Ralph's Prostate Surgery

6/13

The report from the Kaiser oncology lab is that the cancer involved about 10% of my prostate and there are no signs that it has spread.  This is great news.  The next steps will be to get a PSA test in a month to confirm that there is no indications that cancer cells might still be present.  Periodic testing will continue for five years.  With my recovery from the surgery proceeding apace, there is no need for me to make further updates here.  Thank you for all your prayers - God has answered them as we had hoped.

6/12

I'm mobile and have picked up many of the tasks I did before (including vacuuming our swimming pool).  Now it's time for a long discipline of waiting until it's OK for me to lift heavier weights and exercising to regain urinary continence.  Tomorrow I get word from my doctor on whether they have any indications that further treatment is required.

6/10

The fluid stopped leaking last night, so I have been free to move around, which has been very nice.  Disciplines which I had to lay down because of my limited mobility I'm now able to pick up again, though perhaps with a little less energy.   While it would be rash to assume that new issues won't emerge, I'm hopeful that we've turned a corner and that life will look a little more normal going forward.

6/9

Sorry for missing updates.  According to the ER doctor, the leakage I was concerned about is a feature, not a bug. The liquid is part of the healing process, and needs to drain to avoid infection.  So I cover the drainage points with a towel to keep from soaking my clothes and spend most of my time lying down to reduce the amount liquid that comes out.  One location that was draining has stopped, but another opened up.  My hope is that all of the drainage stops soon, but I am finding good things to do while lying on the couch. 

6/7

My catheter was removed, as were most of the staples (we overlooked two of them). I was able to drive home,  which was nice, but once I got home a tiny incision started leaking a lot of fluid. This has happened previously,  and we were able to control it, but this time we couldn't stop it unless I was lying down, so we're back in the ER to get it closed and the two missed staples removed. 

6/5

Another call to Kaiser for a minor problem that resolved itself on its own.  Healing continues, and my energy level in increasing.

I was asked if this surgery is the end of my cancer treatment, or whether chemo or some other treatment may still be necessary.  The answer is "We don't know yet."  The surgeon accomplished what he wanted in removing the prostate and taking biopsies of a couple of surrounding lymph nodes and he observed no other damage resulting from the cancer.  He has sent the biopsies to the oncology lab and I have an appointment with him later next week to learn what the lab has found.  If they find additional cancer then a treatment plan will be decided on.  If not, we watch to see if any PSA appears in my bloodstream.  If it does, then the cancer is there, if not, we take no other action.

6/4

The worries that sent me to the ER last night proved to be unnecessary.  The doctors are happy with my progress. 

6/3

Update: I spoke too soon.  Unexpected swelling and bruising have me in the ER. Waiting to see what the doctor says. 

Overall things are on an upward path.  There's evidence of healing, Ralph's intestines appear to be returning to normal function, sleeping and sitting are pretty normal, and the remaining issues seem fairly small.  He was able to do some small chores around the house and took a ten minute walk in the neighborhood.  The schedule is to have the catheter removed on Friday, which should be fine unless something else surfaces between now and then.

6/2

Intestinal cramping became worse.  In the late afternoon another call to Kaiser got a resolution to the problem - it made a huge difference.

6/1

Ralph is getting good sleep now, but it's hard to be comfortable once awake.  Sitting and lying down are all hard; standing and walking are the best.  Intestinal cramping became a problem in the afternoon.  A call to a Kaiser nurse on-call provided some help.

5/31

Today has been a lot tougher. We went to the ER early this morning (around 5AM) because Ralph's catheter was blocked. It was definitely leaking around the insertion point. It got unblocked on our way to the ER, but they checked him our, rehydrated him, and did some blood tests. The doctor was pretty certain he doesn't have an infection, so he could stop taking the risky antibiotic. But it has been hard for him to get comfortable all day, and there continues to be leakage, which is a big nuisance if nothing else. We are both pretty tired, and are praying that Ralph can sleep better tonight and not have too much leakage. He still hasn't really had any pain around the incisions - we expected that more than catheter issues!

5/30

Queasiness is subsiding and Ralph was able to walk downstairs unassisted.

This morning Ralph was showing slight signs of infection around the catheter insertion point, so we went into urgent care. (Amazing blessing that we found a parking space, got checked in, and called into a room all within 20 minutes! Unlike a lot of urgent care stories we have heard.) The doctor prescribed a strong antibiotic - Ciprofloxasin - which can have some pretty severe side effects. Please pray that Ralph doesn't experience any of those. This evening he has been having some painful muscle spasms (not one of the listed side effects of the antibiotic). They may be a result of an imbalance in salts, etc. so he's having some Gatorade. Thanks for your continued prayers.

5/29

Made it to the hospital on time.  Pre-op went smoothly except that the nurse jabbed two needles in very badly and nearly put Ralph into shock from the pain.  They handled it well though.  The nurse was impressed that Ralph was not taking any medications; at age 68 this is apparently rare.  He has no recollection of the operating room.  The procedure went well and he was back home by about 4 pm.  He required no pain medications and was able to walk upstairs and around the bedroom while pushing an office chair for stability.  Sleep was somewhat disturbed by the presence of the catheter, but in general it was an uneventful night.

Wedding message - Craig and Becky

Craig and Becky, it's been quite an adventure getting to this day, hasn't it.  There were moments when it looked like you'd never make, but by the grace of God you're here.  Standing before this group of family and friends, before God Himself, and making a new thing.  Making a family.  Pledging your vows before each other, making promises of fidelity and generosity, setting out on a path together that, by God's grace, will last many, many years - until one of you passes into glory.

Adventures are what our life is about as believers.  Day by day, hour by hour, we are called to live this great adventure that is the discovery of God's plan for our lives and the demonstration that He is faithful in enabling us to live out that plan.  And sometimes that's a challenging test.  There were times when you had to walk entirely by faith, not knowing if God was going to open the doors and provide what you needed, but knowing that you had to walk in obedience and trust Him to be faithful.

As I watched you over these months, I was reminded of the story of Esther.  She was a Jewish girl who became queen of Persia when her people were in exile there.  One day she learned from her uncle Mordecai of a plot to destroy the Jewish people.  Mordecai urged her to go to the king to stop the plot, but Esther knew that the penalty for going uninvited to the king could be death.  But she mustered up her courage, asked for prayer and went to the king, who received her, listened to her request, and took the needed action to save her people.

This is but one of many examples throughout the Bible of how our walk of faith requires courage.  Abraham laying his son Isaac as a sacrifice on the altar, Moses going before the king of Egypt to seek the release of his people, Gideon leading an army of 300 against a horde of invaders, David refusing to kill King Saul even though Saul had repeatedly tried to take his life, and many more.  All of these people acted out of a conviction that God's way was the right way and that even though the stakes were enormous, it was worth following Him regardless.  

And as God proved faithful with these people, so He has with you.  As you stepped out believing that He would be faithful, God has overcome all the barriers that stood between you and this day.

Your need for faith and courage doesn't end today, either.  It takes both faith and courage to make these huge promises you'll be making.  "For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health…" - what enormous promises these are.  They are far too large for sinful human beings to make on their own.  To make and to stake yourself on these promises requires that God Himself be a part of the promises, enabling you to keep them and to trust your spouse to keep them as well.

But the issue is even bigger than that, as is revealed for us in Ephesians 5:22-33, where we read:

Wives, submit to your own 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 might 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, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Loving Becky as Christ loved the church - Craig, that means a day by day laying down of your life in order to help her become as beautiful as God intends.  Submitting to Craig as the church to Christ - Becky, that means trusting his leadership and seeking to follow him as well as you can, however scary that may be.  

What an overwhelming standard God is presenting here to sinful human beings!  It is as far beyond us as God Himself is beyond us.  And yet it is God Himself who will work in you to make you increasingly able to do exactly what He commands.  As the Holy Spirit works in your lives to shape them after the likeness of Jesus you will learn how to love and serve, how to follow and obey, like Jesus did.

And you will find that it is worth it.  We were made for this.  Adam discovered this in the garden of Eden, as we read in Genesis 2:18-25.

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.

But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 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. Then the man said,

“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.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

 In a world that God had pronounced "very good," there was one thing that was not good.  It was not good that man should be alone.  So God sent Adam to name all the animals, and in the process Adam too discovered that it was not good; that all the animals had their mate but Adam was alone.  Then God made Eve from Adam, and, in the world's first wedding ceremony, he presented her to Adam, just as Bill here presented Becky to Craig.  And Adam responds "At last!"  "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh."  This is the one whom I knew all along that I needed but never had.  Just as Eve was made for Adam, so Adam was made for Eve, and the world could not truly be very good until they had each other.

But there's more.  While we were made for each other, to be companions and to have families and to be fruitful and multiply, God intended much more from us than just that.  As we saw in the Ephesians 5 passage, God intends for us to be an image of the relationship of Christ and the church to a watching world.  Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church so that the world can look at husbands and say, "so that's what Jesus is like."  Wives are to submit to their husbands as the church is to Christ so the world can look at wives and say, "so that's what it's like to follow Jesus."The first wedding ceremony was also the first gospel proclamation.  As God brings Eve to Adam, He says to all future generations, "this is what I am like and what you are to be like."  God created us in His image, male and female so that we would have the unimaginable privilege of showing forth a bit of His nature and glory as we humbly and faithfully live out married lives with each other.

This is why it we are not free to remake marriage according to our own whims.  It is because Christ will not leave his church for someone else that we must not divorce our spouse.  It is because the church must not go after other gods that we may not be unfaithful to our spouse.  And it is because there are not two Christs or two churches bound together that men may not marry men, nor women marry women.

To deface marriage like this is like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa and comes near to blasphemy, for it spoils the portrait of Himself that God intends for marriage to be.  But a faithful marriage between a man and a woman is a true image of the character of God Himself and shows to the world what it means for Christ to give Himself to his church and for the church to follow Christ.

And there's more.  God gave us marriage to teach us about heaven.  In Revelation 21:1-4, we are caught up into a vision of the end of the world and the beginning of heaven.  There we read:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

When God was choosing an image to convey the beauty and joy that will characterize heaven, he chose the image of a bride.  Becky, as you came down the aisle today, you were enacting a little representation of God's people, cleansed and made holy, coming to Him to dwell with him forever.  Craig, as you received Becky, so God will receive His people forever in the life to come.  Heaven is not bored angels sitting on clouds strumming harps - if anything that's more like hell.  Heaven is much more like this moment.  The joy the two of you feel as you approach marriage together is a small hint of that immense delight that God will feel in His people, and we in Him, on the day when all things are made new and God wipes away every tear.

So, Craig and Becky, you have begun an enormous undertaking.  You are to love and submit, to serve and delight in each other in such a way as to provide a watching and skeptical world a true picture of who God is, how He relates to us and how He wants us to relate to Him.  It's a humanly impossible task.  But if you approach it with humility and lean on Jesus every step of the way, He will enable you to do all that He commands, and will make your marriage something of supernatural beauty.  We will pray for your every success and your abundant delight, and as God enables, we will help you to live out a life together that glorifies God and brings you lasting joy.

Wedding message - Will and Amanda

The message makes references to the following Bible passages: 1 John 1:4-7, Philippians 2:5-11, Psalm 121.  Their text is at the bottom of the message.

 Will and Amanda, it's been a long time coming, but you're finally here.  Standing before this group of family and friends, before God Himself, and making a new thing.  Making a family.  Pledging your vows before each other, making promises of fidelity and generosity, setting out on a path together that, by God's grace, will last many, many years - until one of you passes into glory.

This is big.  You've planned and prayed and looked forward with anticipation to this day because it's huge.  It's one of the biggest things you'll ever do in your life.  And God agrees with you that it's big.  What you are doing here today, as we've said already, is creating a little picture of what it looks like for the Creator of the Universe to be united with the people He has made who are his Church.  This is so big that we really don't have words to describe it.  Will and Amanda, today you are creating a picture of the biggest thing that will ever happen in human history.

That's one of the reasons you make the promises you are about to make.  We promise love, faithfulness, patience and so much else to our spouses in marriage because that's what it takes to make a true picture of God's love, faithfulness and patience towards his people.  And that's what makes things like divorce and adultery so terrible; not only do they violate the promises we make to each other at weddings, but they ruin the picture of Christ and his Church that we are making when we get married.

Is divorce OK?  Only if it's OK for Christ to divorce His church.  Is adultery OK?  Only if it's OK for the church to turn away from Jesus to follow after other gods.  When we look at it in this light, we can see that abuse of marriage is something near to blasphemy, because it tells lies about God and about His relationship to His people.

So, Will and Amanda, one of the things we are doing today is telling the truth about God and His relationship to His people.  And the first truth to emphasize is that the foundation of that relationship is love.  That's what we see in 1 John 4:7-12, the first passage that you selected to be read was read.  God is love.  The love you have for each other is founded on His love, and you love each other only because He has made you able to do it.

Love motivated God to send His Son to earth to pay the price for our sin and to reconcile us to Himself in his death on the cross.  Love enables Him to embrace us when we turn from our sins and make Jesus Lord of our lives.  And love is what has Him preparing the biggest wedding feast of all time for His church in the day that Jesus comes again and calls us to Himself.  Any portrayal of God must have love as its foundation, and so your marriage, founded on your love for each other, truly shows us a miniature representation of God's vast and passionate love for us, His people.

But to show us God's love properly, not just any love will do.  So much of what we call love these days is no more than an agreement that if you scratch my back I'll scratch yours.  "So long as you meet my needs, titillate me, and make me feel special I'll love you, but when that stops it's over."  This is no model of God's love for us and it's no foundation for a stable marriage.

The love that God shows us, and that you will need to show each other in order for your marriage to thrive, is described for us in Philippians 2:5-11, the second of the passages that was read.  This is an entirely different sort of love than most of us are able to show each other most of the time.  It's a love that gives up its rights, and accepts suffering and humiliation if that's what it takes for the beloved to become the kind of person that he or she is meant to be.

As we see in this passage, Jesus has rights.  He's the incarnate Son of God, the One who dwells in heaven with the Father, who with the Father created everything that ever has been or will be.  He deserves worship, honor, praise, obedience and every other good thing we could possibly give him.  But instead of demanding his rights, he set them aside and became one of us, being born in an animal's feeding trough, growing up as a poor man in a poor village, serving people who didn't deserve it and ultimately dying an agonizing and humiliating death for the good of people who hated him.  This is the kind of love God has for us and this is the kind of love you are called to have for each other.

Hopefully neither of you will have to suffer a humiliating death for the good of the other.  But you will almost certainly find that there are times when you not getting the good that you expect from the other person.  The other person may not be doing a fair share of the chores or giving you the kind of attention you had hoped for.  Or the person may have needs that require more from you than you want to give.  You may disagree on how to spend your money or time.  All of these issues and more are likely to surface in a marriage at some point.  The question is what you will do about them if they surface in your marriage. 

If you are modeling the love that Christ has for his Church as described in this passage, you will not hang onto your rights at the expense of your spouse.  Instead you will set aside the claims you have on your beloved, humble yourself by taking the form of a servant, and become obedient, even if it feels like you are dying as a result.  You will do this, trusting that, as God raised Jesus from death to glory, He will also raise you to life, as you follow in Jesus' ways.

But how on earth does someone love in such a sacrificial way?  The answer is given to us in Psalm 121, the third of the readings you chose for today.  You lift up your eyes to the hills and seek your help from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.  Nothing less will do.  If you cannot draw on the Lord's help to love your spouse, then you will not be able to model the Lord's love for your spouse.

If you turn to the Lord for help, you will always find Him.  The Lord will not doze off, or be away on a business trip.  He will not lose track of the issues in your life or be caught off guard if something painful occurs.  There's no way you will ever hear God say "whoops, I didn't expect that to happen!"  The Lord will be your keeper, and the keeper of your marriage, as long as you both shall live, and nothing will come your way that He cannot make beautiful.

But how do we do this in real life?  How do we, in the midst of the challenges we will face in our lives together, grab hold of God's power to overcome them?  We do it the way Jesus did, as we are told in Hebrews 12:1-2.

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

To overcome the challenges you will face, like Jesus, you will need to look to the joy set before you and draw strength from that anticipation to run the race with endurance.

That's what you did as you prepared for this day.  It was hard work to plan the ceremony, buy the supplies, and recruit people who would be do everything that needed to be done.  But in the midst of all the challenges, you could remember the joy set before you, the joy of this day, and draw strength from your anticipation to do what needed to be done to make it happen.

In the same way, the Lord will strengthen you to love your spouse as Christ loved the church if you consider the joys set before you.  There is joy coming tonight.  In the morning there will be the joy of waking up next to each other and realizing that you're finally married.  In the days to come there will be joy as milestones are achieved and successes are shared.  It won't often be as amazing as the joy you have today, but joy doesn't always need fireworks in order to be rich and strong.  Joy can come in the ordinary things of life and even in the trials, if you defend and cultivate your joy.

One way to do this is by cultivating gratitude.  Rather than listening to the world tell you about all the things you're missing out on, remember the good things you have and say thanks to God and to your spouse for what they have done to make those good things possible.  Gratitude is one of the best antidotes to joylessness there is. The more frequently and sincerely you can say thanks, the easier it will be to be joyful even in the midst of tough times, and the more joy you will give to your spouse as well.

And keep looking for ways to encourage each other.  That can mean doing something special for the other person to enjoy, or it can be lifting a burden that the other person is struggling to carry.  Each time you do this, you start the gratitude cycle all over again, bringing more joy into your marriage.

Finally, remember the big joy that is set before you, the joy of heaven.  If you trust your lives into Jesus' hands and obediently follow in his ways, in the end he will welcome you into heaven with the words "Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master."  Not only will this joy be far greater and more enduring than any joy we have ever known before, the Bible assures us in 2 Corinthians 7:14 that this joy will make even the worst suffering in this life look like a fleck of ocean spray in comparison to the ocean itself.  If you let this vision of the transcendent joy of heaven be the secure foundation of your love for each other, your love will truly never fail.

Will and Amanda, as you cultivate joy in your marriage, you will make it easier to love each other with Christ-like love and your marriage will look more and more like the relationship of Christ and his Church.  This is God's intent for your marriage, and, to the extent that you succeed in it, you will glorify him and delight each other.  Go for it!  We'll pray for you, encourage you and support you however we can.  May God give you every success in this lovely endeavor.

1 John 4:7-12

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.

Philippians 2:5-11

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Psalm 121

A Song of Ascents.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

2 My help comes from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot be moved;

he who keeps you will not slumber.

4 Behold, he who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;

the Lord is your shade on your right hand.

6 The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

8 The Lord will keep

your going out and your coming in

from this time forth and forevermore.

Wedding message: Geoff and Elizabeth

This message makes reference to the hymn "The Solid Rock" by Edward Mote and the Bible passage Philippians 2:5-11.  The text these passages can be found at the end of the message.

Geoff and Elizabeth, you’ve made it.  You’re finally here.  It’s been an amazing road you’ve traveled together to get to this place, with moments of great joy and moments also of considerable struggle.  As you’ve discovered, being engaged can be harder than it looks.  But that’s good preparation for marriage, which also can be harder than it looks.  However I don’t think that this comes as a surprise to you.

In your choice of hymn and Scripture reading, you’ve made it clear that you’re aware that there are challenges ahead.  The hymn “The Solid Rock” speaks of stormy gales, darkness, and a whelming flood; not things your “happily ever after” Disney prince and princess would be expecting.  And the passage out of Philippians talks about emptying oneself, becoming like a servant, being obedient through the cruel suffering of crucifixion and finally dying a painful death.  When I’ve counseled people who were struggling with life circumstances I’ve sometimes suggested that, when all else fails, they should consider lowering their expectations, but I may not have to do that with you, because in some ways your expectations are already as low as they can go.

Some would say that this is an awfully depressing way to approach marriage, and if that’s the best you could look forward to, then it might be better not to get married.  But singleness can be hard too.  Life itself is hard.  We are mortal, fallible sinners and we live among mortal, fallible sinners so we have to expect troubles in life.  We can’t avoid them simply by closing our eyes and sticking our fingers in our ears and refusing to see or hear the truth.

So the question before you is not “how can we avoid suffering in our marriage?” because that’s impossible, but “how can we live together in a way that glorifies of God and blesses each other in a world that is indelibly marked by suffering?”  To that question, the hymn and Scripture passage that you’ve chosen point us towards the answer.

The hymn “The Solid Rock” affirms that Jesus’ blood and righteousness are our hope, that He provides a secure hold for our anchor when the storm rages around us and that His covenant and blood sustain us when all else is being swept away in a great flood.  It repeatedly declares that Christ is the solid Rock on which we stand and that on Him we can rest securely even in the face of great struggle and loss.  If this is indeed the case, that Christ is such a solid Rock and on Him you are securely anchored, then you have the resources to face whatever trials you may face in the years to come.  

But what makes Christ such a secure Rock?  How can a Jewish teacher who lived two thousand years ago protect us against the trials of illness, heartache and loss that we could encounter in the years to come?  The answer to that is given in the Bible passage that was read to us from the book of Philippians.  Jesus Christ is a secure Rock in a tumultuous world because He didn’t stay dead.

After the religious and political powers of the day had done all that they could do, whipping, beating and finally crucifying Him, His body was laid in a tomb, behind a massive stone, under military guard and it was over.  Or at least so one would have thought.  But a few days later, the stone was moved, the body was no longer in the grave, and Jesus walked among His disciples, teaching them, eating breakfast with them, and commissioning them to tell His story to the world.  Then God raised Jesus up to heaven, where He sits until He comes again to judge the earth.  On that day you and I and everyone who sits here and everyone who has ever lived will bow before Him, for there will be no greater power in all the universe than Jesus.

All this was possible because this Jesus Christ who was raised from death is the Son of God.  He existed before all creation and through Him the universe was made.  He who made the universe and will one day publicly rule it all has all the power that could ever be needed to securely protect us in the midst of any trials we could ever encounter.  Nothing and no one could be a more solid Rock on which to stand than He.

But power isn’t enough to meet our needs.  There are plenty of powerful people in the world, and they typically don’t do us much good.  The people with lots of money or influence move in other circles than we do, and they rarely take note of us, let alone have compassion on us in the midst of our struggles.  How could we expect God, who dwells in heaven, for whom the universe is a small thing, to take note of us or care for us when we hurt?

But Jesus, though He was of the form of God, who lived in heaven with God the Father from the beginning, didn’t insist on moving in His own circle, avoiding motley people like us.  He emptied himself of His splendor, and became small like us.  He was born, not in a palace, not in a clean sterile hospital room, but in a manger with flies that smelled of animals.  He was poor, and walked among poor people, and cared for them, healing them, feeding them, teaching them.  And Jesus suffered like us, enduring hunger, scorn, ridicule, cruel pain and finally death.  This Jesus, who is King of creation, was also once one of us, and He knows what we suffer, and He cares about it.

This is the Solid Rock on which we stand, on the mighty, compassionate, humble Lord Jesus Christ.  And we are called to be like Him, to have the same kind of mind that He had.  One that is willing to lay aside our own rights, privileges and status and endure suffering and hardship for the sake of others.  All of us who are believers are called to this path, but this passage as a particular application to you, Geoff, as you become Elizabeth’s husband.

In Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.  You, Geoff, are specifically called to love Elizabeth with the attitude of Christ, laying down your prerogatives, walking alongside her, and caring for her whatever the cost.  Paul tells us that Christ did loved His people this way “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.”  Jesus endured all the suffering and finally death for a purpose, to make his people clean and beautiful, and He is your role model, Geoff.  Your purpose in serving Elizabeth should be to help her become as beautiful as God intends for her to be.

In the same passage, Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands as Christ to the church.  This is hard for us to hear today, because the word submit has become so toxic; it sounds demeaning and abusive to ask a woman to submit to her husband, but this is not at all what Paul has in mind.  We might come closer to Paul’s meaning if we think of two really good swing dancers on the floor.  The man leads the woman, not for his own glory, but for hers, to make her look good.  She follows his lead not because she has been coerced into submission, but because she knows that he intends for her to look good.  He’s placing his strength at her service so she can do what would otherwise be impossible.  The woman submits to the man’s leadership throughout the dance because she knows that by doing so she will look as good as she possibly can, and the man leads the woman as he does for exactly the same reason.

Elizabeth, this is your role in marriage.  In your dance with Geoff, you are to follow his lead, as he strives to give himself for you as Christ did for the church.  And as swing dancers do not passively wait for their follower’s lead, you are not to passively wait on Geoff.  Rather you must pour yourself into the dance, giving everything you have into making the dance a beautiful thing, even as he gives everything he has for your sake.  As Geoff seeks to make you beautiful, you must seek with all your heart to receive what he has to give, and to use it to be as beautiful as God intends for you to be.

This is hard work.  Living a Christ-like, God honoring marriage is as difficult an undertaking as anything in life.  We are not perfect dancers.  We’ll step on each other’s toes, miss our steps, get discouraged and be tempted to take over the other person’s role or just sit on the sidelines.  Which is why you shouldn’t do marriage alone.  The people with you today have declared their intent to support you as you seek to keep your promises to each other.  You will need their prayers, encouragement and help along the way.  Wherever you go in life, always strive to be in a community of believers who can through good counsel, encouragement, good examples, practical help and prayer give you the help that you will need through the challenges of life.  And seek, as God enables you, to give these back in return, for there will be other married couples who will need the same help you do.

And hold tight to Jesus in all you do.  Just as Jesus modeled the self-giving leadership that Geoff is to live out, so he also models the faithful following that you, Elizabeth, are to live out.  Jesus followed God’s lead in everything, even into deep suffering, for the sake of the joy and splendor set before Him.  He laid aside all His glory that in the end it might be given back to Him in even greater abundance.  As you seek to follow Geoff’s lead in everything, be assured that God will be leading you through whatever trials you encounter to a joy and splendor that transcends them all.  And Geoff, as you seek to give all you have for Elizabeth’s sake, be assured that, though sometimes the giving is costly indeed, God will return it all to you in even greater abundance and joy.

Some of this joy will come in this life.  Though dancing it is hard work, is also fun.  This great dance of marriage, though it is the hardest work you will ever do, brings some of the greatest joys you can have in this life.  As you pour yourselves into the dance, seeking with all your hearts to lead and follow, give and receive, bless and be blessed as well as you possibly can, you will find moments of transcendent delight.  This is what you were made for, and there is surpassing joy in doing exactly what God made you to do.

But even the greatest joys you have in this life will be small compared with the joy set before you, that joy set before all of us who belong to Jesus Christ.  

The Solid Rock

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

 

Refrain:

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;

All other ground is sinking sand,

All other ground is sinking sand.

 

When darkness veils His lovely face,

I rest on His unchanging grace;

In every high and stormy gale,

My anchor holds within the veil.

 

His oath, His covenant, His blood

Support me in the whelming flood;

When all around my soul gives way,

He then is all my hope and stay.

 

When He shall come with trumpet sound,

Oh, may I then in Him be found;

Dressed in His righteousness alone,

Faultless to stand before the throne.

Philippians 2:5-11

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Wedding message - Nathan and Jordan

Nathan and Jordan, it’s so sweet to see you up here together.  So much has happened since you first met each other, and Nathan told us that there was this girl he had met while dancing whom he really liked and wanted to get into a relationship with.  And when we first met you, Jordan, we could see why he was so glad to know you.  You are beautiful, Jordan, and the impact you have had on Nathan has been seismic.  Nathan, you’ve grown in wonderful ways as your relationship with Jordan has deepened.  The love the two of you have for each other has been delightful to see, and your willingness to care for and serve each other has been a beautiful testimony to that love.

So it’s no surprise that you have chosen passages from the Bible about love as focus of your wedding ceremony.  Love is central to marriage; indeed, it is central to life.  But love is also badly misunderstood in contemporary society, so it’s very appropriate that we take a few moments here to talk about what love truly is, how it will strengthen your marriage, and how you can strengthen your love.

One of the sources of modern confusion about love is that we use the word love to describe so many different emotions.  I can love my wife, my children, my job, my church, my country, my pet, or my dinner.  The fact that we can use the same word to describe so many different kinds of relationships makes it easy for us to become confused about how those loves actually differ from each other.  These two passages that we’ve heard read from the Bible illustrate this point, for they talk about two different kinds of love.  Song of Solomon, the second passage read, speaks of romantic love, while the first passage, 1 Corinthians 13, speaks of a love that’s hard to describe with a single adjective, but which I’ll call generous love.

Romantic love such as that described so ardently in Song of Solomon is the love between a man and a woman that fundamentally conveys the message “I delight in you and I want to be bound to you forever”. We hear this throughout the passage - “Arise my darling, my beautiful one… You have made my heart beat faster with a single glance of your eyes… How beautiful is your love… How much better is your love than wine…  Who is this… as awesome as an army with banners?... Put me like a seal over your heart, … for love is as strong as death, jealousy as severe as the grave… Many waters cannot quench love.”

Romantic love is the kind of love we fall into.  It overwhelms us, and once we are smitten by this love, we couldn’t keep from being in love if we tried (and who would even want to try?).  It wants nothing more than to be in the company of the other person, and delights to make that person happy.  Few other experiences in life bring more joy than a shared romantic love, and when this love is shared nothing is more natural than to make the kinds of profound commitments that you will shortly be making to each other; promises of faithfulness in good times and bad, for as long as you both shall live.

The love I’m calling “generous love” that is described in 1 Corinthians 13 is a broader love that fundamentally conveys the message “I want to see you thrive.”  While romantic love is like generous love in that it wants to see the beloved thrive, it is only properly given between a particular man and a particular woman, while generous love can be given to children, friends, one’s church, one’s country and even to one’s enemies.  Generous love can give its possessions to feed the poor or surrender its body to die in battle for a beloved country.  Generous love may be provoked or wronged by an enemy but takes no account of it.  Generous love seeks the good of the loved one even if that love is not returned, or it is returned with hostility, and it is willing to endure all things to see the beloved thrive.

And generous love makes true generosity possible, for true generosity is the spirit that says, “I want your good, and I’m willing to give what I can to help you secure it.”  Much of what passes for generosity these days is less interested in the good of the person receiving the gift than it is in the satisfaction of the person giving it.  We give in order to feel virtuous, in order to receive the applause of others, for the sake of the tax break and for other reasons, but Paul warns us that in God’s eyes, giving done for these reasons is worthless, or even harmful.  True generosity is only possible when we have a generous love for the recipients, a love that has no concern for whether the gift is recognized or appreciated, but only that it does good for the person receiving it.

Generous love is the love that washes the dishes because it knows that the other person is tired.  Generous love gets up one more time at 2:00 in the morning for the wailing infant to let the other person sleep.  Generous love listens to the other person simply because the other person needs someone to talk to.  Generous love doesn’t keep a count of how often the other person has told that story, has no idea who won the last argument (frankly, it doesn’t even think in terms of winning and losing arguments), and it prays long and hard for the burdens that the other person carries.  Without generous love, no marriage can thrive, but with it, a marriage can endure virtually anything the world may throw at it.

Both romantic love and generous love must be cultivated.  Romance gets cold over time unless you help it along.  Love notes, date nights, an attractive piece of clothing, a poem – all these and more can help to keep romantic love glowing (especially if they are backed up with real generous love that meets the needs of the other).  Generous love can become wearisome over time without some encouragement.  Few people become tired of hearing the words “thank you,” and romantic love can give us many creative ways to say it.  The two loves each support the other and as each grows stronger the other will too.

But we are weak people, and there will be times when our love will flag.  We’ll need help to rekindle it.  And this is where it is so important to live in a community that will support you.  Look out at those who are with you today.  We are your support team.  As the years pass by, others will come alongside as well.  If we see your love flagging, our job is to help you restore it, to encourage your faithfulness to your promises and to support you in your weakness.  We are not here to commiserate with you when the going gets tough, but to strengthen you, pray for you, and equip you so that you can do the hard work of loving generously and romantically when the feelings that normally drive such love have gone AWOL.

And above and beyond any help we can give, you need to turn to Jesus.  He is our supreme example of generous love, for he who is equal with God the Father and sits with him on the throne of heaven came to earth as a baby, grew up as a poor man, gave his life in service to others, was misunderstood, hated and finally cruelly killed all for our sake.  He gave himself utterly to rescue us from our alienation to God and to open the door for us to a magnificent future beyond the grave.  And He who supremely demonstrated generous love towards us so that we might truly thrive has promised to give us what we need so that we too can be like him in showing generous love to each other.

Beyond that, Jesus is our example of romantic love as well, for he truly delights in his people.  The Bible speaks of heaven as a huge wedding feast, in which Jesus is the bridegroom and his church is the bride.  This ceremony which we are enacting today is a tiny image of what heaven will be like for God’s people.  Jordan, as you came down the aisle, you in your beauty were a little image of the glory and splendor that God’s people will have as they come to Jesus.  And Nathan, the joy you felt as you saw Jordan is a tiny hint of the joy that Jesus feels as he sees His people coming to him, to be joined to him in the great wedding supper of the Lamb.  This is one of the best images of heaven that you will ever see, and the real thing far surpasses the best we can do here on earth.

Jordan and Nathan, cultivate your romantic and generous love for each other.  With the help of Jesus and of good friends like those with you today, strive to delight each other and serve each other in a generous and self-forgetful way.  Seek to imitate Jesus in his love for us, so that your marriage may be filled with the deep joy and delight that God intends, for in so doing you will find rich blessing in your life together and glorify God by showing the world a small but true picture of what God intends for His people.

Wedding message - Mark and Keighly

 You’ve made it.  Congratulations.  After long anticipation and much planning, the big moment has finally arrived.  And when I say much planning, I have to say that I’ve never seen a wedding better planned out than this one.  This is the first wedding I’ve done where I’ve received a Wedding Info Packet two weeks ahead of time, and to top it off, I got an updated one a week later with all the latest information.  I was very impressed by your foresight, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail.

The sense of anticipation and careful planning that marks a wedding is one of the many ways in which weddings serve as images of our relationship with God.  In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a parable of virgins who are waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom at a wedding feast in which some of them were unprepared and therefore locked out of the feast, while the others were well prepared and therefore allowed into the celebration.  In this parable, the bridegroom is Jesus, and the listeners are being warned that being ready for His coming is important in the same way as being ready for a wedding that you have a part in.  Just as it would not be good if your best man were asleep on the couch at home right now, so it will not be good if we are away from our station when Jesus shows up at the end.

What makes Jesus’ coming appearance so important is that His coming inaugurates a wedding as well.  In fact, in chapter 19 of the book of Revelation, we see that all of Jesus’ followers are invited to what is called “the wedding supper of the Lamb.”  “The Lamb” is another name for Jesus, and his wedding is announced by a huge crowd of angels shouting:

Hallelujah!

For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

Keighly, you in your lovely wedding dress are a little image for us of this resplendent bride giving herself in marriage to our Lord Jesus Christ.

But who is this magnificent bride whom Jesus is marrying?  A chapter later we read that the Bride of Christ is the new Jerusalem, a magnificent city of gold and enormous jewels, built on the foundation of the apostles.  This is the place where God dwells with His people forever, a place of unimaginable splendor and joy.  It is to the wedding of Jesus and His people to which God’s people are invited and nothing in all our experience compares with the glory and delight that we will experience in that day.

But there is something that we have that in a small way does compare with the glory of Jesus’ wedding with His people and that is what we are doing here and now.  The new Jerusalem, we are told, is like a bride adorned for her husband as she comes down out of heaven from God.  Jesus receives His beautiful Bride from God His Father just as you, Mark, have received your beautiful bride from the hand of her father.  More than the celebration of the union of a man and a woman who love each other, what we have seen here is a miniature enactment of the culminating event of all history, as God the Father unites Jesus and His people in a glorious union of ever increasing joy and beauty.

Surely if ever there was an event that should be eagerly anticipated, this is it.  But believers look forward not only to the wedding supper of the Lamb itself, but to the life of eternal joy that it inaugurates.  So also, while this day is momentous in and of itself, it is also inaugurates a new life that you look forward to as well.  Your wedding is the beginning of a life that foreshadows in some ways the life that we’ll have with God in heaven.

Your life together will mirror God’s life with us as you live out your promises to keep yourselves exclusively for each other, so long as you both shall live.  Just as God’s commitment to His people is unconditional, so yours is as well.  This is not a contract you are making, with terms and conditions under which it can be dissolved.  You are making a covenant with each other; a firm unconditional promise made before God.  And just as when God commits himself to us in love, nothing can separate us from His love, so also it must be with you.  There is no space here for talk about mutual compatibility - you have promised to love each other even if there are days when that love comes hard, and, as you do, you will be mirroring the love that God has for rebellious sinners like ourselves.

But we must be clear on what this love is to look like.  The promises you have made to each other are not to be permanently infatuated with each other.  The love that you are committing to have for each other will not be an unending intoxicating buzz that you will feel towards each other.  Such love is not only humanly unsustainable, but is frankly undesirable - two people who are endlessly gazing into each others eyes and sighing at each others absences are largely useless with it comes to doing many of the important tasks in life.  People who promise to love each other in this way are certain to fail, and marriages that end up failing because “I no longer am in love” with this kind of love were established on a foundation that could never have endured..

The love that you are called to have towards each other, and which is, by God’s grace, sustainable as long as you both shall live, is the love that is described for us in the passage that was just read: Ephesians 5:22-33.  Because this passage begins by talking about a wife’s submission to her husband, there are probably people here today who heard nothing that was read except that phrase and may well be indignant that any woman would demean herself so by allowing such a passage to be used in her wedding.  We need to carefully explore this passage in order to understand why it is not demeaning and how beautiful this calling to husbands and wives actually is.

Let’s start with an analogy.  Most of us have probably watched a good couple swing dancing.  If we stop to think about it, our eyes are probably most of the time on the woman.  She’s the one with the gorgeous dress making the amazing moves.  The man is certainly visible, and at times our attention will be drawn to him, but he’s not the primary focus.  But the he’s the one who is leading in the dance.  However his leadership is displayed not by exerting his greater strength to subdue his partner, but by putting his strength to her service to make her look good.  He leads not by dragging his partner unwillingly across the dance floor but by providing her the opportunities to fully display her skill and beauty in ways that would otherwise be impossible.  And the woman follows her partner’s lead not because she has been cowed into obedience, but because she knows that this is the way that she can take full advantage of all that her partner is offering her.  She submits to his leadership because this is how she, and they together, can look their absolute best.

It is this kind of relationship between a man and a woman that we should be thinking of when we read in Ephesians 5 that wives should submit to their husbands and husbands should love their wives.  And it is this kind of relationship that reflects in a small way the relationship that Jesus Christ has with His Church.  The reason that the Church can be the resplendent Bride of Christ at the wedding supper of the Lamb is because Jesus Christ died to cleanse her of all her sins and to make it possible of her to inherit eternal life with Him.  And the Church is called to follow Jesus Christ in everything is because this is how she will enter into that glory and splendor.

Your marriage is specifically designed by God to reflect this pattern.  You, Mark, as Keighly’s husband, are to love Keighly as Christ loved the Church, giving whatever it takes so that she might become as beautiful as God intends for her to be.  And Keighly, you, as Mark’s wife, are to follow Mark’s lead every step of the way so that you might strengthen him and so receive as much as possible of what he has to give you.  To the extent that both of you are successful in this, you will exhibit before the world a living parable of the relationship of Christ and the Church.  It is for this purpose, among others, that a marriage must be between a man and a woman, for no other human relationship is capable of truly reflecting the relationship of Christ and the Church.

There will be great joy for both of you in this divinely choreographed dance, and also great challenges.  We are sinners, and we won’t always get our steps right, we’ll trample each other’s toes, and we’ll want to switch roles or just sit it out on the sidelines.  As an imperfect leader attempts to lead an imperfect follower, there are bound to be mistakes.  And if you were attempting such a life as this on your own, you’d never make it.  

But you are not in this alone.  These friends and family members before whom you stand have promised to do all they can to uphold you as you seek to live well together.  They will pray for you shortly, and hopefully many more times as the years go by, and they may be called upon to provide other kinds of help when the challenge of walking well together or the burdens of life become heavy.  Such a high calling as a Christ-centered marriage should always be supported by a community of people who will support you in living out that life, model for you how to do it well, and even lovingly correct you if necessary, should you forget your calling or be tempted to run from it.

More important even than having such a community (and this is important indeed) is having Christ at the center of your marriage.  God designed your marriage, He made you the way you are and He knows what you need.  Jesus walked the loving path that He calls you too and He will strengthen you by the Holy Spirit to love each other and bless each other better than you ever thought you could.  And you will find joy in this path, for there is joy in walking with Jesus and living out the purpose for which He made you.  In odd unexpected moments, you will find beauty, peace and joy like you have never seen before, and it will make the challenges of marriage all worth the effort.  Encourage each other with this hope.  Remind each other of the privilege you have in working together to help each other model Christ’s profound love for His people.  And seize the moments of joy as they appear and rejoice in them, for they are hints of the glory that God places before His people at the end of time, as we enter into that great celebration of which today is a small and delightful foretaste.

Wedding message - Aden and Kaela

The following message contains references to Isaiah 61:10-11, Ephesians 5:22-33, and Revelation 19:6-9.  Their full text is at the bottom of this document.  It also references the worship songs All Praise to Him and All of Our Tomorrows by Sovereign Grace and There is One Gospel by City Alight. 

Look at them.  Aren’t Kaela and Aden beautiful?  And it’s right that they should be beautiful, isn’t it.  It would be wrong if Kaela came down the aisle dressed in blue jeans.  Somehow, we just know that weddings are a time for dressing up, for going beyond anything that we’d ordinarily wear in daily life.

This awareness isn’t new to us, either.  If we go back almost two thousand years, to the time when the passage that was just read from the book of Revelation was written, we find that in the marriage of the Lamb, the bride is dressed in fine linen, bright and pure.  And if we go even farther back, to the time of Isaiah the prophet, we read about a bridegroom decked out like a priest with a beautiful headdress and a bride adorned with jewels.  Somehow, we’ve always known that when a man and a woman get married, they should get dressed up in magnificent clothing.  And there’s a reason for this that goes beyond just the fun of dressing up.  Weddings are symbolic of deep truths about who we are and who God is, and the clothing that the bride and groom wear is part of the story about ourselves that weddings are meant to tell.

That story begins at the beginning of the Bible in chapter 1 of the book of Genesis.  There we are told that God created human beings in his image, male and female.  We are made to look like God and to be his representatives in caring for the world.  Up to that point in the process of creation, God had pronounced his work to have been good, but with the creation of men and women, it became not merely good, but very good.  In chapter 2 of Genesis the focus shifts to human beings, and we are told that Adam was created first and began his work of caring for creation alone.  His solitude was the first thing in creation to be described as “not good”, so God made Eve to be a partner for Adam in his labors. Turning what was “not good” into what was very good, God brought Eve to Adam, and he received her with joy.  

We are told that this is the first wedding when Genesis tells us, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Today’s ceremony is patterned after this event, for just as God brought Eve to Adam, so Kaela’s father brought Kaela to Aden, and like Adam, Aden received his bride with joy.

However, it wasn’t simply Adam’s joy at receiving Eve that made creation very good.  The creation of Eve completed the picture that God was making of himself in humanity.  Adam and Eve were not divine in and of themselves, any more than a picture of a person is a living person, but like a photograph they presented to the world a true portrayal of God.  Furthermore, Adam and Eve were, in their marriage, a true image of how God relates to his people.

We see this in other places in the Bible as well.  In several places in the Old Testament God called himself a husband to his people.  In the New Testament, in the passage from the apostle Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians that was read for us a few moments ago, Paul told husbands and wives that they are to relate to each other as the Son of God, Jesus Christ, relates to his church.  And at the end of the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, at the culmination of human history, is the description of the wedding supper of the Lamb that was also read for us.  Had we read a little farther in that account, we would have found out that the Lamb is Jesus Christ, and his bride is the church.  So if we are to understand how God relates to us, a good place to begin is by looking at weddings and marriages.

Since weddings and marriages are pictures of God and his relationship to us, we want to do them right, the way that God gave them to us, so people will see a true picture of God in them.  We see this in the vows that Aden and Kaela will make to each other.  In marriage as God designed it, the bride and groom make vows of lifelong fidelity to one another because God’s relationship with his people is one of unbroken fidelity.  A marriage that could be broken whenever it became convenient fails in its purpose to display a true image of God.

And to do a wedding right, it should point to the splendor and joy of the wedding between Christ and his church.  So not only do Aden and Kaela represent Adam and Eve, they also represent Christ and his church.  Aden represents Jesus Christ as he receives his bride, and Kaela represents the church, her beauty hinting at the beauty that the church will have at the wedding supper of the Lamb.  The beauty and joy of this ceremony and the celebration to follow, are intended to point us to the surpassing joy and beauty that awaits God’s people in the celebration of the fulfillment of God’s purpose for humanity in Jesus Christ.

It is an awesome undertaking to attempt to portray God and his relationship with us.  Indeed, on our own, it is utterly beyond us.  Our own efforts are simply not good enough to do justice to the beauty, love, holiness, and grace of the God who created us.  From our birth we are sinners, broken and rebellious people who can’t and won’t adequately display the character of the sinless Son of God, Jesus Christ.

The brokenness and sin that plague humanity find their source in that same beautiful garden where Adam and Eve were married.  Not long after that first joyful wedding Satan appeared the garden, and in a clever evil conversation he got them to break their relationship with God.  When Satan was finished, Adam and Eve didn’t trust God and didn’t trust each other.  Rejecting their place in God’s family, they lost their place in the beautiful garden that had been their home and became part of Satan’s family instead, spiritually dead and consigned to a difficult life of blood, sweat and tears.  

This life of conflict and suffering is our inheritance from Adam and Eve and is the reason why we struggle to make marriages that truly reflect God.  Every broken vow, every imprudent union, every mistreated family member and every unsatisfied longing is the fruit of Adam and Eve’s rebellion and sin.  Only if our relationship with God is restored and our brokenness is healed will we be able enjoy weddings and marriages that display the goodness and beauty of God as he intends. 

The great good news that God makes this restoration and healing possible for those who want it.  As the songs that Aden and Kaela chose for us so abundantly testify, God did this by sending the man whom he promised to Adam and Eve, the son of a woman who would defeat Satan.  God sent

the Servant King

Who left behind His glorious throne

To pay the ransom for His own

All praise to Him Who humbly came

To bear our sorrow, sin, and shame

Who lived to die, Who died to rise

The all-sufficient sacrifice

This Servant King is Jesus Christ, the Son of God whose wedding with the church is celebrates in Revelation.  But before there could be a wedding, Jesus would have to fight for his bride.  He would have to rescue his people from the grip of Satan, pay the penalty that we owed for our rebellion against God, and restore the spiritual life that we lost as a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience.  He accomplished all this not by mobilizing a vast army of angels to fight Satan’s forces, but by dying on the cross and rising back to a newer and richer life a few days later.

It’s a great story.  Our glorious hero, the magnificent Son of God, through whom the entire universe and everything in it was created, set aside his glory to be born of a virgin in a poor town on a tiny planet in the unthinkably vast universe to rescue his filthy, battered, rebellious, and spiritually dead church, and gave his life that she might be cleansed, healed, restored, and reconciled.  The hero then rose from death to a new life of power, love, and majesty.  He then takes the church, now dressed in splendor, as his bride in a wedding of unimaginable beauty and joy.  What better story could we imagine?  And best of all, it’s true.  This is no Marvel Cinematic universe made by actors and CGI; this is the real universe, our world, made by the God who created it all.

The most astonishing thing about this story is that we are invited to be a part of it.  It doesn’t matter that we’re filthy, battered, rebellious, and spiritually dead; if we allow Jesus to rescue us, he will make us beneficiaries of his sacrifice and resurrection.  We too will be cleansed, healed, restored, and reconciled, and we too will be able to look forward with anticipation and joy to the wedding supper of the Lamb, in which we will be participants as members of Jesus’ bride, the church.

But that wedding has not yet come.  Jesus’ church is engaged to be married to him, but the wedding is still in the future.  Unlike Aden and Kaela’s engagement, this is a long engagement, nearly two thousand years so far.  There has been lots of time for Jesus to send out invitations to his wedding, and all of you are invited as well.  If you have any questions about what would be involved in accepting Jesus’ invitation, Aden, Kaela, or I would love to talk more with you about this.  For those like Aden and Kaela who have accepted Jesus’ invitation, we have a job to do, for we are appointed to be Jesus’ messengers to get the invitation out to everyone we can.

But what kind of invitation can we give for Jesus’ wedding?  It should reflect the significance, beauty, and joy of the event, and ideally have an attractive picture of the couple who are getting married on it, like the invitation that Aden and Kaela sent out for this wedding.  How would we create such an invitation to the wedding of Jesus and the church?

The answer is here right in front of us.  It’s Aden and Kaela themselves.  Aden represents Jesus and Kaela represents the church.  They make an excellent picture for us of Jesus and the church. But that only works if Aden looks like Jesus and Kaela looks like the church.  It isn’t necessary for Aden to grow a beard, though.  The resemblance to Christ and the church that Aden and Kaela need to display in order for them to be a good invitation to Jesus’ wedding goes deeper than that.  A description of what is needed from them is in the passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church that was read for us a little earlier.

Aden, as Paul told us, for you to be a good picture of Jesus, you must love Kaela as Christ loved the church, and to give yourself up for her that she might fully become the woman that God intends for her to be.  Anything that lies in your power to give Kaela that will help her to live the life that God intends for he, you should gladly give her, whatever it may cost you.  Never quit praying for Kaela.  She should be second only to Jesus in your affections and concerns, and she should never have a reason to doubt your love for her or your loyalty to her.  Commit yourself first to knowing, loving, and following Jesus better, but after that never quit studying Kaela so that you might know her better and so love her better and serve her better. However much you care for yourself, you should care for Kaela just as much, or even more.  By loving Kaela in this way, you will be showing us truly how Christ loves his people.

Kaela, for you to be a good picture of the church, you must submit to Aden’s leadership as you would to Jesus.  You are to follow his lead like you would on a dance floor with him, not passively but trusting his guidance.  You should be actively seeking to receive the good that he intends to give you and to give the best you have to help him lead well.  Like Eve, you are Aden’s first assistant in life, and you should be fully committed to helping him succeed in the purposes the Lord has given him.  Aden should be second only to Jesus in your affections and concerns, and he should never have a reason to doubt your respect for him or your loyalty to him.  Commit yourself first to knowing, loving, and following Jesus better, but after that never quit studying Aden so that you might know him better and so love him better and serve him better.  By loving Aden this way, you will be showing us truly how the church submits to Jesus.

Aden and Kaela, by living in marriage this way, you will model for us the love Christ has for his church and the respect the church has for Christ.  On your own, this would be a daunting challenge, but God has not left you to your own resources for living this life.  God has promised to give you his Holy Spirit, who will supply with what you need to love and serve each other this way.  This is why we sang earlier about the Holy Spirit:

All praise to Him whose pow’r imparts
The love of God within our hearts
The Spirit of all truth and peace

The fount of joy and holiness

It is as the Spirit imparts the love, truth, peace, joy, and holiness that only God can give that you will find yourselves able to do all that he requires for each other.

Beyond that, you have the help of God’s people.  We in this room have committed to do whatever we can to uphold you in your marriage, encouraging and equipping you as far as we are able to live out your vows faithfully and joyfully together.  If you need prayer, we will pray.  If you need strength and encouragement for tough times, we will support you as we can.  While the world may try to tear you down or encourage you to break your vows, our goal will always be to uphold you in your marriage and help you live out your vows faithfully and joyfully together.

Cultivate joy in your marriage.  Let the Spirit teach you how to take delight in helping one another to thrive.  Look for the good things that your spouse does for you and say, “thank you”.  Say it often, and in creative ways.  Have fun together.  Study the Song of Solomon together and learn how to delight each other in the ways that are so richly displayed for us there.  As God enables, have children and strive to raise them well, for that will set you squarely against the culture of death that darkens our society.  And if children don’t come right away, keep trying – these things take practice.  Lives lived like this will adorn your testimony about Jesus and enable you to be a beautiful invitation to the wedding supper of the Lamb.  

I said at the beginning that weddings tell a story that is symbolic of deep truths about who we are and who God is.  This is that story.  It can be summarized in the words of John 3:16 - “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  This is the true story that your wedding and all weddings and marriages are meant to tell.  It is a huge story, one that you will spend your lifetimes learning how to tell well.  Keep learning how to tell it better, Aden and Kaela, for we need to hear it.  Tell it with all your heart, that we might see in your marriage the truth and beauty of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ and learn again how to respond in love and joy to the love he has for us.  Tell the story well, Aden and Kaela, that we might learn from you how to tell the story of God’s love in our own marriages and in our lives, that God might be glorified and we might be blessed in him.

Isaiah 61:10-11

10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;

my soul shall exult in my God,

for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;

he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,

and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,

so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise

to sprout up before all the nations.

Ephesians 5:22-33

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.

Revelation 19:6-9

6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

Hallelujah!

For the Lord our God

the Almighty reigns.

7 Let us rejoice and exult

and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

8 it was granted her to clothe herself

with fine linen, bright and pure—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

9 And the angel said to me, Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are the true words of God. 

 

To a friend who believes that Jesus was a teacher who taught some good things but wasn't the Son of God.

I gather that you would say that the stories of Jesus' followers seeing Jesus after he rose from the dead and touching the scars of his crucifixion and Jesus eating food (Matthew 28:1-9, John 20:24-29, Luke 24:36-43) are not historical. It would presumably follow that Jesus' teachings about his resurrection (e.g. Matthew 17:7-13, Luke 18:31-34), would be equally false.

If this is so, how do you distinguish between the "many good things" that Jesus taught, and the falsehoods that the Bible records him as having said? And if the authors of the Bible were so free in altering what Jesus said to suit their own purposes, how is it that they didn't also write themselves into the story in a more favorable light? These passages clearly state that the disciples had no clue what Jesus was talking about when he taught about his resurrection and had no expectation of a resurrection actually happening after Jesus was crucified. If they were free to portray Jesus as more powerful than he actually was, wouldn't they have also shown themselves as wiser and more understanding than they actually were?

Even more mysterious, though, is the kind of hero that the authors of the Bible portray Jesus to be. A crucified messiah was incomprehensible to the Jews of Jesus' day, who fully expected a messiah who would throw the Romans out and reestablish a Jewish kingdom. The question the disciples asked in Acts 1:6 reflects this expectation, and the advice of the Jewish teacher Gamaliel in Acts 5:33-43 shows that there had been many individuals who had claimed to be messiahs of that sort. But for a messiah to suffer the humiliation of crucifixion was an absolute absurdity to the Jewish mind.

On the other side, a resurrected religious leader was no less absurd to the Greco-Roman thinkers of the day. To them, the body was the source of evil, and death provided a deliverance of the spirit from the evil of being embedded in a body. To be raised back to bodily life would have seen by them as a horrible thing - consigning the spirit to more life imprisoned in a body and enduring its evil. It was inconceivable to them that a religious leader could suffer such a fate. Paul encountered this line of thinking when he spoke to the philosophers in Athens in Acts 17:16-34. As Luke records the event in Acts 17:32, "When [the philosophers] heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him. "

So the authors of the Bible managed to make Jesus a hero who would have been ridiculed by both the Jews and the non-Jews of the day. If ever there has been a recipe for a failed religion, Christianity should be a prime example. But it's not. The only explanation I can come up with for why Christianity didn't die with Jesus' crucifixion is that it's actually true. Do you have a better explanation?

Imagine - the way it should be.

Imagine there's a heaven
I know it's hard, but try
No fear of hell before us
For we will never die

Imagine all the people
Living for the Lord

Imagine no more evil
And no corruption too
Nothing left to impede our
Living as we're meant to

Imagine all God's people
Filled with endless joy, you
You may say I'm a dreamer
But the Bible says it's true
I hope some day you'll join us
And you'll have this future too

Imagine life as fam'ly
Adopted by God's plan
With Jesus as our brother
The righteous Son of Man

Imagine God the Father
wiping ev'ry tear, you
You may say I'm a dreamer
But the Bible says it's true
I hope some day you'll join us
And you'll have this future too