A Message About Mαrriage

Here was the wedding message for the Wedding of Ife and Jackson that I officiated this weekend. The first part is on Love, the second is a charge to all you husbands out there, the third is a charge to the wives. It was an amazing wedding. For those who couldn’t be there, I hope this post blesses your life.

Pastor Moes

……. “1 John 4:7-21

[7] Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. [8] Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. [9] In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. [10] In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. [11] Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. [12] No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

[13] By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. [14] And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. [15] Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. [16] So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. [17] By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. [18] There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. [19] We love because he first loved us. [20] If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. [21] And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Unpacking 1 John 4:7-21: The Centrality of Love

What I want to do is unpack that beautiful passage from 1 John 4 that we just heard read. Now, perhaps the most basic tool for analyzing any passage of scripture is to read through it and notice if there are any repeated words. Repeated words often tell you right off the bat what the passage is about. Did you catch the repeated word in that passage: love? You probably didn’t count how many times, but in 15 verses the word “love” is repeated an astounding 27 times! In fact, just as the heart of this day is love, the heart of John’s letter to us on this day is without a doubt love.

The Incarnation and God’s Love

In this book as in his gospel, John makes a point of speaking of the incarnation of Jesus: that God himself has come in the flesh. He even says that the way you know false prophets is that they deny this. He says that the incarnation is the true test of a Christian, and the question I want to ask is why? Why is our view on the incarnation the true test of a Christian? The answer according to John is that the incarnation of Jesus is the incarnation of God’s love. And John goes on to tell us that our job as Christians is to embrace the fact that when Jesus came to earth, love itself descended in power. John says we are to embrace that fact and then embody that fact in front of a world that watches. He tells us that Christians walking in love identify not only who we are, but who our God is.

The Absence of Love in Christian Communities

Which should make us cringe a little when we consider what goes on in many Christian churches and Christian families. Shamefully, love is all too often not the way the world would describe many Christians. Christ-like love, which has been defined as willing self-sacrifice for the redemptive good of another all to the glory of God, is often tragically missing from the relationships of those who name Christ. But this is actually a form of hypocrisy and really even blasphemy. Because, precious ones, love is not an optional add-on to relationships. Willing self-sacrifice for the redemptive good of another is the very essence of what it means to claim Christ.

Scriptural Foundation: 1 John 4:7-10

John spells this out very directly for us today: [7] Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. [8] Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. [9] In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. [10] In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Reflection on the Cross

When we behold the cross, we see the extent of God’s love; we see ultimate sacrifice embodied. And as we do so, as we see Jesus dying for the redemptive good of others, we get a lump in our throats as we see the possibility of what we might also be called to do. At the cross, as we behold the force that utterly changed the world, we should also realize that the agents who are called to bring that love of God to the world are sitting all around you right now in this sanctuary. Take a moment and look at them: there are your families; there are your friends; there is your church. They are here because they love you; they love you because Jesus loves you. Now take a good long look at each other. The one standing before you is here, loving you, willing to sacrifice for you, willing to commit their life in service to you, because Jesus loves you. There is a power at work in this room. Can you not feel it? There is a power at work in every Christian marriage that is intent on changing the world. John says, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Beyond Mere Imitation: A Profound Truth

This passage says so much more than look at Jesus and just copy him as though he were just an example. That’s true, of course: he is an example and we should follow him. But something much more profound is being said in this passage. Verse 12 says [12] No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. I’m going to read that verse again but first I want to remind us of something. John said in his gospel. He said back in John 1:18 [18] No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. And now he says: [12] No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. If you take these two verses together, then the conclusion is unmistakable: The way to see God, to really understand who God is, is to look at Jesus. And the way that this world gets to behold Jesus is by looking at the love in the lives of those who are transformed by his Spirit. The Spirit, that power which is hovering over this room, makes God known by showing this world Jesus in the love of Christians for one another. This is what John means when he says [13] By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

The Call to Incarnated Love

This love must be incarnated. [15] Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. [16] So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. [17] By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. In other words, this world is supposed to learn many beautiful things about who God is by looking at you both, at your love, and by looking at the lives of every Christian here, at our love.

Additional Support: 1 John 3:16-18

Earlier in 1 John, if we turn back, we read this: 1 John 3:16-18 [16] By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. [17] But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? [18] Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. In other words, our love must incarnate into flesh, just as God’s love did. John says [19] We love because he first loved us.

The Critical Command: Love God and Neighbor

And this incarnated love you are called to is so critical that he says [20] If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. [21] And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. The same voice that says I love God must be able to look at its neighbor, and especially its spouse, and say: I love you. If it ever can’t, then it lied when it said it loved God. You can’t have one without the other. And so the call is that you and all who are present here naming the name of Jesus, love one another always. That always and in all circumstances, willing self-sacrifice for the redemptive good of another be the hallmark of your lives. In doing so, John says you are completing God’s love. You are loving because he first loved you. You are bringing the power of heaven to earth. God has taken you very seriously and loved you in a profound way in sending his Son for you. He calls you to take him and each other just as seriously now. And so I want to address you each in turn with certain charges for your life that God would have you hear about what a watching world must see when it looks at your life together.

Introduction to Charges: A Nod to Reforming Marriage

Now we are in Moscow after all, and so I’m going to give a little hat tip to a great book that I am sure you have read, and if not, you must. It is Pastor Wilson’s book Reforming Marriage. Which I assign to every young couple I have married over the 7 years I’ve been a pastor. If you have not read it, you must, and when you have, you will recognize familiar themes in what I am about to tell you. (I’m even going to borrow some phrases that you will no doubt be familiar with). Because I am about to give you both some charges before the Lord, and they are good, sturdy reformed ones that I know your Moscow Shepherds will want you to live out as much as I do.

Charge to the Husband

Jackson, you are called to be a symbol and a witness to Christ. As a shepherd in the faith, I charge you with this as your first duty in this marriage, which brings the will of heaven to Earth. As Adam to this fruitful Eve, you are to be a living picture of Jesus. I don’t mean that you ought to be a picture; I mean that you have no choice. No husband has a choice. All husbands, by virtue of just being husbands, are representations of the Great Husband. By your treatment of your wife, you will either speak glorious truth to her and to the world about what sort of Bridegroom Christ is, or you will blaspheme him. The Lord is a husband to his people; he gives his life for his people; he nourishes and cherishes his people. If you are a wandering husband or a physically or emotionally absent husband, then your sin against this woman will be very great, but your sin against Jesus will be infinitely greater as you blaspheme him – as you tell the world that this is the sort of faithless husband that Jesus is to his Bride.

My second charge to you is to be jealous. Exodus 34:14 tells us something about our God: 14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: and Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11: 2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Jealousy can be a great sin when it is exercised at the wrong time, towards the wrong person, and improperly in bitterness and malice and resentment, but ife’s family, and Christ through them, has entrusted to your headship one of their greatest treasures. You must guard her with body and soul against all material and spiritual forces who would harm her or compromise her.

You must supply her with protection and headship and you must disciple her in the faith, training her to grow up to the fullness of Christ. And in addition to spiritual leadership, you must supply her other things as well: with the food she needs – keep her kitchen cupboards full. You must supply her with the clothing she needs, keep her bedroom closets full. You must supply her with the physical love she needs: keep her arms full. And if it be God’s will, the children she needs. She is a fruitful vine, tend her.

You must be satisfied with her beauty and enraptured with her love and you must be content with her in every way, including her cleaning, her cooking, her intelligence. It’s not that you are not called to help her constantly improve in all areas, that’s the art of husbandry, but you may never compare her to another woman in any way by word or action. From this day forward, the sun rises and sets with this woman as you give her priority over all save the Lord Jesus Christ. This includes your own family.

And finally, Jackson, present your wife to your eyes always as beautiful. Ephesians 5:25-27 speaks of Christ’s will towards his Bride: 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.[a] Jackson, look at the beauty of this woman before you: a Christian husband can expect, if he is the sort of man we are talking about, that this loveliness that looks so perfect right now will, in fact, grow. There is a sort of man who drains the life from his wife, and there is the sort of man who gives life to his wife. Jackson, be the sort of man that causes this to flower so that in ten years from now, Ife is more lovely outwardly and inwardly than she is today: more spiritually beautiful AND more physically beautiful.

Jackson, as you disciple, love, feed, and clothe this treasure, she will shine inside and out so that from decade to decade, you almost won’t be able to look steadily at her, even as you can’t look away, recognizing that this is not because you have earned this: all growth comes from God alone, but God works this blessing in our wives through thoughtful and self-sacrificial loving husbands. Be that sort of man.

Charge to the Wife

Now, Ife, it’s your turn. Oh, and Jackson as her head, remember, you are ultimately responsible for all of Ife’s duties as well before God. It’s a tough job being a man. Ife, God has given you a head in this covenant of marriage. He is responsible for you and your family before God from this day forward. But sweetheart, you have duties as well, and first and foremost among them is that you are called by God to respect and honor this man.

Ephesians 5: 22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. Verse 27 actually says to reverence him. This word submission sends modern women into fits of apoplexy, and I know this is not the case with you. I’m preaching to the choir here, but a wife who hates the concept of submission just doesn’t understand the word and will tear her own house down. Submission comes from Latin: sub = under, Mittere = to be sent as in being sent on a mission. The Lord has given your husband a mission in the Kingdom. It will be thrilling to see what this mission is, because God has gifted and equipped Jackson like few men are equipped anymore in this world. He is very rare. Jackson has a vital mission that your happiness is now a part of, and the calling of the Lord to you as his wife is to voluntarily place yourself beside this man and indeed under his authority in this mission - under his self-sacrificial, loving, Christ-like authority as he embarks on this mission. He needs your help; he needs your respect even as you need his love and protection. Respect is the fuel that men run on, and the more respect, honor, and obedience that you give him, the more he will delight to sacrifice for you, if he is walking before the face of God as he should. He has no choice but to sacrifice for you and love you; that’s the calling of leadership, but you can make him delight in this calling by respecting him, even as Sarah called Abraham Lord.

But I want to make a strong point here: though you are called to submit to your husband, and though all believers male and female are called to submit to their elders in the Church, other than those two instances you are not called to submission to any other man. There is a whole sea of men out there who if they are honest would have to recognize that in fact, you are their better and their superior; they are your inferior. Having witnessed you for many years I would say probably most men actually. THIS is your husband, and he is no common man; which means that God’s design for you is to be no common woman.

He is your Lord, and you are his Lady. 1 Corinthians 14 calls you to be his disciple. To be trained by him even as he is trained by the Lord.

In addition to this godly submission, Ife, I also as a shepherd of King Jesus charge you today to be a woman of industry in your home. Make your home your priority. Titus 2:3-5 says 3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. And while your priority is to be your home, Proverbs 31 also makes it abundantly clear that in due time as you hone your managerial skills God may indeed call you to be industrious outside of the home as well. There is great work for you to do in the kingdom, and this starts in your home.

And this involves children. Ife, you are called, (if this is in the providence of God) to bear children and to do so with joy and gladness. Eve was named so because she was the mother of life. Malachi 2:15 gives us God’s intent for marriage in this regard: Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless. Gladly bear children for your husband.

And finally be a woman of charity to the world around you: lift up the weary and depressed; reach out to the lost and broken-hearted as only a mother can. Ife, be a leader in your church and in your community: lead by your gentle and quiet and godly spirit; lead by your charity and love for the less fortunate and downtrodden; lead by your submission to your husband; lead by your devotion to your children. In all this lead by being a picture of the Bride of Christ; lead by your love of the Savior.

Conclusion: A Symbol of Eternal Union

Jackson and Ife, as you are a symbol and a shadow of how believers will one day stand before Christ transformed from peasant girl into his glorious princess bride. So the reality of that end speaks now to you both today. The Father looks in blessing upon this very moment; the Spirit hovers over your union (can’t you just feel Him!); the Son covers you both with his blood; and ten thousand angels sing praises and witness yet again today that here is a son and daughter of the king joined into one before the throne of grace never to be separated.

Behold, He makes all things new! And precisely because that future eschatological world is centered on Christ and one of infinite beauty and power and delight and tenderness and glory, your life together as it is centered on Christ will be one of beauty and power and delight and tenderness and glory. Heaven is present on earth today right now in this Christian marriage.

I’ve spoken enough and so MY FINAL WORD to you both is this: in all you do and say and think, leave this sanctuary as living examples of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; serve him in all things, and watch your love grow not just into immediate blessings, but into generational and eternal blessings as well.

And I close with a charge to all who are here present: if you do not know the Lord, he is placing his call upon you today. At the end of the Bible in Revelation 21:5 we read: And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” This verse is a personal address from God himself. This verse is a revelation of God’s eternal character. And in that character, his will of disposition is that none should perish. So hear his call: respond to the call of the gospel played out before you visibly in this holy marriage today. Christ would betroth you to himself, and despite what you may have done in the past he would present you on that last day as spotless and clothed in white. Come to Jesus and be cleansed. Come to Jesus and experience a whole new world opening up to you….”