Sermon Central
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Marriage: God's Showcase Of Covenant-Keeping Grace Series
Contributed by John Piper on Nov 28, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: The most foundational thing you can say about marriage is that it is the doing of God, and the most ultimate thing you can say about marriage is that it is for the display of God.
But the reasons I stress living vertically from the grace of God and then bending out horizontally in forgiveness and justification toward your spouse is 1) because there is going to be conflict based on sin and strangeness (and you won’t be able even to agree with each other about what is simply strange about each other and what is sin); and 2) because the hard, rugged work of enduring and forgiving is what makes it possible for affections to flourish when they seem to have died; and 3) because God gets glory when two very different and very imperfect people forge a life of faithfulness in the furnace of affliction by relying on Christ.
In Christ, God Has Forgiven You—and Your Spouse
Now I will pick it up here next time and tell you about a discovery that Noël and I made. I predict that the sermon will come to be called “the compost pile sermon.”
Till then, husbands and wives, drive into your own consciences these huge truths—greater than any problem in your marriage—that God “has forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Believe this with all your heart and bend it toward your spouse.
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