Marriage in Christ

What I want to do is sort of continue, pick up a little bit of where I left off two weeks ago, and talk about love, but in in and not just that, I want to talk about our love for each other, but also our love in our marriage.

And so the the message today is titled Marriage in Christ.

And uh this is not just for married people, because as you can see in the title, marriage in Christ implies that there's some some sort of relationship that is tied to Christ.

And so we're gonna look at that.

We're gonna we're gonna follow that through scripture.

We're gonna look at different ways that that we are married to Christ and that he is married to us and that we are the body.

And uh and so, but if you're if you're not married, this is for you.

It's going to change the way that you love others, the way that you love uh it's gonna prepare you for marriage.

If you are married, it's gonna help in that a little bit.

I was somebody who uh desperately needed to get married because I was a mess without my wife, a complete mess.

Uh I I went to school in Orlando, Florida, and I just did dumb things all the time.

And uh my wife has really helped me with that.

She's been able to say, hey, maybe don't do that.

That's probably not the smartest thing.

And I got in my car one day.

I was living in Orlando and I had this really small two-door car, and I got in my car and I sat down in my seat, and I began to feel a tingling on my right arm.

And it was a sensation that I don't think I'd ever felt before.

And I I thought, what's happening to my right arm?

And when I looked down, I had uh spiders, millions, hundreds, hundreds of thousands of spiders crawling.

It was a gajillion.

I have no idea.

And they a a spider had laid eggs in my car and they had hatched, and so they were tiny, tiny spiders, but they were all over my arm.

So I flipped out and I scraped them off.

I got out of my car and I thought, what do I do?

I have no idea what to do.

So I went inside, I was living with roommates, and I said, Take me to Walmart, I gotta figure out what to do.

We went into Walmart and I said, I want the most powerful thing.

I've got to kill these things.

I don't want just a bug spray or something.

I want to kill these things.

And so I I looked and I looked and then I said, I found it, this will do it.

I found a five-bedroom, five-bathroom home fumigator.

And then I bought it.

And I said, This is gonna do it.

So we open the doors in my car, we set this thing off, you know, and smoke just fumes, starts fuming out, and we shut the doors, windows up, and everything, and I'm like, that'd do it.

I said to my roommate, you wanna go play some Xbox or something?

He goes, Yeah, sounds good to me.

So we go upstairs, we're sitting there playing Xbox.

After a little while, there's a knock at my door, and it does not sound like a friendly knock.

And I'm like, I wonder what's going on.

I opened my door and there's two very angry firefighters standing there.

And they said, Sir, did you know that your car is smoking and people can see it from blocks away?

I said, Well, I didn't think about that, but yeah, come to think of it, uh that's probably from me.

He said, Well, uh, want you to know if you can come down and look at it, it had begun to pour out of every crevice of the car, out of the bottom, and it literally was uh rising above our apartment complex.

And uh so uh I was in I was in quite a bit of trouble.

Uh I'll tell you, while I was living in Florida, I ran out of gas so many times because the front visor never cleared up.

It was foggy from that day forward.

I I was in bad shape.

So I needed to get married, and I I needed somebody to love me and to care for me and help me along in these ways.

It was I had I was it was rough for me.

So uh I want to read to you a scripture uh out of Hosea chapter 2, verse 16, and it will be on the screen.

Hosea 2:16

It says, It will come about in that day, declares the Lord, that you will call me Ishi and will no longer call me Bali.

That you will call me Ishi and no longer call me Bali.

This this message is gonna be sort of like uh like an intense murder mystery movie, okay?

Uh we we're gonna start at the very beginning of time.

We're gonna move through time a little bit and follow a young man as he tries to find his future spouse, and then we're gonna go a little bit further in time, and and and and then at the end, somebody's gonna die.

And so it it'll be it'll be intriguing and interesting.

Uh hopefully nobody in here, but it'll be very fascinating to watch it along as we go here.

But it's sort of like an episode of CSI.

I want you to be inquisitive about these things.

We're gonna go over a lot of different things, little areas of the Bible that maybe don't make very much sense, but if we look at it in the right context, I think it'll make much more sense.

And this is one of those scriptures that never really made very much sense to me until I looked at it closer.

I'm not tricking you, I'm not reading a different version.

If you look at New King James, NASB, NLT, any of those versions, it God says, No longer will you call me Bali.

You will call me Ishy.

What would possess God to say that?

What would cause him to say, hey, no more.

You don't call me Bali anymore.

From this day forward, you will call me Ishi.

So, like any good suspenseful drama, I'm not gonna tell you what it means.

Not until the very end.

The last thing that you will hear me say is this this passage of Scripture.

But what happens is that there's a connection between our relationship to each other, between our relationship in marriage, and our relationship with God.

Paul refers to this.

He even refers into it the way that we want to look at it right now, that it's a mystery, that it's something that's difficult to figure out.

And so we start at the beginning of time, and it says uh Genesis chapter 2, verse 24.

Genesis 2:24

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

This idea of them becoming one flesh is very important.

You see, God created man and woman in his own image.

He created man in his own image, and then from that he took and created Eve.

He took from Adam and created Eve.

So all of the characteristics that we have as people come from God.

Sin was then brought into the world, but in our purest form, right there in the garden, everything that we have comes from God.

I know it doesn't seem sometimes, men, like when we're married, that uh that that we came from the same person, that we bear the same image.

We're confused many times by uh women's actions, gestures, words, but we came from the same creator.

We were created in his image.

And right there from Genesis, the the intention would be that then they would come back together and that they would be one flesh.

And so it started off as one man and then they are separated and then they are brought back together.

The thing that I think is so interesting, fascinating about this is I wonder then, based on this, if it's possible that the time that we are most like God is when we are one in our marriage.

The time that we bear his image the most is when we are joined together in holy matrimony and we are living out our marriage in a healthy and powerful way.

And so, as I said, Paul uh talks about this in Ephesians 5.

This is the chapter that talks a lot about marriage.

So Paul's going on and on about marriage, and then he says this something something that's very strange in Ephesians 5, verse 32.

Ephesians 5:32

It says, This mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife, even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

So here, Paul says, This is a great mystery.

I'm talking about marriage, I'm talking about the way that you join yourself to your spouse.

It's a great mystery, but somehow this is a prefigurement for our relationship to Christ.

And our relationship to Christ is based on total sacrifice, the sacrifice of Jesus in order to bond us together.

And so we're going to look at several different stories covering many different areas in the Bible, but the common theme here is going to be total sacrifice.

That is what brings us together, and that is what causes there to be love.

And so Paul is talking about this, and he's saying this in this, it's a great mystery, but what you do right here on earth in your marriage, that is a mirror to the relationship that we as the church have towards Christ.

You have an opportunity in your marriage, in your relationships to others.

You have that opportunity to be a mirror that reflects back to the image of God.

That's the opportunity that we have, that we can live that out.

Now I want to show you the next scripture.

It's in Matthew chapter 13, verse 44.

Matthew 13:44

It says, the kingdom of heaven, and we talked a lot two weeks ago about what the kingdom of heaven really is.

And so this is about right here on our on earth, right now.

This is the kingdom of heaven here on earth, is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again.

And from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

It goes on right there in verse 45.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls.

And upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

So many people have taken this uh this illustration, this story to illustrate the fact that we give up everything whenever we find Christ, whenever we find salvation, or we find how great God really is, then we give up everything and we sell out.

We sell everything and then we really buy this great treasure, which is the kingdom of heaven.

The truth is, though, that it's completely reversed from that.

The truth is that we can't buy the kingdom of heaven.

We can't afford it, honestly.

None of us have enough to buy the kingdom of heaven.

We can't find the kingdom of heaven.

It finds us.

God has placed it inside each and every one of us.

There's nothing we can do to find the kingdom of heaven.

He finds us.

And we can't buy it.

So, really, this scripture then means really that it is Jesus who found us.

And he loved you so much that he gave up everything in order to get you.

The beauty of this story is not that you give up everything, that you can somehow earn the kingdom of heaven, that you can buy your right, your way into the kingdom of heaven.

It's not about that at all.

The moral of this story is that you are the treasure.

And it is Christ's total sacrifice for you, that he bought and paid for you.

That he goes and he sacrifices and pays the ultimate price in order to obtain you.

And so here we understand that in relationships, again, there is total sacrifice.

You're a treasure.

He sought you out, and he did everything that he could to get you, to bring you back.

So we're gonna look at a few more examples, but the first point is we want to understand what kills relationships, and the answer is selfishness.

Selfishness is what kills relationships, selfishness is what eats away and rots away at our marriages, selfishness is what hurts friendships every day in our lives, selfishness is what does this damage.

The essence of all sin is selfishness.

The root of every single sin is the sin of selfishness.

You look at any sin, anything that, any any desire that you have, it is to fulfill something for yourself, to gain something for yourself, it always is rooted and grounded in selfishness.

And we can look see this in scripture, we can see it over and over.

Abraham lied about his wife because he selfishly wanted to save his own life.

Achan caused defeat to Israel because he selfishly took some forbidden loot from the ruins of Jericho.

We uh we have turned in this way to seek out what is best for us.

We've turned in this way to s to try to get money, riches, wealth, power, all of these things.

And in that, in that we have committed this sin of selfishness.

Selfishness is difficult on people, it's difficult on you as a person.

People who are selfish are always at war with themselves.

Their selfish desires cause them to be unhappy.

The truth is it will never really be enough.

And so, as long as we are continuing to be selfish, we'll continue to seek out things that will never really satisfy us.

They never bring happiness, they never bring satisfaction.

People who are very selfish, they never really enjoy life.

They always have to complain about what they don't have instead of counting their blessings and being appreciative of what they do have.

They're always envying what others have, envying what others do.

This is especially difficult in our time where life on social media looks so amazing, and they're so tempted to go on there and look and go, their life must be so incredible.

Again, selfishness eats away at us in so many ways.

Selfishness breeds distrust in relationships.

Selfishness uh will eat away at any friendship that you are in.

Here's the reason why, here's the main reason why.

Uh selfishness breeds distrust in the relationship because if I'm friends with you and you are selfish, then in the in there will come a time where I will know that I can't communicate with you openly because if you ever need to use the information that I have given you to do something better for yourself, then you'll do it.

I know I all of us have had a friendship that has been betrayed in this way.

All of us have had a friendship that gets hurt and broken and wounded deeply because the person uses information that you have trusted them with and they turn and use it against you.

Why did they do it?

Selfish desire.

If it was going to benefit them in any way, then they knew that they they needed to use it.

So selfishness tears away at our uh relationships.

I I can't trust that you uh might use that information in a moment of anger.

I can't trust that you might use it in a hurtful way to elevate yourself.

For these people, their medicine is to put others down.

They love bringing others down because it makes them feel better about themselves.

You must be unselfish to love.

Love always says that you will lay down your life for the one that you love.

Love says, I pick up the burdens that you have.

You lay them down and I will pick them up.

Love says, I love whatever you love and I hate whatever you hate.

Love says, I'll I'll take on the burdens, the the passion, the mission that you have.

I'll take that on as if it's my own, and I'll do whatever I can to excel you and propel you to that place because my love pushes me towards that.

My love for you doesn't think about what I will get out of the relationship, but thinks about what I how I can help you get more out of the relationship.

There's no space for selfishness in marriage.

It is the destroyer of all relationships and the cancer of love.

My life, my wife likes to watch these uh cheesy chick flicks, and uh and sometimes I get uh stuck watching them with her.

And uh in in these like Hallmark movies, there's always this scenario where there's a woman who definitely should leave this man who's not treating her right, and and so he's not treating her right, and it gets over and over, and maybe it even escalates to some sort of uh act of vi of violence or hurt or pain or whatever.

And so the woman knows that she should leave, and there's like this trump card that the man says right before, and it always works every single time, it works every single time.

He always goes, baby, I would die for you.

And she's like, Oh, okay, that sounds good.

Well, it's because we know we know that dying is the ultimate sacrifice that anybody can make for someone, and so it's like this this ultimate trump card.

And so we say that all the time, I would die for you.

And it's an imaginary scenario.

It's it doesn't happen.

It's like if somebody in our mind were thinking, if somebody shot a bullet at you and I was faster than that bullet, I would Kevin Costner, I would jump in front of it and oh, you know, I would die for you.

And it's like, oh, it's so romantic.

I love that, it's incredible.

It's imaginary.

Immediately, you can right after that statement, he goes, baby, I would die for you.

Just go, will you take out the trash for me?

No, I'm watching the game.

But I would die for you.

I would I would literally die for you anytime.

It's this trump card.

We know that this death, but it the death could be anything.

The death can be your selfish desires, the death could be something that you want to accomplish, the death could be you laying down your desires and picking up your spouse's desires.

So selfishness destroys relationships.

There's this amazing story in Genesis chapter 4, 24.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

I want us to look at this again with the very critical eye.

It's the time where Abraham sent a servant to find uh a wife for Isaac.

And so he says, you know, I want you to travel to this land and find a wife for Isaac, and he goes, he takes ten camels.

We know the Bible says he takes ten camels and he goes to this place, and we can see from the historic archives that this was a particularly difficult journey.

The servant goes to this well and he says, if a woman shows up at the well and she takes water for herself, but then she also offers to give me water and to water my camels, then I'll know she's the right woman.

And I always thought that like this guy secretly is really lazy.

If you think about it.

Like he was supposed to go find a wife, and all he cares about if she will give water to the camels.

I honestly think he just didn't want to do it himself, and he was like, hey, maybe somebody will do this, and I won't have to do it.

And then I'll be like, You're the one, and that's how he would choose her.

So I thought it was strange.

I decided to look into it a little bit more, and so I looked up how many about a rough account of how many miles this trip would be, where they had 10 camels, and so the camels would be particularly thirsty at the end of this, and so I thought, how much would a camel drink after a journey like this?

The answer is each camel would drink between 25 and 30 gallons of water.

So then I thought, well, I can take this a little bit further.

Each gallon of water weighs about 8.35 pounds.

A typical bucket in that day would be between two and five gallons, and then I just estimated maybe it would take somebody about three minutes to lower the bucket into the well, fill it up, take it over to the trough, and pour it in.

I think it's a pretty conservative number.

So then I just added all that up and I found out that this woman moved between 60 and 90 buckets of water.

It would have taken her more than three hours, and she moved a total of 2,500 pounds of water.

2,500 pounds of water.

You know what the Bible says?

The servant gazed at her the whole time.

What a jerk.

That is terrible.

That is awful.

That is so terrible.

I can't believe that.

He just stared at her.

That is way worse than men today not opening doors for ladies.

He watched her do all this.

He didn't help at all.

It's terrible.

So I thought, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe in in a in an earlier context, understanding these things that we don't understand about this story, maybe there is a lesson to be learned.

And this is what I really genuinely believe it is.

He said, I need to find the perfect spouse for my master's son.

And nobody who is selfish would do this.

There is no person who would be a selfish spouse who would offer to do this amount of labor labor for a complete stranger.

I'm joking about him uh gazing at her the whole time, but you know, I'm starting to think maybe it's possible they didn't gaze at her just because she agreed to do the work.

Maybe she took so much joy in what she had offered to do for him that it was truly astounding to him.

And he said, This, this definitely will be the perfect spouse.

We have to remove selfishness from our relationships.

The second point is what keeps relationships?

What destroys relationships is selfishness, what keeps relationships is love.

Jesus had just washed the disciples' feet and served them in the ultimate way.

And he he modeled and exampled this love for them.

And he says in John chapter 13, verse 34, it says, A new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you.

John 13:34

That you also love one another.

By this you will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

Jesus illustrates that I want you to love each other in the way that I have loved you.

How did Jesus love them?

He gave his life for them.

He truly, genuinely sacrificed his life for them.

He shows us that the example is to lay down your life.

So I want to draw our attention to uh the story in Hosea 2.

And we're gonna get back to that scripture where Jesus says, No longer will you call me Bali, but you will call me Ishi.

This is the story of Hosea and Gomer.

If you remember the story, Hosea was married to Gomer, and at some point she left and went into a life of prostitution.

She decided that she wanted to pursue every whim and desire, every selfish desire that she had.

She wanted money and riches, and the way to do that would be to go into prostitution, and then uh and then it went really bad for her, and she ended up being sold from master to master.

Sold and auctioned off, and and and so Hosea, his wife, leaves.

And how difficult and how heartbreaking would this be for a spouse to say, I no longer want to be with you.

And in fact, I'll give myself to anyone, anyone at all.

My selfish desires have taken over so much that I'll go out and I'll I'll do whatever I want to do.

Every whim and desire that I have, I'm gonna follow that.

And so she goes out and leads her into a life of prostitution.

God says to Hosea, Hosea, I want you to go and I want you to buy her back.

So Hosea goes, and this would not be the way that we typically view prostitution, where uh the the woman would be in some sort of way self employed, and and so you would go and you would say, uh, you know, how much to buy you in this time?

This day and age, these women were passed along from master to master.

And so a man would take the slave, a prostitute slave, and he would do whatever he wants to her for as long as he wanted to.

And then he would take her to a place where they would auction off these women.

And they would strip them naked and they would place them up on a block.

In probably the most shameful way that you could ever imagine.

And then men would bid and they would purchase these women.

This is where pursuing her own desires finds where Gomer finds herself.

So Hosea goes there.

He does exactly as God has told him.

He bids the highest price.

He purchases his wife back.

But this time not to be a slave.

But to be a wife again.

In my mind, I'm taking liberty with this, but in my mind, I like to think that he takes her home and he picks her up and he carries her across the threshold for a second time.

He sets her down and he says, I bought you back, but not so you could continue being a slave, but so you could be my wife.

See, the truth is, it might be the same for you, but I can remember.

I can remember the times, the days, and the moments where I said, God, I'm walking away from you and I'm gonna follow whatever whim and whatever desire I have for myself.

I said, God, there are desires that I have, and I'll do whatever it takes to get them, and so I'm leaving you.

You've been great, God, but I want to go out and do my own thing and get whatever I want.

And I and my selfish desires are pulling and they're tugging at me.

And I went out, and I was exactly like Gomer.

Prostituting myself out to whatever desire I had.

And in that moment, I was completely in bondage.

I wasn't free to do whatever I wanted.

I was in bondage.

Jesus.

He bit on me and you.

He paid the highest price, the ultimate price, by giving his life.

And he bought and purchased you back.

I want you to imagine now.

He picks you up and he carries you across the threshold.

And he sets you down.

He says, I want you to know I know that you went out and you pursued your own selfish desires, but I bought you back.

Not as a slave.

I bought you back to be my bride.

The translation to that scripture that says, No longer will you call me Bali, from this day forward you will call me Ishi.

The translation of that is to say, No longer will you call me master.

From this day forward, you will call me husband.

God said to Hosea, what I just asked you to do for Gomer, that's what I'm gonna do for my people.

That's what I'm gonna do for my people.

You might be in a place today where you found yourself pursuing whatever it is that you wanted to pursue.

Maybe you need to remember that he paid the ultimate price for you.

Maybe you need to remember that he cared so deeply for you that you were the treasure.

And he paid the ultimate price.

But not so you could be his slave, but so you could be his bride.

I'd like to ask you to bow your heads and close your eyes with me if you will.

I'm gonna pray in just a moment, and then the altar ministry team is gonna come forward.

We're gonna have a moment of prayer, and maybe you need to recommit your life to God.

Maybe you need to say, God, I I have wandered far from you, but I want you to buy me back.

Maybe there's a relationship in your life.

And you've hurt that relationship because you've followed your own selfish desires.

Maybe you need to pray with somebody and agree for restoration in that relationship.

It may be that in your marriage, it may be that in your marriage you wanted sometimes what was best for you and not what was best for your spouse.

Maybe today you want to recommit.

I'm laying down my life for my spouse.

I live no longer for myself, but for you.

Whatever your need is, we want to pray with you today.

At every campus, there's going to be prayer ministers, whatever your need is.

We pray every week for every kind of need.

If you just need general prayer, agree with someone in prayer for your job, your work, your finances, your health, whatever it is that's going on, we want to pray with you today, whatever your need is.

So as I finish praying, if you need prayer, we're gonna stand up, we're gonna go into one more song of worship, and then you can come forward and receive prayer.

Father, right now I pray, Lord, that you would draw our hearts back to you.

God, it's so easy.

It's so easy for me to be pulled away from you, pulled towards my own desires, God.

Maybe not even in big ways, God, but in small ways I've pulled away from you.

I've been selfish, Lord.

I've gone to whatever I think would give me happiness.

Hey God, today I need to come home.

God, for anyone else here who's saying, God, I need to come home and I need an experience and encounter with you.

Lord, I pray that you would draw their hearts, Lord, that you would soften their hearts, Lord, that you would give them courage.

Courage to come forward, to receive prayer.

Lord, don't let anything stop us from receiving prayer today.

Everyone needs prayer at some point.

So, God, let us intercede, let us agree with somebody in prayer today that you are here, that you are the healer, that you mend broken relationships, you restore hurting marriages.

Lord, we need you today, God.

So I pray right now that you would draw every single person who needs prayer.

And I pray all these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.