Yesterday, we began a series entitled, “The Glory of God in the Homes of His People.” This is a series that has been on my heart for several months and for several reasons. There is great need in our world today for basic, biblical instruction on the subject of marriage and family because it seems that in our culture and our community, many people have lost their way when it comes to this glorious institution. Andreas Kostenberger makes the following comments on our current cultural crisis:
“For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is confronted with the need to define the meaning of the terms “marriage” and “family.” What until now has been considered a “normal” family, made up of a father, a mother, and a number of children, has in recent years increasingly begun to be viewed as one among several options, which can no longer claim to be the only or even superior form of ordering human relationships. The Judeo-Christian view of marriage and family with its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures has to a significant extent been replaced with a set of values that prizes human rights, self-fulfillment, and pragmatic utility on an individual and societal level. It can rightly be said that marriage and the family are institutions under siege in our world today, and that with marriage and the family, our very civilization is in crisis.”[1] He goes on to list several negative consequences of the erosion of a biblical view of marriage: sky-rocketing divorce rates (which many statistics say are as high or higher among professing Christians as they are among the rest of secular society), sex outside of marriage, adultery, teen pregnancy, homosexuality, and gender role confusion. Satan seems to be successfully ravaging the homes, not only of our society in general, but also of God’s people.
My basic presupposition for this series is this: Marriage and family, like everything else in this universe, exist for the glory of God. This means that there is more at stake when marriages fall apart than just our own pain or the emotional damage to our children. The glory of God is at stake when our homes are in trouble. Our homes are to be beacons that display the light of the glory of God to the world. In John Piper’s “This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence,” he opens the first chapter with this statement: “There never has been a generation whose general view of marriage is high enough.”[2] My prayer is that God would use this sermon series to do a work in our hearts that will lift our view of marriage and family as high as possible so that it would redound to the glory of His name for all eternity.
I. The Meaning and Purpose of All Marriage (Ephesians 5:31-32)
I’m kind of going out on a limb this morning because no book that I have read on marriage so far explores the last marriage in the bible, which is called “the marriage of the Lamb” in Revelation 19:7. The reason I want to start there today is because according to Paul, when God created the first marriage, He had the last one in mind. He says the following in Ephesians 5:31-32: “‘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.” The meaning and the purpose of marriage is to put on display the covenant love between Christ and His bride, the church. It was created by God to be a lived out parable of God’s covenant love for His people. This means is that we can tie a string from the first marriage and every other subsequent marriage to this last one between Christ and His bride. If you are married, that is the ultimate meaning and purpose of your marriage. That is why you are married. If you hope to be married someday, that is what you should look forward to most.
This again means that marriage ultimately exists for the glory of God. Through it, He wants to fill the earth with a demonstration of who He is. Gary Ricucci articulated what this means: “When we speak of bringing glory to God, we mean doing that which, to some degree, accurately reveals and represents Him and appropriately honors and responds to Him for who He is in His perfection and power. Thus, marriage brings glory to God by displaying as fully as possible how He relates to His people through Christ.”[3]
Marriage is a metaphor used to describe the relationship between God and His people throughout the Bible (Is. 25:6-9, 49:18, 54:5-10, 61:10, Ezek. 16, John 3:29, 2 Cor. 11:2, Eph. 5:32, Rev. 19:6-9, 21:1-4, 9-14, 22:17). One beautiful example of this metaphor is found in Isaiah 54:5-10, where declares His steadfast, covenant love for His people in spite of their rebellion. So now that we understand meaning and the metaphor of marriage, let’s how they are ultimately fulfilled in the last marriage.
II. The Last Marriage (Revelation 21:1-4)
It is no accident that we see this metaphor of marriage appears again on the day that the whole Bible has been looking forward to. Please don’t miss this. It is monumentally profound that when God wants to describe the consummation of His kingdom, He uses the metaphor of a wedding. He uses the metaphor of a marriage. The new creation begins (21:2) with the holy city of God’s people, New Jerusalem, “coming down…as a bride adorned for her husband.” Now, what was the first institution that God established in the old creation? It was marriage. So catch this: God’s new creation and new covenant is consummated by the oldest custom in creation. He does so because this is the wedding that every wedding has pointed to in some way. There are at least four things that we see in this marriage that speak to ours today.
1) The Nature of Covenant Love
The first thing we observe about this last marriage is the nature of covenant love. I called this the day that the whole Bible has been looking forward to and the reason that the whole Bible has been looking forward to this day is because God said it was going to come. This is the day that God Himself committed to bring about. That’s the significance of the curse being lifted (21:4): it is what God has been working towards since He declared the curse in Genesis 3. In Genesis 3:15, God promised that He would send someone to undo everything that was done that day. He made a vow to redeem His people. This wedding of God and His people is the end of that promise. This wedding is the end of every one of God’s covenants with His people throughout the Bible. He has ultimately blessed the nations through Christ by calling out from among them a people to be His bride. This wedding between God and His people is the end of the new covenant (Jer. 33:31-33, Ezek. 36:25-28).
Now here is why I say that this last marriage teaches us about the nature of covenant love: because it speaks back to all of history and to all of the new creation that God is a God who keeps His covenants. He is a God who keeps His vows. He has never wavered in His commitment to His bride. He has never ceased to be committed to her. He has never broken covenant with her no matter how she may have rebelled against Him. He has even died to secure the reality of what He has promised to her. That’s the nature of covenant love. It keeps its vows. It never gives up. Have you ever considered that Jesus Christ has been the most loving husband to the most unloving bride in all of history? He has never and will never leave His wife.
This unwavering and unceasing commitment to keep covenant is the idea behind many covenant symbols that are part of weddings and covenants we see in scripture. The wedding ring seeks to communicate that just as a circle is unending, so will a couple’s commitment to keeping the covenant of marriage be. The salt ceremony seeks to communicate that it would be easier to separate every individual grain of salt and put them back in their original containers than it would be to end this covenant. Genesis 15 is one of by favorite examples of a covenant symbol, where various animals are sacrificed in half and the parties of the covenant walk between the halves of the animals, signifying that they will die like these animals before they will break the covenant that is being entered into. That is the nature of covenant love. It is unwavering. It is unceasing. It is committed. It is permanent.
Marriage is a covenant (Ezek. 16:18, Mal. 2:14), not a contract. Contracts are conditional and can easily be broken. The marriage covenant is a sacred bond horizontally between husband and wife and vertically between the couple and God. And covenant love is not about my spouse’s faithfulness to me; it is about my faithfulness to her and to God. As Piper says again, marriage is not mainly about staying in love, but about keeping covenant.
This also has profound implications for single people who want to get married one day. You need to be resolved to love like this if you want to marry someone and you need to only marry someone that you can love like this. In marriage, people change in both good ways and bad ways. You need to resolve in your heart that you can love and be committed to this person regardless of what changes you both may go through. That’s the nature of covenant love. It’s in for better or for worse.
2) The Beauty of the Bride (2, 9-14)
The beauty of Christ’s bride is highlighted here Revelation 21:9-11 and in Revelation 19:6-9. She is said to be a radiant bride that is adorned with “the glory of God.” In Revelation 19:8, her clothing is “fine linen, bright and pure,” which is defined as “the righteous deeds of the saints.” According to Revelation 7:14, her clothing, her righteous deeds, are white because they have been washed in the blood of her Husband, the Lamb. I think this means that the beauty of the Lamb’s wife will be her holiness that was brought about by the saving and sanctifying work of her Husband, Jesus Christ. This beauty will be a testimony to His grace towards her and of her love for Him. That is why her beauty is said to be the “glory of God.”
Here’s what I think this says to our marriages today: that if what is beautiful about Christ’s bride is her holiness, then our marriages should be working towards one another’s holiness. I should be an agent of grace that encourages, pursues, and fights for the holiness of my wife. Jesus doesn’t stop at the justification of His bride; He also pursues her sanctification and her glorification. He relentlessly pursues her holiness. He has committed Himself to seeing her conformed into His image. What I’m saying is that we should commit ourselves to seeing our spouse conformed to His image as well. This brings up some convicting questions. Am I fighting for the holiness of my spouse? Am I warring in prayer for my wife’s growth in the Lord? For my children’s? For anyone’s other than my own?
3) The Intimacy of the Union (3-4)
The reason marriage is such a rich metaphor for the relationship between God and His people is because it helps us understand one of the mega-themes of the bible: GOD’S DESIRE TO DWELL WITH HIS PEOPLE. This desire is seen in several places, like in the Garden of Eden, in the Tabernacle, in the Temple, ultimately in the coming of Jesus, and is also seen in the Church. And here (21:3-4) we have sin removed and the heart of God becoming the only reality. We could say that heaven is the honeymoon of God and His people. God wants this metaphor to communicate the intimacy of this eternal union. Heaven is the perfect home where the Lamb will forever live with and enjoy His bride. This is the happiest of all happily ever-afters.
Now here is the part I really don’t want to mess up! The reality that we witness about the last marriage also speaks to the treasure that God is. God is a treasure that is infinitely more valuable than anything we can or will ever experience. He is better than a spouse. He is better than a boyfriend or a girlfriend. He is more satisfying than sex. He is better than children. Is this not Paul’s point in saying that being with Christ is “far better” than anything we could experience in this life (Philippians 1:23)? He is the highest and deepest joy that anyone can experience on either side of eternity. At the last marriage we will experience that reality in its fullness.
I guess at one level an application of this point would be that you should make “dwelling with” (spending quality time with) your spouse a priority. That is a good idea. Do that. But I would like to push you a little farther and a little deeper than that. If God really is the treasure that scriptures declare Him to be (and I believe He is), then I want to challenge you to treasure God. Spend quality time with your spouse, but most importantly, spend quality time with the Lord in prayer and in His Word in anticipation of this day that we read about in Revelation 21:1-4. Let Psalm 16:11 become the anthem of your heart before God, that “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at you right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Any marriage that fails to treasure God will ultimately never make it. I don’t mean they will certainly divorce, but I do mean that they will never know what it is like to display the covenant love of Jesus for His bride if they do not treasure Him. This is one of the most important things that any married person can know: the key to treasuring marriage properly is treasuring God. As Piper often says, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
4) The Glory of the Bridegroom (4)
I simply want you to see here in verse 4 Who it is that is dwelling with, comforting, and healing His bride: Jesus. The Lamb is the hero of this greatest love story. His covenant love that reached its climax in the cross is forever enjoyed and celebrated in this new creation. He has rescued His bride. She will never want again. She will never cry again. She will never face pain or death again. If you were to take all of history’s greatest love stories and happy endings and put them together, it would only be a cheap cartoon compared to this scene. No hero has ever more gloriously rescued His love than Jesus has.
Let me encourage you that Jesus needs to be the hero of your love story (of your marriage) as well. He can heal the hurts that you have experienced in marital failure. He can wipe away the tears. He can restore your marriage and your fellowship with Him. Please here this today: because God is unwaveringly committed to the beauty of His bride’s holiness, that means He is with you, fighting for your marriage to be this picture of covenant love. But you cannot display the glory of God properly in your marriage if you do not treasure Him and live utterly dependent upon Him to display that glory.
In closing, I would to just make note of a few implications of this passage. One is that no earthly marriage is ultimate & that all earthly marriages are temporary. This is implied here in Revelation 21:1-4 (it is the only marriage that we read about) and it is explicitly stated in Mark 12:25, which says, “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” There will be no human marriage after death. I don’t say this to burst anyone’s bubble, but to both encourage single people and to safeguard us from making marriage and family an idol.
Secondly, though no earthly marriage is ultimate, all earthly marriages are sacred. They are designed to display the covenant love between Christ and His church. We should make our highest priority in our homes to not warp this picture by the grace of God.
Finally, because no earthly marriage is ultimate, all earthly marriages are dependent upon the grace of God. This first means that if you are not a Christian, it is impossible for you to display the glory of God in your marriage properly. Your heart is dead and cannot treasure God. You need to experience this covenant love of Christ for the first time today so that you can express it in your home. This secondly means that if you are a Christian, that you are still utterly dependent upon the empowering of the Holy Spirit of God that lives within you to accomplish this lofty task of displaying the glory of God’s covenant keeping grace. And let us all rejoice in this reality that in our dependence upon Him, He is also unwaveringly committed to our displaying His glory.
