Sermon by Pastor Brent Kompelien
August 13, 2023
INTRO
It is good to be back this week! I had a wonderful time as a guest preacher at Prairie Hill Church in Eden Prairie. I want to thank my friend, Pastor Matt Brant, who joined us last week to cover conflict and forgiveness. I didn’t give him that topic for any particular reason or because we’re having some kind of conflict here at our church; it just happened to be the next one on the list! I’m so grateful for the wisdom Matt shared. And I had a wonderful time visiting Prairie Hill, but I missed you guys!
Let me begin with a story to set the stage: Some years ago, a prominent pastor and Bible scholar was asked to speak about the Christian view of marriage in a philosophy class at a large secular university in Los Angeles.
This pastor knew that it would be difficult to explain Christ-centered, biblical ethics to college students who openly reject Jesus and the authority of the Bible.
So he began his presentation like this: “Christ’s standards of ethics cannot be ultimately accepted by anyone who does not trust him as Savior and Lord. I do not expect most of you to agree with what Scripture says, because you don’t believe that through these words your Creator has spoken. Believing and embracing scriptural standards for anything presupposes that you have a right relationship with the God of the Scriptures. Only when you know and love the Lord Jesus Christ can you really apprehend his good design and then desire in your heart to follow it.”
After some awkward silence, one student raised his hand and said, “Well, then maybe you should tells us about Jesus.”
The pastor spent the next hour sharing the gospel with this class of philosophy students and this secular university, and only after this did he describe a biblical view of marriage.
You see, what this pastor was teaching these students is simple: It is only when we truly understand the biblical story of redemption, when we surrender fully to Jesus Christ as Savior and acknowledge his authority as Lord, knowing that God created us and designed us with purpose and that His ways are best, it is only in the reality of the gospel that we will rejoice at the privilege of following how God wants us to live. (SLIDE 2)
This morning we are going to look at what the Bible says about marriage and family. And these realities are designed by God, given to us for our good, and are living illustrations of the gospel. If we have the eyes of faith, if we have a soft heart, if we surrender to God’s authority and the Spirit’s transforming work within us, we will apprehend God’s good ways and rejoice that we get to follow him. (SLIDE 3, title)
I need to say one more thing: For many of us, the actual lived experiences we have with marriage and family are often very painful. You may have experienced abuse as a child, you may have divorce in your family, you may have conflict in your marriage, or you may simply find that family life has been hard.
The reason we need to approach this topic from a biblical perspective is that you need to know that there is real forgiveness and that there is real power for redemption and restoration in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Over and over in the Scriptures, Jesus reaches out to touch those who are in broken families, he forgives those who have hurt others, and he offers redemption from the reality of sin in marriages. So take heart, Jesus loves you and he can do his redemptive work in your marriage and in your family.
Let’s talk about marriage. ILLUST — Jonathan Edwards, the great 18th century pastor and theologian, once wrote, (SLIDE 4) “The creation of the world seems to have been especially for this end, that the eternal Son of God might obtain a spouse, towards whom he might fully exercise the infinite benevolence of his nature, and to whom he might, as it were, open and pour forth all that immense fountain of condescension, love, and grace that was in his heart, and that in that way God might be glorified.”
Friends, marriage is a living illustration of Christ and his Bride, the church. The creation story of Genesis establishes the pattern and prefigures the future reality that we see in the book of Revelation that describes the new heavens and new earth as a wedding feast, where Christ is the Groom and New Jerusalem is the Bride. In other words, it was God’s purpose from eternity to design human marriage as a signpost to the reality of the union of Christ and his church through the gospel. Let’s look at this original design.
MAIN 1 — God’s Created Order (Genesis 1-3) (SLIDE 5a)
Go with me to Genesis 1, the first page of your Bible. We are going to glance through these first three chapters and point out some critical features of God’s created order:
Chapter 1: (SLIDE 5b) God created in complementary sets: light/dark, waters above/waters below, land/seas, sun/moon, birds/fish, animals/reptiles, and the culmination of it all was the complementary set of human beings that bear God’s image, male and female.
Chapter 2: (SLIDE 5c) This chapter zooms in on the creation of humanity and explains that Adam was given the world to steward, but also given a command to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for he would certainly die (2:16-17). Then Eve was created as a help-mate for Adam and they were united together as one in the first marriage (2:24)
This union of one man and one woman as one flesh is affirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19 when he talks about the damage that is caused by divorce. We all know the prevalence of divorce in our culture, and some of you have been affected by it. The reason we experience such pain, and the reason there are scars, and the reason it feels like a part of you is amputated is because it is the tearing apart of one flesh. It is not merely a social contract, it is not a relationship of convenience, it is not a status symbol or civil right. It is a mysterious union of two image-bearers as one, and tearing it apart hurts.
In our culture, there are all kinds of ways we tear apart marriage: We elevate marriage too high as though it will satisfy our deepest desires, often making single people feel less than human (what about Jesus?). Or our culture distorts marriage to be man/man or woman/woman, completely missing the point of the beautiful difference of the complementary nature of male and female. Or our culture tries to normalize the tearing apart of families by divorce. These are weighty issues and the damage is real. You’ve probably felt it, and it affects us deeply because it isn’t the way things are supposed to be.
Chapter 3: (SLIDE 5d) The good order is distorted by sin. Satan comes to tempt Eve, twisting the words of God, and Adam is nowhere to be found. Without her help-mate, she makes the decision to disobey God, and Adam abdicates his responsibility and partakes with her. When God comes calling, he goes to Adam and holds him accountable. But he deflects and blames Eve. She in turn blames the serpent, and all is lost under the curse of sin.
The curse distorts the marriage relationship. In Genesis 3:16, God says to Eve, (SLIDE 5e) “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Desire = the Hebrew word here means “to seek control over.” So the curse over the wife is that she will “desire” to control her own destiny by subverting her husband. This is the opposite of trusting relationship.
The curse over Adam is that he will “rule” over his wife. The man’s curse will be that he will be heavy-handed and authoritarian in order to promote himself. He will act in ways that are for his own protection and advantage. This is the opposite of self-giving love.
This distortion of marriage cries out for redemption. Let’s fast-forward to see how this can be redeemed in the gospel.
MAIN 2 — Gospel Corrective (Ephesians 5:21-33). (SLIDE 6a)
READ Ephesians 5:21-33.
Before we dive into the details of this passage, we need to understand the issues that were going on in the church in the city of Ephesus at this time.
There was a cultural battle going on in the Greek-Roman world of the 1st century:
The ancient Greeks practiced ancestor worship. They viewed the role of husband and father like a god, and everyone else in the household existed to serve the patriarch of the family. In other words, being head of the family traditionally meant that a man exercised authority for his own benefit. Being a husband or father was a self-serving role, and power was wielded to protect his lineage and honor.
But as the Roman Empire took over Greek culture, a new movement started that rebelled against this. There is evidence that in the 1st century there was a wave of Roman women who began reacting against dominant male headship by refusing to have children, by wearing immodest clothing, and by generally rebelling against their family responsibilities. Many scholars call this a type of ancient feminism.
KEY: These dynamics in the broader culture of the 1st century were infiltrating the church in Ephesus because there were an increasing number of Greek-Roman converts to Christianity. These new believers came to faith in Christ, but still had to unlearn the Greek way of thinking and apprehend the deeper truths about the one true Creator God and his revealed design for marriage and family.
Knowing this background, Paul’s words about God’s design for marriage relationships are not merely idyllic and detached from reality. (SLIDE 6b) The church in Ephesus was experiencing the same sinful distortions we saw in the curse of Genesis 3 to “desire” and “rule”.
You see, Paul is speaking eternal truths about how marriage reflects Christ and the church into a cultural moment where husbands were abusing their role as head of the family and women were asserting their own autonomy and refusing to participate in family life. Friends, there are striking parallels between what was going on in the church in Ephesus and what is going on in our society.
What I want to show you that God’s design for marriage and family point to grander eternal realities that illustrate our redemption in the gospel.
Let’s look at the details of Ephesians 5:21-33. Paul gives instructions for both wives and husbands:
(SLIDE 6c) WIVES (vv. 22-24) — The key word here “submit yourselves” means “voluntary yielding in love.”
IMPORTANT — This is not an active verb, it is in the “middle” voice, it is reflexive, with the meaning of “submitting yourself”, making a choice, exercising your will, again, “voluntary yielding in love.” (SLIDE 6d)
APPLY: This was a direct challenge to the Ephesian women who were asserting their own radical autonomy and destroying the fabric of their families.
ASIDE: We must be clear: The New Testament never commands husbands to subordinate their wives, to force them to submit. Instead, a husband is to treat his wife as an equal image bearer for whom God has given him the responsibility to love. In other words, biblical submission is not coercive and it does not destroy the will of a wife, but rather upholds and empowers her will to choose to act in loving response.
Ask the wives: Will you yield yourself in love? Will you show the world a living illustration of how the church submits to Christ? That is Paul’s challenges.
The church’s submission to Christ is not coercive; it is an act of love. It is a willing response.
The church’s submission to Christ is not stifling; it is for our thriving. We trust that he is acting for our good.
KEY: It is counter-cultural to imagine that submission could be a loving act and could lead to thriving. Frankly, it is a vulnerable place to be. The only way this is possible is if that vulnerability is matched with trustworthy self-sacrifice.
(SLIDE 6e) HUSBANDS (vv. 25-33) — The command for husbands is to “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
The word “love” is repeated 6 times in this paragraph. It should be no surprise that husbands need to hear the same command 6 times before it sinks in!
How do we define love? Our culture defines love as a feeling. But this passage defines love as the action of self-sacrifice. It is modeled after Jesus’ love for the church, and it has two features:
Jesus’ love is self-giving (SLIDE 6f) — How did Christ love the church? By dying on the cross; by giving himself to suffer for her; by putting her needs above his own; by giving everything for his Bride.
As Philippians 2 says, Jesus “did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant…he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!”
Ask the husbands: Are you willing to give up your privilege, putting your wife’s needs above your own, sacrificing yourself for her, to model what it means everyday to “die to self”?
APPLY: This was the challenge to the Ephesian men who were using their position for their own advantage. Here Paul tells them that the deeper design of God is for them to reflect the self-giving love of Christ. This brings us to the other feature of Jesus’ love.
Jesus’ love is generous (SLIDE 6g) — He loves us when we don’t deserve it.
The world’s love is always object-oriented or achievement-oriented. A person is loved because of physical attractiveness, personality, wit, prestige, or some other such positive characteristic. Or we love someone because they give us some kind of self-worth or because it will achieve something in the eyes of the others.
This is twisted and toxic because we feel a pressure to have something to make us lovable. In other words, the world loves those whom it deems worthy of love. When love is based on a feeling or keeping the spark or impressing others, as soon as that transaction doesn’t work anymore, people leave each other to seek that self-fulfillment.
But when you love like Jesus loves, you don’t calculate the merit. Real Christ-like love continues to give generously as long as there is need. This is what Jesus did for you and for me. We don’t deserve his love, we aren’t worthy of his love, we can’t merit his love. It is pure grace.
Ask the husbands: Will you choose to love as an act of generous service, putting the gospel on display by loving your wife without a transaction, seeking her good, as an act of grace?
APPLY: (SLIDE 7a) Do you see how this passage in Ephesians 5 reverses the curse in Genesis 3?
(SLIDE 7b) Rather than the desire to control, a redeemed wife is openhanded and yields herself to her husband as an act of love and trust, showing us how the church trusts Christ.
(SLIDE 7c) Rather than ruling for his own advantage, a redeemed husband is self-giving and generous with his love, working daily for his wife’s good and showing us how Christ gave himself for the church and how he promises to safely usher us into the new heavens and new earth.
We need to realize how hard this is to live out everyday! We need grace for each other, we need to practice forgiveness, we need to abide in Christ, and we need to let the Spirit transform us. Marriage is one of God’s tools of sanctification. It is an opportunity for change and growth as you learn to live with another person who is not like you! The complementary nature of men and women will push us to grow in grace and patience for others.
ILLUST — This is like a dance, lead and complement, where it is more intuitive and it flows as the lead makes the complement shine. When done well, it flows! It is not stifling; It causes thriving! It is a joy and a delight! When it is done well, it isn’t forced and it doesn’t seem obvious to onlookers. It looks like a beautiful dance. BUT, we often step on each other’s toes, get off-rhythm, and sometimes forget the way this whole thing is supposed to work.
When I think of the married couples I know that I want to emulate, they aren’t loud and in your face about these things. They tend to quietly and faithfully live out the beautiful dance of lead and complement. They live it out without having to shout it out that there is headship and submission.
KEY: The only way to truly embody either submission or headship well is if your identity is secure in Christ. If you are a recipient of grace, you can more easily give it. This is why Paul says at the opening of these instructions in verse 21, “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
IMPORTANT: This mutual service of self-giving generous love and voluntary yielding in love are a living illustration of the gospel and it redeems and restores the curse of sin in marriage. Contrary to Ephesian culture and contrary to our culture, this biblical vision is not traditionalism nor liberation. It is a wholly different and is it God’s design for marriage that is a beautiful picture of the gospel.
(SLIDE 8a) This is the God-ordained and beautiful path toward making a home where children can come to know and love Jesus because they see the gospel displayed in living reality in their own parents.
We don’t have time to say much about parenting or other aspects of family life, although I have some book recommendations in the sermon handout. But I want you to notice the very next topic Paul addresses with the Ephesians after this section on marriage. Look at chapter 6:1-4. (SLIDE 8b) READ Ephesians 6:1-4.
(SLIDE 8c) The best place for these commands to become a reality is in a home where husband and wife are living out the gospel in their own relationship first.
I’ll say again what I said at the beginning — It is only when we truly understand the biblical story of redemption, when we surrender fully to Jesus Christ as Savior and acknowledge his authority as Lord, knowing that God created us and designed us with purpose and that His ways are best, it is only in the reality of the gospel that we will rejoice at the privilege of following how God wants us to live.
Questions:
In what ways have you experienced the effects of sin in your family?
How has God shown his redeeming and restoring power in your family?
What areas of growth do you have as a husband or wife in light of this passage from Ephesians 5?
How can you display the truth of the gospel to the next generation?
Resources for Later:
Beautiful Difference: The Whole-Bible Complementarity of Male and Female – Andrew Wilson
God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation – Andreas Köstenberger
The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexity of Commitment with the Wisdom of God – Tim and Kathy Keller
Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family – Paul David Tripp
Raising Passionate Jesus Followers: The Power of Intentional Parenting – Phil and Diane Comer