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!
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.
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