Generations: Marriage (Part 1)

Hey, if we've not met, my name is Josh, and today might be your very first time. It might be your 10,000th time. I don't know if that math works out, but either way, I'm glad you're here this morning. If you've never connected here at Whitewater beyond attending a service or watching online, I just want you to know God has so much more in mind for you than just to show up or just to watch online. See, God's design for the church is that we would live in Christian community with each other, that we would get to know each other, that we would help bear each other's burdens, that we would celebrate with each other and mourn with each other, that we would support each other, encourage each other, that we would share our gifts, our talents, and our resources with one another.

That's biblical Christian community, and that's what God has in mind. And so today, I want to challenge you, if you've never taken a step toward that reality, to do one of just a few things. First is to simply connect. If you've never connected at all, after the service, head out into the foyer, meet our team at the information desk, and just let them know that you'd like to connect here. It's a great first start.

They can help you find your people here. Second, if you have connected and you call Whitewater home and you have not joined our community of generosity, our giving community, yet, I want to challenge you in, encourage you to do that. Here's why. Because the Bible says that that is part of our worship, that this is what God has in mind for two reasons. Because your generosity makes a huge difference.

It allows us to gather each week to bless our neighbors, to make sure our kids and students have a safe and relatable place to learn about Jesus, to care for this tremendous facility that we have, and to spread the gospel here and not here, locally and globally. And the second reason is this. The Bible tells us that part of our worship is giving, that this is part of our expression of worship. It's an expression that says that all of this already just belongs to God anyway. So if you're ready to invest in the kingdom through generosity here, you can do that by three simple ways on the screens.

And if you're ready to worship through giving, that's how you can do it. Now, finally, if you call Whitewater home, but you aren't yet sharing your time, your gifts, your talents, then I cannot encourage you enough to get started. See, we believe the Bible teaches that all of us who are in Christ have been given gifts and talents. They're for sharing with each other. And so that could be on Sunday mornings with our guest services team, making sure that people that walk in the door feel seen and known and welcomed.

It could be with middle school or high school students investing in the next generation. It could be on one of our go trips that helps bring the gospel to places far away. It could be in the life center or the food pantry, making a big impact on our local community. Whatever it is, if you're not sharing your gifts for the kingdom, you're missing out on a beautiful community that comes with this, but also on sharing your gifts with the church. So today we hope that you'll take a step, one of those steps.

Also today we're starting into two weeks looking at the topic of marriage. Now, before you check out, before you think this message is now no longer for you, hold on. Just because you're not married, just because you're widowed or divorced or a student, or because you never intend to be married, check out, don't check out. Here's why. Because of all of the metaphors that God used from COVID to cover in all of scripture, from Genesis to revelation that would help us see how he feels about us, how he feels about himself, in unity with the Trinity, in the life he wants us to live with Him.

He chose marriage. In Ephesians 5, Paul is talking about what it looks like to operate a household. It's super practical instructions for husbands and wives and kids. And then he says something kind of crazy in the middle of it. He says, in Ephesians 5:32, this is a profound mystery, but I'm talking about Christ in the church.

Paul's like, I know it sounds like I'm talking about husbands and wives and children, and I am. I am talking about that. But I'm also lifting the veil on something much bigger than husbands and wives and children. See, when you zoom out, this is all about Jesus. Marriage, at its best, is just a picture of God's eternal plan to restore shalom, to get things back to the way he intended them to be, the way they were in the garden in the beginning.

See, marriage is not just a social construct. It's not just a legal position. It's not just a tradition. It's not even just about love and commitment. Marriage, biblically speaking, is a metaphor that points to something bigger, something heavenly.

God intentionally gave us this picture of marriage, of a bride and a groom, of covenant and of oneness, to help us understand the kind of relationship he intends to have with us. So when Jesus calls the church his bride, he's not just being poetic, he's being deeply personal. This is why it matters. Even if you're single, widowed, divorced, young, or have no desire to ever walk down an aisle. Because this message isn't about earthly marriage, it's revealed through earthly marriage.

It's ultimately about Christ and the church. So this week we'll get a bit of the kind of biblical theology around marriage, the study side, if you will. And next week will be a super practical message for preparing for marriage. Those who are married, those who are divorced and, or remarried, and even for those who never intend to be married or, or never intend to be married again, that's the practice side. We value both the study side and the practice side.

And because I know that the church at large has done really a bad job of communicating this well, I want to say very clearly to everyone listening, marriage is not what completes you as a Christian or a human being. Jesus did not say seek first the marriage and everything will be added to you. He said, seek first the kingdom. And Paul kind of famously wasn't married. Did you know that?

Jesus wasn't married? Peter was the only of the disciples who the Bible says was married for sure. In fact, Paul says in First Corinthians 7, 8, he's talking about marriage. He says now to the unmarried and the widows, I say it's good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. Being married does not complete you as a human or a Christian.

To be single does not make you lesser than in the church or the kingdom. But practically, just like in our world today, in Bible times, most people were married or intended to be married. And so that's okay. It's normal to be married and it's okay to not be married. And it's normal to not be married too.

So if you're single, whether you want to be or not, first, this message really is for you. And second, you are just as valuable to the church and the kingdom in your singleness. So Paul says that this whole marriage thing is a profound mystery. It's because this isn't the kind of love that we're used to giving and receiving. Biblical marriage isn't transactional.

It's not conditional, it's not rooted in romance, it isn't self satisfying, it isn't, you earn it and I'll stay. It's a covenant that says, I have chosen you and I will stay no matter what, unconditionally, I love you. And in this mega metaphor, we, the Church are the bride and Christ is. We're the ones Christ has pledged Himself to. We're the ones he has chosen.

He's preparing us. And we're the ones he's going to return for someday as well. Revelation 19 says that when Christ returns, there's going to be an ultimate marriage that will take place. Revelation 19:7 says, Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory, for the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride, the church has made herself ready. See, the only way that this message is not for you today is if you have no interest in eternal life with Jesus.

Because the metaphor of marriage is for all of us who want to be in Christ. Now, if all of this is true, if marriage is the giant metaphor that God has given to all of us to understand how he feels about us, we what he's done for us in Christ, then we better pay attention to what God says about marriage in the Bible. So let's go back to the very beginning and let's see what God says about marriage. Let's get a biblical perspective, a biblical definition of marriage. And already, before I even start into that, some of you are squirming in your seat.

Some of you are just sitting there waiting for me to say the next words that you know will offend you. And some of you are salivating, getting excited that I'm going to stick it to all the people who don't have a biblical view of marriage. These people who are wrong. I have something to say to each of you. For the one squirming in your seat, I can't say it better than Tim Keller.

He says, now what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't. You'll have a God essentially of your own making and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle, as in real friendship or marriage, will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not some figment of your imagination and a reminder from scripture as well.

Second Timothy, chapter 3, verse 16. All scripture is God breathed and is useful. For what? For teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Why?

So that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Work. The goal as Christians is not to align the Bible to our feelings. Preferences and beliefs. It's to align our feelings, preferences and beliefs to Scripture.

Now, for those salivating at the hope that I will put someone in their place today and hold the line, a reminder of who the true enemy is. Ephesians 6:12. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. The word of God is not intended to be a sledgehammer to bludgeon Kathy in the cubicle next to you. I've said this before, so my job today, my job every week, is to simply tell you what the Bible says.

And if you're offended, I promise you there is enough in the Bible to offend every person sitting in this room today. The gospel is a knife that cuts all the way through to our souls and convicts us. That's part of its work.

And for the sledgehammer folks, let's properly identify the enemy and let's care enough about people to love them toward the truth. So Genesis 1, let's get back to the beginning. Genesis 1, verse 26. Then God said, let us make mankind in our image. The hour here is the Trinity.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish and the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God, he created them. Male and female. He created them. And then Genesis 2 is where we get the first glimpse of the first marriage.

In Genesis 2, God has created the earth and everything in it. He makes Adam from the dust. He breathes life into him. And then in this really interesting act of allowing Adam to be part of ruling over the the earth, and to set up what's coming next, God parades all of the animals in front of Adam and invites Adam to name them. And one of the things that God wants Adam to see is that Adam is different from all the rest of creation.

He is the one who's created in the image of the Trinity. And none of These animals, verse 20 says, were a suitable helper. That's the word, helper. This is what God creates Eve to be for Adam, his helper. Now, this word helper immediately gets people worked up because a lot of people read this and they think to themselves immediately that this woman is supposed to be servant to the man.

She's subjected to the man. But this same word, actually helper, is used many times to Describe God's help, help that he brings to people. We certainly don't believe that God is man's servant. So what does this actually mean? Well, the word helper is actually two Hebrew words, ezer and kenegdo.

And together they literally mean helper as his match or helper who is opposite. This is an equal helper, not a subservient helper. Jewish rabbis have been teaching this for a long time. They used a picture of two planks, two boards that are leaned up against each other in an A shape. By leaning against each other, they both remain standing.

You remove one, the other one falls. And they keep tension against each other in a proper way to keep them both standing, each providing strength to the other, each relying on the other. And then verse 24, we find out how Eve is formed. And then we get our anchor verse for what God has in mind for marriage. Genesis 2, verse 21.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. And then we read the first words from a human being in the Bible. And if you're reading this in an actual Bible, you'll notice that the words look different than the words around it. They're indented, and they look like some of the phrases from the Book of Psalms.

If you're familiar with that. And anytime in the Bible you run into this indented text, you're running into one of three things. It's either quoting scripture from other part of the Bible, it is dialogue, or as in this case, it's poetry or a song. See, when Eve is made from Adam's side and he wakes up and he sees her, his response is immediately this poetic love song. Ladies, if some guy is interested in you and all he can do is grunt when he's around you, I'm just saying raise your standards, okay?

At least expect a short haiku or something. Here's what Adam says. This at last, I've gone through all of creation. This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

And his love song is quick. It finishes, and we're right back to the narrative. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. When Adam saw her, he didn't say, awesome, someone to help me mow the grass. He didn't say great, she can fix me a sandwich.

He didn't say wonderful, someone to wash my fig leaves.

He said, this, this, she is part of me. And for that reason, for this deep soul level oneness, God established from the beginning that a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife and the two will become one, one flesh. God shaped them to fit together both literally, physically and in purpose and in presence. Each one designed to complete what the other lacked. This is God's design.

And what Scripture calls one flesh is the single most significant part of this. This is what is at the very heart of marriage. It's why marriage exists, to show us and to be for us. It's more than physical closeness. It's spiritual, emotional and covenantal oneness.

And in that way, marriage becomes a living picture of divine unity. Marriage is representative of the same type of stuff that God experiences in his own oneness with, with the Trinity. One God, three persons perfectly united in love, purpose and being. And Jesus affirms this. Fast forward all the way to Matthew 19.

Someone asks Jesus about divorce and this is what he says. Haven't you read? He replied that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. And haven't you read? Don't you know?

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. So when we put all of this together, we can confidently say that the biblical picture of marriage is a sacred God designed lifelong oneness between one husband and one wife. In marriage, two become one in body, in spirit and purpose. And this physical and spiritual oneness in marriage is most intimately shared and sealed through the physical and spiritual act of sexual intimacy.

Sex isn't just a physical act, it's a soul binding act. It was never meant to be casual. It was never meant to be transactional or disconnected from covenant. From the very beginning, God designed sexual intimacy to be the physical expression of the oneness established through the covenant of marriage. This is why it matters so much to God.

Not because he's against it, but because he created it. He knows the power it carries. He knows the proper boundaries for it. This intimacy is the seal of oneness between husband and wife. It's sacred, it's spiritual.

This is why it belongs inside of marriage. The best analogy I can come up for this is fire. Fire, when it is properly contained, is fabulous. It's bright, it brings light and warmth and energy and joy. It is useful.

But take fire out of its proper boundaries, take it out of your fireplace and onto your couch, you have a huge problem. Take it out of the fire pit and onto dry leaves, and suddenly thousands of acres and homes and buildings and structures are destroyed by it. This is the analogy. So while we might not see the effects, so obviously when it comes to that kind of intimacy, sex outside of marriage only leads to destruction. But don't miss this.

First, this is not my painting. This is not my painting of marriage and sexual intimacy. It is God's painting. This is what the Bible teaches us. This is not traditional versus progressive.

This is not legalistic versus grace filled, just simply what the Bible says. And still I know that this room is absolutely full of people whose lives and experience don't align with what God intended for marriage and sexual intimacy. Maybe your story includes divorce. I shared last week that all of my grandparents on both sides, my whole life were divorced and remarried multiple times. Maybe your story includes sexual sin.

Maybe you're living a life right now that is completely opposed to what the Bible describes is God's design. Maybe you or your child or a loved one would hear this message or are hearing this message right now, and you immediately feel unloved, condemned, or hated by God or by me or by this church. And if that's where you are, I want you to know a few things. First, alone, you're not alone. And second, your story is not beyond hope.

The gap between God's design and our reality as humans, that's something that every single person on the planet has to grapple with. We have to reckon with. Because none of us have lived a life that's perfectly inside of the boundaries of God's design. In scripture, none of us. Romans 3:23 says, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We all carry wounds, some from our own decisions, some from other people's decisions, some from things that have been done to us. But God's response to all brokenness, God's response to all coloring outside of the lines is not to push us away. It's actually to lean in. It's always to draw near his truth and his design. Don't cancel out his compassion.

And his standards aren't meant to crush us. They are meant to show us that there is a better way. They're meant to point us back to something he desperately and deeply wants for us. So if you feel tension, conviction or grief, that's not rejection. That's an invitation.

It's an invitation into what has been made available to us through Christ. Just like every other part of our lives, marriage and sexual intimacy have been broken and twisted by the fall. Sin breaks things. It breaks things. It breaks our marriages, it breaks our families, it breaks our hearts, it breaks our sexual sexuality.

But from COVID to cover, the Bible is all about restoration. It's all about restoration. From COVID to cover, this message is on repeat. Jesus came, he gave his life, so that no matter where you are today, there is a path back to God. This is the gospel message.

There's a path back to the way God intends things to be. And just because we haven't walked perfectly with God is up to this point, just because we haven't walked perfectly with his design doesn't mean that God is done with us. It doesn't mean he hates us. In fact, the kingdom of God is for people who are just willing to be honest with themselves, see that there's a better way and desire it and move toward his grace. So the goal today is not shame, it's alignment.

It's alignment with God's design. It's saying, God, I want your way, not mine. Your truth, not culture's version. I want to walk in your kingdom, whatever it costs. See, God's heart isn't just to confront sin.

The Bible certainly does confront sin, but it's to heal sin. That's God's plan. His invitation is always this. Come to me. Come, just come and I'll show you a better way.

I just thought of this. It's not even in my notes. I remember when Ada, my oldest, was. She's about 18 months old. She was old enough to walk and talk.

And I was laying on the couch one day and she was standing there and I said, come here, baby, come snuggle with me. And she looked down at her shirt, and at lunch, she dropped something on her shirt and she said, oh, no, Daddy, I dirty. And I had this moment where I just thought, man, the only thing keeping my daughter from coming to snuggle with her dad, who has a washing machine that she can't even fathom. Like I could throw the shirt out and bury her in a dozen more. And all she can see is this little stain on her shirt that is keeping her from being embraced by her father.

And if that's you today, if you think that, no, sorry, dad, I'm too dirty, you're wrong. You're wrong. And God is just waiting for us to crawl up on the couch with him and he goes, that's no problem. I took care of that in Jesus. This is why I sent my son.

This is why he lived a perfect life. This is why he was brutally killed on a cross and he gave himself for you. I raised him from the dead so that you didn't have to worry about a dirty shirt. This is what's on offer through Jesus. And wherever you find yourself today, married, single, divorced, widowed, dating, hopeful, hear this.

The deepest longing every human heart actually has is not marriage. It's oneness. It's oneness. And when marriage is at its best, it's a beautiful picture of that oneness. From Genesis to Revelation, marriage points beyond itself.

It's the mega metaphor. The oneness we're called to live out as followers of Jesus is meant to show the world what his love is like. That's what marriage is. When Christian marriages model humility and grace and servant hearted love, they proclaim and exemplify the Gospel. When Christian singles live with contentment and joy and purposeful connection in community, they bear witness to the sufficiency of Christ.

They are living out oneness. When those who have walked through divorce or loss find healing and restoration and belonging in the body of Christ, they demonstrate redemption in real time. This is what the world needs to see. Church. Not perfect marriages, not ideal circumstances, but a church marked by oneness in Christ, where no one stands alone, where love is more than a feeling, and where covenant isn't just something we believe in, it's actually something that we live see.

When we live out of that kind of oneness, that kind of unity, we are the preview, the kingdom for those who do not know him. And if you are in this room and you are longing for that kind of oneness in your life today, in your marriage, in your singleness, in your community, if you are longing for that kind of oneness but you don't know where to start, just do one thing. Come and pray with our prayer team. Just start there. They'll be at the bottom of the ramp here after the service.

And again, I've said this so many times, nobody's watching you walk across that room and thinking, oh, they're shame, shame, shame, shame. Another dirty person walking across the room. They're praising God that another one, another one has broken through this lie, that you are too dirty to crawl up in the Father's lap. That's what we're thinking. So our team will be there.

Do that one thing. And if you want to hear a lot more about what this looks like in practice, come back next week.