Mark 10:6-9 | What God Has Joined Together

Preacher: Scott Hollingshead

Scripture: Mark 10:6-9

Big Idea: Marriage is a God-instituted, God-witnessed covenant relationship between one and one man for a lifetime patterned after the gospel to the glory of God. 

1. Marriage is a covenant instituted by God  
2. Marriage is a covenant witnessed by God 
3. Marriage is a covenant patterned after Christ and the church

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Church, let's pray. And as we do, we're gonna come out of Psalm chapter 40. And Father, as I look at this Psalm, I'm I'm reminded of the task in front of us today. Reminded as we talk about the gift of marriage, that verse one is very much accessible to many. When David says, I waited patiently for the Lord. But Father, we have such an encouragement as we wait on you because as David said, and as we know in Christ, you incline your ear to us and you hear our desperate cries. You draw us out of pits, out of the miry bog. You set our feet upon a rock, and you make our steps secure. Father, I pray that some of that work would actually be taking place as your word is preached today. As people gather for worship, you are removing them from places they ought not to be in. You are setting them on stable places. You're putting a new song in our mouths, God, a song of praise to you. The discouragement that sets over us, maybe about ourselves, about our circumstances. We come to the Lord's house to worship you, God, that you might help us to see our lives through the lens of faith, to see you in everything, to receive from you a song of praise in our hearts. Lord, may we be among the blessed. Verse 4 says, Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust. God, examine that in us today. Whether we first have trusted in you for salvation through Jesus Christ, but also whether or not we're trusting you in the circumstances we presently find ourselves in, Lord. That we don't turn to ourselves, we don't go to astray after lies, we trust you, even when what we see in front of us is not interpreted by us in a positive way. By faith, we see your hand in all of it, we see you sovereign and above everything. God, you you want our hearts, Lord. You don't delight in offerings and sacrifices. You want us to give you our hearts, you want us to rightly verticalize our lives, to see you first and most and best and above all. Lord, be pleased in our circumstances, wherever we find ourselves. Would you deliver us from where we are to where you want us to go? Would you make haste to help us, Lord? God, may this promise be true in verse 16. May all who seek you, Lord, and we are here to seek you, God. May all who seek you rejoice. Leave us rejoicing, God. May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you, and may those who love your salvation say, continually, great is the Lord. Great are you, Lord. Be great among us, Lord. Be great as your word is exalted. You are great. You may be exalted as such in our midst. Would you magnify in your greatness the proclamation of your truth as your tool to bring sanctification and salvation to your people, God? May it be today. We trust you for it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. As we continue in worship, I want to have you grab your Bibles if you have it near you and remain standing for the reading of God's Word as we come to Mark chapter 10. So this is what we're going to read today. We'll be in Genesis as well, but we're going to read Mark chapter 10, and we're going to start in verse 6, and we're going to read down to verse 9. And obviously these are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, but before he spoke them in Mark 10, they were written for us in Genesis chapter 2. This is the word of the Lord for today. And Jesus said to them, But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore, God is joined together. Let not man separate. Love ones, this is the word of the living God for this Lord's day. May the Lord write these eternal truths on your hearts. And with that you can be seated. Good morning, church. Hope you're doing well. Got a lot of claps today. 8:30, you're kind of clappy. Sometimes, sometimes we can't get a clap out, and we got like 15 claps already. So I feel pretty good, pretty confident this will be a good, yeah, more clapping on the clap comment. Yes, let's keep it going. If you have your Bibles, why don't you go to Mark? But why don't you also get your finger in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2? Mark 10, Genesis 1, Genesis 2. If you want to be mindful, we'll look at Malachi 2.15 just a little bit. If you just wanted to grab a few places today. My name's Scott, I'm the lead pastor here. Want to say welcome if this is your first time. We're so glad that you're with us. This is week two, guys, right? Week two of what you see up here, the grammar of marriage. We're basically building or establishing the building blocks of a marriage from the Bible's perspective. And so last week, Pastor Tyler got us started, and we talked about uh the I loved his title by the way. Did anyone catch the title? How awesome it was last week, The Origin of the Spouses. I just thought that was amazing. If you don't get that, ask your friend later. Um such a great title. He served us so well, don't you think? Week one. And so we jump into week two this week, and uh my title, not as creative as Pastor Tyler's, but it's in the Bible. All right? Title of the message What God Has Joined Together. What God has joined together. Now I'm sure you've used the phrase putting the cart before the horse. You heard that before? When you said something like that? You probably understand if you've used it that it's an idiom for doing things in the wrong order. If you put the cart before the horse, it's impossible to move forward. Why? Because the cart is leading the horse. With marriage, we often get started with the cart. We talk about what we want our marriage to be and how we want our marriage to fulfill us or that it's not fulfilling us. I want one, I want out, I want all these things. And here's the thing. We haven't even so that's the cart stuff. That's not the horse. But based on what you want or don't want or feel fulfilled or don't feel fulfilled in a marriage, that's cart stuff. We we need to get to the horse before we deal with the cart. What you want your marriage to be, what you want your marriage to do, all that stuff, those are good aspirations, but we need to start with how about what is marriage to begin with? And what am I expecting my marriage to do that maybe the Bible hasn't said my marriage should do? How has God designed it to work? See, because without the horse, without the what marriage is, without understanding the design and the direction and the purpose of marriage, here's what happens: marriage ends up being assessed by you. The bar ends up being your feelings, your self-fulfillment, your expectations, explicit or implicit, but it starts to be revolving around your idea. Without the what it is, marriage becomes moldable like play-doh, and you start to make it into your own image and then get really upset that it's not fulfilling what you wanted it to do for you. Well, listen, God hasn't left us to fill in what we think marriage is. Like, hey, here you go, you can have it, and then knock yourselves out with how you want to do it, deal with that, how you want to build it, how you want it to be for you. He hasn't left us with that. He hasn't left us to fill in what marriage is according to our opinion. He also hasn't left us to figure it out on our own. He's revealed his will for us and his design for this sacred institution. And when we look at God's word, we can see it plainly. And here's what we see when we look at God's word. It's our big idea, and this is where we're gonna drill down today. Week two is all about this. Marriage is a God-instituted, God-witnessed covenant relationship between one man and one woman for a lifetime, patterned after the gospel to the glory of God. Don't worry, I'm on my best behavior. I'm gonna go slow. Let you get your pictures up there. I don't like giving you long big ideas, to be honest. I really don't. But this encapsulates the entire sermon. So if you zone out for the rest of it, this is what you're gonna go live out today, tomorrow, and the rest of your life. If you are married, this is what you're pursuing. If you're not married, a kind of marriage that would be under these parameters, a God-instituted, God-witnessed covenant, covenant relationship between one man and one woman for a lifetime patterned after the glory of God. So many things in this can already frame how we think about marriage. Number one, that it's all done to the glory of God, which means God is first. Number two, the second most important relationship is the spouse that you're married to, right? So even relationally, there's an order to this. That one person that you are married to is your highest human relationship. It's kind of embedded into this. We're gonna talk about all this. All we're gonna do today is drill down on this. We're gonna break it down into pieces and we're gonna have at it for the next 40 minutes or so. How are we doing? Do we write it down? We feel good? All right, let's break it down like this. Marriage, number one, is a covenant instituted by God. Okay? Marriage is a covenant instituted by God. Now, any guesses as to the average cost of a wedding? I don't want to know what you paid. Yes, someone said 50,000. That's wild, isn't it? Somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 for a wedding. It depends who you talk to, it depends who you read. Someone's AIing it right now. Oh, it's $35,000. All right, all right, all right, great. Write that down for yourself. $35,000. I didn't say it, you said it. All right, AI. $35,000. And there's something to it because it's always somewhere, you gotta get a nice venue, right? And they're pricey. I'm so glad we're shifting out of this. Everyone had to get married in a barn for a long time. That was the worst, by the way. It was the worst. It was always a July wedding. I always had to wear a suit for you, and you wanted to get married in a barn. It was the worst. And for years, that was like exclusively the place you wanted to go, and it was always expensive. I'm like, there's dust everywhere. My shoes, why am I even wearing this? I should be wearing jeans for this. Never mind. The expense of it is crazy because you pick the venue, everything has to be pristine, you're inviting all your most precious people, you're paying for them typically to consume something while you're there, food, right? Things like that. The bride in all of her glory, she's walking down the aisle, but the moment is so special, isn't it? Like that moment when the when the groom sees the bride and is right, just trying to hold back the tears. It is a beautiful, special, glorious moment. And I gotta tell you, there's a reason why we put so much effort into it. There's like echoes of Exodus in our celebration. Excuse me, Echoes of Eden in our celebration. Not Exodus. Not Exodus. You know what's funny about that, actually, is that there is a book called Echoes of Exodus that's entirely unrelated to marriage, which is what I just articulated. I'm glad that was fun though. The Lord had that for us today. There's Echoes of Eden, Eden within that celebration. And when you think about the first marriage, man, it was the greatest celebration you could imagine, evidenced by a number of things. One, when the author of the institution shows up at your marriage, that's a big deal. Okay? God present there. The fact that it happens in paradise, that's where everyone's hoping for it to take place, right? Those destination weddings get even more expensive. But you got paradise, you got God there, you got the timing of the wedding, you think about it, it was before the fall, so no sin, no pollution in the marriage at all of that first marriage. And then you think of who was getting married that day, the father and mother of all mankind. I mean, that was an epic celebration, and every other wedding since then has sort of been an echo of not Exodus, but Eden. Right? Now, the question I want to ask is what's in this God-instituted covenant? And you've got to start here. It's a covenant given by God. It's from God. Instituted by means given from God. And the word given implies the word gift. Marriage is a gift from God. It's given as an unchanging foundation for human flourishing. This is so important. See, in creation, God established certain ordinances from the beginning. When he made the human race, he had certain ordered structures to human life that would lead to human flourishing, and marriage is among those. And when you think broadly practically, if we could kind of put an initial definition around what marriage was meant to do, it's this that marriage exists so that man can serve God through really two pairings that go on in Genesis 1, and we see it in Genesis 2. Two pairings. Marriage exists so that man can serve God through two pairings: work and worship, marriage and procreation. Or if you want to go alliteration on both, work and worship, relationship and rearing. Rearing of children. Work and worship applies to, well, we saw last week, we were in Genesis 1, 26 and 27, right? Genesis 1, 26 and 27, the establishment of the creation of man in the image of God. And so that leaves us in verse 28, correct? And you see in verse 28, it says, God bless them and said, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So did you hear that? Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion. Two pairings address all of that. Work, that's the subduing and having dominion. Worship, that's the balance of the rest, the one day a week of rest, right? We rest in the Lord. We work and we worship. And then the relationship and the rearing or the marriage and the procreation ties to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. We do that by the byproduct or outflow of this relationship God's given us, when it's consummated, gives birth to new life. And he's quoting out of Genesis 1. God made them male and female. So watch this. It's a creation, it's a it's a covenant instituted by God. First thing you need is one man in a marriage. That's why he made him male and female. He made one man. And he gave to that one man one woman. So watch how this works out. Just very practically, because Adam couldn't find a helper suitable among the animals, which we're going to see in Genesis 2, that means bestiality is excluded from the marriage situation. Because God made a woman for the man, homosexuality is excluded. Because it's one of each, polygamy, polyamory, open relationships are excluded. Because it finishes with what therefore God is joined together, let not man separate, it means it's for a lifetime, which means not till you fall out of love, not till you're inflamed with some other love, not till you get bored, but till death do you part. That's the framework. Now, as we think about those two pairings, work and worship and relationship and rearing, you have the framework. Genesis chapter 1 gives the broader picture of creation. Genesis chapter 2 is like God zooming in on the creation of image bearers. Go to Genesis chapter 2, verse 15, where we kind of pick it up. It says, Then the Lord God, here's the work part. The Lord God took the man, put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. So you've got man designed to be the one who has the responsibility to keep the garden, to be the gardener, to be the worker. But we find no more than a few verses later in verse 18 that it's the work is so great, the work is so significant that he needs a helper suitable for him to manage and steward and support the work that God had given the man to do. More than that, if they were going to be fruitful to see the Garden of Eden and the goodness of the garden extend to the ends of the earth, they were going to need more than the two of them. So she wasn't just needed to manage and steward and support what he had been entrusted, but it was also that they might multiply and mature image bearers that the goodness of Eden might spread around the entire world. You'd need more babies for that. So you see the combination, right? He's given this work. They're to work hard and rest one day. That's their worship work reality. We'll get into more of this as the series goes, but let me give you the framework for today. So worship or work and worship. And then you've got the relationship and rearing or the marriage and the procreation. See, one of the things God does in this relationship is he blesses man by building this relationship between a man and a woman of this God-honoring delight, intimacy, and faithfulness. Where it's so rich and when it's at its best, the consummate glory actually reproduces life. That you love them so much you express that in this intimate act that actually produces children. And it's not just children that God wants, but let's go back and think about this again. One thing man can't do on their own is reproduce, right? Do we still understand that? Because we have a lot of people out there that think they're birthing people, okay? That think they can have children and they can't. And I'm not trying to be insulting, but that's the world that we live in today. So I just want to make sure you know men can't have babies, right? Okay. Fifteen years ago, I don't think I would have said that. I think it's a reality now. It is funny, and it's actually not bad that it's funny to some degree. I think we need to be careful how we laugh about it. But it's become so outlandish that what happens is when you reject the truth of God's word, you get to a level of complete outlandishness that's that's that's ridiculous. By the way, we God laughs at the wickedness of man. God laughs at the ploy. So let's just not be like overly polite about this, okay? Send that email to somebody else. All right, marriage and procreation. Not only does God want children, but there's something specific God wants. Malachi 2.15 gets at this, the kind of children. And what was the one God seeking, Malachi 2.15 says? Here it is, godly offspring. Right? He doesn't just want more kids, he wants your kids to be godly, which means your goal as a parent is not primarily to pay for their college education. Praise God if you do. Your kids are happy if you do. Your goal for your kids is not to make sure they play the highest level of club sports. It's a gift if you play sports. I'm speaking as one who played at a very high level of sports, and it does realter your life, and you have to reclaim your life if you're gonna live for Christ. It doesn't mean that you give them, you know, every opportunity, which is the suburban thing. I'm a good parent. If I give my kid every opportunity to succeed or to have fun or to try new things or whatever, all of that is the pressures of suburban. Parenting, none of that is the responsibility of a Christian. All those things are good things. I'm not taking a swipe at any of them. What I'm saying is God wants from you parents to raise godly children. That's what he wants. So it's not just having kids, it's raising faithful ones. And as you do this, you have this relationship where there's this intimacy. The intimacy gets to consummate. The consummation leads to life. By the way, one of the things about consummation of a marriage that's so awesome is that it directs the sexual intimacy or passion that seems woven into us. There's a place for it to go, number one. And it is not just a directional thing, it's a protection for you. Now, no, I don't mean what happens in a lot of Christian circles, like, oh, they read 1 Corinthians 7, and some dude's like, I'm burning with love, sounds like I should get married. No. It's a protection when you're in the marriage. It is a protection for you in the marriage, not I'm gonna get married to have the protection. No, you need self-control. You need to put to death the passions of your flesh. That's what you need to do. You need to learn how to do that before you get into any kind of relationship. That's what maturity is. This isn't, oh, I burn with lust, let me get married. I just I just want to be very clear. It's a protection inside of the covenant. So as we're working through this, what we're beginning to understand is God-given, right? It starts this institution of marriage is God-given, but it's also, by the fact that it's God-given, means it's God's God governed. God governs marriage. It's his invention. Which means it's going to thrive when it's defined by God. It's pursued in the way God wants it to be fulfilled. Which means it's not man's to define, it's not yours to define, it's not the government's to define what marriage is, it's not the culture to define what marriage is, God defines what marriage is. So on a basic level and application, here it is. Receive the creational institution of marriage. Understand the basic framework. One man, one woman, united, with the purpose of work and worship, these like principles to your life, work and worship, relationship and rearing, intended to serve God for his glory. To see that the glory of God covers the earth as water covers the sea. See, if God's authority is absent from your marriage, your marriage cannot be healthy. Because you're using it outside of the design that God has for it. We need to reclaim this creational institution. We need to make the marriage serve the purposes of God again. So, some of you, what you're gonna need to do is you're gonna need to move the goalposts of your expectations from what pleases you and what fulfills you in your marriage to what pleases God. What you're gonna need to do is do a good hard inventory on what is out of step with Scripture's explicit description of what marriage is and what a Christian is for that matter. By the way, when we talk about marriage, we're gonna hit on some marriage passages. Eventually in the series, you're gonna see we're just gonna hit on Bible passages. Because it's not rocket science. The best marriage is two really mature Christians. Period. It's not like they got a secret. I'm not planning to bring out, I have an awesome marriage for the record. And I can say that because we've been married for 17 years, so it's more like I think we're out of the newlywed stage. But my goal is not to like bring you in on like, let me the seven tips of Scollingshead. You know, that's not what we're doing. The most important thing you can be is be a faithful Christian, submission to the Word of God, with another Christian, submissive to the Word of God, understanding the patterns that God has created within marriage to represent and to pattern after and to be for us and to pursue those things. So if you're off on here on some things, let me just say this: you can rebuild on God's purpose. You may have to tear some things down and oh my goodness, does that hurt? But it is so worth it. So if you've got something that's off, there is always time to turn things around. There's always time, and it's so worth the effort. It may be a long, hard road, but full submission to God's purposes in humility can go so far, and I will be praying for that as the series goes on. Marriage is a covenant instituted by God. It's God given and it's God governed. We we meandered a little bit. My bad on that. It's probably the echoes of the Exodus thing going on, but you got it, right? Worship, work, relationship, rearing. Let's get to the second thing. Marriage is a covenant witnessed by God. Marriage is a covenant witnessed by God. One of the things I hope we're seeing, and I'm trying to explain this, so let me just say it out loud. Marriage is not first and foremost about you. It just feels good to say that, right? Take a deep breath. It's not about you ultimately, it's about the Lord. In fact, it starts with God on multiple levels. Even the actual act of marriage is entered into before God. In other words, at your wedding day, God is not a spectator, he's a witness. You still got Malachi 2.15 open? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and wife by covenant. The Lord was witness between you of this covenant relationship. Now, what's the nature of this covenant relationship that God is witness to? Well, when you look at the word covenant that's used in the Hebrew, it's a word for contract, which most of us are like, I got that dialed in, right? Most of us live in contractual relationships, but I want to say this the word is contract, but means more than we often mean in our American context, okay? And I think the contractual idea of marriage has messed with many and put many in counseling. So let's talk about what the American idea is versus what the Hebrew word is talking about. The American idea of a contract is typically something that you sign up for for a limited period of time that emphasizes specific actions that you want done. Sometimes you don't even say them out loud, you just think 'em, oh ladies, am I right? Holla. Expect your men to read your minds. No, it's perfectly explicit, no, it's not, unless you say it in words. Contract. Then you take those whether explicit or implicit things, and you assess the performance not of yourself, but of the other. You got this mirror, and it's not pointing back at you, it's pointing right through to your wife. It's pointing right through to your spouse, right through to your husband. So it's a limited period of time, emphasizes specific actions, conditioned upon a performance and entered into for your own benefit. When you think about a contract, you're like, what's in this for me? I'm signing up to get something out of this. The contractual mentality says, I will stay, I will be good to you as long as you hold up your end. The assessment has nothing to do with you, it doesn't start with you. You're constantly looking at the other, measuring whether the other person is batting a thousand on the promises that they signed the other side of that contract. Listen, contractual marriage is doomed from the beginning. It is literally DOA. It is dead on arrival. And the reason for that is because it requires someone not to sin in order not to violate your contract. And there's a really good book written by a really good friend who tells us that the only people who ever say I do are sinners. That can't be the way. And it's not the heart of this word for covenant. The biblical word for covenant says, I bind myself to you in faithfulness. There's a permanence implied. It's not just a pledge to your spouse, it's a pledge to and before God. Because you understand the sacredness of marriage implies that it's a relationship before and under God, that your marriage is actually a theological event before it's a romantic one. And you're not focused on the performance of the spouse, but the priority of the other's well-being and free self-giving to the other. What's wild about it is so much counseling happens to do responses when people are sick, poor, or worse. You see where I'm going here? So much of counseling has to do around people getting sick, poor, or worse. You remember how jacked you were on that day? For better or for worse, for sicker or for poorer, I'll do it all. Right? You are so fired up. Those words meant nothing to you in the end. You never considered the way. Here's one of the things that I would say when we talk about what marriage is. One of the things that I get into, especially when you're like seven, eight, nine years down the road in a marriage, and you come in, I'm like, what did you think you were getting into? Did you count the cost at all? You literally said you were going to be in for richer or for poorer, but what you really meant was richer. And honestly, that's the only part at the beginning that's the worst, right? It's poorer and then you get richer. The other ones, you know, you're you're way better looking when you start. No offense. Can we right? You're way better looking at the beginning. You just get older and hairier in the places you don't want the hair, and you lose it in the places that you do, and it's not that it's not getting better. You see what I'm saying though? What were you expecting? You so flippantly say your vows for better or for worse? Do you know how much of a junk drawer term that is? I'm in. For better or for worse. Really? You ready for that? Worse defined by you or defined by the absolute junk drawer term that is in God's sovereignty? Whose world are you living in, right? Man, marriage is something, it's a beautiful gift, but the rush. What's crazy too is the counseling when there's the divorce and then the wanna the rush back into marriage. It's like you don't see the chaos that's taking place. Now you're gonna rush back in.

unknown 33:32

What?

SPEAKER_00 33:36

Let's get to the heart of this covenant. We're getting there. We're seeing the covenantal distinctions between a kind of a mere contractual idea. Let's get to this language. Genesis 2.24, it's where Jesus picks up the covenant language. Mark 10, he's quoting Genesis 2.24. You see it in the text right there. Therefore, right? A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one flesh. Let's just break this down for a second. What is this covenant? This covenant is a leaving and cleaving covenant. Binding yourself to them in faithfulness. Let me tell you, that word leave implies a new primary earthly loyalty. It is a superseding relationship that starts the minute you both say I do. That means your mom, your parents are your best friends, and they still want to rival that relationship, a brother wants to rival that relationship. You know, they're saying I'm blood, and you say I'm husband. It's higher. From day one, you get that identity. It's establishment of a new family from the two original families. The leaving part is your opportunity to choose your love, and might I add, choose your love wisely. Give you a few tips on the end, and then stick around for the series, and I'll give you a lot of tips throughout. Leave. Cleave, so if leave is choose your love, and establish this higher, ultimate, first place relationship, human relationship, then cleaving is loving your choice. You spend the rest of your marriage loving your choice. You choose your love and then you love your choice. That's actually the simplicity of marriage. Choose your love, love your choice. Cleave means this: to hold fast. It's this idea of covenant adhesion, if you will. Literally, the phrase cleave means joined together by God. The imagery is of being glued together, and it was like the glue. Here's the picture. Imagine like taking wood glue and gluing two pieces of wood together and leaving them in clamps and making sure they are rock solid. If you were ever to try to break it, you would be more likely to break the wood than you would be to separate the seal of the glue. That's how strong this cleaving, this holding fast, this coming together. When you break that, you're breaking people versus the glue. That's the idea. Marriage is a gluing of souls by God's own hand, which says so much about sex outside of marriage, by the way. People are wondering why it is so significant, why it feels so heavy. It's because that is a privilege to be enjoyed within a covenant relationship that when enjoyed outside of the covenant relationship, you have all these soul-attaching elements to them that were not designed to be taking place outside of the marriage. When Jesus quotes this, he uses a different word in the Greek, of course, is why it's different. But it means the same word for cleave that is used is the word for yoked together. So here's this other picture you have. This other picture being yoked together. Now think wooden frame used to couple two oxen so they could work as one. You cleave to your spouse, God hasn't just merged you closer to each other, he's harnessed you together for a shared labor and single direction. Goes back to the framework: work and worship. Relationship and rearing. Work and worship, relationship and rearing. Furthermore, when it says, and the two shall become one flesh, Mark's language shows in the Greek that it is a not just a direction, but a total transformation. In other words, you don't just start acting as one when you get married, you become a new entity. Like, when it says one, it means mathematical. Count to one and stop. It's a numerical reality. So then when he follows up and says, so they're no longer two but one flesh, it's in, so they are never again. That's what it means. So they're no longer existing as two but one flesh. In other words, in the eyes of God, the arithmetic of marriage permanently deletes the two and establishes one. So how do you think about this stuff? Well, I think a couple things come to mind as you think about application. One is faithfulness over feelings. When you frame your marriage, you're going faithfulness over feelings. You're thinking covenant over chemistry. Man, chemistry can come and it can go. By the way, when you get married at like 22 years old, um, the person you're married to, I know this is crazy, is gonna change. So when you start with that in a counseling session, you won't believe how much they've changed. I'm like, uh no, I could totally believe how much they've changed. Right? You don't like the change is what you're saying. But the idea that you're shocked that they've changed, hello. For life. People are going to change, and it's the privilege of a lifetime to keep up with the growth of your spouse, to study them, to know them, to, you know, I can think of different times in my own marriage where I can tell you now I wouldn't get Aaron a sewing machine. But I can tell you, like 12 years ago, if I had, I would have been a killer husband. Which I did, by the way. So but I have the joy of studying her, right? I have the joy of knowing her. I have the joy of committing to her. She's my one. I chose her, now I love my choice. We walk with Jesus together. Doesn't mean you don't need help, but it means that I'm after covenant implications over the chemistry piece. We'll build the chemistry as we understand the covenant. One of the things Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, I think is one of the best things about marriage. He says this, it's not the love that makes the marriage, but the marriage that makes the love. That is so important. We all we get it backwards. We want the love, and then we go, we found the love, and then we get married. It's like, no, you get the implications of marriage and you'll get the love. And it's not like you, oh, can't I have both? Yes, you can have chemistry with that person. I'm just saying don't idolize it. Because of the covenantal implications, here's a couple things. You just need to kill the this will solve my loneliness vibes of marriage. If you're if you're single praying for it, I'm praying for you because I think it's a good desire. I want you to have that. I don't want it to be with someone godly, and it's actually worth waiting until they are or not getting into one. It will not solve your loneliness. It will not solve your loneliness. Men, it will not solve your lust problems. All a marriage does will expose those idolatrous things, those undealt with issues. It doesn't magically make them go away. It exposes them. Women the whole I want to marry them because I believe I can fix what's broken in them. That's the nurture care, right? You're the one that comes alongside and you help nurture. These are the ways God's gifted you. And so you I will you love the bad boys and all that kind of dumb stuff. Oh, I love the bad boys. Give me a break. That stuff, come on. But it's it's so silly. It happens all the time. Don't look to fix what's broken in them. They need to be looking to Jesus to fix what's broken in them. Here's another thing. Beware of the drift to the contractual mindset. Which means, ditch the record of wrongs. It means you have got to figure out how to deal with brokenness biblically because you're two sinners in a relationship and sparks will fly when two sinners are together, and you've got to figure out how to keep short accounts and how to deal with brokenness biblically. We'll get into more of that as the series goes. Kill the threats, right? The people that use the D word all the time. Well, if you say, if you don't know, I'm gonna give, we're gonna get to don't say it. Stop using divorce as a threat. That's not covenantal, that's not faithfulness, that's not, it's manipulative. And it's wrong to what marriage is. And maybe just this: like the simplicity is if you focus on outdoing the other and showing honor and loving them, and their job is to do it to you, under the banner of what glorifies God, that's how you'll get close. You don't worry about you, they're worried about you, you're worried about them. And God's gonna bring you two together as He's at the signpost. Which, believe it or not, is the third point. Marriage is a covenant patterned after Christ and the church. Now, if you're at our members' meeting, I said, this is where we're gonna land the plane. So I can't preach my last sermon on the first week, you know? I like doing that, but I gotta get this set up for you because you're like, oh, marriage is so great, and it started with us. God had my marriage in mind at the beginning. No, actually, before he even had the idea of marriage in mind, we have to understand the implications of covenant being that before God laid the foundation of the earth, the father had already selected a bride for his own son. Okay, that that is so important. A horizontal marriage, meaning between two humans, was never the first thing in God's mind. Before creation was even established, the Father had already selected a bride for his son. Are you a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? You're among the bride. This is why Paul uses the same what we just went through in Genesis 2, the leave, the cleave, the two shall become one. But in chapter 5 of Ephesians and verse 32, he follows up on that verse that we just looked at saying, This mystery is profound, and I am saying it refers to Christ and the church. So hang on a second. So what Paul's saying is, is when God designed the original marriage, he already had Christ and the church in mind. Do you get that? Back when God was planning what marriage would be like, he planned it for this great purpose that we in our marriages would give a beautiful earthly picture of the relationship that would someday come between Christ and his church. Which used to say this, that your marriage, if you have one, is albeit a dim, but a dramatic dramatization of the unbreakable covenant love between Jesus Christ and his church. You guys are actors. Your marriage is to display the kind of covenant love that Jesus Christ has for his bride. The husband as the head, displaying the sacrificial Christ-like leadership, and the wife gladly flourishing under in submission to the Christ-like sacrificial headship of her husband. This is the picture. This is what you're to work together on. Marriage was designed to reflect that covenant. Marriage was always, this is what it means, was always meant to point beyond itself. So if you're single or widowed, listen, this is good news. No one should make marriage an end in and of itself because it's not ultimate. Listen, if you're in a marriage, it's not ultimate, which means this, it's not everything. Sometimes it feels like the married people have that, and I'm just missing. It's not everything. You ought not to treat marriage as such. The other thing we can do, though, is make it seem like it's nothing. Oh, you know, it's like singleness is more spiritual. Let's not do that either. Paul gets on people in the Ephesian church for that, speaks about it in Ephesians or 1 Timothy 4, talking about this kind of ascetic approach. Marriage is nothing. No, marriage is significant. What we need to understand, though, is that if you're gonna understand your marriage, you have to understand the covenant that it was patterned after. Which, get this, is applicable to everyone. Here's how you prepare and live in a good marriage. You need to become a master of the gospel. You need to know the gospel inside and out. It's amazing for how many times we preach it, how hard it is still for small groups to articulate it. You need to be gospel experts. You need to rehearse the gospel. You need to stay in a church that preaches the gospel. Not just be in a church, stay in a church that preaches the gospel. You need to hear the gospel over and over and over and over again. That's how you'll actually, if you're single and say never to get married, you'd have your eyes on the right thing. If you're married, you have your eyes on the right thing. Because ultimately, marriage is meant to be the signpost that posts, uh the signpost that points to the consummation of the things that are to come between Christ and his bride. So the question is: do you know the gospel? Do you know the good news of the Lord? That God created all of us in his image with dignity and value and worth and purpose and relationship with him. And our first parents, they rebelled against the Lord and against his word, choosing to really exalt themselves as their own gods. And every generation after that has done the same thing. We've inherited a sin nature, we've walked out this rebellion where maybe we'll accept God to some degree, but not full degree. He's definitely not Lord, and we definitely don't live under his lordship in totality. And so we all find ourselves, especially with standards like the Ten Commandments, falling woefully short. In fact, none of us have ever faithfully obeyed any one of the Ten Commandments. We're unholy before the Lord, we're unclean before the Lord. That's not how we were created, it's the situation that is, and we were so stuck and dead in our sin with no way to get ourselves out of the predicament. God in his great love sent the Son, Jesus Christ, to take on human flesh, to humble himself, to condescend, he from the greatest heights, to condescend, to live a perfect life, obediently, in an active sense, fulfilling the law of God, but also in a passive sense, enduring such suffering on behalf of sinners, so that in that culmination of suffering, where he was beaten and mocked and flogged and then nailed to a cross where he suffered and died in your place for your sin, he could actually set you free from your sin by paying the penalty for your sin on that cross where he died for the wages of sin is death. Three days later he rose from the dead, conquering sin and death. He is the only way to the Father. He's the only name under heaven whereby you must be saved. The Bible says that the salvation of God is a free gift in Jesus Christ. That eternal life is received by faith alone, trusting Jesus, the one who died in your place, the one who lived in your place, the one who rose in your place, and now by your being united to him by faith, by a trust, a confidence in him, what's true of him is true of you. Your sin has been paid for. You have died to the old you, now you've raised to new life in Jesus Christ. That eternal life that begins at the moment of salvation and continues on into consummate glory, on into eternity. That message is what you must, first of all, trust in, but is what you must prioritize. It is what you must focus on. It is much what you must rehearse. This is the ground zero for marriage. This is the picture. When you get the gospel, it will come through your marriage, and then you will put the gospel on display for those to see. They should be able to see it in your marriage. And so our journey begins. Marriage is a covenant instituted by God, witnessed to by God, patterned after the gospel, for the glory of Jesus. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for your word. We thank you for marriage. We thank you for the gift it is. We thank you to what it was supposed to point to. God, we help, we pray that you would help us. We need help, Lord. Lost as we can be in our sin. We need help. Lead us by your word, lead us by your spirit to walk in a way that's glorifying to you and thus good for your people. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.