As most of you realize, & you husbands better remember, this Friday is a very special day. It is Valentine’s Day, a day that is set aside for Love.
Illustration:
A group of young adults were discussing the subject, "How do you say `I love you’ to someone?"
In answer to that, one wife shared how her husband had "popped the question." While she was with a group of her girlfriends, he had shown up unexpectedly, wearing his best suit. And in front of everyone, he took her hand, kneeled down before her, & asked her to marry him!
I must admit though, that I approach our topic today with a sense of hesitancy. By no means because it is not a relevant subject, because I strongly feel that it is one that the church needs to be addressing
Rather my fear is one of general appeal.
- Not all people are married; some have never known the experience of being a husband or a wife.
- And others still grieve over the loss of a wife or a husband, after many years of marriage.
- And harder yet is the pain I feel for divorced people in our church family who have discovered that the grace of God does extend to them as well.
Yet, the urgency of this message overrides every fear.
Illustration: I know you have heard the story of some children who were playing outside and were going to pretend they were getting married. The parts were quickly filled- the preacher, the bride, the groom and so on. As they were imitating the wedding ceremony, the child who was the preacher didn’t know what to say; at last one of his friends said, “quote a scripture.” So he quoted Luke 23:34, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
I doubt whether any one of us really knew what we were doing when we got married- even if this particular scripture was not a part of our ceremony. I know I didn’t, and I have to confess I think I am still learning.
Illustration: Someone has said that marriage is when you agree to spend the rest of your life sleeping in a room that is too warm, beside someone who is sleeping in a room that is too cold.
As I have worked with many of the couples in the preparation of their wedding services I have been amused, amazed and blessed at the different ways each one has tried to express their individuality, uniqueness and love for each other.
Marriage is an awesome responsibility isn’t it? It is one of those commitments that a person makes not fully realizing all that is involved until after you have said yes.
Do you know there is not a single person present in our worship this morning? No, it is true. Everyone one of us is either preparing to get married or if you are a Christian, you are already married.
How can this be you ask? Because in the Scriptures the church is referred to as the Bride of Christ. Please follow along with me this morning as I share God’s Word found in,
Ephesians 5: 22-33 22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[b] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
If you are seeking to become a Christian you are a bride in waiting, but if you are already a Christian you have been married to Jesus through your salvation.
In my years as a pastor I have met all kinds of brides. Most of them I had a feeling were going to be make wonderful wives, but there were a few that I thought to myself, “this young man is going to have a real wake up call.”
Do you remember what kind of a bride or groom you were looking for when you began to think about getting married? I do. I remember asking God to give me a wife who would understand my needs, who would always love me and remain faithful to me and if by any chance you could give a great cook, and someone that is good with kids; that would be wonderful too. Guess what,… I CAN TELL YOU THAT GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS! AMEN.
I wonder what Jesus thinks of us, His Bride, this morning? Have we remained faithful and true to Him? Has our marriage, our salvation stood the tests of time, or have we been lured away into adulterous situations and circumstances with the world? Is Jesus still the love of your life or have you replaced Him with your job, your quest for materialism, your pursuit of pleasure.
In a wedding ceremony the couple stands before each other and they boldly proclaim, “I do!” I do love you. I do promise to cherish you and to honor you. But what does “I do" to Jesus mean if we are His bride? “I do” what?
I. Do you know that the wedding PROCESSIONAL, (the entrance of the bride and the groom into the sanctuary) is a declaration of intention? Most people think it just means that the ceremony is about to start but it is more, much more.
A. I don’t think I have performed a wedding ceremony yet, where the best man or one of the groomsmen did not tease the groom only minutes before he was to enter the sanctuary that he still had time to change his mind. Because once he walks out that door he will declare his intentions.
1. As the bride and groom enter the sanctuary from different directions and they meet in the middle, they are declaring their intention before the invited guests that they are here for a purpose and that purpose is to give themselves to each other.
2. This morning what does your presence here declare? Have you come as the bride of Christ ready to give yourself to Him? What are your intentions?
3. A declaration of intention is a public witness of what someone intends to do. In fact, the rest of the wedding ceremony will be statements said and repeated of what the couple intends to do for each other as a married man and woman.
4. As the bride of Christ we declared our intentions before God as well when we gave our lives to Him. Would you say you have honored your intentions as Christ’s bride? Do the two of you make a good couple or is their difficulty in your relationship.
5. This morning, you have an opportunity to reaffirm your intentions as the bride of Christ. - to declare anew that you belong to Him and that you love Him. Will you declare your intention?
II. But you know, when a couple says, “I do” they are saying I do promise to live in COVENANT with you - to commit myself to you.
A. A marriage starts with a statement of intention, but good intentions do not make good marriages. You can promise your spouse the world before the wedding, but it is what you do afterwards that makes or breaks the marriage. You have to give yourself to the marriage, to your spouse.
1. If our relationship with God is to grow and be fulfilling we must be willing to commit ourselves to Him. To follow through with “I do!” Coming to church each Sunday is a great attention getter. In fact it truly is an exercise in Godly living, but it’s how we live – how we treat our spouse when we go home that is the true test of whether we have a good marriage or only a good image.
2. If you have noticed, the groom always enters the sanctuary before the bride and he is the first one to say the vows. This is on purpose. The groom signifies that he is the covenant initiator.
3. This is important because whoever initiates the covenant assumes greater responsibility for seeing it fulfilled. God initiated covenants with Noah, Abraham and David. He is the covenant keeper. God is committed to us as His people.
4. Jesus initiated the covenant of salvation with us. And though sometimes we are not always as faithful as we should be and as we want to be, Jesus assumes the greater roll of keeping us together in relationship with him.
5. We may fail, but He does not. We are sometimes that fickle, flirting, bride but our groom, Jesus never entertains the thought of giving up on us of divorcing us. He is committed to us and He asks us to commit to Him.
B. In the wedding ceremony, the bride and groom also take each other’s right hand as they say the vows. The open right hand offered by each party symbolizes their strength, resources and purpose. By clasping each other’s right hand, they are pledging these to each other.
1. We too depend upon the saving strength of God’s right hand. In Psalms 20: we read “Now I know that the Lord saves His anointed; He will answer him from His holy heaven, with the saving strength of His right hand.
2. This morning I ask you to take the hand of Jesus and lean on Him. The good thing about our groom is He never gives up on us. Right now, this very moment He wants to bless you in His love, to open to you all the riches of Heaven. You could say that you, the church, the bride of Christ married Mr. Perfect – Mr. Right. Not too many people can say that.
3. Many times a couple will have a unity candle as part of their service. A unity candle is a symbolic expression of how two lives become one. Not by their efforts or by their abilities. The light symbolizes Christ, it is He who is able to take two lives and make them one.
4. This morning will you join me as the bride the Christ and light the unity candle as a sign and seal of your oneness in Christ. What God has joined together, no one or nothing is to separate.
III. But the PRONOUNCEMENT of husband and wife at the end of the wedding ceremony is more than just a name change. It acknowledges that for sure, but it is more than that. It is part of the “I do”. “I do” from this time on take my stand to be your wife, to be your husband, so LET IT BE!
A. Marriages truly are built on trust, aren’t they? At the pronouncement the couple says, our trust is unbroken and unwavering. Nothing will come between us for we are husband and wife.
1. God has declared His undying love and devotion to us as well in His Son Jesus Christ. Through our salvation we find relationship with God and the blood of His Son declares that we are His and nothing can come between us.
2. But it takes two to keep the promise. God never waivers. He never doubts. He never questions the relationship, but we do, don’t we?
3. Someone this morning has not been a very faithful bride and I am not talking about your marriage to your husband, but rather your relationship to God.
4. When you became a Christian, God pronounced you His. He claimed you and once God stakes a claim He does not give up. If you have been an unfaithful wife, an unfaithful Christian, then I invite you to come to Him and ask His forgiveness and receive his embrace.
5. In the wedding ceremony the bride and groom exchange rings. The ring is and unending circle. It has no beginning and it has no end. That is the kind of love and God displays to us as His people. It is a perfect love, an unbroken love.
6. In the Old Testament whenever two parties made a covenant, they exchanged something of value as a token of their pledge. The exchange of the rings represents this demonstration of their pledge.
7. It marks them as belonging to each other, as having pledged themselves to one other.
Conclusion:
As you leave the sanctuary this morning you will be offered a gold ribbon, the symbol of a wedding ring. It represents your marriage to Christ as His bride. I invite you to take it. Place in your bible, tie it to your brief case, put it in your wallet, etc. Let it be a reminder that you belong to someone, that you are married to Christ and as His bride he calls you to be faithful.
As a pastor I see all kinds of marriages and my heart breaks for each one that fails. How would describe your relationship with Jesus this morning. Is He the love of your life or the last person you think of?
It’s hard to explain how much Christ loves us in earthly terms. One of the closest metaphors we have is the love between a husband and his bride. It illustrates the closeness of Christ's relationship with us, and the depth of His love. We are the bride of Christ. He gave himself up for us.
I would like to end today’s service with a video clip that helps us understand what it means to be loved with a love that never fails.
VIDEO: “To Be Loved” (WorshipMedia.com)
