Marriage - To Serve and Protect
January 16, 2011
Scripture Reading: Ephesians 5:1-2, 15-33
Ephesians 5:1-2
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart, 20 giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 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. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. ESV
Review – Ephesians 5:1-21
Christians are to live as Christ lived—mindful that God’s highest purpose for every human being ever born is to bear the glory of God’s image and likeness. That is God’s highest purpose for our lives and our physical bodies—the reason that Jesus appeared among us to redeem and restore all who hope in Him to their original purpose.
The final verse of our our Scripture reading last week (Ephesians 5:21) told us how disciples of Christ relate to each other physically.
Using someone’s body or allowing someone to use your body for temporary sexual satisfaction desecrates the image of God’s glory and purpose in both you and them.
We are to submit to the knowledge that every human being has been created NOT for our temporary use and satisfaction, but to bear the image and likeness of God, and therefore reverence and (if we are disciples of Christ) we respect not only our own bodies, but the bodies of others. Why? Let me say it again; out of reverence for Christ who died and now lived to redeem our bodies from the ravages of sin.
BIBLICAL TRUTHS ABOUT MARRIAGE
First, the Bible says that this “respect for Christ” also forms the basis for why spouses treat each other and their marriage with reverence and courtesy. Living in with the knowledge that your partner as been called to glorious work in Christ’s kingdom should make you want to serve and protect this vessel formed for God’s use.
No where does this idea that you are living with God’s property need to realized in actions than in dealing with some of the special stress that often comes with BLENDED FAMILIES—families where not all, or maybe not any of the children are biologically linked to one or the other parent. When you understand that you have now been put in a place to nurture, to serve and protect them for the same reason you are to serve and protect their parent (your new spouse), then you treat those children with the utmost respect and tenderness knowing that their highest purpose is to bear the image of Christ, and you are to help mold, shape and model that image in them and model it before them.
Second, the most powerful agent of change in marriage is pressure. That’s the way diamonds are formed. Something kind of carbon bsed material as come as coal deep in the earths crust remains fixed under extreme pressure and over time the transformation happens.
Third, we are not to enter into marriage as if it were a temporary convenience between any two people. Gospel marriage is the joining together of a man and a woman “till death do us part.” It is not a temporary convenience, but a permanan covenant put in place to effect great and good change in your life and the life of your spouse.
2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us that over time we are changed—transfigured, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters, and over time we become like Him.
Staying put (styaing married) under pressure is what God wants in marriage. That is why God expresses such displeasure with divorce and gives so limited a list when it comes to acceptible reasons for divorce. Divorce short cicuits the process of change. Jesus put it this way; Matthew 19:6 Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate his art by cutting them apart." (MsgB)
I don’t know how to say any clearer than with this summary statement: It is the permanency of marital intimacy that keeps us put while God works the change into us that restores in us the image and likeness of God, and we had better reverence and respect the purposes of God in marriage.
Fourth, marriage can sometimes be difficult because... because why?. Here is why. Romans 3:23 … all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Marriage puts two sinners in the same bed. We are all quite used to your own sins. We tend to put our own sins in a kinder light. “My sins are jharldy sins at all. It’s just my Irish temper, just my German stubbornness, just my Latino emotions, just my English sarcasm. That’s just the way I am.”
But when we find that our partner is a sinner too, we have no such mercy. “This marriage is not as much fun as I thought it would be. You think more about yourself than you do me, and since we both know that this marriage is about ME, I will not tolerate your sin even for a moment. Abnd son say that it’s just the momma bear in you, or just you natural impatience."
And so the goal that was supposed to be to undergo change and learn how to walk as one. The new goal is to change your partner IMMEDIATELY into the likeness and image you have in mind for him or her.
Here is the problem, AND THIS IS HUGE; you want your mate to meet your needs and satisfy your desires and your mate is failing miserable, but there is a number (maybe a great number) of your needs and desires that God has no intention of meeting through your mate or by any other means. You must actually die to those needs.
Here is what God wants; He wants both you and your mate to change according to His will until your desire are simply a reflextion of diires. You want to see His will don on earth (and at your house) as it is in heaven.
His purpose for your union is that a watching world can look at your marriage and family and see the likeness of God’s patient love and generous forgiveness worked out in human flesh.
Fifth, since marriage is a permanent arrangement between one man and one woman, Christian marriage satisfies sexual desires in a way unknown to the world.
It does it by informing each partner that they are the other partners’ protection from entering into relationships (sexual and otherwise) that distort, disfigure and desecrates the likeness of Christ in youself as well as some other person.
The Apostle Paul lays out Gospel-marriage very clearly for the believers in Corinth. Keep in mind that the Corinthian believers lived in the midst (and had recently come of of) a culture where much of the economy came from sailors and travelers who came to Corinth for the express purpose of filling up on sex of every description. It was a wild and sexually wide open port city.
It was all part of the various religions and reituals that could be found in Corinth.
WATCH WHAT PAUL SAYS HERE; 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." 2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For THE WIFE DOES NOT HAVE AUTHORITY OVER HER OWN BODY, but the husband does. Likewise THE HUSBAND DOES NOT HAVE AUTHORITY OVER HIS OWN BODY, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.ESV
Marriage is God’s protection against entering into any kind of quick or temporary sexual arrangement;. It is the actual point in time when you give your body away for the other persons portection. Do you see that? 1 Corinthians 7:2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.
This is the view that marriage intimacy, far from being part of the world of immorality, it God’s protection from the world of immorality.
Marriage intimacy stands apart from sexual immorality.
Here is the way a husband and wife should view their roll in the marriage as regards sex; they have joyfully surrendered the rights to their own bodies for the other’s protection. Mmm! Sounds really good -- at first. Where it get rough is when we see that this giving away of our rights to our own body to our spouse is a permanent surrender that covers a whole lot more issues than sex. In every way your body has been given so that that through you God protects and grows His own image in your partner, and thus in you. It is that simple and that difficult.
So while you are loving your partner and following God’s plan for you to protect him or her, God uses your partner to do the same for you. The result is mutual surrender and mutual satisfaction and thus mutual protection. In other words, we submit one to another out of respect for Christ.
This is why marriage intimacy is pure and undefiled and holy and a totally different thing from temporary sexual arrangements (Heb 13:4 – the marriage bed is undefiled).
Now dow you see why Paul insists (Ephesians 5:22-33) that marriage is designed to give us insight into the mysteries of the union of Christ and His church? It is becasue Christ laid down His life for the sake of His bride—the church. But watch this, Jesus didn’t surrendered just His mind and will. It comes down to this; we are saved becasue He surrendered (gave up the rights to) His own body for our salvation.
A Gospel based marriage lifts sex out of the area of lust and appetite and puts in the place of serving and protecting.
Some of you may be saying, too bad I didn’t know this sooner. I’ve already used my body and the body of others in ways that marred the likeness of God’s image.
The things you need to know about being single or married is found in God’s Word.
You need to know that God weeps over the damage that sin has done to you, and sin and its consequences is what Jesus came to save you from by offering His body to take your sin and heal your wounds.
The Gospel (good news) is that Jesus lays down His life in order to take your sins away, forgive you for your participation in them, and to cleanse you from guilt in order that He raise you up to your God’s purposes for you life. He did this with His own body on the cross.
Through His Word God is trying to give you each a fresh understanding of your own body and everyone else’s so that you reverence each person you meet because you know what God has designed them form.
What do you do? You go to God who has made it possible for you to come to Him through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. Your sins have already been paid for by the sacrificed blood of Jesus. Don’t hold your sins as if they were valuable. They are deadly and toxic, and Christ has died in order to save your from the consequences that accompany sin. You call on the name of the Lord and He hears and brings you out of sin and into salvation. This is called surrendering to God. It’s that simple.
Next week I am going to talk more about children and I will tell you ahead that the same principle prevails. The job of Christian parents is to do all possible through prayer and the example of their own marriage to see the likeness of Christ formed in their children.
