Summary

Pastor David Deutsch preaches out of Ephesians 5:31-32. In this sermon, Pastor David unpacks that marriage is a sacred reflection of Christ and the church, designed to tell His story rather than just fulfill personal desires. Through seasons of joy and hardship, its purpose remains the same—to display Christ’s love, requiring sacrifice, grace, and a commitment to forgiveness.

Transcript

Open your Bibles this morning to the book of Ephesians. You'll know why we're taking a little bit of a side trek in just a moment. Ephesians chapter five for this one sermon, I'm gonna read verses 31 and 32 before I pray. Ephesians five verses 31 and 32, hear the word of God. 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 that I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. This is the word of the Lord. Our God in heaven as we come to your word today, we pray that you would teach us, that you would take hearts of stone and make them hearts of flesh and that you would accomplish your divine purpose today for this passage coming to us today as a people. We ask for your spirit to come and do his work with your word and accomplish the mission of the word today. In Jesus name we pray, and amen. A few weeks we're gonna be coming across a verse in the gospel of Luke that is just dropped in the middle of chapter 16. The context before it and the context after it simply doesn't lead up to it or lead away from it. There's a parable before it and a parable after it. And Luke just drops a verse right in the middle in verse 18. Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery, boom, bam, nuke dropped, no context, no explanation, Mike dropped, Jesus moves on, just lays it out. And so because that's coming, I think it's important that we spend at least a Sunday before we get there and kind of set the stage why Jesus would say that, the way that he says that and with no explanation at all, just drops that bomb and he moves on. And so this morning we're gonna let Ephesians 5, 31, 32 read and write our marriages for us and set the stage a little bit so that when we get there, we kind of have a little backstory as to why Jesus would say that, the way that he said that. And I recognize this morning as we come into Ephesians 5 that I am dancing in a minefield. I am as a pastor dancing in a minefield. Some of you in this room and some of the marriages in this room that are represented, you're enjoying the feast of marital goodness. Some of you are riding on the clouds of marital bliss. Some of you are lost in the fog of marital confusion. Some of you are cold in the freezer of marital boredom and blah. Some of you are crashed on the rocks of marital wreckage. Some of you are bleeding on the fields of marital warfare. Some of you are worn out on the bed of marital weariness. Some of you are lying in the ER of marital pain and trauma. Some of you are stabbed with the poisonous dagger of the marital tongue. And some of you are stuck in the cul-de-sac of feeling a marital dead end. Some of you are single and on the ocean dingy of never thinking you're gonna get married. Some of you marriages completely in your future. And for some of you marriages in your past, I understand the minefield that we're entering into today. But whatever situation that we're in, wherever the minefield is and the mines that we might step on, Paul's words are true in Ephesians chapter five. These things will always be true. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. And the mystery is profound. And I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. And one of the reasons why problems creep in to our marriages or crash into our marriages is because our marriages become severed, severed from the only marriage that gives it meaning. It becomes severed from the mystery of the union and marriage that is Christ and the church. And when our marriages become severed from the mystery marriage that is Christ and the church, they lose their meaning, they lose their definition, they lose their reason to be according to the apostle Paul. And so as we come to this passage, I want you to drop with me into verse 32. Paul says that this mystery of marriage is profound. This mystery is profound. He says it's a mystery because it's not something that's immediately clear what he's about to say. The clarity of it lacks, it's blurred. We don't really see it clearly until the bridegroom comes. And when the bridegroom Jesus comes onto the scene, finally we see it clearly. A mystery is something that's blurred for a while and then is made clear later on. And we see this clearly, this mystery becomes clear when Jesus shows up on the scene. And when the bridegroom shows up on the scene, now we see what the mystery actually is that's been hidden in ages past, but it's now made clear when Jesus himself actually comes. And this mystery, according to the apostle Paul, is profound. This is the only time when the word mystery is used by the apostle Paul that he attaches the word profound to it. Multiple times in the book of Ephesians, the word mystery is used. Multiple times in the Pauline letters, the word mystery is used. But only here, only here does Paul attach the word profound to it. Here the mystery is great. Here the mystery takes our breath away. Here the mystery is of another kind. Here the mystery is something beyond what we could even conceive, its profundity is something just staggering in every way. But what is it? Well, we would be led to believe reading coming out of verse 31, that the mystery that is profound is the end of verse 31. The two shall become one flesh. The mystery is profound. And yet that's the right inclination, but that's the wrong marriage. This mystery is profound, Paul says. And I'm saying that it refers to Christ in the church. You see the mystery that Paul's talking about is the mystery that is Christ and the church, the marriage of Christ in the church, the union that exists between Christ and the church. Christ as the bridegroom and the church as his bride, that is the mystery that Christ is talking about. This mystery is profound. And I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. What refers to Christ and the church? All of it does. The mystery does refers to Christ and the church. That's the great mystery of the ages. Why is there anything at all? Why did God create it all? God created so that there might be a bride for his son. The story begins in a wedding and it ends at the wedding feast of the lamb. The whole story is that Jesus would come and he would chase the girl and get the girl and bring her home to the father. And there's this wedding feast at the end. That's why there's anything at all is because the father loved his son and provided a bride for her. That's the mystery and it's profound because that is what it is that God is doing from Genesis to Revelation, from the Alpha to the Omega, from the beginning to the end. Everything that God is doing, everything that God is doing in history is the provision of the bride for his son. And it stuns us that we've been woven into and brought into and grafted into and been made a part of this bride that is the church that is loved by the son and has been redeemed by the son and has been chased by the son. The son loves his bride and he has come for her and he has died for her and he has risen for her and he has captured her and he's bringing her home. At the end of history ends at the wedding and marriage of the lamb as the bride comes forth. In the book of Revelation, you see it is a profound mystery, but it's more than that. Genesis 2.24 also refers to Christ and the church. Verse 31, "Therefore a man shall leave his father "and mother and whole fast to his wife "and the two shall become one flesh. "The mystery is profound." And I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Church, listen, the reason why God created Adam is because first there was Christ. The reason why God created Eve is because first there was the church. And the reason why God created Adam and Eve to be wed together is because first there was Christ in the church. In other words, God's eternal purpose was that there would be Christ in the church. And when God went to create, He embedded in the creation from the very beginning a micro story, a little story whose existence from the beginning was to house the big story and to tell the big story. The reason a man leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife and the two becomes one flesh is because there is the mystery of Christ and the church. You see, this is what God has done. From the beginning, God has baked into the very fabric of creation, the saving mystery of Christ and the church into the very wedding and story and marriage of Adam and Eve. It's not, it doesn't come later. It's etched into the Genesis marriage from the very beginning. Christ and the church is found in the Genesis 2, 24 passage. That's why Adam leaves his father and mother. He didn't have any, but that's why he established it. That's why he holds fast to his wife. That's why they become one flesh is because Christ in the church was always that, you see. You see, Adam and Eve were always pointing to something more than their marriage. Marriage was always pointing to something more than it self, you see. And so God in his infinite wisdom always had Christ in the church as his purpose for the reason of his creation. And so God says, how is it that I can build the mystery into my created story? How can I tell the mystery before I show the mystery? Right? How can I tell the mystery for thousands of years and always tell the mystery before I show the mystery? And so here's what he does. I will showcase the mystery of Christ in the church because I will give marriage. That's what it is. I will give these mystery stories of little marriages that exist for the purpose of telling the bigger story of Christ and the church. That's what defines marriage. That's why marriages exist. That's why God gave them. That's why you send your sons out. That's why you give your daughters over. That's why that continues on and on. We do this so that the story of Jesus and the church will be perpetually told world without end until Jesus himself comes. And that's one of the ways in which God wants that story to be told. You see, marriage is the mystery that already anticipated the other mystery. And marriage has within it the mystery of Christ and the church and it is defined by Christ and the church. And the marriage mystery of Christ and the church is what gives meaning to the marriages that we ourselves have. And so I want us to think about that for a moment. The reason why you married according to God is so that your marriage could put on display the story of Christ and the church. So your marriage is defined by Christ and the church not by you. Your marriage is defined by Christ and the church not by culture. The meaning of your marriage is not what you get out of it. The meaning of your marriage is that it placards Christ and the church. The union of Christ and the church is what gives meaning to your marriage, a meaning that could never have from anywhere else. You see, your marriage is a sacred manifestation of the marriage of Christ and the church. It's always sacred. No matter what, we could say that marriage is a sacred short, right? You go to the movies, they have the feature presentation, that's Christ and the church. But before the feature presentation, they have these little short movies and that's what your marriage is. It's one of those little short movies. It's a sacred short, okay? And that sacred short is to tell the same story as the big story, but to do it in miniature in a shorter way that's temporary, you see. Because your marriage is temporary because it's only gonna last as long as it does because it gives way to the bigger story. Why do you think marriage doesn't last into the new heavens and the new earth? Because it's fulfilled in the Christ and the church. That's why, that's why there's always a temporary character to marriage. That's why you can remarry after someone dies, right? That's why the issues that God gives for divorce and remarriage, the grounds for that in the Bible that do exist are legitimate is because marriage is a temporary thing because it's going to give way at death. And at the end, you and I will simply be sons and daughters of God, enfolded as members of the church, married to Christ and our marriages will give way to that great marriage. And so this is the way that God decided to do it. He decided that he would build into the world millions of little marriage stories, the purposes of which were to tell the big story always, refract and tell the big story always. And you have these built throughout Ephesians five, husbands are to as Christ, right? So 523 even as Christ is the head of the church, 525 husbands love your wives as Christ, right? 529 as Christ does the church. You see the role of the husband is Christologically grounded. No Christ, no husband, it's not the other way. See, we have this, we sometimes think that God created Adam and Eve, God created marriage and then said, "Man, I think this would be a great idea if I patterned Christ in the church after Adam and Eve." No, God's plan is Christ in the church. And when he went to create, he said, "I'm going to take this eternal love story and I'm going to put it in creation." And those little love stories from the beginning are going to tell the bigger love story. That's the reason why he created marriage. You see, not the other way around. We have it flipped around. We think that we're the antitype and that Christ's marriage to the church is the type. That's not true, okay? That's not true. Christ's marriage to the church is the fulfillment and the antitype. We're the types, okay? We're the little stories, he's the big story. And so so husbands as Christ and so wives as the church, right, verse 24 says for the wives, your role is ecclesiologically grounded, right? Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives. And so notice that the grounding for the roles, and I'm not going to preach the roles today, okay? What I'm trying to show you is that the grounding for the roles are grounding in something that is transcendent, okay? And that's the relationship of Christ in the church. And so that's why we need the vision of Christ and the church because every single marriage exists to tell that story, not its own story, okay? Not its own story. And so that's where we run, that's where we bump up into the problems is we have these competing narratives that happen, right? We want our marriage to tell a certain story. And that story competes with the fact that the Bible has already established the story that our marriages are supposed to tell. And that is the story of Christ in the church. That's already been given for us, okay? Marriage is a dramaturgy. That's a way for you to think about it. Marriage is a dramaturgy. What do we mean by that? Well, here's what we mean by that. Marriage, in marriage, we dramatically live out and put on display in the liturgies and stories and scenes of our married life, the script of Christ in the church. That's it. The scenes of our married life, the stories of our married life, the liturgies of our married life, we look to the script of Christ in the church. That's what we do. We look to that script. Here's the script of Christ in the church, right? And we follow that script in our married lives. That's an authoritative script for how we live our married lives, all right? So that should be being trained in our children. It should be being embodying in our lives. Our script must be acted out. We look to the script that God gives Christ in the church and that script becomes the script for our married lives. The chief end of your marriage is not your satisfaction. The chief end of your marriage is not your happiness. The chief end of your marriage is not what you want and not what you planned and not what your dreams are and not your personal fulfillment. If you put the freight of any of those on your marriage, you will crush your mate and you will be hopelessly sad. The chief end of marriage is to tell the story of Christ in the church faithfully. That's it. And when you do that, guess what gets thrown in? All the other stuff. All the other stuff you think you need to have gets thrown in. But if you aim for that other stuff, you lose that. You lose that stuff. But you aim for telling the story of Christ in the church and God will give you all the sprinkles on your doughnut in your marriage. But you aim for the sprinkles and you're not gonna get the doughnut. And so the issue is this. The question that your marriage should be trying to answer at every moment is this. Are we in this season of our married life aiming to faithfully show Christ and the church off? Are we at this season of our married life trying to put the story of Jesus and the church on display? That's the question that should be being asked at every moment in your married life. That is what your marriage is for. That's what you should be asking. And that's the only question that ever needs to be asked because if that question is answered, all the other things line up. All the other things line up. But if you don't answer that question and you're like, I'm not getting this out of my marriage, I'm not getting that out of it. It's not me, get, get, get, get. Guess what? You're gonna get, get, get, get, get. Because you're asking the wrong question, you see. You should be asking, when you come together for your family marital meetings, right? The question on the table should be, how can our family glorify Christ through telling the story of Jesus and the church? Where do we need to repent? Where do we need to forgive? Where do we need to shore up? Because if you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these other things will be added to you, Jesus said. So why should a man leave his father and mother and whole fast to his wife so they become one flesh? I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church. That's what we're missing in our, the imaginary, the modern imagination of the church is missing this. So our marriages are in the situation they're in. You see church inside the wardrobe of verse 31 is the Narnia of verse 32. Right? There's more in this wardrobe of our marriages than coats and jackets. In the wardrobe of your marriage, it should lead to the Narnia of Christ and the church. That's just the way it should go. And you know, we need a reinvigoration of our marital imaginations. We need to let the Bible read and re-script our marriages because it's often your marriage that competes with your marriage. Because your marriage is to be a story of Christ and the church, but your actual marriage competes with that. And you need to let the Bible read your own marriage and re-script your own marriage because you know what? Your marriage is not yours. Your marriage is not yours, it never was. On your wedding day, your marriage was mistreated into Christ and the church and at the cross, your marriage was enfolded into Christ and the church. And so the only question is, what are you doing with his marriage? Cause it's not yours. It's not yours. Right? And so the mystery is following his script and showing the mystery. You know, I've been pastoring for a long time, a long time, and been pastoring marriages for a long time. And you know what? I really never heard in a pastoral context when we were really in the grip of things. I've never heard a man or a woman look me in the face and passionately say this. I just want my marriage to glorify and honor Christ and the church no matter what it costs me. I've never heard a person break to that point. And that's why the marriage breaks because we don't break to that point. That's what happens. Now sometimes one person might break to that point and the other person doesn't and that's why the marriage breaks. It's not always on the two people, right? That's why Jesus said, because of the hardest of your heart, that's why there's a provision for divorce and that's why there's a provision for your marriage because that does happen and God wants people to be able to glorify the Lord in the second mountains. That does actually happen. And so let me round this out and offer some hope, okay? So the first is this, the church needs to restore the reality that the only hope that we have for our marriages to answer the reason why they were created is if every marriage in the church actually begins to take seriously that the call of your marriage and the end of your marriage is to faithfully tell the story of Christ in the church and that you begin to seek that by grace and forgiveness earnestly in your home. If that happens, the church will actually begin to show itself off in the right kind of way like we should when it comes to our marriages and you have to come to that place as a home yourself. You have to break to that place yourself. Every husband in this room and every wife in this room needs to break to that place to yourself. That whatever you're holding out for and whatever original circumstance that you were in at the beginning when I read all those situations that you can be in, whatever situation you find your marriage in, it's not going to change until you break to this point. That the reason why our marriage exists is to tell the mystery of Christ in the church. And when you come to that place, then you've turned the corner. Let me give a couple of implications that fall out of this, okay? The first is this, Christ. This is just honest, earthy stuff, okay? Christ is married to the small C Catholic church, yeah? Which has had many iterations in history. One church, I'm not counting the Old Testament right now, just leave the Old Testament aside, I'm not going to deal with that. Just many iterations since the Old Testament, all right? So Jesus says love the apostolic church with all of its wards and then it became the early church. Then the early church became the split between East and West. And then it became the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern church. Then we had the Reformation, he loved that church. And then we had the Baptist and Jesus even loves the Baptists. I do too. And then we had the Great Awakening and then we had the Second Great Awakening and then we had evangelicalism and now we've had the Confused Church. In other words, in the last 2000 years, the one small C Catholic church has been like all these different kinds of churches and Jesus has loved this one bride all the way through. Listen church, the same is going to be true of your marriage. If you stay married long enough, you will come to find out that the one person that you married to is going to be five to eight strangers in that time period. That one person you married is not going to be the person that you married. Throughout a lifetime, because of time and the beating of life, you're going to change and they're going to change and there can change a lot over the years and you cannot know ahead of time. You cannot know on the day you get married. You cannot know ahead of time, the physical, spiritual, social and mental changes that are coming to the person that you are saying I do too. You don't know, you can't know. God doesn't tell you in advance. You're not going to know who your spouse is until you get to that moment. You won't know what your spouse is at the 10 year mark until you get to year 10. You won't know until you get to year 30. You won't know that until you get there, okay? You are going to have to go through seasons of life in which you will have to learn to love the person you married differently and all over again. Mrs. Deutsch is coming up on 34 years of marriage to a difficult man. (audience laughing) Exactly. In 34 years, she's been married to 34 different men. Every June 2nd, a stranger shows up. She is a no, she's going to get the guy who's going to gain 100 pounds that year who's losing 100 pounds that year. She doesn't know if she's going to get fezzy wig or Mr. Depresso. She doesn't know. I mean, down in El Rio, it's 51 dates every year for us. Why is she still here? Because that's what the promise is for. Because she said I do. Because she stands behind her word to me. Her vows to me. On July 2nd, 2013, we lost everything. Overnight, everything in our life of 20 years was gone. I had, we had nothing. Nothing. Everyone but our family had abandoned us. Everything was gone. And our anniversary was in four days. And on our anniversary, she made me take us out to the place where I asked her to marry me. And she said to me in the very spot I asked her to marry me a couple of decades before, she said, "This is as bad as it can get." But I said, "For better or for worse?" And David, this is for worse, for worse, for worse. And I'm not going anywhere. I gave you my word. And I will stand with you. You see, we don't bend our spouse to fit the size of a one year love. Over the years, we break ourselves to learn to love the one that he gives us, it's going to change throughout our lives. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to be broken over and over again and learn to bend your love to the changes that's going to happen to the person that you said, "Yes, I do too." I'm not talking about dealing with grounds for divorce issues. I'm not talking about that. I'm fighting today for the 98% of you that will never have grounds for divorce, but your marriage is going to go sour and you're going to want it. And I'm telling you now, no, no. I'm telling you now, break. Let yourself be broken, bend the love to the person that you're actually married to and what they need and ride the lightning. Ride the lightning, you say. Bonhoeffer, on the sermon from prison, a marriage sermon from, wedding sermon from prison, said, "It is not love that carries the marriage, it is marriage that carries the love." It's the marriage that carries the love, 'cause love is this. But the marriage stays and it allows it to be bent, you see. Second implication, let's remember that it was two young idiots that got married back in the day. Listen, you all got to laugh. You were idiots when you got married, all right? And let's remember this, that you are not easy to live with. And let's remember this, the idol of expectation of perfect obedience has to go, right? What were you thinking? What were you thinking when you put two neurotic, selfish, immature people together and you think we're gonna become angels? Come on, people. Love does not answer that, all right? Every marriage is a covenant partnership of two private people with good intentions and zero understanding of how to deliver, right? So what is necessary? Marriage lives by 70 times seven, right? You're gonna have to forgive a million times. Forgiveness is gonna have to be the oil that keeps your marriage going because in order to tell the story of Christ in the church, you're going to have to oil your marriage with ready forgiveness, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of times, you see. Because that's, and here, this is what I'm talking about. The kind of forgiveness that doesn't litigate the past. How much of your marriage has spent litigating the past? That's not forgiveness. Does Jesus litigate your past when He forgives you? He covers it and He opens a new future for you. That's what happens in marriage when we forgive. We cover and we open a new future for our mates. We cover the sin and we open a new future for our marriage and we do it on time and time and time again because we forgive the inexcusable and our mates because God has forgiven the inexcusable in us. We take what we've received and we give it 70 times, seven, you see, that's what we do. That's the only way this whole thing works. And guess what? That's what you learn from the script of the church. That's why you need the ancient dirt of the liturgy in your life. When you come into church every Sunday, what happens? Jesus does for you what you must do for one another. He forgives you. That's the declaration and absolution of forgiveness in the liturgy is with the most important part besides communion because communion is Christ communing with you forgiven. And that script sets the script for your marriage, forgiveness and communion. So this script, scripts your marriage. You see, you go through this script and then you take it home and you do it in your home a thousand times. You come back and you get scripted here and you take it home and you do it a thousand times. That's the only way this works. So we're not, when you think of Christ in the church, don't be thinking of angel wings. Be thinking of dirt and blood, man. Be thinking of this liturgy that nourishes and cleanses and cherishes which we receive every week. That's earthy, that has a cross at the center of it and nails and blood and scars. That's what's at the center of this whole thing. And that's what Christ did for us. And that's the story that we bring into our marriages. You see, our marriages are going to be stories of martyrdom. They live by martyrdom. That's how they live. They thrive. You say, well, how does that even work? They live by martyrdom because when you die, Christ raises things. That's why. And so perpetual death skew it to perpetual resurrections, you see. And so the ancient dirt of the church and its liturgical life then scripts us to do this thing of telling the story of Christ in the church because we're retold the story of Christ in the church and we go through it as the bride. Every week and I bring this around to a close. You don't have to have all this story lined up. You don't have to have a non-wrecked marriage. Your marriage can be whatever condition it's in. And you're welcome at solely church. What I want solely church to be is a healthy place for people who find their marriages in whatever condition that they are in, in the marital madness. I want solely church to be a place where wherever your marriage is, wherever you're at in a marriage situation, listen. This is a place for healing. This is a place for help. This is a place for hope. This is a place for gospel. This is a place for grace. I want solely church to be a place where you don't have to lie about your troubles. You don't have to lie about your hardships. You don't have to lie about your messes. That you could come here with whatever baggage and wreckage you have, and we will love you through them. We will enter the darkness with you. We will come when you call. We will listen to your hurt. We will guide you into truth and light. We will stay there for the long haul. We will go with you through it all, and we will not abandon you. We will not leave you. We will not hide from your brokenness. We will cry with you. We will fight for you. We will fight with you and then buy you a pizza and a beer. We will not abandon you. We will wash your feet. We will stay with you in the fight so that all of our marriages at least begin to hedge in the direction that they need to be going. This is a church in which this sermon is not about arrival. This is a sermon in which what is put before us is where we need to be going. And wherever you are at on the going, this is a church for you to find a place of grace and help to get there, no matter where you're at on the place, because we as a part of the bride ourselves are the receivers of that from the Lord Jesus Christ. There is not one marriage in this room that doesn't need the grace of Christ. There is not one pastor, deacon, husband, man, woman, child in this room that does not need the grace of Christ for certain parts of our lives that have wreckage in them. This is not a pointing of the finger at. This is a clarion call for what our marriages need to aim towards because of what they are and a place for us to find hope because of what they're not because of the greatness of the gospel. So if you find yourself not where the marriage is supposed to be, this is the place for you. This is the church for you, because we want to be that kind of church for you because we want to be faithful to Christ and faithful to the scriptures and faithful to wherever you are at. Lord Jesus, I pray that you would be glorified that our marriages would be renewed and reformed, that those in wrecked situations would be comforted and helped, that those in situations that need repentance and renewal would find it, that those in hurting situations, Lord, would just find a peace that passes all understanding for those marriages that are just off the track a little bit that they would be put back on the track some, for all of us, Lord, to look one another in the face and say, we need today to know that the question that we are asking is, are we seeking to put on display Christ in the church? And today we anticipate that you will feed us at this table because we are your bride and you are not ashamed of us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.