Olline and Micah Wedding 2023 | Special Event

Wedding Welcome and Opening Prayer

Well, we welcome you here to this very special day for the wedding of Micah and Auleen. We're grateful that you have joined us here. Will you please bow your heads with me as we open our time in prayer?

Our gracious and sovereign God, we are so thankful to you for this opportunity to be here. We thank you for bringing Micah and Auleen together, for what lies ahead for them, for your plan for them. We are grateful that we can be here and be witnesses of this very solemn occasion.

And we pray that as our hearts are filled with joy and affection and gladness for what you have done and what you will do, we pray that our time here would be honoring and glorifying to you in the greatest measure, that you would be honored through the meditation of our hearts and all that is done here in celebrating this union.

And we pray your glad blessing upon our time and upon their marriage together, their union together, and their lives in service to you. We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Who gives this woman to be married to this man?

Genesis 2 and the Creation of Marriage

I'm going to read to you from the book of Genesis chapter 2, verses 18 through 25. Then the Lord God said, it is not good for a man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

And whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper suitable for him.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man.

The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. For this reason, the man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Would you join with us, please, as Josh leads us in singing the doxology.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him above, yours here below. Praise Him above, ye heavenlies. Father, Son, and Holy.

The Witnesses and Counselors of Marriage

I want to just take a moment to speak to you as witnesses to this marriage. You know, when you get a marriage license in the state of Idaho, there is a place for two people to sign as witnesses. And we've already found those two people and they've already signed.

So we've fulfilled the law in that sense. But in a much greater, deeper and more profound sense, you are here and you are here and you are here because you are all witnesses to this event. By your very presence, you signal your approval of this marriage, that this is good and right in the sight of God.

You also are committing yourselves, whether you know it or not, and in particular to you ladies and you gentlemen, you are committing yourselves to act as witnesses and counselors to this young couple in the days to come.

All marriage has its challenges. That is a fundamental axiom of human nature. And this young couple, like all others, will have their challenges. And they, from time to time, will need people to come and to speak truth into their lives.

And so that opportunity is yours. That opportunity in a very special way is yours, gentlemen, and yours, ladies. You were selected for this purpose. So will you commit yourself to them? Will you pray for them?

Will you come alongside them to encourage them, to exhort them in the truth, and if needful, to speak directly into their lives? Will you do that? Fantastic. Let's begin. All right, you folks. Well, at long last, you have arrived at that much-anticipated place.

You are shortly to be married. And Micah and Aline, Carol and I have been meeting with you over the course of a number of months here, and there is much that we have talked about with regard to marriage.

During that time.

And so what I want to do with you both in the next few minutes is to just quickly review some of what we have learned. You might say that this is your final review prior to the big exam called marriage.

Let me ask you a question. Why marry? Why marry? It may seem like a silly question given our present circumstances, but it is nonetheless a question that is increasingly being asked in our culture. There is a rising societal disdain for the institution of marriage.

Christians committed to the Scriptures as the inerrant and authoritative Word of God, we have an answer for that question. In fact, in reflecting upon this day, I have come up with seven purposes for marriage, and I would like to briefly review them with you.

Okay? These are things we have talked about. So let's just dive in. The first purpose for marriage is partnership. It is partnership. We read in Genesis chapter 2 that the Lord God said it is not good for a man to be alone.

I will make him a helper suitable for him. And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. And the man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. God has created us to live in relationship. He is a relational God and he has created us in his image. So he has created us to live in relationship.

Deep down inside, there is a longing and a need to share our lives with someone. When Adam was created, he was without sin, and he was in a perfect vertical relationship with the Father above and the animal kingdom below.

But we read that there was not a helper found suitable for him. In other words, he lacked a horizontal relationship. He needed someone who corresponded to him. And God fulfilled that in Eve. Micah, Aline, you both come from loving and nurturing homes.

You also have a number of very close friends, as we can look around and see. And yet neither your family nor your friends will ever be able to satisfy the deepest longings of your heart like you can for one another.

Together in partnership, you will complement each other's strengths and offset each other's weaknesses as joint heirs to the grace of life. Secondly is provision. The second reason to marry is provision, again from Genesis 2.

For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. God's design for you, Micah, is to leave your father and your mother and to cleave to Aline as you establish your own home.

That's why she will take your name and not you hers. There's something about the responsibilities of marriage that provides a growth accelerator to manhood. You are no longer footloose and fancy free.

You now have responsibilities for someone other than yourself. So put away the video games, go to bed early, put your nose to the grindstone and embrace the privilege and pressure of manhood. As you work hard, providing both materially and immaterially for your family, you will learn what it means to be a man.

Protection in Marriage and 1 Peter 3:7

Third is protection. Peter writes in 1 Peter 3 .7, you husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman, and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.

Micah as a husband, you have a God-given duty to lovingly protect your wife. This protection includes her spiritual care as well as her mental, emotional and physical.

Well-being.

I'm going to remind you of a truth that is both obvious and yet in our culture, obscure. You ready? Aline is not a man. She is a woman, the most glorious and beautiful of God's creation. Women are weaker vessels, we're told.

In other words, they're more delicate than men. But weaker doesn't mean inferior. In that book that we read called Reforming Marriage by Doug Wilson, he uses an illustration, do you remember this, of a teacup and a hammer.

Remember that? And he asked the question, which is better, a teacup or a hammer? And the answer is, it depends what you want to do with it. Teacups aren't very good at driving nails, but try drinking tea out of a hammer.

Each of you have God-given roles and responsibilities, and yours, Micah, is the protection of your.

Wife.

Your protection of Aline should take the form of loving, servant leadership, since you will become one flesh. You are to care for her as you would your own body, nourishing, cherishing her. If you do this well, then her heart will fully trust in you, and her respect for you as a man will grow to be immense.

Provocation, Forgiveness, and Sanctification in Marriage

Fourth is provocation, provocation. The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 32, Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

Marriage is the closest of all human relationships, and as such, it is a divinely designed school for spiritual growth. Micah, Aline, it is inevitable that you are going to provoke each other from time to time.

Communication breakdowns, selfishness, impatience, even fatigue will all contribute to conflict in your marriage. But the great thing about all of this is that even when we blow it, we can still repent, confess, seek and receive forgiveness, and start all over again.

The beauty of it is that now you can't avoid each other. You're starting out in a small place like most young couples. You got to figure it out, and you got to resolve it, because there ain't no place to go to.

Get away from it.

Marriage will sanctify you. Fifth is procreation. Back to Genesis again. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

God blessed that first couple, and He gave them the incredible ability to create life, to bring into this world a human being made in the image of God, body and soul, and He has given that ability to us as well.

And implicit in this gift is a mandate to use it, not thoughtlessly or selfishly, but responsibly for the glory of God. At the risk of stating the obvious, children need a mom and a dad who are committed to.

Each other.

It's the basic building block of society. The great social experience of single motherhood and single fatherhood, or we say single parenthood for the last 50 years, has produced no end of problems. Give yourself to the task of parenting with all diligence, and you will experience great.

Reward.

Purity and 1 Corinthians 7

Sixth. Are you with me? Alright, good. Purity. Purity. Again, from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.

The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

By God's design, He has placed within both men and women the powerful passions of sexual.

Energy.

Within the confines of marriage and its pledge of fidelity, we have a lawful release for this God-given sexual passion. Micah, Aulene, the sexual desire that you feel for each other right now is both natural and wholesome, and God wants you to enjoy it as an important part of your lives.

As you grow in this aspect of your marriage, you must refrain from perverting God's good gift and turning it into a weapon by which you manipulate or punish the other by withholding your body from them.

Instead, God would have you come together regularly as a means of expressing your love and your commitment, and thereby creating a wall around your relationship that will fend off sexual temptation. And that takes us to our seventh.

Seventh and finally is what I'm calling portrayal.

Portrayal.

And for that, we would look to Ephesians chapter 5 and verses 22 to 32. And there, according to the Apostle Paul, the Christian marriage reveals the mystery of the relationship between Christ and His church.

It reproduces in miniature the beauty shared between Christ as the bridegroom and the church as His bride. Four times in that passage, Paul compares the roles of the husband and the wife to the relationship between Christ and His church.

In verse 22, he says, wives submit to their husbands as to the Lord. In verse 23, husbands as the head of the wife is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. Verse 25, husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church.

And verse 29, husbands nourish and cherish your wives just as Christ does the church. The ability and the motivation to fulfill these core roles is a direct byproduct of a spirit-filled life. To the extent that you too walk by the Spirit, you will fulfill these roles and rightly portray Christ's servant leadership and the church's loving submission.

But if you reject the Spirit's leading and you refuse your God-given roles, you will still paint a picture, but it will be an ugly picture indeed. When I was a child, we had a toy called an Etch-A-Sketch.

And by manipulating a knob on either side of the screen, you were able to draw a picture. And the beauty of it was that if you messed it up, you could turn it over and shake it a few times and the picture was erased and you could start all over again.

You know, God provides for us the means to redraw the picture of our marriage and paint it as often as we need to until we get it right. And the means for that is repentance. It is repentance. Momentarily, you too will make some very serious and lofty promises to each other that at times in your marriage, you will not fully keep.

When you do it, you must repent of your sin before God and each other, ask and give forgiveness and redraw your marriage picture. May God grant you the grace to excel at this.

Let's pray.

Our Father, we are so thankful for the work of Christ in the life of Micah and Aline, that by your indwelling spirit, they have all of the resources they need spiritually to excel in marriage. May they embrace the roles that you have outlined for them and may they find great joy as they learn to live and love together, to grow in grace.

May they paint a picture of marriage that is beautiful and attractive to all who know them and may you grant them a long and fruitful marriage. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, so if you two want to join hands.

Okay, Micah, if you'll repeat after me, please. I, Micah, take you, Aline, to be my cherished wife. I promise you with all my heart to walk beside you in days of adversity and in days of great happiness.

I will rejoice with you in the good times, weep with you in the sad, and seek to create life with you in reverence. I promise to work hard to provide an income for material needs, a shoulder to cry on, and a heart that understands.

I commit to love you sacrificially and to grow with you in trust, share possessions, and communicate openly and honestly with you. I will be the spiritual leader in our home, and I will seek to create a climate where the gospel is both spoken and lived so that you can find refuge from fear and strength in a troubled world.

I will be faithful to you and you alone as long as we both shall live. I ask God's help in keeping this solemn vow. Aline, if you'll repeat after me. I, Aline, take you, Micah, to be my cherished husband.

I give myself to you fully and without reserve, and will gladly bear your name. I look to you as the leader in our home, and will submit joyfully to your leadership. I promise full cooperation in building a Christian home.

I will support you in your aspirations, pray with you in your trials, share your burdens, and labor with you to make our marriage a joy. I will live close to my Lord so you may trust me at all times. I will laugh with you in the happy times, comfort you in the sad, and seek to create life with you in reverence.

With you, I will honor our Savior and Lord all of our days till death do us part. I ask God's help in keeping this solemn vow. May I have the rings, please?

All right.

Well, because the ring is a circle, it has no beginning and no end. Thus, it pictures the ongoing nature of real love. Rings are exchanged as a token of love and trust. For a Christian, a ring is a symbol and a reminder of the promises made by a married couple to one another before God.

And so, Micah, as having placed that ring on her finger, repeat these words after me. This ring is a token of my love for you. With this ring, I pledge my life and all I have to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

I'm going to take this ring and place it on Micah's finger. And as you do, repeat these words after me. This ring is a token of my love for you. With this ring, I pledge my life and all I have to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Okay. If I can just turn you two to face the audience, please.

Pronouncement of Marriage and Presentation of the Couple

Well, now, having pledged your love and loyalty to each other and having sealed the pledge with the marriage rings, I do by the authority vested in me as a minister in the Church of the Living God pronounce you husband and wife.

Micah, Aileen, you are no longer two independent persons, but you are now one in the eyes of the Lord. What. God has joined together, let no man separate. You may kiss your bride. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my privilege to present to you in public for the very first time Mr. and Mrs. Micah Curiel.

Micah had asked for Aileen's hand in marriage that he came up to me and he told me, I just asked for Aileen's hand in marriage. And I said, Are you sure? Did she say yes? And he said, Yes, she did. She said yes.

I said, That's awesome. That's awesome because marriage is the most wonderful thing. It's the greatest thing because it's like the date that never ends. I said, You'll be spending a day with your wife and then the day will come to an end and you don't have to go home.

And the next day and the next week and the next month, it's like the date that never ends. It's wonderful. I've been celebrating my date for 33 years. So, to begin this date, their first date today, we're going to, I've got some administrative tasks for you folks, and that is to get rid of you.

So, what we're going to do is we're going to have the ushers. Ushers, are you guys out here somewhere?