I know that all of you stand in line at grocery stores, and though I have not done any grocery shopping here in Orange City, I’d bet a bundle that the experience here is pretty much like my experience in a small town in North Texas. When I go through a checkout line, I am treated to a large display of tabloids. I can remember them from my boyhood, when I’d be standing in the checkout line with my mother. I looked forward to standing in the checkout line, because I would get to see pictures of bat-boy leering out at me, or pictures of aliens shaking hands with President Kennedy in the White House. Later those same aliens would be shaking the hands of President Johnson, and then President Nixon, and then President Ford, and every other president since then. Surely the United States must belong to several interstellar alliances by now!
But, in the past years, I’ve seen fewer and fewer pictures of bat-boy and aliens in the White House. Instead, I’ve been treated to colorful pictures and screaming headlines about celebrities and who they’re dating, who they’re breaking up with, and who they are marrying, or who they’re divorcing.
What I have noticed over the past decade or so is that bat-boy and the aliens in the White House are becoming relatively rare at the checkout lines. In their place we now find a wealth of information, news, gossip, commentary, celebration, and retailing aimed at marriage and those who are getting married and those who want to get married.
Celebrities are the grist of the machine that churns out all the gaa-gaa-goo-goo journalism about celebrities and their marriages. But, there’s stuff in the grocery store checkout lines for ordinary folks too!
I am always flabbergasted when I pick up Bride’s magazines. Those things are thick, glossy, flamboyantly fashionable, and about 90 percent advertising. And, you have to pay five or six bucks for a lot of them. And, just yesterday I saw something on the stand I’d never seen before – a magazine named “Older Bride.” Yup – it was obviously aimed at 40 or 50 year old women who were getting married. There were articles for those getting married for the first time, and other articles for those getting married for the second or third times.
Now, this got me to wondering, “What’s big deal about marriage?” For Christians, marriage at least has the possibility of a meaning and purpose different from what you find out in the world, right? But, even so, what’s the big deal with marriage among those who are so happily SECULAR and non-religious?
You see, in the past couple of decades we have witnessed many startling developments with respect to marriage out there in our country, developments that suggest that no one should care about marriage any longer.
For example, the divorce rate has been running around 50 percent for quite while now. And, this dismal statistic is artificially low because there are hundreds of thousands of divorces which never occurred, BECAUSE the weddings required for them have NEVER happened in the first place. Since 1960, the percentage of the population that marries has plummeted 43 percent. Households made up of Married couples are now BELOW 50 percent of ALL households, while single-person households have skyrocketed. A recent University of Chicago study reveals that cohabitation without marriage is now the dominant lifestyle for the below-30 segment of the population.
The problem here is not confined to the secular segments of our country. About ten years ago now, the Christian pollster George Barna ignited a firestorm of controversy when he reported that the rate of divorce among evangelical Christians was AT LEAST as high as the general population, perhaps a few points higher. Because he was faced with a firestorm of criticism, George Barna repeated his polling, and he not only confirmed his original findings, he turned up something even worse – Among those identifying themselves as evangelical Protestants who had ALSO experienced a divorce, over two-thirds of them had this divorce AFTER they had become Christians! Barna uncovered a powerful correlation between becoming a Christian and getting divorced.
And, there’s yet another feature of the marriage habits of Americans that would suggest that marriage is no big deal at all. Last year, Rutgers University published a lengthy study of young men who defer marriage well into their 30s. Among the reasons the Rutgers study listed for this behavior were these
1. They can get sex without marriage very easily.
2. They can enjoy the benefits of having a wife by cohabiting rather than marrying.
3. They view marriage as a financial liability because of the high probability of divorce and the high expectation of financial loss from divorce.
4. They are waiting for the perfect soul mate and she hasn’t yet appeared. One man resounded to a questionnaire on this point with these words: “How would I feel if I got married and someone BETTER came along afterwards?”
5. They face few social pressures to marry and many economic inducements to remain single.
6. They are reluctant to marry a woman who already has children.
7. They want to own a house before they get a wife.
8. They want to enjoy single life as long as they can.
Is it any wonder that the median age for a first marriage for men is at its highest point in American history. At the beginning of our country, it was below 18. Now it is at 27, and climbing.
If we wish to see where this is likely headed, we only have to look to Scandinavian countries where social mores about marriage have been very relaxed. These are countries in which gay marriage has been a matter of settled law for a decade or more. Everyone expected that the incidence of gay marriage would skyrocket. It made a statistical blip after the legalization of gay marriages years ago, but never rose above that blip. Instead, what has happened is that marriage itself – whether heterosexual marriage or gay marriage -- both have almost disappeared.
Here is the point: in the presence of common divorce and serial remarriage, with the prospect of same-sex unions being placed on a par with heterosexual unions, more and more people are asking, “What’s the big deal about marriage? Why all the fuss?” But, at the same time, there is indeed quite a fuss. For all their tackiness, those grocery store tabloids, those bulging, slick Brides’ magazines are mute testimony that our culture is still enthralled with the idea of marriage at the same time that our culture’s actions demonstrate that few people are taking marriage seriously any longer. What, indeed, is the big deal? [8:00]
Fortunately, we have a place in the New Testament which tells us why marriage is a big deal. We can know what all the fuss is about, because the Apostle Paul tells us what all the fuss is about.
In Ephesians chapter five, from verse 22 to 34, Paul lays out the classical statement of the way in which marriage is supposed to work. In this section of scripture, he draws repeated points of comparison between the relationship of husband and wife and the relationship between Christ and the church. And, then he ends with this statement:
“ For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I am speaking of Christ and the Church.”
Paul’s words here are often a puzzle for many. He has just spent considerable space expounding a comparison between men and women in marriage and Christ and the church. And then Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 – a verse that concludes the Genesis account of the first marriage between Adam and Eve. Here is where we get the Bible’s startling answer to the question “What’s all the fuss about?” with respect to marriage.
Let’s begin to unpack Paul’s words here by first asking “what is a mystery?” The modern meaning of the word isn’t very helpful here. For us, a “mystery” is a certain kind of crime fiction. Or perhaps we use the word to describe something that is difficult or impossible to understand.
For Paul, a mystery is some truth which no one can discover by searching it out. A mystery isn’t something unknown; rather, it is something which can only BE known because someone who ACTUALLY KNOWS tells you. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians contains several mysteries. The first one you can examine at your leisure later on. It is found in Ephesians 1, verses 9 and 10. Another discussion of a mystery is in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 1 through 7. In each case, Paul is talking about some truth of God’s plan of redemption, a truth which could not be known without God revealing it through his apostles or prophets.
And, here in Ephesians 5 we have a mystery, a mystery about Christ and the Church.
Well, what is this mystery? What is it that cannot be know, except God reveals it? Paul tells us that the mystery is this: that the very first commentary on marriage which we find in the Bible – recorded in Genesis 2:24 – this commentary is talking about Christ and the Church.
Have you ever seen one of those pictures that is made up of hundreds, even thousands of smaller pictures, all carefully laid alongside one another, so that they form a completely different picture when they’re viewed all together?
If you are very, very close to a picture like this, all you can see and understand is the tiny part you’re looking at. If you step back a ways, you can see a few unrelated pictures stuck next to one another.
But, if you stand back far enough, you begin to see that the individual pictures have a significance you could never apprehend just by looking at a few of the tiny pictures. Stand back, and what jumps out at you is something that is made up of all the little pictures, a kind of mosaic which you cannot ACTUALLY behold unless you are far enough away to take it all in.
Paul is telling us something like this about marriage. The Bible begins with a marriage – between a one man and one woman – and by the time that John writes the Book of Revelation, we know that the Bible concludes with a marriage – between Jesus Christ and that vast body of the redeemed which is collectively called The Bride of Christ. Paul’s point is simply this: marriage – beginning with that first marriage in Eden, and including every marriage after it – is about Christ and the Church. This was true from the very beginning, but no one could ever figure it out unless God told us.
When God FIRST created mankind MALE and female, when God brought that FIRST woman to that FIRST man, -- the PATTERN for God’s work and the GOAL of God’s work was WAY out there at the end of history – the union of Christ and the Church. When God designed man and woman for one another, he had Christ and the Church in mind. That was God’s goal from the beginning – to work in human history to that point where Christ and the Church are united in glory. And, God’s first step toward that goal is the creation of Adam and Eve and their union in marriage.
BETWEEN these two marriages, there are a gazillion other marriages. Genesis 2:24 tells us how they are to work. A man leaves his father’s house and cleaves to his wife and the two become one flesh. So, every marriage is, in a very REAL sense, a RECAPITUATION of the first marriage in the Garden of Eden. Moses’ commentary in Genesis 2:24 makes this certain. Looking backward at what God had accomplished in fashioning Eve and bringing her to Adam, Moses writes, “For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.”
But, there is another perspective on this – one which we DO NOT KNOW until it is revealed to us by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 5. Looking forward to the end of time, this same commentary by Moses is ALSO speaking about the LAST marriage in history – the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Paul tells us that Genesis 2:24 is also talking about Christ and the Church!
The marriage of Adam and Eve was the first step toward that ultimate marriage. And, Paul is telling us that every marriage since then is another step toward that ultimate, climactic, and final marriage.
Now we are prepared to understand a feature of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The British Baptist David Pawson put it this way:
[Throughout the Bible …] the male/female relationship is seen as the best analogy for the divine/human relationship. … The male represents the divine side of the partnership; the female represents the human. Both Jews and Christians have seen this analogy in the Song of Solomon …. The analogy recurs many times in Scripture. See for example, Ezekiel 16, where Jerusalem is variously described as an abandoned baby girl, developing in puberty, courted and married, enthroned as queen, and finally turning to prostitution. The new Testament follows the Old. Jesus uses the feminine word for his church; he loves her and gives himself for her.” [_Leadership is Male_, Thomas Nelson, pp. 27-28]
Now we can begin to understand a little better what all the fuss is about.
For example, in light of what Paul tells us, it is no longer a mystery why marriage retains so GREAT a fascination, even for those who act as if they did not value marriage at all. Marriage is not something for Christians alone – it was fashioned for mankind generally. And, so, marriage is HARD-WIRED into the human psyche.
SO, it is no accident that ANY human society where marriage works as Genesis says it should – these are the societies which grow and flourish. These are the societies in which civilization advances. And, this happens even when the societies are not Christian, or even especially religious. It is enough that a society follow even in rudimentary ways the design for marriage that we find in the Bible.
And, if we can now understand why following God’s design for marriage – even in a crude way – results in growth and productivity in a society, we can also understand how abandoning God’s design for marriage is so destructive to the societies in which marriage is fading away.
The immediate consequence of a low view of marriage is a dramatic drop in the birth rates of those societies. Europe and Russia have had birth rates too low to even maintain their populations for several decades now. The coming decades are going to see radical social and economic upheavals in these areas of the world, as a burgeoning population of elderly people attempt to collect their state pensions from a rapidly shrinking population of workers. This same problem is looming out there here in America in another 20 or 30 years. The Social Security system is an hour glass that will drain away its final grains during the lifetime of most of us here in this room. And that hour glass is emptying because Americans – like Europeans before them – are reproducing at lower and lower rates as the years roll by.
None of this should be a surprise. This is how the Roman empire dissolved. In its final years, the Roman Empire was marked by marriage and family characteristics everywhere visible today in Europe and America – a falling incidence of marriage, a normalization of homosexuality in men and women alike, and a falling birthrate because of abortion and fruitless marriages. In those days, it was the German slaves brought into Italy that kept the Roman economy moving along. And, those German matrons were having babies at a rapid clip. Within a century, the German slaves far outnumbered the native Romans. Rome committed ethnic suicide.
Today it is imported Islamic workers in Europe who keep the European welfare states moving along. But, worshippers in Mosques have outnumbered worshippers in churches of all types in Great Britain for some years now. And fully 25 percent of the French population today is Muslim. Marriage within Muslim society is strong and vital, and those Islamic women are having babies at the same prodigious rate as the German matrons in Italy 1800 years ago. Europe and Russia – and, perhaps, the United States – are committing national suicide. When marriage – which is a Very Big Deal in the Bible – becomes not such a big deal to a nation, that nation dies over the course of two or three generations.
On a more individual scale, Paul’s revelation of this mystery explains how marriage advances our own individual redemption for those who are married. Marriage is a life-long matrix that matures us. And, in case you single people among us think that marriage is of no consequence to you, I’d point out that it is your parents’ marriage – or their lack of a healthy marriage – which has more impact on how you believe and practice the Christian faith than any other single factor. We may not all of us be husbands or wives; we may not all of us be fathers or mothers. But most assuredly, some man sired each one of us here this morning; and some woman bore us in her womb. And how that man and that woman relate to one another is a critical factor in what kind of Christian you are right now. It is a critical factor in how simple – or how difficult – it is for you to understand God’s Word, and in how you conceive God’s very being as Father. I will have more to say about this in the evening service.
Marriage affects how our own individual redemption plays itself out in our lifetimes. For most of us it is our parents marriages that set our courses, for good or evil. Their marriages shape us, guide us, mature us. Our parents’ marriages, and those all around us – the marriages of our brothers and sisters, the marriages of our neighbors and co-workers – all these marriages provide a precedent and a pattern in how we live our lives, whether we are married or not. If marriage in a society works the way God wishes it to work, all marriages keep before us a goal toward which God is moving all of human history.
Finally, the mystery of marriage – the knowledge that marriage is a picture, a pattern, and a path leading toward the final marriage of all history – this cosmic view of marriage, if you will, puts something very powerful in our hands. Whether married or not, whether our marriage is the first or a subsequent one – the mystery of marriage sets before us the power to call sinners into the grace of redemption. If our own marriages are giving others a picture of where all marriage is heading, we provide for everyone around us – believer and unbeliever alike – something that this world cannot otherwise see and understand – the grace and glory of our redemption in Christ.
Again, I would say this to those who have never married, or to those who are no longer married –the power of YOUR testimony that marriage is holy, righteous, and good – YOUR testimony has special credibility and power. Think of John the Baptist – that crusty, dusty preacher of righteousness out in the Judean wilderness. What do you suppose lay nearest and dearest to his heart? He tells what that is when his own disciples come to him, all anxious because Jesus and his disciples were gathering larger crowds to their ministry, John – the single man – said this to his disciples:
“You yourselves bear me witness, that I said ‘I am not the Messiah,’ but ‘I have been sent before him.’ He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is fulfilled.”
That’s what was on John’s mind; that is what he daydreamed about – a wedding, a bride and a bridegroom, for whom he himself served as friend of the bridegroom. Marriage, indeed weddings, were not just something John picked up as a useful way of explaining things. Not at all. That final wedding at the end of history – THAT was what was on his mind, and he had the glory of preparing the way for the bridegroom of that final, cosmic wedding. For this single man – the one whom Jesus said was the greatest of all the prophets – for this single man, the mystery of marriage defined him and his mission. In like manner, the mystery of marriage can shape the identity and mission of every single man and woman, as well as every married man and married woman.
And, this is an identity and a mission that the world we inhabit desperately needs. You, Christians, are the only ones who can provide them the message, the picture of mankind’s destiny in Christ. You alone are have in your hands – if you will receive it – the power to model, to display, and to call a world besotted with a confusion about sex and marriage into the marvelous light of the gospel. And you do this by honoring marriage as God designed it. You do this by living marriage as God designed it. You do this by facilitating, encouraging, strengthening, and prospering every marriage as God designed it. For in marriage we have a great mystery – the culmination of all things in the union of Christ and the Church at the end of the age.
Many years ago, we lived in Europe, and for the last two years a 30-something Russian woman lived with us, to help us care for our children and house. She got to closely observe my marriage to my wife; she got to observe the marriages of other Christians who were guests in our home, sometimes for weeks at a time.
One day, as she and my wife were talking about marriage, she remarked to my wife that she had never seen anything like she saw in the marriages of the Christians around her.
“Where I came from there is always fighting and the fist” (here, she was pounding her fist into her palm). “But, here,” she said, “there is kindness. And, the man and woman work together, and they serve one another. There is real conversation between them.”
This was a woman whose mother and father fought all the time. This was a woman who was divorced from a man who had been carrying on an extramarital affair with another man. This was a woman whose colleagues and coworkers avoided getting pregnant and aborted the pregnancies that did occur, because babies would get in the way of their careers. This was a woman who had many powerful reasons to suppose that marriage was no big deal at all; that it was, perhaps, a pretty sorry deal all round.
No amount of teaching, no amount of encouragement was going to change her mind. What got her attention was the spectacle of Christian marriages, Christian husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the Church; and Christian wives, honoring their husbands as their heads in Christ, Christian fathers and Christian mothers loving their children and rearing them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Watching these things over the months overcame the hardness of heart and awakened in her a longing for what was behind every Christian marriage and every Christian family. What was behind it all was the Great Mystery of Marriage – that all of it is, ultimately, about Christ and the Church.
Christians, this mystery is your stewardship. It is your heritage from Christ himself, passed down to by the Apostles and the Fathers of the Christ’s Church over the centuries. And it is not only your heritage, it is your destiny in Christ. And in the present – in the day-in-day-out lives of your marriages and family, in the marriages and families of other Christians around you, this Mystery is a message you have to offer to a world in which natural love has grown cold.
May God in her mercy grant that each of us – married or single – will prove good stewards of this Great Mystery. May Christ have mercy on all of us as we seek to conform our marriages to the one final wedding at the end of time. May God’s Spirit strengthen each one of us to hold fast our faith in that Mystery and in God who reveals it to us in His Word.
Let us pray.
O Heavenly Father, who gave the Church to your Son, that with her He might consummate that most excellent mystery at the end of the age, grant each one of us, who look forward to that consummation, to live our lives in conformity with that ultimate marriage that is for us a precedent and a pattern, and also our destiny, to the end that the Bridegroom of the Church may find his joy in us, and that those outside who long for what is lost may find in our examples a call to the glorious redemption found only in Your Son. We ask this in the name of the one who will one day return to the Earth to receive his Bride, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
