrifice.

Cain's not.

Abel can approach God, Cain cannot, because Abel is willing to sacrifice, Cain is not.

All the way through the Old Testament.

Sacrifice is required where there is no shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sins.

The climax of that image is, of course, Christ on the cross, where he lays down his life.

And of course, the sacrifice of Christ isn't seen just at the cross.

It's his entire life.

It's his entire life.

He had the riches of heaven.

He sets them aside for the poverty of earth.

More riches than you can imagine, for more poverty than you can understand.

Being in the form of God, he didn't consider equality with God, something to be grasped, but emptied himself of it, taking on the form of a slave, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

The pathway to the cross is that of sacrifice.

It is that of subtraction.

It is that of giving up, empty-handed.

He had the riches of heaven, 2 Corinthians 9 says, He let them go.

Let them go.

Worshiped by angels to being murdered by Romans.

That's an extreme contrast.

Surrounded in the court of heaven with heavenly beings to surrounded by disciples, black-headed disciples.

Going from glory to clay.

Surrendering his own prerogatives, being on the receiving end of ridiculous questions from everybody from the disciples' moms that came to corner Jesus to the antagonistic Pharisees to the messengers from John the Baptist.

Questions that are totally beneath him became not just at his level, but he became underneath them as he became a servant to us.

This is the sacrifice he gave all so that we might live.

He didn't hold on to his rights and prerogatives, but he gave them up.

You understand how marriage.

Paul describes that in verses 22 down through verse 31 over and over and over again, that kind of sacrifice, that kind of self-depreciating love towards your spouse.

One commentator says that a husband's most humbling act is to take the blame for something his wife did, to own it, to say to God, it was me.

I should have stopped her from eating the fruit.

I should have laid down between her and the serpent.

Blame me.

Just please don't blame her.

That's the commentator says it's the most sacrificial thing a husband can do.

Well, I'll tell you what, that becomes a perfect illustration of the gospel, doesn't it?

Because Jesus comes into the world and he takes on our sin in himself.

He says, Don't blame the makes an appeal.

Christ makes an appeal to God and says, Don't blame them.

Their sin becomes mine.

You have wrath for their sin poured out on me, Jesus says.

He steps into our place.

Through his own sacrifice, he bears our sin.

This is what Jesus does for his bride.

He takes our sin from us, he lays it on his own self.

He sacrifices his holiness.

He sacrifices his reputation.

He sacrifices his dignity to win his wife.

The result of that is that we can be united with him, Jew and Gentile in one body together.

Number five, it's beneficial.

Marriage is beneficial.

It's good.

It's good, Paul says.

It is good for a man to take a wife.

It is not good, Moses says, for man to be alone.

It is beneficial.

Peter says marriage is the grace of life.

Marriage should have positive connotations in the world because it is a gift that God gives to people.

Nevertheless, we live in a world that is broken, that has divorce everywhere.

There are often negative connotations with God's gifts to us, including marriage.

But you have to remind yourself that when there was a world that was good in every way except for marriage, God declared it to not be good.

You remember that there was marriage before there was sin.

You look forward, there will be marriage even at the wedding feast of the Lamb, when time is wrapped up and everything is surrendered back to God.

It is marked and celebrated with a marriage.

Marriage is good, it is very good.

We will not be married to each other in heaven, but we will be married to Christ in heaven forever and ever.

And so we look forward to that.

You recognize that marriage is good in this world.

It serves as an apt illustration for how good marriage will be in the next to our Lord.

Number six, marriage is instructional.

It's instructional.

Marriage is designed to teach.

Paul says the husbands should strive with their wives to present them sinless, spotless, faultless, without blemish, holy.

That's what's happening in marriage.

God is sanctifying both of you in marriage.

He's sanctifying you as you encourage one another, as you provoke one another to love and good deeds.

I love that Paul uses the word provoke one another to love and good deeds because it has that kind of provoking element to it.

Anything that's from basic as like, you know, so have you have you prayed yet today?

Have you read the Bible today?

Hey, don't provoke me.

Those questions are designed to provoke you, designed to encourage you to the word.

Husbands are supposed to lead their wives into the word.

They're supposed to strive with their wives to sanctify them, to work in the context of family.

No, this looks different in every family.

Some families, the husbands and wives, read the Bible together and pray together.

Sometimes they do it separately.

Sometimes some families have family devotions.

Some families teach their kids to do devotions independently.

Your family, your mileage may vary in this, but it's got to look like something.

All your families may not approach this the same way, but you've got to approach it somehow.

The details of what Ephesians 5 27 might look like might vary, but it's got to look like something.

And what it should look like in the broad picture is progressive sanctification as you wash yourself with the word, as you pray to the Lord, as you in the context of marriage and family are striving in godliness to grow in holiness with each other.

That's what marriage should accomplish in your life.

Marriage was given to you to sanctify you, and sanctification is a good thing.

Ditto with the gospel.

God doesn't save you and take you home, he saves you and leaves you in this earth for the rest of your life for the purpose of your sanctification.

Everything that happens to you in this life is designed to sanctify you.

When you understand that, it takes away like 90% of other theological questions.

Everything that happens in this life is designed to sanctify you.

Yeah, well, why did God allow this bad thing to happen to me?

For your sanctification.

Marriage sanctifies you.

The gospel sanctifies you.

You're declared to be holy, and then the Lord works with you and through you to manifest that holiness throughout the rest of your earthly life.

Marriage is a picture of that.

And finally, number seven, federally.

Marriage is federal.

We talked about this last week.

I don't need to repeat all that again.

The word federal, if you recall, means covenantal, where two people enter into a covenant with each other.

There's generally a representative involved in that kind of federal covenant where one stands in the place of another.

You get this in the garden.

Adam, in that sense, was our federal representative in the garden.

He stood in for all of humanity in the garden.

You get this with Jesus in the wilderness.

He stood where Adam stood.

He withstood what Adam did not withstand.

He succeeded where Adam failed.

So Jesus becomes a better federal head for us than Adam is.

He stands in our place, securing our righteousness through his own obedience.

And that is evident on the cross.

On the cross, he takes our sin.

He is standing in our place.

On the cross, our sin becomes his sin as he suffers and dies as our substitute.

This is true in marriage, in the sense that as the husband and wife are married, they are joined to one another.

The husband represents the family.

They take the husband's name.

The husband can represent the family towards the world.

It doesn't diminish anybody's individuality in the marriage relationship or anything like that.

It is a picture of the reality of the gospel that I just described.

Why would God design marriage so that one person can stand on behalf of there's only two of you?

Do you really need a representative when there's two of you?

I mean it's like there's two of you on a deserted island.

You have to vote which one is going to represent you to the government.

There's two of you.

You are the government.

Well, God makes marriage this way to be a picture of the union we have with Christ.

The husband stands as the head of his wife.

Why?

So we can understand better how Jesus stands as our head, that he is our representative, that he stands before the Lord in our place.

He accomplishes that for us.

This is where the road of Ephesians 5 meets the rubber of verse 33 here.

And Paul says this is going to be played out in your life.

One of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should see that she respects her husband.

Whole books have been written on this.

Whole books have been written about how you know husband's greatest need is respect, and the wife's greatest need is love.

And I don't know, there might be some truth to that, some of it might be psycho mumbo jumbo, I don't know.

But Paul does end this description by reiterating the command earlier.

I don't know if it rises to the level of man's greatest need is or wife's greatest need is or whatever, but it rises to the level where Paul sums up his teaching on marriage with this point.

The wives are to be loved by their husbands.

Husbands are going to be loving themselves, they better share some of that with their wives.

And the wife should see that she respects her husband.

The wife wants to be respected, she should see that she respects her husband.

All that is tied together in the context of marriage.

When you look at this whole picture, you understand that we are known by God and God knows us.

And when the Bible says that, for example, Adam knew his wife.

What does it mean when it says Adam knew his wife?

You know what it means that Adam knew his wife?

Abel.

That's what happened when Adam knew Eve, Abel happens.

Through Christ, we're known by God.

It's intimate language, it's personal language, it's particular language that God knows us.

He seals us with his spirit.

He knows us personally.

We relate to him as an individual.

His spirit dwells in us, a physical connection to him.

As we have faith that Christ sacrificed his life on the cross for us.

This is the best, the best thing that God can give us is his son.

And he gave it to us.

And he gave him to us to instruct us in how we're supposed to live through faith in Christ and then in a life of holiness.

That's why he gave him to us.

And it's all wrapped up with understanding that he is our federal head, that he stands in our place before God.

If you're here this morning, you've never given your life to Christ.

I appeal to you.

Maybe you don't come from a good marriage.

Maybe you don't have a good family.

Maybe you were raised in a broken home or whatever.

Understand that the picture that's presented here in Ephesians 5 is better than that of your family.

That you have a heavenly father who will never leave you, you have a heavenly father who will never forsake you, never harm you, but only cherish you, only nurture you as he gave his own son for you.

If you came from a good marriage or a good family, raised you, recognized that's a blessing from the God from the Lord, and God gave you that blessing so that you have a better and more rich understanding of Jesus Christ and the gospel.

If you're here this morning, you've never given your life to Christ.

I pray that you would at least grant that there is such a thing as good and healthy marriages in the world.

And grant that that existence of a thing is good.

It's good for those people and it's good for society.

And then go from there to the fact that it's good to teach you about Jesus Christ better than any marriage, better than any family.

And that through faith in Jesus' death on the cross for you, faith in his resurrection, his real resurrection, that you can have your sins forgiven and be joined in union with Christ, a union that will never be divorced, that will never be torn asunder, that will be perfect and eternal, better than any marriage you can experience with Christ through faith in him.

Lord, we're thankful that you gave us the gospel to sanctify us, to have our sins forgiven, to declare us holy.

And so, Lord, I pray for people here that have never believed that message.

I pray that today they would give their life to Christ.

Today they would surrender their life and they would say I do to Christ.

They would bow the knee of their heart to Christ.

And to you, I pray that you would receive them.

There would be joy in heaven at sinners who repent.

I pray today in this room there would be sinners that give their life to you.

We know that only your Holy Spirit can do this, so we pray to you and ask that he would save people today.

In the name of Christ.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.