The Glory of Marriage

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Revelation chapter twenty-one, verses one through four.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall be neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

So that's that's a pretty good deal, I'd say.

Yeah.

One woo.

There's no death, so whatever, no crying or pain or whatever.

Woo woo.

Let's pray together.

Father, I pray this morning that you would teach us how to hope.

Lord, that you would give us eyes that would look into the future that you have told us about, and that you would show us how to use this image of the end to inform our hope now.

Lord, hope is a double-edged sword because it means that the thing that we long for we don't have right now.

And Lord, the thing that we long for, as you've described to us at the end of the Bible, is unthinkably glorious.

Lord, I pray that you would help us to look forward to the glory that you have purchased for us on the cross.

Lord, that you would give us imaginations to be able to wonder at a world where there is no death, no crying, no mourning, no pain.

And Father, that you would help us to live lives that express this hope that we have in you, that is a sure hope.

Lord, that we would imagine what would our lives look like if we knew that this was the end.

And Lord, we look forward to the end because in your end you make all things new.

Father, stoke our imaginations.

Draw us into this text this morning.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So this is our fourth week in our marriage series, titled The Marriage Series.

And in these first four weeks, what we've done is we've gone through the whole narrative of Scripture and we've seen how the whole story of our redemption can be explained through the lens of marriage.

My hope in doing this is that when we understand how central marriage is to the narrative of Scripture, then when we get to the particular application of the Bible's teaching on marriage to our lives, it won't feel like these arbitrary constraints.

Instead, we'll see now that we know what marriage is, the way that the scriptures call us to inhabit and participate in our marriages will instead make perfect sense.

So we're still looking forward to that part, the application part of this series.

But today we close out this first segment, which uh is the whole story of redemption, which also I hope you see now is the whole story of marriage.

This is what marriage is.

It is this way in which we are able to see and understand the redemption of all things in Jesus Christ.

So what we've looked at in the first sermon, we looked at the creation of marriage, where the creation story itself in Genesis is also the story of the first marriage of Adam and Eve.

And we see that the order that God brought into the world is the order in which we're meant to inhabit our own marriages.

And then the week after that, we looked at the fall of marriage, and we saw how the story of the fall and sins coming into the world can also be understood as the sin's entrance into marriage.

And we're told there that marriage will be full of strife and difficulty, that the marriage relationship experiences the curse of sin.

And then the week after that, we looked at the redemption of marriage.

And the way that we looked at the redemption of marriage was by looking at Jesus coming and seeking his bride.

That the Lord did not leave us in sin, but he sought out his church.

And we saw a picture of that in the scriptures as Jesus meets the woman at the well.

And when he meets the Samaritan woman at the well, she is defiled and sinful and uh estranged from the true people of God.

But Jesus seeks her out.

And the Bible tells us that story in the shape and form of a marriage story.

Because in the Bible, if you meet a woman at a well, that's the woman that you marry.

There are many stories throughout Scripture, maybe a good rule of thumb anyway, but we don't have many wells in that you know, that we go hang out at.

Although people still meet at bars and things.

It's kind of the same.

And Jesus, so what we see in that is that Jesus sought out his bride.

And in seeking out his bride, we see that the Lord restores us to the truest picture of marriage.

And the truest picture of marriage is Christ, the true husband, laying down his life for the true bride, the church.

And when he lays down his life for the bride in love, then she is made pure before him.

So I want you to imagine that that story that we looked at last week of Jesus and the woman at the well, it's that that is the airport scene in the rom com.

That's the scene where before that the couple that was in love, they had they, you know, fell for each other and they had a meet cute when someone when she dropped her books and then they reached down and touched hands, you know, at the same time.

It's actually how my wife and I met.

And no, it's not.

And they um uh but then some strange falling out happens with the couple.

Uh some obligatory falling out happens, and then the the uh man in the story uh realizes uh that because of this falling out, he's about to lose the woman forever.

And then there's this in every rom com you get a brief action comedy where they race to the airport and he races, rushes off to the airport so that he can meet her.

And then while they're talking, you're shouting at the screen, like you guys are perfect for each other.

Don't you see?

That was all a big, you know, you can let bygones be bygones, and then you get married and live happily ever after.

And I think if we were watching the scene of Jesus with the woman at the well, and we understand who Jesus is, and we understood who the woman is at the well, we would be shouting through the screen things like, don't you see?

She look, woman, Samaritan woman, he's not like those other six husbands that you've had.

He's the true husband.

Submit to him as though he is your true husband.

Don't don't think of him like those other six husbands that you've had.

He's the true one.

So submit to him even as Lord, because he's the true husband and he is the true Lord.

And we'd be shouting through the screen at Jesus and we'd say, You are the one who can make her pure.

I know she's defiled right now, and you're meeting her, but you can lay your life down for her and make her pure and beautiful and present her to yourself without spot or wrinkle.

And it would be utterly sensible to shout those things through the screen as we saw that interaction.

It would be, if we understood the dynamic, that's exactly what it would be shouting.

And of course, I'm just riffing on what the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians shouts through the screen at us for all of our marriages.

He says, 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.

Now these verses are so offensive to our egalitarian culture.

The this language, wives, submit to your husbands.

The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.

But I know they're offensive because I preach them at every wedding I do.

And I can look out, and it's in like half the people at the wedding are like, uh, why this guy doing the wedding?

You know, and so I can tell when it when it happens.

And the um, and so the uh uh but the the the reason that they feel offensive to us is because we we don't know the story of marriage.

Because we don't know that marriage is patterned after Christ and the church.

And so it's offensive even at a wedding, because the very wedding that people are witnessing, they don't even know what they're looking at.

The the heights of glory of what this relationship points towards and what it what it really means.

And so, in one context, when we see Jesus with the woman at the well and we see it in the full we see marriage in the fullness of its expression, then it's the very things that we would shout through the screen.

We know the Lord Jesus is the true Savior who can lay down his life, and that will be the expression of his love because he's the true head of her.

And we know that for her to walk away and to not submit to him would be like suicide.

It would be a destruction of this glorious marriage that we we should see the picture of.

But then in our own marriages, when we seek to see that that same pattern, the language itself just feels offensive.

And so I'm just reiterating my hope for this series is that now that we see the pattern of the glory of marriage throughout the whole narrative of Scripture, then later, when we exposit this passage in Ephesians 5, then it will no longer feel like this grand offense in the call for wives to submit, for husbands to lead.

Instead, we'll see this is the most glorious and beautiful pattern that's that's written through the the redemption narrative of all of Scripture, and Christ shows us the this most beautiful picture of it.

And we'll say, Well, I want to participate in that.

I want my marriage to be like that true marriage.

And so we'll we'll get there.

This was just a teaser.

So if if that scene last week was the the airport scene where they reconnect, then this is the the final wedding scene where there's a smash cut and we're at the wedding, and they play uh September by Earth, Wind and Fire.

Because that's a what that's a that's uh I don't know if they knew it at the time, but that is the the wedding song.

And it we all we all smile and cheer because they finally got married, and and we walk out of the movie theater and we have these huge smiles on our faces because we know that the story is supposed to end with a wedding.

The true story, the best story, it has to end with a wedding.

Even our fairy tales end with the glorious with a glorious wedding.

Like it it's not it's just Snow White, isn't it?

The prince finally shows up.

The true prince shows up and she was dead.

But he kisses her.

Even while she's dead, he kisses her.

And then she comes back to life and they are married.

You know, this is this is the story of the scriptures.

This is the story of Christ and his church.

And so today we see the the wedding scene.

And it it's it's unthinkably glorious.

It's a glory that goes uh beyond our imagination.

And the words are simple and comprehensible, but the image that uh that that John uses in in his revelation to describe to us this most glorious end of all things that we Christians are looking forward to is the image of a of a bride meeting her true husband.

It's the image of a wedding ceremony.

And that is the coming together of Christ and his church.

If we understand that pattern, we see the glories that we're looking forward to, we'll we'll be able to, in hope, seek that same pattern for our marriages today.

So we'll move in and we'll look at our text this morning.

Now, in Revelation, to understand the shape of our text that we're looking at this morning, of the glories that are coming, we have to understand what happens just the chapter before, because it ties right into the fall of marriage, which we had looked at two sermons ago.

And in Revelation 20, verse 10, it says, And the devil who had deceived them, remember in the fall of marriage, that fall story in Genesis 3, the serpent that comes in and deceives them?

Revelation 20:10

Like the Bible is like this huge uh I don't have I don't know the word.

Yeah, bookends.

Sebastian, nice.

And it where there's this simit there's this symmetry where at the at the beginning of scripture we see all these loose ends are just wrapped up in glory at the end of scripture.

At the beginning in the fall, we see the deception of the serpent.

Well, here it says, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

That great enemy is gone.

What Adam couldn't do in the garden, or didn't do in the garden, get rid of that serpent who was deceiving his bride, the true Adam, Jesus Christ, does.

And at the end of the story, this serpent whom he has now bound, he will throw into the lake of fire forever, and he will be tormented.

Uh let me check the text, day and night, forever and ever.

Now that is a very long time, especially towards the end.

That's uh uh Albert Einstein made that joke about eternity.

I don't know if he actually did, but it's one of those things that people say Albert Einstein said.

So now I think that.

The serpent is crushed, he is done away with, he is gone.

And so that means that the true Adam has arrived.

And this text goes on and it describes the great white throne of judgment on which Jesus sits as the judge of all people, and there is a final resurrection, and those whose names are not written in the book of life are resurrected, and they will join that serpent the devil in hell for eternal punishment forever and ever, because the world that the Lord is creating will have no sin in it.

But the ones whose names are in the book of life, for them awaits a glory that is beyond imagination.

They will be the ones who are treated as the true bride of Jesus, and they will be wed to him eternally forever.

And that's what we look at now, and that is exactly where John's eyes turn, their gaze turns in Revelation 21, verse 1.

Revelation 21:1

After this great white throne of judgment and the crushing of the serpent, there's a glory.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

A new heaven and a new earth.

He gazes into the eternal glory that we are headed towards.

And so I got to catch up with Bo.

And he shared with me the story of a guy that they've gotten to become friends with over there, and he grew up uh in Czechoslovakia back when it was that, you know, under communism.

And they're where they are in Bratislava is just on the other side of the Danube from uh Austria and Vienna.

It's just 45 minutes, it's super close to Vienna.

And Austria was free, and Czechoslovakia was was communist.

So he grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, this friend of his.

And Bo was was sharing with me that he told him this story of as he was growing up, just on one side of the river, he could look over into Austria, and there was this uh palace that was built there, and surrounding the palace were these fields of fruit trees, and in Czechoslovakia they weren't allowed to have any fruit.

That seems bad.

And he says that as he was growing up, he would look across the river, and he said he knew he would never get to experience that.

He would never get to see what was on the other side of that river.

And the beautiful part of the story is that Bo shared with me that he he was telling him this while they were visiting that palace.

So he did.

He did.

He got to he got to see the other side of the river.

This part of scripture, we are staring across the river into a glory that we can't possibly imagine.

And we are given a glimpse of it, but we are not looking at it as people who know we will have an eternal longing into something that we will never get to experience.

We look at it in Christ as a place that we will certainly go.

We know our stories will end there.

Now, how does that change the shape of your life now?

Like consider all of the problems and difficulties and struggles within your marriage, or with your longing for marriage, or with within your close, within your family, or your relationships, or financially, or whatever it may be.

Now, I want you to understand that in Christ, all of those stories will end here.

New heavens and a new earth.

Now, isn't it so like the Bible, where at the at the very end of all things, things are new.

You know, we call this eschatology, the eschaton.

That just means it just means last.

It's just a Greek word for last.

And in all of our experiences, when things are at the end, that that means they're old and they're worn out.

But since Christ has come into the world and he has conquered death, he has flipped everything on its head.

So that when we look to the end, we are looking towards a resurrection, a glorious new beginning.

And what is this new heavens and this new earth?

You should not think of them like Like the old earth vanishes and a new one comes into being.

That's not the images that Scripture gives us.

We should think of the new heavens and the new earth as the final and true culmination and restoration, the regaining of all that this earth is meant to be.

It is not new in terms of an eliminating of the old and the spontaneous recreation of a new.

He doesn't restart the world.

It is new in the way that a tree is new as compared to the acorn.

Now there's a sense in which you could say, well, it's the same thing.

It's the very same thing, but what is more glorious?

The acorn, it has a particular glory to it.

If you look up closely at it, it looks.

There's a glory to an acorn.

But it's not the glory of an oak tree.

The glory of an oak tree, you know, you'd get shade and look up into it and swing from it and hang swings from it, and, you know.

Even more trees come from it.

It's glorious.

That's this earth is like the seed.

And it and it the fullness of its glory is come into.

Or the other analogy, and perhaps even a better one, is it's new in the way that Christ's resurrected body is new.

When Jesus comes back from the dead and in after his resurrection, then he can no longer die again.

And there's these wonders of these glorious things, because the resurrection is deeply mysterious.

He's able to move through locked doors, and he seems not bound by any of the types of things that we're bound through or bound by.

But nobody is saying, yeah, but that's not Jesus.

You know, that's Jesus too.

That's not the same Jesus.

That's not what it is.

He's the very same Jesus.

Because he's able to say, look at my scars.

He carries it through with him into glory, these pictures of his glory.

This is the new heavens and the new earth.

It is that type of new.

This is the way God loves to do things.

He likes to make things that are glorious.

And then he makes them far more glorious.

To where we look back on the thing before and say, was that even glorious?

But can you imagine?

Many of you move to this state because I did, because I saw the glory.

But there is a new heavens and a new earth coming that will swallow up this glory beyond imagination.

And it says, and the sea was no more.

That also happened to me when I moved to Colorado from Florida.

But why is the sea no more?

That seems like a strange thing.

Well, the sea throughout Scripture has been this image of chaos and destruction.

It is that which moves in at the flood and it brings that old creation before the flood.

It washes all life away.

It's this agent of death.

It's that place where the monsters dwell, so that when Jonah gets pulled down to the depths, it is the monster that comes in and swallows him up.

That ended up being his salvation.

So it's a good image there.

So saying that the sea is no more, it means to us that there is no more opportunity for chaos or destruction.

Likewise, the sea throughout the New Testament has always been this picture of where the Gentiles are.

Those people who were not a part of the people of God, who now in Jesus Christ are brought in.

Because we all have access to God through the one true mediator who is Jesus Christ.

That's why I never noticed this.

And then once I had heard it, I uh I heard it from James Jordan, and he explained uh he was like, you notice that the Old Testament, it's all shepherds.

It's all sheep and shepherds, land, land type of things.

You know, those are landy things.

And then in the New Testament, it's all fishermen and fish.

That's a weird flip, right?

But from the first one, it's the promise of the people in the land.

But this, the calling, Jesus doesn't go out and collect uh shepherds to be his disciples.

If I were to a betting man and I were reading, and Jesus were to go collect his new disciples, I'd think, well, shepherds, that's the way God's always done things, but he collects fishermen.

Because he's going to the nations, to the Gentiles that are across the sea.

And he's plucking these little glimmers of light out of the chaotic depths into his glorious kingdom.

That's what fishing is.

He's gathering them up, and even when they gather up, they're mixed multitudes.

But so the sea is no more because there are no Gentiles anymore.

We are all united as the people of God in Christ.

That's what we're looking forward to in the new heavens and the new earth.

There's no people that are outside of him.

All of his people will be gathered in from all the nations to him.

So that's what it means when it says the sea is no more.

And then the wedding language comes in.

In Revelation 21, verse 2, it says, And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband.

Revelation 21:2

So, first of all, before we see the bride language, let's look at the city language.

It is in the beginning of the scriptures, it is a garden that humanity is placed into.

At the end of the scriptures, it is a city.

Do you see the development that has taken place?

It's like a city is what happens after a garden is around for a long enough time with enough people.

And it matures into a city.

And this city is not just any city, it is the new Jerusalem.

Now, what has Jerusalem been?

And it's been the dwelling place of God among his people.

So a new dwelling place of God among his people is coming down from the heavens, out of heaven from God.

God is the originator of it.

And what is this new city, this holy city, this new Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband?

Well, we've been taught through the scriptures that the bride of Christ is the church.

If Jerusalem is a holy city because it has the temple where God dwells, then the people of God are the true temple now, because in Christ and his sending of the Holy Spirit to dwell within us, we are the temple.

All the temple is, is what makes the temple glorious is that it's where God dwells.

So what makes the church glorious is that it's where God dwells, in the hearts of his people.

And so at the end, there's a holy city, the true, what Jerusalem was meant to be, comes down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband.

This is the culmination of all the images of marriage that God has used for him and his people throughout all of the scriptures.

God describes himself as the true husband to his people.

And this is the final culmination of it, the most glorious image of it, where we, the people of God, are presented to God as his bride, adorned for her husband, adorned in glory and righteousness, holiness.

We are a suitable bride for our Lord.

It is the culmination of the whole story.

It is the answer to the prayer that our Lord that our Lord taught us to pray, that we prayed already this morning.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

There will be a day where that prayer will be absolutely answered.

It will be on earth as it is in heaven, because heaven will be joined, will be wed to earth.

This is the culmination of all the marriage stories in Scripture.

You know, the marriage that you are in will not last forever.

It will have an end.

When one of you dies, that will certainly be the end of your marriage.

Unless it's like the notebook where you read a magic story to your spouse that kills you and her at the same time.

Which is the way I like to describe that movie.

Your marriage will come to an end.

Jesus tells us himself, he explained it to the Sadducees in Matthew 22, verse 30.

Matthew 22:30

He said, For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

What we're looking forward to is actually there will be a time where marriage, as we know it and participate in it, will not exist.

But that's because the fullness of what marriage means will have arrived.

And the trueness of our participation in marriage will be completely realized.

It will be swallowed up in the glory of our being wed to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Marriage ceases in the new heavens and the new earth because it is swallowed up in a greater glory.

The glory of our marriages now are mere pointers towards the glory of the marriages that are to come.

Now, I don't think when we are in that new heavens and the new earth and we bump into our spouses now, it will be like, oh, hey, nice to meet you.

Tell me about yourself.

You know, our resurrection, it's still us.

It's this is the thing that's just so hard to grasp.

But it's you in Christ, if you're a Christian, you will experience this.

You.

As you are right now, one day you'll see this.

I don't know.

I I don't even know what to say about that.

Other than you should just think about that a lot.

Think about it a lot.

That's my advice today.

You should probably be thinking about that.

I'm gonna experience that.

How does that change the story that I'm in?

For some marriages, this is a this is a great hope, but it's a because it's like, okay, uh, this marriage will end.

But it's a great hope for for all marriages, even good ones, because they they we we know that this we I I think John Piper calls it this light and momentary marriage.

That's what you're in now.

We'll be swallowed up in this glory.

Remember when Philip gets whisked away by the spirit to see the Ethiopian eunuch who's riding in his uh chariot?

Well, if you don't, there's this moment in Acts where Philip, one of the apostles, gets whisked away by the spirit, and he gets taken to this Ethiopian eunuch who's riding in his chariot, and he see, and the Ethiopian eunuch is reading scripture out loud to himself.

Everybody read out loud back then.

It's actually true.

That one's true.

I know I joke a lot up here, probably shouldn't do that, but that is true.

Everybody read out loud back then?

And he's reading Isaiah 53, which is the story of the suffering servant.

And he asks Philip, who is this referring to?

Who's the suffering servant referring to?

And Philip is able to explain it's Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the one who has promised, who will come, and on him the Lord will lay all of our iniquities.

In fact, he's done it.

Jesus has come, and the Lord laid on him all of our iniquities, and we have the fullness of our salvation and our restoration to God in Jesus Christ.

Now, I I think it's safe to assume that one of the reasons that the Ethiopian eunuch was so desperate to know who that suffering servant was was because he had also read Isaiah 54.

And he understood that Isaiah 53, the suffering servant, was the one who would accomplish on his behalf all that was necessary for him to gain the promises of Isaiah 54.

In Isaiah 54, verse 1 says this Sing, O barren one.

Isaiah 54:1

That might be useful for a eunuch.

Break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor, for the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who was married, says the Lord.

And so the eunuch wonders, they look and they say, I'm not I I he can't be married.

He'll have no offspring.

And he looks and he says, Who is the suffering servant of Isaiah 53?

Because if I know who that is, perhaps one day I could experience the promises of Isaiah 54.

I could look forward into a true glory.

It continues, Isaiah 54, 5 through 8.

For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name, and the Holy One of Israel is your redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.

For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God.

For a brief moment I deserted you.

But with great compassion I will gather you.

In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer.

This section, Revelation 21, that we're looking at today, it is the fulfillment of this promise from God.

Because Isaiah 53 is true, and it is about Jesus.

Then the eunuch.

Because of the wonder of my children.

I don't know how exactly they'll be able to say that.

But these promises are this is the glory of what we're looking forward to.

Your marriage is always.

Or your lack of marriage.

Or your marriage that ended in divorce.

Or death.

Our marriages always have this tinge of I I would love to be naked and unashamed with this person, but it's it doesn't really feel like that.

But your marriage will be swallowed up into a glory that is beyond imagination.

And you'll wonder in all the ways that your marriage causes you to wonder, am I missing out on something else?

You look forward in hope to this new heavens and the new earth, and you will know, you'll look back and you'll say, I didn't miss out on anything.

I didn't miss out on anything.

And this promise that is given here is for those who endure till the end.

So that's why I think the Lord gives us this picture of the glory that is to come.

Because hope becomes the fuel for our perseverance.

Because we know that the ways that we're learning to endure, and much of that endurance, like, don't think it's just overcoming the other person.

It's not.

It's overcoming your own sin and your ability to relate to this other person.

If that endurance, if it doesn't have a fuel, it will run out.

And you will start to consider this life is the only place that I have to experience the goodness of what I think marriage could offer or what I think a relationship could offer.

And so you'll give up on the one that you have and you'll start hunting.

But because of this hope that you have, you can know you will miss out on nothing.

And the way that you miss out on nothing is by leaning in with the fullness of the hope that we're shown in Revelation 21, knowing that that will be the glorious end of the marriage in which you are enduring now.

How does that change the shape of you engaging with your marriage now?

How does that change your hunting?

You'll miss out on nothing.

Unless you try and get it all here.

On this side of the new heavens and the new earth.

Then you'll miss out on it all.

It's promises for those who endure.

Now Revelation continues.

And God Himself will be with them as their God.

And then I turn to the husband and I say, Say, husband, you may now kiss your bride.

And all of the photographers say, when once you say that, then you step over here so that you don't ruin the picture by being in it.

Well, this is that announcement.

The whole promise from the whole of scriptures.

The covenant that God makes with man is I will be your God, and you will be my people.

Well, here John gets a glimpse of hearing that announcement.

I will be your God, you will be my people.

The dwelling place of God is with man.

It's what happens at a wedding.

You move in together.

God dwells with us.

Now, also notice it does not say the dwelling place of man is with God.

This is not a going up and escaping thing.

God comes down and restores.

He makes his dwelling place with us.

The unthinkable love and humility of our God.

He will dwell with them.

They will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

What will that be like?

Just imagine, just imagine for a moment.

What will it be like?

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

And death shall be no more.

Neither shall they be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.

The former things have passed away.

You have things you're mourning right now.

One day you won't.

You have things that cause you pain right now.

One day you won't.

There are difficulties in your life.

There are things that you practice ignoring so that so that you can maintain yourself and the tears don't come.

One day they will be wiped away for the last time.

This is our hope in Christ.

You know, in romantic comedies, you don't get to see the marriage.

You can see the wedding, but they don't show the marriage.

Maybe you'll get like a slideshow of the honeymoon rolling behind the credits, you know?

That's the way I do it if I were a director.

But they don't show the whole marriage because marriages mostly are like, why can't why don't you put lids on things?

What type of savage grabs toothpaste from the middle?

You know?

So they don't show that in romantic comedies.

But this true marriage that we just gaze at across the river, the scriptures show us what it is.

It's all that you'd ever imagine.

More glorious than we could possibly endure right now.

This is the end of all true marriage stories.

This is why we would seek to inhabit the marriages that the Lord has called us to.

So because of this, we live our lives, the fullness of our lives in Christ, whether you're married or not, are shaped by a hope that it will end with a marriage that is more glorious than you could possibly imagine.

We will dwell with God.

He'll be with us forever.

Alright, let's go ahead and take communion.

Unless, are there any questions today or there are?

Okay, let's do it.

How should we understand the romantic nature of earthly marriage as compared to the future marriage of Christ in the church, especially as men?

What does it look like for Christ to love us in marriage if our earthly comparison is romantic and physically affectionate sexual union?

This is why we have to we have to learn to think about, to think in multiple levels of reality if we're going to be good interpreters of Scripture.

Because obviously Jesus doesn't marry the woman at the well.

And in our modes of thinking, we think we would say, so then they didn't really get married.

So we shouldn't say that that Jesus and the woman at the well that there's like a marriage theme going here because they didn't really get married.

To which I would I would say that word really is doing a lot of work, and I think it's doing the opposite work that you intended to.

Because what is more real?

Our marriages here that end in death and are just in like we stand up and we say some vows and then poof, gone.

Or is it more real that God has formed a covenant with his people that will be eternal and never end?

What is more real?

Well, that's the more real thing.

And so we think we think in reality as a bottom-up event, that there's these little atoms, and then they cohere into things, and uh uh from from chaos comes some order, and it and it's this bottom-up sort of thing.

So the most real, most fundamental things are the smallest components, the smallest causes of, you know, it we think of just cause and effect.

And if we find the smallest cause, then we'll be able to determine the grandest effect.

And so our most real to us is located down.

That's the way our intuitions are formed.

But that's not true.

Because the the original realness came from the mind of God and his speaking.

That's that's up.

He is above us.

And so our marriages are not real.

The fullness of our marriages that they're not real because they emerged as this cultural institution.

They're real because God made it.

And they find their reality in it in the way that He relates to us.

Because marriage is describing a relationship.

So what's the most fundamental relationship?

Well, the most fundamental relationship of civilization is marriage.

Well, what's the most fundamental relationship of existence?

Well, it's God to his people.

So that's real.

That's what makes our marriages real.

It's how they pattern what comes down from above.

But we don't want to equivocate between these things.

We don't want to say that they're that they're not identical, but they're real manifestations that take place at different levels of meaning.

And we need to be able to think and understand how those relate to one another in order to interpret well.

Because otherwise, we'll do silly things where we'll say that like Eve, like it, like interpreters will try and flatten these things all the time.

You know who flattens it is like uh uh the Da Vinci Code guy?

What's his name?

Dan Brown.

Dan Brown.

That Dan Brown.

Now we're just a like a like a 2004 church.

Because he he's he's thinking it, he's seeing like all these these texts in scripture where they're talking about the marriage and the marrying Mary Magdalene and these things, but he only thinks at one level of reality.

He's he's not a he has no transcendence.

And so he's just like, Jesus was married to this woman.

And we're like, no, he wasn't.

But he was just way more than what you're thinking.

Way more.

So anyway, that's just some like how to think biblically that hopefully helps answer that, answer that question.

We need to be able to understand these things multiple levels of reality.

How do we do this masculinely?

Like, how do we do this as men when we're relating and it's like, Jesus is my husband?

That's weird, I understand.

I understand that.

Um but we have to understand that the principles of masculinity and femininity uh were are um they're they're higher principles than just men and women.

You know, when we gather together as the church, I once talked with somebody and and he said he went to this very clever church, and in they would read the Apostles' Creed, and they would uh change the gender of God in the Apostles' Creed to a feminine gender, to a feminine gender.

Because the intention of that was to be more inclusive.

Because, you know, what you know, is there anything else we should ever be at all ever?

And uh I said to him, that's that's completely absurd, because the the reason that God shows himself to us as a man is because he's teaching us to relate to him as though we're the bride.

And so we're the ones who submit to him.

And so that was as you worshiped God that day were you practicing not submitting to God?

That's what your church was doing.

You were practicing that.

And so, in our as husbands, in your relationship to your wife, you were a husband.

And when you're gathered together as the body of the church, or when you're relating to Christ as as your Lord, you're relating to him as the bride, because he's above you.

But these are not equivocal things, these are these are the same pattern applied at different levels of reality.

And so you you see how the pattern above informs how we operate in the way below.

You know, when you like you and your wife both relate as in the feminine to your Lord.

You're both trusting in him that he laid his life down for you.

But then when you relate among one another, well, you there's the husband and there's the wife.

And you you know how to relate to that because you've seen the true pattern.

So we're it's hard for us because we're flat thinkers.

We're egalitarian, silly, mechanistic, flat thinkers.

The silly was just mine, but it it informs that.

The Bible teaches us to think in these wonderful, just the fullness of life, like what it's actually like out here.

All right, let's take communion and pray.

I want to talk about that stuff like for hours.

Um, thanks for asking that question.

And I'm already going long.

So in 1 Corinthians 11, 23, it says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

So on the night before Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread and he broke it, and he said, This is my body which is broken for you.

And he took the cup, and he said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

All of our hope of one day walking across that river to see the glories of what's coming, was purchased for us by Jesus, who laid down his body into death, so that he might take all of his people up with him into life.

We will enter that resurrection glory because he took our death for us, that he might give to us his resurrection.

So look forward in hope because of what Jesus has purchased for you.

Look forward in faith, Christian, that you will one day be at that wedding feast with him, the true husband.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this time of communion, that it would be like a little snapshot from the future that comes back here to this present moment.

A little picture of the wedding feast that we are headed towards.

Lord, as we are united fully to you and brought into a greater glory than we can possibly imagine now.

Let it nourish and equip us to endure the life that you have called us to.

But let us not endure it by a gritting our teeth, but let us endure it in hope of the glory that you have reserved for us, stored in the heavens.

We lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.