The Wedding Party | Pastor Greg Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

We're gonna jump into God's word today.

We're uh in a series of messages right now that we're calling uh symbols.

And what we're doing is we're taking concepts that begin in the Old Testament and we're looking at those things and what is the deeper meaning behind what they did.

Because there are some things that started in the Old Testament that we still participate with in some kind of way today.

And so we want to not only know what they did, but why they did it.

What's the essence of what they were doing so that when we do it, that it really means what it's supposed to mean, and it helps us to be reminded of what we're supposed to remember.

And so uh one of the things that's interesting about, again, the ancient Near Eastern Jewish culture is they started doing seven annual feasts, and those feasts were essentially one big party type things, that they would come together because they're like there's something about God, something he's done, or something about who he is that we want to keep in the spiritual rhythm of our calendar.

So even like when you see this, maybe you came in, and if you're from a sort of maybe different kind of church background or no church background at all, this might have felt really weird.

Like, man, these guys got lights and people are jumping around, and okay, this guy's wearing weird clothes and whatever.

It's just like, what is going on?

And so it might almost feel like we just made it up and it's this newfangled thing.

It's really not.

It's actually rooted in all the way back in the Old Testament, the idea that they would throw parties, have feasts and festivals to remember certain things about God.

And so we're just kind of doing that within our context.

Um, what I want to do is I want to take something from the really uh is codified or defined in the Old Testament that we would be familiar with, but I want to look at it uh at the institution of the thing so that we can see it from the beginning and then learn some things uh that we need to learn about it.

And we're gonna look at weddings through the lens of the Old Testament.

Um, we're calling this sermon the wedding party, is what we're calling it, the wedding party.

Um, what I want to do is I'm gonna describe the wedding process for you in the Old Testament and then the why behind each of the symbolic ritual uh behaviors.

And uh just to be clear, there's a lot, right?

So I'm not gonna be able to hit it all.

I'm gonna get sort of hit it at a high level, and there's four things.

So these kind of on the stained glass here, there's gonna be four uh different words that are gonna come across uh that gives us some of the big picture and the why behind the what.

Okay, so uh first word I want to give you today is the word value.

The word value.

Um in Old Testament weddings, um basically the way it would start out is uh their culture was there were arranged marriages, which sounds essentially horrifying.

Uh, like your mom and dad are gonna go talk to somebody else's mom and dad, and you're gonna have to marry some some person you don't like or whatever.

I'm sure that happened at some point, but that's really wasn't the spirit of what happened.

Usually somebody's son would recognize somebody's daughter, they would tell his parents, and that the parents then would be a part.

It was a kind of a community decision.

We have these young people that have some interest in each other, and they'd start, hey, you know, just so you know there's interest, why don't we gauge the interest?

And then to engage the wisdom of the generations.

We have the parents, the grandparents, we have people that have kind of been there, done that, they've been married a while, they understand what it takes for a marriage to work, and we're looking at these young people and going, is this a is this a good union?

Is it compatible?

And so at some point, if if if all the parties are sort of aligned, then you have the the young man goes to the young woman and he proposes.

He says, You know, I want to marry you, will you will you marry me?

And if she says yes, they now begin a uh period of being betrothed, is what it means, essentially engaged.

And what he says to her is this he says, Okay, good, this is great.

Okay, let's go prepare ourselves.

So we're gonna set ourselves apart for one another.

In other words, I'm not looking at anybody else, I'm not going after anybody else, I'm not talking to anybody else, I'm not dating anybody else, I'm not I'm for you and you're for me.

So the young man says, I'm going to my father's house and I'm gonna build a place for us to stay.

So he builds a room or a house upon with his parents' house, he's building their abode, and then she says, I'm gonna go prepare myself, I'm gonna set myself apart too, and I'm gonna go and start to collect things, gifts from my friends.

I'm gonna tell them we're getting married, collect these gifts so that when the house is built, I'm gonna bring the stuff to go in the house and we're gonna have this period that we're apart.

So they make this commitment out of the gate.

Um, the the other uh element that's going on with this is um as he's he's basically gone and he's doing this work, he has not given her a date.

So it's not like October 11th, I'll be there.

So she's waiting in anticipation.

Of course, he's working as fast as he can, but he but I want to get this thing all the way right.

And she's waiting, okay, in this process.

In that process also, there's an exchange of expensive or uh valuable things.

Again, that's all part of the value, okay.

So you have it's gonna sound weird when I say it, but it's is what it was.

It was a bride price.

So they say, hey, I value you, I'm gonna give a bride price, which sounds weird because it sounds like you're you know putting a monetary value on a human being.

That's not what it was about.

It was really about just saying, hey, this is a statement of value to you.

And then the bride and her family would give a dowry to the groom essentially as well.

They'd say, Well, we value you too.

And so each of them are receiving something of value, they're giving something of value.

And then even there were um, what we would, for us would be like rings, they had coins or medallions that would be put on a necklace, and again, those were valuable, and it was like a wedding ring.

In fact, if you go into the New Testament, and you you've you've probably seen that, maybe seen this story before, it's in Luke 15.

Jesus gives a parable of a woman who loses a silver coin.

And and so look what it says in Luke 15, 8.

He says, Suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one, doesn't she light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?

And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, Rejoice with me.

I found my lost coin.

In the same way I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Okay, so when we read that, you're like, Man, if I lose a silver coin, I'm definitely not staying up all night.

All right, I'm not sweeping the whole house.

You lose the silver coin, it's not that big a deal.

But again, contextually, they would have heard wedding.

They would have heard wedding ring.

Okay, so I lose part of that silver coin.

It's like lose, it's like my wedding ring's no longer complete.

This is a true story.

My wife, like two weeks ago, she comes in and she's really upset.

I'm like, what's going on?

Um, one of the small stones on her wedding ring just fell out.

Like she could, she has no idea where where it's at.

And she was upset about it, you know, and I was like, Oh, let me see it.

You know, so she gives me the ring, and I'm telling you, it is tiny.

It was just a tiny little thing there.

In fact, if she had handed me a ring and said, hey, you know, look for 20 minutes, see if you can see anything wrong with this.

Uh it looks great, you know, I would have had no idea.

So it's a tiny, tiny stone, probably not a whole lot of money worth.

I mean, it was that small.

But to her, it's not about what how much does the jeweler say it's worth.

The value to her is in what the ring represents.

And the fact that that she lost that, she's not just taken, she looked all over the place, she's getting it taken care of.

Because for her, it's it's more than just what's the monetary value, it's the deeper value.

So, in this story, now, this is what's really cool, and this is why when we understand context, it really comes alive because when Jesus is telling the story and he goes, it would be like him saying it like this imagine a woman who loses a stone on her her engagement ring, she wouldn't just go to bed, she would start hunting and looking, it would be a big deal, and when she found it, she'd tell everybody she found it.

Okay, and he's like, by the way, that type of value, that's how God feels about you.

That's what he's that's what he's saying.

He's like, that's how God feels about you.

He's saying, if you're lost, if you're lost, he won't stop till he sweeps the house and finds you.

He's coming for you, he's searching for you, he's pursuing you.

All right, so again, Old Testament wedding language, moving into the New Testament, uh, value.

Um, let's keep going.

The second word is the word joy.

The word joy.

Okay, so let's go back to the young couple.

He said, uh, uh, I'll go to prepare a place for you.

By the way, you probably noticed that, right?

In John, um, oh, let me pull that up real quick.

Sorry, I skipped over that.

Uh, John um 14, verse 2.

Um, Jesus says, My father's house has many rooms.

If it were not so, I would have told you that I'm going to prepare a place for you.

Right?

So if you've ever heard that before, read it, you're like, what is he talking about?

My father's house has many rooms, I go to prepare a place for you.

He said, If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come and take you back and bring you with me so that uh you may also be where I am.

I'll bring you unto myself.

So that's wedding language Jesus is using.

He's essentially uh saying, I'll go, I'll go to my father's house, build a room, and uh I go to prepare a place.

So again, that's where it would have connected to his audience.

The second one is joy.

If we go back to the couple, he's gone to prepare a place.

She has gone, uh, she's been, they've both been anticipating this moment.

She's got and collected everything she needs, and then one day he decides to show up, and he's like, all right, it's go time.

So he goes to her house and he lets her know it's go time.

And so then they go from there in the bridal processional, and they're either go back to his home or they go to another location, but they go to a place where there is a huge feast.

And so their family's there, their friends are there, their community's there, and and they have this massive, massive feast.

Now, I've been to some weddings that were awesome.

We danced into the night.

I've never been to a seven-day wedding, but in the ancient Near Eastern Jewish culture, weddings were seven days long, seven days of feasting.

And what they're doing is they are embedding the value of joy into the fabric of this marriage.

This isn't just a commitment.

This isn't just about, you know, uh us not leaving one another.

This is about us not only being together, but the joy of love, the joy of this relationship.

And so they kick it off with seven days of joy.

In fact, you're probably thinking about in John, uh, in the book of John, when Jesus does his first miracle, it's at a wedding that's been going on for days, and they've run out of wine, and Jesus' mom comes to them as like, you know, this party's starting to die down, you know, and we we need a little joy around here.

And Jesus is like, Mom, it's not our problem.

This is not our problem.

Okay, it's their wedding, and she's like, I'm your mother.

You you do what I tell you to do.

That's basically what she said.

I'm your mom, all right?

And so she's like, do whatever he says, and then she walks away, knowing he's gonna be obedient.

So he does, and he turns what the water into the to the best wine, uh, apparently at the party.

Well, he's taking the party that's already been going for a while, and he's extending it even further, right?

Um, we we we see the the the idea of joy uh actually from John the Baptist.

Uh John the Baptist um uh is a great character in the Bible.

He's somebody who uh was a cousin of Jesus, and John the Baptist was a charismatic guy, he had a huge following of people, he had kind of a fresh new message, he's out in the wilderness, people are following him out there, and and so he's got this following, and when Jesus shows up, a lot of John's followings start leaving Jesus, or sorry, leaving John to follow Jesus.

So a bunch of his disciples and followers just walk away from him to follow Jesus, which is concerning to John's uh remnant of disciples.

Like, what look what's going on?

This guy's taking our followers.

What are you gonna do, John?

And look what John says in John 3 29.

He says, the bride belongs to the bridegroom.

The friend who attends the bride, the bridegroom, waits and listens for him and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice.

That joy is mine and is now complete.

In other words, what he says is, okay, guys, through your lens, you're you're getting jealous and you think I should be jealous.

You're getting competitive and you think I should be competitive.

He said, You've got it twisted.

I'm not the groom.

I'm not the main character, I'm a groomsman.

I'm like the best man in the wedding, and this ain't about me.

And so he says, Jesus is the bride, people or the church, or I'm sorry, Jesus is the groom, the church or people are the bride.

And he said, It was never about me anyway.

My whole point is to get excited when I see my friend that's about to get married, and how can I support him and point people to him?

So the fact that they're following Jesus, he goes, Not only am I not jealous, not only am I not defensive, not only am I not competitive, my purpose is being fulfilled in the fact that people are following Jesus and not me.

Alright, so he uses the term joy here.

So the idea that the wedding is designed to embed joy uh in the relationship, and this is really important because not all seasons of marriage or any actual real-world relationship is going to be exhilarating.

It's not all gonna hit your adrenaline, it's not always gonna feel warm and fuzzy, it's not always gonna feel uh hot and heavy and romantic and whatever.

You have to be able to have the awareness that joy is not circumstantial.

I don't wait until everything is going up and to the right before I decide to apply joy to my life.

The idea that we can find joy in any season.

And it's imperative if our relationship is going to be healthy and strong, it is gonna not only stand the test of time where we stick it out together, but where we're gonna have uh the type of marriage that we're supposed to have, the point of this is we have to be able to find joy in every season.

So joy is is another component.

The the third is intimacy, and so uh you know, we know well that um physical intimacy, the consummation of the marriage happens um after the wedding and physical intimacy.

And if you don't know what consummating of a marriage is, call your mom after service.

She can explain it to you, that's her job to do, not mine.

Uh but there there's the physical intimacy.

But really, again, all of this is much deeper than just physical intimacy.

This is more than just bodies.

Uh, this is about intimacy relationally.

So there's a beautiful component of the wedding ceremony where the bride comes in and she's wearing a wedding dress and she is behind a veil.

And so when she enters the wedding ceremony and she's veiled, she physically enters, and we can all see that she's physically entered, but there is but she's hidden from us.

She's hidden from the room, and she walks in veiled, and then she stands in front of the groom, and the groom pulls back the veil, and now she's looking at him, and he's looking at her, and now she has showed him a part of herself that she's not showed to anyone else in the room.

No one else can see her the way that he can see her.

And so they are now looking at one another, and part of that tradition, not just the what of the veil, but the why behind it, is we are making a covenant today to protect one another in our weaknesses.

We are making a covenant today that there are some things that we only share with each other.

There's some things that I'm gonna give you or I'm gonna let you see.

Intimacy is into me see.

Into me see, intimacy.

We're going to have not only physical intimacy.

By the way, you can find anybody to be intimate with your body, but to find a lover of your soul.

I'm gonna let you see into me.

I'm gonna let you see the things I'm embarrassed about, I'm gonna let you see my insecurities, I'm gonna let you see me on a bad day, not just today where I've got this expensive dress and a full face of makeup.

I'm talking about tomorrow when it ain't that great, first thing in the morning.

I'm talking about with morning breath.

I'm talking about when when things aren't going well, when I just when when I'm feeling insecure, when I'm not where I want to be, where I'm feeling like I'm not enough, where all of that.

Again, it's beyond the physical.

It's it's into the mind, the will, the heart, the emotions, the depth.

So can I can I trust you?

Because we're making a covenant today.

We're making a covenant that you that you when I show you into me and I reveal things, nobody else knows, and and and vice versa, that you're gonna cover me, you're gonna protect me.

Or will you take what I shared with you and share it with everybody else?

Or when we are in the heat of an argument, will you weaponize my insecurity back at me?

Because I showed it to you thinking I could trust you to protect it.

But but but if you lost your temper or you got too far into your feelings, and now you started grabbing for anything you thought you could hurt me with, so we're making a covenant today.

This is the type of relationship we're supposed to have.

We're gonna see into one another, and we're gonna be able to cover one another and trust one another into me, see.

And this is where, by the way, in the New Testament, we start to understand that regardless of who let you down and who didn't live up to what they said they would do, and maybe that someone was you, maybe you're the one that let down, okay?

Bottom line is we can't always have the thing that we want from human beings.

This is really more than just telling us about marriage, it's telling us about God.

Think about Romans 5.8.

God demonstrates his own love for us in this.

While we were sinners, Christ died for us.

In other words, it's saying that not when we were at our most beautiful, not when we had earned uh uh earned it with being good enough, but even at our worst, when we were sinners, Christ died for us.

The fourth thing, the fourth word is the word commitment.

The word commitment.

So their tradition is a little different than ours.

So the engagement period that starts when he says, I go to prepare a place for you, that was the betrothal.

And the betrothal, once they start exchanging uh valuable things, they now have essentially a contract.

So you probably noticed this, like when you read the Christmas story.

Uh you remember when uh Mary and Joseph, right, they weren't married, but they were betrothed.

And um, and then you know, Mary shows up and she's like, hey, uh, I'm pregnant.

And Joseph's like, that's weird.

Uh because we've not been together.

And she's like, I know it's weird.

It is.

I was praying and then now I'm pregnant.

And he's like, I've heard that before.

And uh I didn't believe it then either.

Uh and so what what it says in Matthew 1 19, it says, because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law, yet he did not want to expose her to public disgrace.

That's that's a heck of a dude.

He had it in mind to divorce her quietly.

Which you're like, that's weird.

How would he divorce her?

I thought they weren't married and they hadn't consummated the marriage.

Exactly right.

So again, their engagement, for us, an engagement, you just we just break off the engagement.

In their time, the betrothal was seen as a greater commitment.

If you were going to break it off at that point, you literally had to go legally there and get an actual divorce.

So we know even again in the wedding ceremony, they have what's called a hoopah, or basically a canopy, where the the bride and groom stand underneath with the officiant under this canopy, essentially saying we are committing to each other under God.

Okay, so so the the commitment starts all the way back at the agreement, and and it's something that they see as a holy thing.

So those are the four elements.

That's how it's designed to go.

Now I've got more to say, but I want to give you an announcement real quick.

We're we're gonna do something we've never done before.

We're gonna try it and see how it goes.

Maybe we'll do it again sometime.

Um, so we have people uh around here who are uh dating or engaged or wanting to get married, and often we'll have requests for weddings, and you can only do so many.

Um we're going to do a one day where we do, we have 20 slots for weddings.

It's October 11th.

Okay, October 11th.

Now, before you get excited, listen to how this is gonna go down.

Alright.

Um, okay, so if you are, if you're wanting to get married and you're looking to have a really bougie wedding, this is not the one for you.

This is not the one for you.

Alright, you're not flying in a helicopter, you're not riding in on a Norwegian elk hound.

All right, this is gonna be they're gonna be tasteful, but they're gonna be simple, and they are going to be fairly brief.

Okay, we're doing them all on one day.

So we have four different venues on the property, some indoor outdoor venues.

And so you're gonna be getting married at the same time somebody else is getting married across the property, and then we're gonna have a reception, and at the reception, you're gonna you can have some of your friends and family, but you're gonna they're gonna have their friends and family too, so we're all gonna kind of meet in the same spot for the reception.

We're providing an official.

We're providing one church music, it's gonna do the music for your wedding.

We're providing uh photographers from our church, people that take pictures on Sundays and baptisms, they're gonna come take pictures for you.

Uh our care team's gonna do premarital coaching, which you'll need to do uh before the the wedding, uh before we do that.

And just so you know, we're gonna start on time.

There'll be just a tiny little bit of customization, but if you have fashionably late family members and friends, you need to tell them to turn over a new leaf by October 11th because we're gonna be starting.

All right, we will be starting at the time we say we're gonna start.

And so if you're interested in this, there's the QR code right there.

Uh you can scan that and you can go uh sign up.

Uh 20 slots when they're gone, they're gone.

All right?

We're good?

Is there anything else to say about that?

Everybody good?

All right, okay, back to this.

So we have laid out the wedding all the way back from the book of Genesis.

We have understanding the traditions, but understanding the bigger picture.

This is about value, it's about joy, it's about intimacy, it's about commitment, it's about more than that, but you get these four critical things.

I think we all know well enough to know that things sometimes that make tons of sense on paper don't always play out quite like that in the real world.

Um it's prove it's proven to be pretty challenging to maintain a proper perspective of the value from the wedding day to a dying day.

Um, the reality is that's just a human challenge in general.

Because we tend to value highly things that are novel and new.

And if I'm gonna stay together for 50, 60, 70 years, it's not always gonna be novel and new.

This is why, frankly, there just does something to us anytime you see an elderly couple still flirting.

You see an elderly couple still a little frisky.

You see an elderly couple that's found a way to keep it novel and new, even though the bodies are deteriorating and withering, and we can't do all the things we used to do.

And certainly I don't look like you did when you met me.

And we've had some ups and downs, and some good and some bad, and some very ugly, and yet we found a way to be more in love than we've ever been.

There's something beautiful.

I mean, it's universally beautiful when you see that.

Because we know that often people tend to overvalue novelty.

So, what happens is throughout the course of my life and your life, and anybody who's trying to go the distance with someone, that value sometimes things that when they were novel, I I valued, now I start to take for granted.

I start to take for granted.

Honor is treating something like it's uncommon.

Dishonor is taking and treating something like it's common.

Some of you have a family heirloom that if you took it to the pawn shop, they wouldn't give you much of anything for it, but it's valuable.

And you put it in a place of honor in your home because to you it's uncommon.

This this represents generations from my family.

I'm putting this in a place of honor.

You would never put it on the ground, or you would never put it in a place where it was going to be mistreated, mishandled, because that would be to treat something uncommon as if it's common.

And so what happens often over time is starting to take each other for granted.

And I start to roll my eyes through this marriage, and I start to yawn my way through this marriage.

And so we take somebody who had a premier place in our lives, somebody who was a priority in our lives, that now is just sort of being treated as common and they're actually uncommon.

So to be able to be mature enough and wise enough and disciplined enough to not get so caught up in what he's not doing or get so caught up in what she's not giving that that I start focusing on that percentage of things that I'm not getting, that I lose track of all the things that she's been doing that's been like clockwork, and I hadn't even, I just quit valuing it anymore.

And in the words of the great theologian Joni Mitchell, don't it always seem to go that you don't know what it's got till it's gone.

You don't know what you got till you lose it, right?

You don't know what you got till it's gone.

And often, okay, we devalue something that's tremendously valuable, but because it's been consistent over time, it's lost its novelty.

And so now we start to devalue the one who who at one point we were given everything to, willing to go the extra mile.

And so it's it's difficult.

And in the real world, again, on paper, it sounds good that we're gonna love each other properly till death do us part, but in the real world it doesn't, it doesn't always work out like that.

A lot of times it doesn't at all.

Uh, you know, you think about joy, again, inevitably we're gonna have pain.

We're gonna have mountains we have to scale together, we're gonna have difficulty, we're gonna have things, messes we made and messes we didn't make, but we have to deal with all of that to say it's to keep joy at the center of the relationship, to keep making new memories together, to keep to keep uh to keep laughter in the home and in the relationship.

And you know, that's work, that's work, that's tough.

Intimacy, again, intimacy often over time uh we start to know enough about each other, and maybe we start to get a little lax and a little loose with our protection of one another, and we start to resent each other, and maybe sometimes attack on something that's a weakness of the other person from their past, or or uh something that you know that they said or did, or a failure of theirs, and keep bringing it up.

And you know, you get close enough to somebody, you know how to hurt them, you know how to hurt them, you you know, you know how to strike a blow, and and now we've started to do that, and and and we can we said things we can't unsay, and we've done things we can't undo, and and maybe there's been a loss of intimacy or even a commitment, you know, over time uh that commitment maybe has has really started to loosen and fade.

And so, you know, it's interesting because Jesus shows up in in again a world like ours where you have people uh that had marriage on paper and then they had marriage in the in reality.

In fact, there's the story of the woman with the issue of blood.

If you look deeper in the context of of their time, about 500 BC, uh, there was basically basically not within the biblical text, but within um, you know, parallel text, something that would ultimately become the Mishnah, which was uh rulings or or debates or things that that were interpretations of the Torah or the law and the prophets.

And so, long story short, they said, you know, marriages are really uh they're about building a family and procreating.

And so if a a woman cannot, if she if she's barren, if she's infertile, around 500 BC, the rabbis started to give essentially not only permission, but expectation that after 10 years, they called it the infertility clause.

And it was if if after 10 years you can't have a baby, then he is not only allowed to, he's expected to uh divorce.

And so when you look at the story of the woman with the issue of blood, right, this is a bleeding issue directly related to infertility, and this is now we're knowing that.

We look at the text, it says she for 12 years had incessant bleeding.

She's two years past the clause.

We don't know for sure that she was married, but if she wasn't married, nobody would have married her.

Nobody would have married her, she would have been radioactive as it relates to marriage.

If she was married, she was two years past the infertility clause, to where now, I thought when you I thought when you pulled the veil back, you were committing to protect me and my intimacy.

I thought you were committing that for better or for worse, I thought you were committing that even if I can't do something I want to be able to do, that even if I'm not enough, if I have a deficiency, if I'm not good enough, I thought I thought I could trust that.

But in their culture, 10-year clause.

So if she was married, she's divorced probably for two years.

The Bible says that she had taken every dollar she had, which probably would have been her dowry that came back and spent it all under the care of many physicians, and instead of getting better, she got worse.

So you have somebody who is in all aspects of life spent.

I am spent.

I'm financially spent, I'm physically spent, I'm emotionally spent, I'm relationally spent, and I'm spiritually spent.

And so she goes and she tracks Jesus down and she touches the hem of his garment, and he she's healed, and he stops everything.

And the my favorite part of the whole story is the one time that we have a quote where Jesus calls somebody daughter, is right there.

He says, daughter, your faith has healed you.

And so we see, not only with that story, but the story of uh the the woman at the well, even Jesus' conversation in Matthew 19 about certificates of divorce, all of this, is essentially Jesus understands more than anybody the complexity of human relationships.

If I started passing the mic around the room today, I've sat with so many people, some of you, lots of people, who have had tremendously painful, complicated situations.

And sometimes it was people just so tired they couldn't do it anymore.

Sometimes it was good people that just couldn't figure it out.

Sometimes it was an attack or it was something that that turned very ugly.

Uh sometimes it was one person fighting, but I can't fight for two people.

I mean, it's all of that.

And so we know his grace is sufficient.

But as Jesus, again, he shows up to that, he's showing up to go, look, we have two things going on here.

One, we have the opportunity in our marriages, the opportunity in those relationships to have a glimpse into the character of God and to treat one another to make this our standard of how we treat one another.

I'm not setting my standard based on uh my my family marriages.

I'm not basing my standard based on my my my best friends' marriages or the people I hang out with or my coworkers' marriages.

I'm setting my standard on this is the standard.

I mean, our two takeaways today, and I'm wrapping it up, I swear.

My two takeaways today, the first one is for those of you who are married, make this your standard.

Not only is it an opportunity to have a marriage that gives you a glimpse of God, and to give that glimpse to the person you love most.

It's an unbelievable witness to the world.

Unbelievable witness to the world.

It's funny, I some of you guys know this.

When we started the church, I worked the front desk at a fitness club.

I was the opener guy, and so I would scan people in as they would come in, and uh I I was honestly, I didn't, I didn't just lead with or tell people, there's a lot of people I didn't tell that I was planting a church, I was starting a church.

Because honestly, when people find out you're a pastor, they start acting weird around you.

They they just do.

It's like, you know, if a bad word slips out, they're like, sorry, preacher, you know, sorry.

Come on, man.

You think I've never heard a bad word before?

Okay, and then um they start speaking to you in like King James English, you know?

And they just start saying weird, super spiritual stuff.

I don't even think it's true.

You know, they're like at the gym, they see me, they're like, I've been praying and fasting on what I should do today in the gym.

You know?

I'm like, God told me to tell you to do legs, you know.

He said, It's been a while.

Take that as confirmation.

Um so I kind of was undercover uh for some people the whole time, and I was I I I resigned the job because I was uh church was growing, I needed to go full-time here, and so I put in my two weeks, and there was this lady that was walking out, and I called her by name, hey, just so you know, next Friday's my last day, I'm taking another job.

She's like, Oh, good for you.

That's so cool.

She's like, What do you what are you gonna be doing?

I was like, Well, I started a church, I'm a pastor.

She's like, I knew it.

I was like, what?

She's like, I knew it, I knew, I knew, I knew there was something, I knew there was something about you.

She's like, there's just something different.

I said, What are you talking about?

She goes, You always talk so nice about your wife.

And at first I was like, Oh, like you guys, and then I was like, is that all you have to do for people to know you're a Christian?

It's a pretty low bar, in my opinion.

It's just like, you just say nice stuff about your wife, they're like something different about that guy.

Tell you what, that guy cut from a different cloth.

Like, seriously?

I mean, just by speaking honoring of my wife.

And let's be honest, it's not enough to just talk the talk, because a lot of people can say you're my world and sunshine or whatever, and then go home when nobody's looking and treat them like garbage.

I'm I'm not talking about just talking the talk.

I'm talking about actually honoring and treating what is uncommon as it's uncommon, treating it like it's special, doing the work, the discipline, the maturity to say, I'm going to maintain value, I'm going to maintain intimacy, I'm going to maintain.

Oh, they took it down.

You know, you saw it, all right, you wrote it down.

Commitment, commitment, come on.

It's third service.

I'm hungry, all right.

I'm starting to lose.

I think it's a great witness.

So the the the first thing is let's let's take and let's look these over.

I honestly, as I was looking into studying this, I'm asking me, Lord, help me.

Is there anywhere that I need to change what I'm doing?

Is there any area I need to repent?

I need to turn.

Is there any area I've just been taking Shaylen for granted that, you know, Lord help me here?

And so do that.

Let's let's let's not let the world set the standard for what our marriages are.

All right.

The second thing, the second thing is, regardless of whether or not you're married, and regardless of whether or not you ever want to be married again, I cannot promise you today any sort of reconciliation with with the love of your life.

I can't promise you today that that a new and better, new and improved person is gonna come to your life.

I can't promise you that.

I wish I could.

That's not that's not my territory.

But what I can promise you today is no matter how much your heart has been broken, how many times you've been betrayed, no matter how low you may feel, no matter how many times human beings do human things, today I want to encourage you that the foundation of your life is not simply on what you could have, but what is available to you.

That even though not everybody lives up to their commitments and not everybody knows how to keep value right, not everybody knows how to do that stuff, that we build our foundation of our life on Christ the solid rock.

And it and just because the relationship failed doesn't mean that the gospel isn't good.

Just because the relationship fell apart does not mean that God is not faithful.

And so today I want to encourage you, no matter how disappointed you may be with someone else, don't color God with the same brush that this person gave you to color them.

To refind your foundation, to get your bearings around the truth about God's love for you.

I'll give you these verses and then we'll just take a moment and sing in worship.

Romans 3, 3 and 4.

Look at this.

He said, What if some were unfaithful?

Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness?

Not at all.

Romans 5 8, God demonstrates his own love toward us in this.

While we were sinners, Christ died for us.

And here we go, Romans 8, 38 and 39.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor X's, nothing else in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love that God has given us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

Go ahead and stand up on the Lord.