Let marriage be held in honor among all, even in this present age

Tom and Alice*:

This is your special day. It’s a significant day– a day that brings every reason to rejoice in the Lord. Today you are establishing a covenant relationship. You are entering into all the privileges and joys and holy expectations that come with marriage.

This day is significant for at least two reasons.

First, it’s signficant because you are entering into the first human relationship God blessed – that He put His holy stamp of approval on.

The covenantal union of a man and a woman is not an idea that has evolved over time; it was decreed by God when He created the universe. {I just read His words from Genesis 1-2 a moment ago}

When God created His image bearers He did so by creating us male and female. Our maleness and femaleness are a designed blessing from God. To be a male or to be a female, is not a bug; it’s not a faulty design that requires fixing. To be a male or female is a blessing from the God of the universe. And from the very beginning God’s design was for His image bearers to come together as husband and wife in a one flesh union. God created the male first and later brought to him the woman — providing Adam a helper uniquely suitable to him. At the end of Genesis 2 we read that Adam gets that and delights in what God has wrought. Upon seeing Eve in all her femaleness, Adam says in praise to God and delight in his wife, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’

Covenantal love is a borrowed love, a love of imitation: Be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us (Eph. 5:1-2).

The chapter closes with the divine decree that what He had done for Adam and Eve is His standard for all who would come after them: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

Hundreds of years later, when the Son of God was here on earth and being quizzed by self-righteous sinners as to what they could get away with regarding sex and marriage, Jesus took them back to Genesis 1 and 2. He said, ‘What God has joined together, let no man separate.’ No one is to go away from God’s standard, to tear it down or tear it apart.

Tom and Alice, this is the biggie going on this afternoon. God does not pronounce His blessing on friends with benefits. He does not bless mega-billionaires servicing a stable of women. He does not bless same-sex unions. In fact, God only warns of judgment for those who do not repent of their defying and defiling of the covenant union of a man and a woman. Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. – Hebrews 13:4. Rejoice in the Lord, because amidst this crooked and perverse generation, you two are entering into what our holy Creator has blessed from the beginning.

The second reason this day is significant is because of what God says marriage represents. In a few minutes you will be exchanging rings – and those pieces of precious metal are a symbol of your covenant vows to each other. But the Bible teaches us that your marriage – your life together — will be a living symbol of the relationship between Christ and His bride, the church.

The Bible tells us that Christ claims a specific people for Himself and vows to never leave them nor forsake them. His Church is His bride – and all those who make up the church will for all eternity be defined by their union with Christ. Marriage between one man and one woman is to be a parable – a picture — of the union between Christ and His bride, the church.

Let me state two implications and then I want to address those you’ve invited to witness your vows.

Implication #1 – Your identity will never be the same again. Let me state the obvious.

Tom – From this day on, you will be a married man. You will not merely be best buds with Alice. You will not merely be housemates. You are taking this woman to be your wife. From this day on you, the male, will be the husband and head of this woman.

Alice – From this day on, you will be known as the wife of Tom Smith. You, the female, are giving yourself to him, the male. No longer will you be identified as Alice Jones; you will be identified as the wife of Tom Smith. He is taking you to be his wife, and you are giving yourself to him as your husband. So, implication #1. Your identity will never be the same again.

Implication #2 – Your covenant vows today, will be what will see you through till death do you part. Let’s get a wee bit of help from Martin Luther and then from Dr. Seuss. A marriage isn’t held together by feelings. Five hundred years ago Martin Luther wrote, Feelings come and feelings go, and feelings are deceiving. He was echoing what the Bible reveals about us: The heart is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9). Every Christian is aware of the convoluted and polluted mixture of desires and thoughts that run through their mind. God-honoring marriage is not held together by sappy love songs from the 70s. Euphoria will come and go. Which leads me to Dr. Seuss. In his book Horton Hatches the Egg, the elephant, Horton, agrees to watch after the egg of Lazy Mazy the bird — while she flies off to Palm Beach. As he sits on the egg amidst all kinds of trouble and dangers and taunts, Horton repeatedly says the following: “I said what I meant, and I meant what I said. An elephant is faithful 100%. Dr. Seuss was not original. There actually is a real standard and example of 100% faithfulness!

To be a male or to be a female, is not a bug; it’s not a faulty design that requires fixing. To be a male or female is a blessing from the God of the universe.

Real love — the kind that sees an imperfect husband and imperfect wife stay together through cancer, through dementia, through disappointment, through disability, through exhaustion, through famine, through selfish pride and stupidity – is their imitating the love of God for sinners. It is a love defined by God Himself who swears by His own name that He will save His people and remain in covenant with them forever. His reputation, His word is at stake. The Bible speaks highly of the man who swears to his own hurt and changes not (Ps. 15:4). But the only One who has done that perfectly is Christ Himself. Christ loved His bride to the extent that He gave up His life for her. He remained 100% contentedly obedient as a human and remained true to His word to the point of death, even death on a cross. The Lord Jesus Christ who saves sinners said what He meant and meant what He said. Christ alone is faithful 100%. Covenantal love is a borrowed love, a love of imitation: Be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us (Eph. 5:1-2).

And now let me address your witnesses. To Ken and Michael, to Sasha and Kate, and to you, family and guests, the next portion of this service is when Tom and Alice declare their vows. As you listen to them consider this: There is a command given to all humans. God declares that marriage is to be held in honor among all. All of us are to value and regard marriage as of great value (Heb. 13:4).

In our sin-soaked minds and our sin-loving world, that does not come easily. But there is good news. God’s saving grace provided in His Son Jesus Christ, does two things. To those who repent and seek their salvation from God’s judgment in His Son Jesus Christ, God forgives them all their sins – including their sexual sins and their indifferent and low views of marriage. But God’s saving grace does not lower the standard of marriage. God’s grace does not negate His command for all to honor marriage. The second thing God’s saving does is it instructs us (Titus 2:11-14). He enables us to have a holy sense of the goodness of marriage and a desire to honor marriage with our own lives. Feeble and stumbling as our life united to Christ may be at times, God helps us honor marriage.

So the challenge and summons for us who are witnesses today to Tom and Alice’s marriage vows is to ourselves hold marriage in honor. This afternoon, as you consider what has been read and said, perhaps you need to acknowledge your low view of marriage and seek God’s forgiveness. His saving grace will not only forgive you, it will instruct you to live in ways that are good and godly (Titus 2:12). And that includes honoring the blessing of marriage, whether single, widowed or married.

For those of us who have turned to Christ in faith and are being instructed by His grace, He calls each of us to hold tightly to the truth. He calls all of us in this room to encourage one another – and that includes encouraging Tom and Alice as they now become one flesh and live out the blessing of marriage.

Closing prayer

Great God in heaven, as Tom and Alice begin their lives together, we send them off fully confident your grace will instruct them in the way they should go. Bless them as they love, honor and cherish each other. Give them Christ-honoring humility, Christ-dependent wisdom and Christ-rooted delight as they build a household together. In the coming days and years may these witnesses encourage Tom and Alice in their marriage. May each here honor the blessing of marriage. For our joy and your glory we ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen

*Not their real names.