Married Like Jesus -- The Big Dance

As I've said throughout this series, this is not just a series for married people about marriage. This is a series for all of God's people because marriage is a metaphor that God gives over and over about his relationship with us. So we're going to look again at Ephesians. Today, we're looking at what is the fullest teaching of the Bible on marriage and I've promised one sermon in the series is really about marriage. So this is the one that's really about marriage.

We're going to read together as is our custom. Ephesians 5:1 and then 22 to 33. You can find that in your bulletin or you can read off the screen, but I'd ask if you would join me. Ready? Three, two, one.

Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. Wives, submit to your 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 may be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself. She respects her. — Ephesians 5:1, 22-33

Let's pray. Father, these are hard words for some. These are challenging words for all of us. Lord, who can measure ourselves by these things? And Lord, we need your grace and your mercy. Lord, help us. Lord, as we open up your word, would you open our ears and hearts. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

I read recently that the average day visitor to the Grand Canyon—now this is not people who spend the night there, but the average stay of a day visitor to the Grand Canyon is nineteen minutes. That's nineteen minutes outside of a car or a bus. And I was like, really? I mean, that's just long enough to take a glimpse and a selfie, right? Go to the bathroom and the gift shop. That's really about all that is.

And of course, that includes people who are spending the night, but that's astounding to me. One of the seven wonders of the natural world and it gets nineteen minutes. I feel a little bit about that as I preach on marriage. We're looking this morning, as I said before, at one of the longest teachings in the Bible on marriage and we're going to go right up to the precipice. We're going right up to the edge of glory and we're going to peer down in, and yet I feel like for many people, talking about marriage in the church feels like, yeah, I've seen it. Right? Like, it's not that big a deal. It's boring. It's outdated. It's old news. And I would say it's anything but. I mean, Paul calls marriage in this passage a profound mystery. Like staring into the Grand Canyon. He's like, I can't just look at it and walk away. I'm taken in by this.

I believe that God has something for each of you this morning. Whether you're old or young, whether you've been married, you're single, divorced, whatever. I think the Lord has something for you in this passage today. This passage is not just for the married.

A writer who I really like, Lauren Winter, says this about marriage: "Marriage is a gift God gives the church, not just for married people but to the whole church. Just as marriage is designed not only for the benefit of the married couple, it's designed to tell a story." Marriage is designed to tell a story—a story about God's own love and his fidelity to us.

Too often, I think the church has treated marriage sort of like the prosperity gospel or like a lottery. Like, if you're good and you do all the things and you save yourself for marriage and you check all the boxes, God will bless you with the perfect special person and your happily ever after. And so we made it into this kind of prosperity gospel which says marriage is about me and my enjoyment and my happiness. And the Bible's like, no. Marriage is first and foremost about Jesus. It's about Christ.

And the theme of this passage—don't miss it—it's not primarily about marriages. It's primarily about a God who marries his people. A God who marries us. This is why you hear Paul sort of stumble. I mean, if you listen closely to this, listen to him sort of stumble here in verses thirty-two and thirty-three.

This mystery is profound and I'm saying it refers to Christ in the church. He's like, oh, but also, however, each of you should love your wife, right? Like he goes on to say, this is—I'm really talking about Jesus this morning.

So I want to visit the Grand Canyon with you today. I want to take a look down. I want you to understand how cosmic marriage is, and I'm very intentional about that word: cosmic. C-O-S-M-I-C, right? Like, big—that marriage is in the Bible. It's so big that, as Anderson said during our call to confession, the Bible starts with it. In the first pages, Adam and Eve, and ends with it in Revelation 21, and it's all over the middle of it. In fact, I just want to go over this briefly. The entire book of Exodus follows a Jewish wedding ceremony. This isn't just like Paul comes up with this one day. This is all over the Bible. Let me show you this.

Marriage Throughout Scripture

In a Jewish wedding, in a betrothal, a man would go to a woman and say, "I want you to come. I want you to leave your father's house and come to this new place I'm giving you." This is exactly what God says to Abraham.

I want you to leave your father's house. Come to this land I'm giving you. — Genesis 12

At the betrothal, the groom then leaves the bride and says, "I'm going to come back. I'm going to go. I'm making a promise to you. I'm going to go there and I'm going to come back and get you and bring you there." This is what he says in Genesis 15.

Know for certain that for four hundred years, your descendants will be strangers in the country and they'll come out with great possessions. — Genesis 15

And then at that betrothal ceremony, the groom would hold up a glass of wine and say, "I'm not going to drink of this fruit of the vine with you again until we do so in the land my father is giving us, in my father's house."

The groom then goes and prepares a place and comes back to get the bride. He adds a room onto his dad's house and comes back to get the bride and brings her, and he says, "Consecrate yourself. Get ready." This is exactly what happens at Mount Sinai. God tells his people, "Consecrate yourselves because God is about to marry you."

And then there's the blast of the trumpet and the ceremony begins and there's this cloud that comes over Mount Sinai. If you're familiar with a Jewish wedding, they have something called a Huppah—it's got four poles and a sheet. The cloud over Mount Sinai was supposed to look like that.

And then at a Jewish wedding, there's a giving of a Ketuba, which is all the kind of blessings and promises between husband and wife. God at Sinai gives his people his Ketuba—the Ten Commandments. He says things like this:

Look, I'm going to be your husband and have no other loves, just me. And don't even have pictures of your old lovers. Have a date night with me. Trust my provision for you. Don't hurt yourself. Protect yourself sexually. Don't take what's not yours. Tell the truth about yourself and then be satisfied with the life that we have together.

And then the marriage is consummated and God tells them, "Alright, I want you to build my house in the middle of all your houses because I'm going to live with you." This is the Jewish wedding night. This is the consummation. They build a tabernacle and God comes. His presence lives with the people. This is amazing what happens in Exodus—just a picture of how big the Bible is with this idea of marriage.

This is all over your Old Testament. This is why, when God's people are unfaithful and they run after idols, God doesn't just say you're being idolaters. He says, "You're being adulterers." He doesn't just say you're abandoning. He says, "You're an unfaithful spouse."

This is all over the Bible. Jeremiah 2, God says this. He reminds the people:

I remember the devotion of your youth. Remember the good days right after our wedding. We're wandering around the desert together. This was our honeymoon period. I remember the devotion of your youth. How as a bride, you loved me and you followed me through the desert.

I mean, go read Song of Songs. Go read Hosea. The Bible, the Old Testament is dripping with imagery of God saying, "I want to be married to you." And this is all picked up by Jesus.

I mean, how many times does Jesus tell stories about weddings? He calls himself the groom. He starts his earthly ministry at a wedding in Cana, and then at the Last Supper, he says, "I'm not going to drink of this cup again till I do with you in the new kingdom." He took promises from the old covenant—"My father's house has many rooms."

His resurrection, I'm going to go and prepare a place for you. I'm gonna come back and get you and take you there. I mean, amen? Amen. What kind of god is this? What kind of love is that? This is all over the Bible. This is all that god wants to tell us. This is why marriage is such a big deal to Christians.

I know it's why we can't just redefine it however we want to. It's why the US government should never have gotten involved in regulating marriage, giving tax breaks. I mean, this is god's property. He invented this. This didn't grow up over time. This was god's idea from the very beginning to the very end and this is why we can't honestly support gay marriage because god weds himself to one who is not like him, to one who's entirely other. He gives himself to one who's entirely different. That's what is being pictured. This is the entire point of the marriage paradigm.

Christian marriage is from god and it's defined by god and it's all about god. So it's not out of date and it's not old fashioned. Look, every marriage between a believing husband and a believing wife is just supposed to be a cover band playing a version of the original song, the divine marriage song.

I looked up this week information about cover bands. Aside from Christmas music, which of course has been covered by everybody, but like songs that are not Christmas music—do you know that out of the 10 top songs that have been covered over and over again in a studio, six of the 10 are by the Beatles? I mean, that's kind of amazing. Yesterday has been covered over 430 times by other bands in a studio on an album. But that's nothing compared to Jesus. That's nothing compared to the divine marriage song that Jesus is singing over his people. It's been covered over and over by Christian husbands and wives, millions and billions of times. This is what god has for us—that we would be people in our marriages who learn to sing that song and the more that we sing that song and cover more faithfully the original, you know what? The more God is honored, the more that we step into something of glory that's not of our own making, something much larger than us.

The Divine Pattern for Marriage

Let me just review with you. Look what Paul's doing here. He's going back to the very beginning. He starts with Genesis where god says that there'll be two people and how are they going to be connected? They will be one flesh, right?

The man will leave his father and mother and take a wife and they'll be one flesh — Genesis

This is amazing. God takes two selfish mes and invites them into a circle of us. And that's with sinners. Nobody else comes in that circle. I mean, kids, no matter how much we love our kids, they are not part of that. Two selfish mes become a one us.

Then Jesus picks up that theme and adds to it. In Matthew 19, Jesus talks about, goes back to Genesis and says, this is what God's plan was for marriage.

Man, woman, one flesh for life — Matthew 19

And then he adds something to it. He says:

What god has joined together, let no person separate — Matthew 19

You've been to weddings enough. You know the old King James, right? "What god has joined together, let not man put asunder." This is what Jesus says. We have no right then to say, hey, we get to make up what this is. I mean, democracy—that's a human invention. That's a pretty good one. But marriage, this is god's song.

Then Paul picks up the same thing in Ephesians five. He quotes again from Genesis. They'll become one flesh. But notice what he says:

Be imitators of god — Ephesians 5:1

Being imitators of god. When we imitate god, that surely can't be second best, can it? I think sometimes that's how Christians act—like, you know, I'm kind of stuck in this life of obedience. God's given me and it kind of stinks and it's hard and god gives me things that really are reigning in my fun. No. No. No. No. You're imitating the lord of the universe. Nobody else gets to do this.

Look what he says in this passage. He's saying, this is god's design. Wives, I want you to imitate Jesus one way. Husbands, I want you to imitate Jesus another way. Both of these are glorious. Both of them are imitations of a divine marriage. So the more and more we imitate this, the more we are stepping toward glory. We're stepping into something that god has for us.

I want to just make sure you understand this. The heavenly marriage is the reality. You're the metaphor. That's not the metaphor and you're the reality. It doesn't go like that.

It's not like Paul was sitting around going, "I need to help out these people with their marriages. They really stink at it. What can I say that comes up with a great analogy for marriage? Yeah, sort of Jesus in the church, that might work." That is not what's going on in this passage. He's saying, this is the reality. God is this way with his people. Therefore, imitate that in your relationships with one another.

Jesus sings this love song. He's got the original song. We're just coming in behind and our voices are scratchy and off tune, but we're still covering this song. You know how the NCAA has that tagline for the NCAA tournament? "Welcome to the Big Dance." That's right. It's like, this is the big event. This is as big as it gets in college athletics. But God is showing us in this passage, there's even a bigger dance. There's a bigger dance that he's revealing for the way that he wants husbands and wives to imitate him, to follow him.

The Husband's Call in the Big Dance

Let's look at this. We're going to first look at the husband, verses 25 to 31. Even though Paul starts in this passage with the wife, I can't start there because we're in a culture that has such a hard time hearing about the wife part. I'm going to start with the husband part, then it will make sense.

What does this call say about the husband's call in the big dance? Two things. Two ways that he is called to imitate Jesus: loving and leading.

Loving

As Christ loves the church.

This is where it stinks to be a preacher. I mean, words fail. How am I supposed to talk about how well Jesus loves the church? We sing songs that say this: "Oh, the deep deep love of Jesus. Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free." It's too big. We sing: "The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen could ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star, it reaches to the lowest hell." Words fail.

You know, this is the bar for husbands. Not that any man can reach this by any stretch, but this is what God holds up for us. How does Jesus love the church? He loves his church with an unending love and an undeserved love and a sacrificial love and a purposeful love and an unselfish love and a visible love. That's the standard. This is how God loves.

Jesus' love for his bride is beautifying it. He washes her with the word, speaks truth over her. It's nourishing. It's like fertile soil for her to grow in. It's cherishing. The husband is to love his wife as he loves himself. You know, this is like how often I spend time looking for stuff for accessories for my car, or clothes that I need or things that I want to do. That's the creativity and depth and thoughtfulness that husbands are called to love their wives with. That same kind of sacrificial action, and it's also meant to be in touches and caress and gentleness.

When I do a wedding, I always give instruction about the kiss. Now, some of y'all may think that's weird, but I gotta give an instruction to a Christian couple about a kiss. It can't be a peck, because Jesus loves his church. Now it can't be gross or sloppy either. But it should say, "Jesus loves his bride." When the couple's up here, I want them to, I want people to have to blush and look away because it's like, yeah, that's what Jesus is like.

I promise every week a tool in my preaching on marriage. So here's the one for this week, and I'm stealing this from the Gottman Institute. The six second kiss every day. Six seconds. That's "I cherish you. I mean, you can't imagine how much I love you." Right? This is how Jesus loves his bride. And we husbands are called to pour out the same kind of love and affection and adornment and cherishing and nurturing.

Leading

As the head of the wife. Now, we think of being the leader. We think of giving orders and being the boss, right? Who's in charge? Who's making the call? But we know that this scripture holds up a different picture of gospel leadership, doesn't it?

How did Jesus lead his disciples? He was with them. He invested in them. He delegated authority and responsibility to them. He didn't do everything. He's like, "You, I'm going to send you guys out." He sent them out. He was gentle with them. He was so patient and kind to them. He was so enduring.

Do you ever see Jesus biting the disciples' head off? I would have. Man, I'm feeling like, "You guys, I need to get 12 new ones tomorrow. You're done. I'm done with you." Right? Jesus is like, no. So committed to you. So committed to you. Jesus is never harsh. He's never mansplaining. Can you imagine Jesus mansplaining to the disciples? He had every right to. I mean, what's that called? Godsplaining? Anyway, he's never petty. He's never name calling. He's never mean. He's never short-tempered.

You know, the language in verses 22 through 24 here of headship has gotta be understood only in Jesus. Right? Like, the husband is the head of the wife. That's been misused, and let me just go a little meddling here. That's been misused to actually underscore a lot of toxic masculinity in the church. There's so much damage that's been done with that. If I could call out a name, Mark Driscoll has done a ton of damage to couples with this. If you don't know who that is, bless you. That's an unbiblical brand of headship. He's the boss. She does what he says. Servile. That's not anywhere in the Bible.

Submit to one another out of love for Christ.

That kind of mutuality. You know, if a husband is going to be head of a family, it means he has to learn to love and lead like Jesus. This means knowing his wife's mind and heart before she even says something. Like, I know what she's gonna say. I even know what she thinks about this subject. Right? This isn't nineteen fifties Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, whatever those shows on Nick at Night. That's none of those models of headship.

Headship is not a trump card that a man pulls out of his wall. It's like, "Time to play the card." Or the tiebreaker. That is not what that means. It means that if you have to pull out the trump card, it means you've probably failed as a husband to really know your wife's heart. You've failed to really communicate well. You've failed to pursue and really care for her and nurture her.

Headship does mean that it is the man's responsibility for the health of a marriage. And I mean every word of that. Like if the marriage is struggling, it is his responsibility to go like, "What do we need to do? Can we go get some counseling? Can we invite another couple into this? Let's go see our pastor. Let's go talk to our community group. Let's get people to pray for us." It's his responsibility to make sure that she is thriving, that they are thriving, that their family is thriving.

You know, it's leading in a way that the husband is not threatened by his wife. But he's like, "Man, she's awesome at some stuff," and he delegates things to her which she's better at. Even things that we consider man's work—like fixing the cars or the gutters or repairing the lawn mower, whatever it is the way you grew up. A good husband who is promoting his wife and delegating things to her and understanding his wife is like, "Man, this is us together, and there's things that she's better at than I am. Praise God."

She's better at the money. Let her do it. Right? There's no place in scripture that says the man has to go earn the money and the wife has to stay home. That's not in the Bible. Until the industrial revolution, both the husband and the wife all worked at home, all made the money, and all raised the kids. There was no separation of labor like that. That's a brand new twentieth century invention that Christian America has baptized. You're a stay at home dad? That's awesome. She's better with making money. That's great.

You know, one of the greatest gifts that God has used in our marriage—and I want to illustrate this—like the guy doesn't have to initiate everything. Susan, over years, came to this conviction very early on with our kids. She was like, "You know, I don't want to just talk to our kids about God when they're doing things bad, right? I don't want to just say, okay, now it's time we gotta talk to the Word and ask for forgiveness." And she brought into our marriage this conviction that we should be gathering around God's Word. And she's continued to hold that up in our family ever since. Like, regularly, Susan brings us back to, "Let's have family worship tonight. Let's gather around God's Word. Let's sing." We used to act out parables and stuff with our kids. I mean, it's looked a lot of ways over years. But I'm so grateful God has used that and promoted that. I don't think that's my failure. I think that's our success. That's the dance. It's working.

What About the Wife?

Verses 22 through 24, the commands for the Christian wife are two: to imitate Jesus in these two ways, respect and submission.

I want to be clear about both of them. Respect. See that the wife respects her husband. This is probably a bigger deal than most wives realize. I know husbands would much rather—they would say, you know, values in my book is being respected even more than being loved. I need to know that what I do and who I am is godly and manly and is good. I need encouragement in that.

Respecting your husband can look like all these things: having a good attitude, discussing things with him openly and honestly and lovingly, showing confidence in his work, building loyalty in your kids to him, not talking about him with family members in ways that tear him down. Giving him feedback in a way that encourages him, confronting him in his sin in ways that call him with you to go to Jesus. Being grateful for him and to him.

Submission

And second, submission.

Submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. — Ephesians 5:22

I know that this language of submission really is like it's nails on the blackboard for some of y'all. And that's hard for us to hear, but again, what is submission? This language doesn't come from any nation. It doesn't come from any culture. Submission was never a human idea. Some people are like, sounds like a bunch of guys in a smoky room seeking to dominate their wives came up with this idea, and I get it. But it began with the Trinity, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There's a doctrine that we and all other orthodox Christians believe in called the eternal subordination of the Son. And it goes like this: from eternity past, Jesus has submitted himself to the Father's authority. Why did he do that? He's equal with God the Father. I think Jesus has lots of gifts, don't you? Clearly very gifted. Clearly very valuable. And yet, this is what's pictured for us in the Trinity—the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father. And that's not invented by some power hungry men; that comes from God's self-disclosure of how the Trinity functions in eternity. That's mind-blowing.

See, submission also doesn't mean that the woman is the JV partner. Submission doesn't mean that the woman is inferior to her husband. Remember, the name given at creation to woman. I went over this a little over a year ago in the gender series. What is Ezer? It's where we get our word helper. It's a name given to the Holy Spirit in Scripture. The Bible doesn't say, and I just want you to hear this: the Bible doesn't say that the woman was so weak and helpless and emotional that she needed a helper, a strong man to fix her problems. No. The guy was the one who needed the helper. Right? The guy was the one who needed help. The man was the one where God said, "Not good. Not good like this." He doesn't need a frat boy. He doesn't need a fraternity brother. He needs an Ezer. He needs a strong Ezer who's going to walk with him and challenge him and embolden him and respect him and make him move toward Jesus.

See, what is submission? Is the Bible calling a woman to a groveling submission? No. Some foolish husbands would think so, but it can't be that because this comes out of the Gospel. This is the response of all people to the lordship of Jesus. When Jesus comes into your life, you're called—you can't say, "Well, I want to keep holding on to everything I have. I'm in control of everything, Jesus. Glad you're around." No, we come to him. We lay down everything at his feet. That's what the Gospel calls us to. Submit all of ourselves to him.

Submission is never a husband's to demand. It's a woman's to offer. It's a woman's to give. No husband truly like Christ would think otherwise. This is why I think Paul adds this phrase, "as to the Lord," knowing like she's married to a guy who's like me—gonna get it wrong lots of days, most days. And yet, there's something about that dance. A husband who's trying to grow and loving his wife. A wife who's respecting him. A husband who is trying. A woman who's submitting to him and challenging him and encouraging him.

The godly submission of a wife to a husband requires a lot of spiritual maturity. Let's be honest about that. It means a wife is not threatened by the successes of her husband. She's like, "Your successes are my successes, but your failures are also my failures too." It means that she's got to be so secure in her identity in Christ that she's not competing with him or looking for some kind of identity out there apart from him. She's saying, "No, mutuality. Interdependence. This is what we're about."

In other words, if you're a woman and you're considering marriage to a man, the real question should be, "Do I really trust this man? Does he cherish me? Is he the kind of man that I can give myself to for a lifetime together?"

You know, in gospel marriage, it's not easy. And this big dance, this is hard.

It's not problem free because there are two sinners in every marriage and yet what I think I've found over years watching couples, watching couples at CTK work this out is that there's a dynamicness to this. There's an ability over time for this to become like elastic, that suffering comes, hardship comes, sins happen that really impact and rock the marriage, and you know what? It's still able to stand firm. God still can preserve this. The power of this comes from Christ through the Holy Spirit.

A Warning About Cover Bands

Now, I'm going to conclude this way. I want to urge you. Some of you are sitting here this morning like, this is the last time I will be at CTK. You're like, I don't want any of this and I don't like a church that talks about this. And I want to warn you briefly before I close up.

Just because you've seen a lot of bad cover bands doesn't mean the original is bad. Like all of us, we've heard some terrible cover bands—the divine marriage, right? We can name all the bad marriages. But the divine marriage is meant to sing to you a deeper story. And if you're investigating Christianity, I would really want to make sure you're hearing the real song.

You don't evaluate Christianity based on our sexual ethics or our doctrine of marriage. That's like saying I'm going out and I'm going to find a new car and I'm going to choose it because I like the door handles. The door handles are not the main part of the car. When you go shopping for a good used car, you're looking at the engine, right? You want to know, does this thing really run?

I find that lots of people who are sort of marginal to the church are like, you know, I don't think I like Christianity because I don't like its doctrine of sexuality and marriage. That's not the main point. That's like way down the list of what's important. The central part of Christianity is: Did Jesus rise from the dead? Is he the savior of the world? And is his grace sufficient for you? And that's the song the divine marriage sings. So I want to make sure you're hearing the song.

God's Eternal Covenant

The song that God forever wants to give himself to you. He wants to pour his life out for you. He says, "I do," and he comes and he honors us with words, invites us to the altar. He says, "My body," and not just till death do we part, but through death forevermore.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you this day that you sing a song over us. And while it's hard for us to hear in our culture and it's unpopular and the things we just talked about make no sense for those who really don't have ears to hear, I pray for everyone today. Father, would you grow us in confidence of your deep and profound love for us? Lord, that you always love your children with this kind of everlasting "I do." Father, grow our hearts in those things. Lord, grow us in following you and covering your song. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.