The Marriage to Come — Thaddeus Barnum

Almighty God and Father, we come before you this morning in thanksgiving for the wonder, the kindness, the love you have poured out upon us in your beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And so move among us by your Spirit, do the work only you can do, and be glorified here, we pray, in our midst.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Good morning. This morning I'm coming to the appointed text of today, one of them, and it's found in Jeremiah 31. So if you've got your Bible, please grab it. If you've got your text in an app phone, find it.

I really would like you to join me here in this text. So sometimes what happens is we come to a passage given to us and it simply has a little bit more weight and a little bit more substance to it than others, perhaps.

Jeremiah's Promise of a New Covenant

I can only say to you that as I've been in this text, I can only say to you that my heart just hurts. I don't know how else to express it to you. It feels like sometimes that if you can imagine, and the image I've got is if the Father just took us aside and just shared his heart with us, just shared what matters to him, what his purpose and his passion and his desire is, and you hear it in your own heart and you turn around and stare into the face of the culture and look what the devil's trying to steal from us.

It just makes the heart hurt. I don't know how else to express it. So forgive me. We're in Jeremiah and the weeping prophet. So here we go. The Lord's sharing to us here in this epic passage of Old Testament is that there's coming a day when there will be a New Testament.

The Old Testament, you know the Bible's divided into two, the Old Covenant, Old Testament, New Covenant, New Testament. In the Old Covenant, he says, you broke. I brought you out in the past and you were unfaithful.

You broke the bonds of the Covenant, is what he declared. Even though, he says, now a covenant is very simple in the sense it's simply an agreement between two parties. And so if you're about to merge companies, you come and you have an agreement in which you define the terms and conditions of the agreement so as to become one company.

And we do that all the time with all the things that go on in our life, the transactions. When you're writing a will and you're going to prosper your beneficiaries, you write a testament, an agreement between the parties.

When you buy a house, the lawyers, I don't even know where they get the packs of paper you have to sign. It's an agreement between two parties on an arrangement, an agreement. That's all it is. The Lord's entering into a formal, legal, binding covenant with us.

And so what you want to say is in this text of Jeremiah, you want to hear the words that I brought you into this covenant, a covenant, verse 32, that you broke even though I was a God to you. Or you might hear him say, even though I was king to you, or I was shepherd to you, or maybe more intimate, I was father to you.

But no, look at the language, the nature of this covenant and how he's designed it. I took them out by the hand and brought them out to the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was a husband to you.

And suddenly what you realize is that we're in the scriptures of an old covenant and a new covenant that is a marital contract. But the Lord is giving us a picture of his relationship to us. So as a couple comes and stands before us, groom and bride, we're seeing a picture as they enter into the covenant of marriage, we're seeing a picture of what the Lord's relationship is to us.

In other words, those pictures point us to something bigger. Do you get that? So grab a hunk of bread, eat the bread, and get sustenance to your body. And then listen to what the Lord says. Listen to what Jesus says.

I actually, I am that bread. Not just to your body, to life and to eternal life. Come take of me. You see, he points us to a practical picture to reveal himself to us. Do you get that? One. Thank you.

Marriage as a Picture of Christ and the Church

So it is with marriage. This is the design behind it. And you all know this. This is not foreign to you. Listen to what we say. Dearly beloved, we have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in holy matrimony.

The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation. And our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. It signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his church.

And holy scripture commends it to be honored among all people. You see what it's doing? It's pointing beyond. It signifies to us, this groom, this bride, signify to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his church.

In other words, the intimacy, the fellowship, the communion, the love the Lord has for us. He wants to show us himself through the lens of marriage. And look what's happened in our culture. Look what's going on with it.

It's like the devil has stolen what is holy and profaned it right in our midst. I feel like sometimes the prodigal son who demands before his father dies the inheritance and his father's got this gift that he's earned by his labor and by his sweat.

And before he even dies, he gives it into the hands of his son. But it's like this metamorphosis happens, this transformation happens. It was meant to be the agape love of the father, the agape, the Greek word, the love of God, the pure, the holy, the right love of God.

But by the time it gets into this, the young man's hand, it becomes eros love, erotic, passion, lust. And what's he do with it? He goes to a distant land called America and squanders it. He got loose living and prostitutes and spends it on the lusts of his pleasure.

And the devil takes that which was intended for our good to satisfy that which is meant to be blessed. And in his hands, he spoils us. He ruins us. He takes that which is holy and profanes it. And it's everywhere.

Is it not? People sleeping with anybody, anywhere, anytime. Even our government says, oh, whatever marriage is, go for it. What's happened to us? What are our kids growing up into? Now it's sex, it's everything.

It's everything. Drives us. The images we see on the on the TVs and the internet, it's like a fuel that's lit underneath, that the God we're serving is a lust. And now we're getting married based on that lust, which is no merit at all.

And then they hear, the kids hear us saying, you really shouldn't have sex without marriage. It's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not what we're saying. We're saying that something holy has been given to us, entrusted to us by God.

And in it, we will find fullness. In it, we'll find the satisfaction we're longing for. In it, we're going to find all the intents. He's going to lead us through it to a relationship with him. It's beautiful.

It's holy. It's right. It's the Lord's heart for us. And it's meant to point us to a relationship with him. And so let me begin at the beginning. In Matthew chapter 19, I'm going to show you Jesus looking at the beginning.

When Jesus testifies, I know everybody says, Adam and Eve is just a myth. Fascinating. Just fascinating. Because Jesus takes us back to Genesis. And what he says in talking about marriage is so profound.

He says in chapter 19, verse 4, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? He made them male and female. What's that mean? Well, he did. He took man from the dust of the earth, and he breathed his life in him, and man became a life-giving spirit.

When it came to a woman, and some of you know this. Erlin loves talking about this. When it comes to a woman, he didn't do the same thing. He didn't go to the dust of the ground and breathe into her. No, no.

He put Adam to sleep, and she came out of him. You say, well, why is that important? Because one day, the last Adam, Jesus is going to come. And out of him, we're gonna find our life. Derivative. The bride the church is gonna find.

Not life on our own, but life derivative from Jesus. Oh yes. He made us male, and he made us female. So much so that it's declared by Adam when he first sees her. He says, this is at last bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman, for out of, she was taken out of man. And there they are, the two of them. And what does the Lord do? After making them two, what does he do? And here comes the essence of marriage.

As Jesus says, the Lord, the Lord speaks and says, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. A man shall turn, just as Rob showed us, turn away, leaving the things of the past and cleaving to our wife.

And so that's what they do. They stand here. But that's only the environment for marriage to happen. What is marriage? It isn't just the human love or the eros love between the groom and the bride. What is it?

It's more, isn't it? It's not just the leaving and the cleaving that does it. No, it goes on and says this. And this is the mystery behind it. The two shall become one flesh. And then Jesus repeats it.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh and therefore what God has joined together. That is the miraculous substance, the miraculous power behind marriage. It isn't our cleaving, our leaving, our cleaving.

It's our receiving of the blessing, the infusing, the heavenly glue that takes the two and unites us to be one. What God joins together. That's the miraculous power behind marriage. What God joins together.

Do you believe that? Do you understand that the nature of it then, going back to what Rob and Clay have been teaching us through Lent, that times of temptation are gonna come our way from the pit below.

Times of testing are gonna come from heaven above. But here's the point. Let the storms come, because this house when God joins it together, nobody can put it asunder. When Jesus, when the Father, when agape love isn't at the center.

When all we've got is our leaving and cleaving. In come the storms. The culture that we're now living in. I know. We all know the statistics. What? Half marriages don't even survive. Marriage has become this thing.

Agape Love and the Healing of Broken Marriages

Because it's not designed that way. Eros passion is designed in the agape love of God. It's the expression that comes out when we're doing things the way the Lord has designed them. The original blueprint.

But just take it outside. Human love. Eros love. Cleave all you want. Cling all you want. I know. I know. Some of you are married and you have a non-christian spouse and it's painful and it's hard and I know that.

Some of you have Christian marriages but you are constantly at each other's throat. It's not going well. There are there are particularities. There are complexities in your marriage. I know. I know. But I know what to do with you.

Not simplistically, but I know where to go. I know the one who can heal. I know the one who can take the agape love of God and make a difference. I know the source upon which this thing called marriage, this gift God has given us, can come alive in Christ.

Even the most difficult situations, that agape love has power to do something in our lives and to change us and to make us new. And if you're in premarital counseling, I've got to tell you, you know who I fight for most?

It's not just that the original blueprint is followed by law, but it's done in the heart that we're waiting for that moment when the Lord joins together. The Lord does this. We receive the agape love.

Why? Because I fight for the kids. The kids in our generation are growing up in a day where marriage is being made fun of and their homes are growing up in broken homes. Broken, broken, broken, broken homes.

And nobody is saying, no, no. The kids deserve more than that. Do they not? And this is why sometimes I don't want the church to stand up to the culture and wag your finger. You shouldn't be doing that.

No, no. We should be rising up and pouring out the agape love of God to a culture that doesn't know him. Because that's where it starts. They've got to taste it to know it, that we might come to know him.

And that's why the point behind marriage is to be a picture beyond it. It's meant to show us the love of God. And that's why if you're single, the goal isn't to get you married. Did you get that just now or are you staring at me?

No, no. The marriage in the church is meant to appoint us, whether you're in marriage or not, to the real marriage, to come to know Jesus in your life and to be joined to him. And that's why you've got the beauty of the Bible and the way it's written.

The Lord as Husband and the Coming Bridegroom

I am a husband to you. Isaiah 54, your maker is your husband. Listen to the words that come out of Jeremiah 31. I was a husband to them. Listen to the sound of chapter two. Listen to the beauty of this, where the Lord says, I betrothed you to me forever.

I betrothed you to me in righteousness and in justice. I betrothed you to me in steadfast love and in mercy. I betrothed you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord. What is the New Testament?

It's the arrival of the bridegroom. John the Baptist says, John chapter 3, John the joy it is to be the bridegroom's friend and rejoice at the groom's voice. How does the Bible move to the end? Oh, if you haven't gotten there.

The marriage of the lamb has come. There's a day coming when all of it, we start with it in the Garden of Eden with the marriage of the two. We end the Bible in the same way. The marriage of the lamb.

Do you think marriage might be important to our Lord? Do you think so? And do you think it's not just because marriage in and of itself, but because God designed it to be holy and right and true and pure, but to be a picture of himself so that you might hear the words as a bridegroom.

Isaiah 62, I think, 5, I think, as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride. So the Lord rejoices over you. The love of agape, love of the Father poured into our lives by the Spirit given to us. What's our responsibility?

Our responsibility is to leave the powers of the Eros love that the devil has thrown at us and tried to steal with the world, the power of the flesh and the devil trying to grab us. We leave it behind.

We cleave to the Lord and we get ready to receive the wonder of that saving power in our life. And that's why you find the way the New Testament is is articulated in Jeremiah isn't about what you will do, but what he will do.

We leave. We cleave. We get ready to receive all that the Lord has for us. And listen to the way it's described in Jeremiah 31. I will put my law within them. I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people.

No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, no, the Lord, they shall all know me the least to the greatest, for I will forgive their iniquity. I will remember the sins no more.

The New Heart and Knowing the Lord

What does that mean? Just the first thing, the law of the Lord inscribed in our hearts. What is the law? Isn't it summarized in the two great statements to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and to love our neighbor as ourself.

That love of God suddenly now coming into our hearts. That's exactly how it's described. Ezekiel 36 describes it as the heart of stone being taken out and a new heart given to us. That's how we become born again.

I know some of you, you've grown up in Christian homes and you've done all the right things. And when somebody comes to you and says, hey, are you a Christian? Yeah, I am. Yeah. Got a good mom and dad.

I'm not asking that question. I'm asking, has Jesus met you? Has the work of God, the agape love of God come upon you? Have you received that blessing, that gift that the Lord has so that you hear the words, he is my God and I am his.

I am your God and you are mine so that we can hear the words. Do you know the Lord for your life? The only way that's possible is if he does this work inside of us that we might know him. Does that make sense to you?

This is the wonder of it. I pray that the riches of the glory be upon you, that you might know the strengthening power of the spirit of God within you, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in agape love.

You see, this is all that design, all that desire that we might come to know the Lord and might know what it means to be forgiven for the shame and the guilt and the fear in our life to be taken out. And that's the joy of Calvary.

That's the joy of the moment that we're coming to as we come to Monday, Thursday and the week of Holy Week. But that Monday, Thursday in particular, when Jesus takes that cup into his hands after supper, he took the cup of wine.

And when he given thanks, he gave it to them. And he said, drink this all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant. The new covenant. The unbreakable covenant. He's come to actually establish the ability for us to know the Lord, to establish an unbreakable covenant.

Security in Christ and the Wedding Feast to Come

Why do I say unbreakable? Because when the Lord joins us together, no man can separate. Or listen to how Paul says it. I'm convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creative thing will be able to separate you from the agape love of God found in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

There is security that results. The Holy Spirit comes into our hearts as a seal, a guarantee, a down payment that that which he's done will last through this life and not only through this life, but for the time, the life to come.

The wonder of the eternal life that we might know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent. He gives us in our hearts a security and awareness that no matter what the trials are, no matter what the testings are, no matter what happens or where those testings come from, you and I in Christ, in the church, we will stay and he will build us together as a family.

And he will put us on the rock and say, I will build my church. And when the Lord builds us, the gates of hell cannot prevail. There's that security that comes, there's that beauty that comes. And so I ask you today, do you believe in the agape love of the Lord coming into your heart to change us, to make us new, to win us to him?

Do you believe it's possible that the agape love has got enough power in it to separate us from what the devil has done to take that which is given to us by the Lord, the way he's perverted these things, the way we found ourselves addicted to these things?

Does the agape love of God have the power to deliver us from that bondage? Yes, or no? Then I say that agape love is what we need in our day, in our church, that we might shine it to a world in such desperate confusion.

I said at the earlier service, I'm afraid that if Sodom and Gomorrah were to rise on the day of judgment, that they would actually find themselves more righteous than us. That's what's happening to us.

We've lost ourselves. This culture is imbibed on a toxic drink that is sending all of us into confusion. Our kids are getting to 13, 14, and 15, and they're confused. Of course they're confused. The agape love of God, that's what we need.

The power of Jesus in the Spirit of God setting us free from the bondage that we might leave, that we might come and cleave to the Lord and wait for his power to come upon us, to prepare us now to be the people he's made us to be, to bless our merits, to bless our relationships with the Lord, to give us hope for the time to come for the wedding feast has not yet happened.

That's where we're headed, to be with our bridegroom, our Lord, forever and ever. Oh, thanks be to God for what he's done. But do you hear the kind of intimacy he wants with you as a person and us as a church?

It is time to stop compromising with the world because the Lord has a gift to give us that will satisfy. The erotic alone does not satisfy. It makes us want more and gets us hooked. But the agape love of God, friends, I don't know how else to say it, it satisfies the soul.

You might know the peace of God that passes understanding. We will see healing to marriages and healing to people trying to walk. We'll see hope given again and restored because the Lord wants to move in our midst.

We leave, we cleave, but he does the work for us to receive. I can't believe we're living in the day that we're living in. But okay, that's where it is. Let's have a passion in Jesus to do something about it and share the agape love of God with anybody and everybody and steal them from the abyss that's going on outside the door and rescue them with the same agape love that rescues us.

In Jesus' name. Almighty God, Almighty Father, please, as we come into prayers, especially if there are any bondages that we are under, ways that we have tossed you aside and not clung to you, ways that we've not received a saving power into our life, Lord, minister deeply to us as a bridegroom rejoicing over his bride.

In Jesus' name. Amen.