Marriage And The Consummation of All Things

Amen. Dear Heavenly Father, you're a good and wonderful God. I pray that you would help us to understand you in all your greatness and all your perfection as we study your word this morning.

In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so we are continuing our study of marriage for those who have not been with us before during this.

We looked at Ephesians five, what it says about marriage between man and wife being modeled after the union between Christ and the church and specifically how salvation itself should dictate how husbands love their wives, how wives submit to their husbands.

And then taking that to heart and walking through everything the Bible says about salvation, everything it says about the history of salvation, the historia salutis and applying it to marriage and trying to draw applications to marriage.

So we have this lesson and then one more after that. So we started all the way before the foundation of the world with election.

We've gone all the way through judgment and today we are looking at marriage in the consummation of all things.

But actually, now that I just remembered, there were some parts of judgment we hadn't done and I did not print out notes for that, but let me pull those up if I can find that.

So we have a little bit of leftover from last time. All right.

So last time we had talked somewhat about judgment. One other aspect of judgment is the vindication of the bride.

So part of the reason why Christ judges the world is to judge the bride innocent and vindicate her.

Revelation 19, eight says, and it was given to her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

Okay, so a husband should honor his wife and speak well of her, just as Christ does. He should cover her weaknesses, highlight good works.

This is especially the case as others speak poorly of her and dishonor her. And yeah, it should be his aim to counter any ill speech with truth or goodness.

Yeah, many times, for example, wives will face criticism from especially her in -laws or family.

Those are especially times that a husband should defend the honor of his wife. Sometimes those criticisms have merit.

So it's not the case that someone should deny what is true, but still there are ways of protecting one's honor even when criticisms are true and you're not denying the truth.

Proverbs 31, 28 says, her children rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also, and he praises her, saying, many daughters have done worthily, but you excel them all.

Moreover, a husband should learn to praise her more substantial qualities. Because many focus on the superficial, a husband should honor what runs deeper.

Proverbs 31, 30 says, grace is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman that fears the Lord, she will be praised.

Give her the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the gates. So I would say that a husband whose praise of his wife is really just isolated to her beauty or something like that is not really praising her the way that a good wife should be praised according to Proverbs 31.

Now also, you have the aspect of Christ's jealousy in that judgment.

Anything that threatens the union between Christ and the church, he has a hatred of, and this is referred to as jealousy.

Nahum 1, 2 says, Jehovah is a jealous God and avenges. Jehovah avenges and is full of wrath.

Jehovah takes vengeance on his adversaries and he reserves wrath for his enemies. All right.

Most frequently, yeah, jealousy refers to one party's opposition when the other party in the union threatens it.

So a lot of times, it's not just something external threatening it, but something internal where one party is threatening the union and there's a jealousy from the other party, a hatred of that which would threaten the union.

So he does not permit his, God does not permit his people to go after other gods. That's a situation where you have

God's people threatening the union between them and God. Exodus 25 says,

You shall not bow down yourself to them nor serve them for I, Jehovah, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.

Exodus 34, 14 says, For you shall worship no other God. For Jehovah, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous

God. And then one more verse. Deuteronomy 4, 24. For Jehovah, your God is a devouring fire, a jealous

God. Okay, so all this applies on the day of judgment. Judgment is not merely targeted at the external enemies of the union between Christ and church, but even against the church itself in some way.

Though we will have the mercy of Christ because we will be perfectly forgiven, we will have to give an account of every time that we threatened that union.

Second Corinthians 5, 10 says, For we all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether it is good or bad.

Romans 14, 10 says, But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you reject your brother?

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. All right, so applying this to human marriage, it's right for husbands to be jealous.

This especially applies to husbands, not just, it's true both of wives and of husbands that they ought to be jealous for one another.

But this especially applies to husbands in their roles of protectors over the marriage.

So if a husband's role is to protect that union, especially, even more so than the role of the wife, yeah, he should certainly be jealous against that, which threatens the marriage, either externally or internally.

There should be an opposition in the marriage toward any kind of inappropriate behavior that would threaten the marriage, especially when it comes to interactions with the opposite sex between one of the parties in the marriage, excessive familiarity with the opposite sex, suggestive speech with the opposite sex in modest clothing, et cetera.

In Jim Neuhauser's book on marriage, he lists several rules for interactions with the opposite sex that I thought

I'd just write down and read to you. All right, so the first one is, spend no time alone with a member of the opposite sex at work, in a car, at a restaurant, et cetera.

An exceptional situation should involve prior agreement from the other partner. There should be no absolute privacy in conversations with the opposite sex via email, chat, text, social media, or phone.

If such communication must take place, share it with your spouse. Three, do not engage in any flirting.

There is no such thing as innocent flirting. Four, show appropriate reserve in touching or hugging. Five, do not discuss personal matters, especially a relationship with your spouse with someone of the opposite sex.

If you need to pour out your heart to someone other than your spouse, find a godly same -gender friend.

All right, of course, this jealousy is inappropriate when it is without self -control.

So when a lot of people talk about jealousy as being a negative thing, as opposed to that thing which reflects

God's own character, they're talking about it existing without self -control or existing beyond what is appropriate.

So those who distrust their wives without warrant damage the marriage in their own way. And if the whole point of jealousy is to hate that which threatens the union, then an excessive or not self -controlled jealousy is itself something that should be jealous against, because that is something that threatens the union in its own way.

If it's just fraught with distrust toward one another. All right, secondly, this also applies to the wife's jealousy not just the husband's jealousy.

The judgment is a matter that the saints themselves will participate in. First Corinthians 6 .2

says, or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?

Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life? In other words, it's not just right for the husband to be jealous over the union, but as you see

Christ delegate judgment to the bride to do this judgment. So it's the case that the husband's protection of marriage in a sense is delegated to the wife and she should likewise have jealousy over these things.

All right, yeah, he should trust his wife too.

He should delegate to his wife the responsibility of making these determinations, et cetera. Yeah, the duty of protection doesn't fall solely on him such that he should not trust her or that she has no role in this.

I will also add that we've pointed out several times that what happens in this analogy between Christ and the church and human marriage is that Christ is perfect.

The church is absolutely worthless apart from him. And when we're talking about human marriage, we're talking about something very different on that spectrum.

So with a human wife, it is right for her to be jealous against her own husband when he is threatening the union.

There's never a time where that would be appropriate between Christ and the church because he would never, yeah,

Christ would never threaten the union. All right, but in human marriage, yeah, those rebukes could go both ways.

All right, sorry, so that was leftover from last time when we were talking about judgment and didn't finish. Now we're going to talk about the consummation.

Tim, could you hand me a tissue there? Yeah, thanks. All right, let's talk about the marriage supper of the lamb.

Could I get someone to read Revelation 19, seven through nine?

All right, James. And then once you read that, stay there because I'm gonna have you read something later on in that passage too.

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready.

It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb.

And he said to me, these are the true words of the God. Okay, so the

Bible describes the marriage between Christ and the church as being inaugurated by a wedding feast. And this is not only a time when the union itself is celebrated, but also the work of Christ in judgment that makes that union possible.

If you could also read verses 17 through 18 that talk about that. Then I saw an angel standing in the sun and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, come gather for the great supper of God to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and the riders and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.

Okay, so this is interesting because you hear the way the supper is being described. First, it's like a very traditional marriage supper.

The second time you see it, it's very different, right? It's more like a sacrifice that's being made.

This great supper of God is dead bodies on the ground with the birds of the air coming to eat.

This very much alludes to a similar passage in Ezekiel where Gog and Magog are destroyed and the birds are feasting on this sacrificial meal.

So yeah, not just celebrating the union, but also the work of Christ in judgment that made it possible. Okay, so let's talk about wedding feasts in particular.

Who is providing the wedding feast here? We might say it's the father. It seems to be more proper to say it's the son given that that picture that we just saw, he is the one who is going out in judgment, slaughtering in order to provide for the wedding feast.

Typically in scripture, we see that the groom provides the wedding feast. Judges 14 .10, and his father went down to the woman and Samson made a feast there for so used the young men to do.

Esther 2 .18, then the king made a great feast for all his princes and his servants, even

Esther's feast. And he made a release to the provinces and gave gifts according to the bounty of the king.

And note that at the wedding in Cana, Christ is the one who makes the water into wine.

But the groom is considered responsible for this. John 2 .9, and when the ruler of the feast tasted the water, it now become wine and did not know from where it was, but the servants that had drawn the water knew.

The ruler of the feast calls the bridegroom and says to him, every man sets on first the good wine.

And when men have drunk freely, then that which is worse, you have, then that which is worse, you have kept the good wine until now.

So he speaks to the groom, right? The groom is the one who seems to be responsible for the feast, even though he wasn't really the one who did it, he's regarded as the one responsible.

Now there's a variation in a parable where it is a king providing the wedding feast for his son.

Matthew 22 .2 says, the king of heaven is likened to a certain king who made a marriage feast for his son.

So all these examples, it's either the groom or the groom's father in providing that.

Okay, so can anybody think of an example where it's, there is one example in scripture where it is the wife's husband who provides the wedding feast.

It's in Genesis. Anybody?

Going once, going twice. Yes, it's

Laban, it's Laban. All right, so, yeah, that's the only example we have, or that I'm aware of anyway, of, you know,

I've tried looking through a lot of examples. That's the only example we have of the wife's father, the wife's family providing the wedding feast.

Genesis 29 .22 says, and Laban gathered together all the men of the place and made a feast.

But we've talked before about how backwards everything was in that situation, right? The fact that Jacob is longing for his father's house, that this seems to be the pattern of men going to their father's house and marriage.

You know, even Christ, you know, I go to prepare a room for you, or a place for you.

There are many mansions in my father's house, et cetera. Right, there's something right about that, and there was something that was backwards about this.

And then on top of that, remember the whole, all this trickery from Laban. Okay, so first of all, what happens when

Laban makes this wedding feast? What does he accomplish in it? Right, he swaps brides.

So he, through making this wedding feast, he tricks Jacob into marrying the wrong bride.

And this all seems to be some kind of retribution on, or some kind of discipline, at least, on Jacob for his former trickery on his father, where instead of allowing his father to make that blessing, he allowed his mother to subvert it.

So here you have Jacob having gone to his mother, swapping the roles between husband and wife.

And then, what is the penalty for this later? More swapping of roles that's coming back to haunt him.

So I wouldn't take Genesis 29 as being a positive example that scripturally it's considered equal for either side to provide the wedding feast.

I think it's trying to show something that's backwards. Now, what we've been doing as we've been going through this is trying to make applications for our own traditions.

Now, it's kind of hard to, I'm not necessarily giving steps that you need to personally take, but I am trying to say these are customs that I think are good, and here are some customs that I think do not reflect, aren't necessarily reflecting anything in scripture.

I do think it's good for the husband, or the husband's family, to be providing the wedding feast.

Now, in our own culture, it's typically the bride's family often that's providing the wedding feast.

And there's some senses in which that seems right because the bride's family, because the wedding is highlighting the beauty of the bride, and obviously they would care about that.

A lot of times, though, it's not a healthy consideration of how God created man and woman, though, but a vain desire for the daughter to be sort of a

Disney princess for the day, right? She really wants this, and the parents really want to support that, and so they invest in that, sometimes very significant amounts of money.

I feel like I saw a statistic recently that said the average wedding cost in the

U .S. was 30 ,000. Just seems, yeah, I don't know if that's,

I assume that's saying true weddings as opposed to, I'm assuming that's not including all the, many times people just elope and don't have any kind of real feast or ceremony beyond that.

But still, a lot of people invest very, very large amounts of money where vanity is a bigger part of the rubric of success than other things.

Yeah, if the groom is to be the provider, it makes sense for him to be the one providing the wedding feast.

Once again, yeah, I'm not trying to make statements about like, oh, this is absolutely wrong the way our culture does it, but at the same time, if we want to reflect what

God, yeah, what God has, if our marriages are supposed to reflect marriages between Christ and the church,

I think it is a very good tradition to have the man supply this rather than the wife's family.

All right, any questions about that before we move on? By the way, you can raise your hand at any time and ask questions.

Yes, okay.

Well, we did talk about bride prices right before, right? The bride prices are common in Scripture. They even,

Christ pays the bride price of his own life to purchase her out of slavery, right? We have,

I don't think that even the notion of a bride price is wrong. It's something that acknowledges her value as well as highlights his ability to provide for her.

So maybe it does look like that, but I don't think that needs to be such a concern. Now, obviously, there are ways of doing that in an extreme manner where she's just a piece of property and it's not really showing her value but her lack of value.

That's obviously a problem, but I don't think it has to be that way. All right, all right, wedding dresses.

Let's talk about wedding dresses. The bride in Revelation dresses in white. It represents the righteous deeds of the saints.

We just read Revelation 19 .7, which had said, and it was given to her, sorry, this is

Revelation 19 .8, and it was given to her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

Psalm 45 .13 says the king's daughter within the palace is all glorious. Her clothing is in wrought with gold.

She will be led to the king in embroidered work. The virgins, her companions that follow her will be brought to you.

All right, so yeah, these different verses talk about a bride being dressed beautifully on her wedding day.

So it is good for brides to be dressed beautifully on their wedding day. This is not, this is something that would be immodest in other occasions, right, and by immodest,

I don't mean the way we often use that term to mean revealing, but to mean just proud, right?

If someone wore the equivalent of a wedding dress, like just every day, you know, out and about, that would just be very ostentatious and proud, right?

It wouldn't be appropriate, but because the purpose of the ceremony is for her beauty to highlight his glory, as we see with Christ in the church, it is right for her to be dressed beautifully.

Yeah, and we had discussed this some with First Corinthians 11, seven. If you remember, that says, for a man indeed should not have his head covered since he has the image and glory of God, but a woman is the glory of the man.

And so if the woman is the glory of the man, there's a special way that she radiates him, right?

And First Corinthians 11 had even discussed this with the father and the son, right? There's a way that the son is radiating the father.

So it is, this is a proper role for the wife in this event that highlights their union as opposed to other times when she's just out by herself, right?

Then it's not necessarily, then it's just highlighting her, and it is just proud, and it is just ostentatious.

Okay, so just looking at that tradition of a wedding dress, you know it is good for there to be a beautiful dress.

All right. Second, it talks about the color of the wedding dress, right, it's linen, bright and pure, that means it's white.

In our own culture, traditionally, women have worn white wedding dresses to symbolize their virginity.

And traditionally, it was only those who actually preserved themselves from marriage in chastity who would wear white.

Now, very, very few avoid wearing white, right? Just everybody wears white, doesn't matter whether or not they've been sleeping with their boyfriend for the past two years, it's just something that everyone does.

And really, the only examples you would see otherwise would be typically in remarriage, but even in remarriage,

I don't think it's that common to wear something else. I'm not sure, I haven't seen a lot of examples of this. I do know my mother and father, so they were a widow and a widower, and so she wore some kind of light green color or something, she didn't wear white at that wedding because she had already been married previously to her late husband.

So it is something occasionally where people do not wear white. White is not worn at every single wedding. And I think it would be good to preserve this for it to actually demonstrate some kind of true chastity and purity.

A lot of people think it would be cruel to call someone out for their past sins, but a culture that doesn't have a place for any kind of notion or shame has no place for any kind of honor, right?

Okay, any questions on that? And once again, I'm not necessarily saying that what we need to do right now is to start enforcing any specific changes.

I'm just saying that a culture that does certain things would be better than a culture that does not do things. I'm not necessarily telling you the path to get there given the culture we're in.

Okay, any questions? Yes, right, yeah.

Yeah, Christ has done something like wonderful and miraculous in making us pure. That's not something that happens in human marriage even if there is forgiveness.

Yeah, this is definitely something where we're talking about, we're not talking so much about hard and fast rules as we're talking about what ways can the way we approach marriage honor what scripture describes marriage as.

And I'm just saying that if you see the dress that is white representing good works and purity, then it would be good for that to truly represent that in marriage and not just be just some kind of tradition that's arbitrary, right?

Oh, it's white, it's just as good as any other color. Yes. No, there's no statements about that.

I mean, you have a description of him wearing a turban in Psalm 45, I think, but yeah, there's no explained significance of this stuff other than he's dressed well, right?

And same thing with here. You don't have significance described to her being dressed beautifully other than, okay, well, it's white.

We do see a lot of emphasis on white throughout scripture. You know, there's the great white throne that alludes to Solomon's throne of ivory and shows this purity of great judgments, et cetera.

So in as much as you see meaning invested in those things, then it's important to take it into account.

There's not a lot of meaning invested into the turban or anything, yeah. All right.

The consummation. All right, so all things will fulfill their purpose in this final judgment, and some translations refer to this as the consummation.

You see that in 1 Corinthians 15. Sometimes they'll refer to that as the consummation because it's the completion of all things.

But it's not without reason that that word consummation is also associated with the beginnings of marriage.

It is at the consummation that the church is fully built into the maturity that is required for the full unity between Christ and the church.

1 Corinthians 15, 27 says, for he put all things in subjection under his feet.

But when it says all things are put in subjection, it is evident that he is accepted who subjected all things to him.

And when all things have been subjected to him, then will the Son also himself be subjected to him that subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.

All right, so this is describing all things coming together, that God may be all in all, that the purpose of all things might be finally realized.

We're in this state right now where God is doing a wonderful work of salvation to bring things where they are all supposed to be, where everything reaches its full completion.

Ephesians 1, nine through 10 says, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in him, and the administration of the fullness of the times to sum up all things in Christ, the things in heaven and the things on earth, in him

I say. All right, so recall that Paul speaks of this consummation as a mystery.

Right, Ephesians 5, 31 through 32 said, for this reason will a man leave his father and mother and will join with his wife and the two will become one flesh.

This mystery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ and the church. Now on one hand, a lot of people read this and they think about human marriage being the mystery, right, and there's a sense in which it is a mystery.

Proverbs 30, 18 through 19 says, there are three things which are too wonderful for me.

Yes, four which I do not know. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maiden.

Now on the other hand, this isn't exactly mysterious in the way that the Bible frequently speaks about mysteries, which is something that is hidden that has yet to be revealed.

And so when Paul speaks about this mystery of the two becoming one flesh, he makes it clear, he says that he speaks in regard of Christ and the church.

It is that union that is mysterious and has not been fully revealed yet.

Yes, we are in union, the church is in union with Christ. At the same time, the fullness of that union is not yet manifest.

There will be a consummation, a bringing together of husband and bride. Though we enjoy union now, there is a completion of that to enjoy his full presence.

Okay, so first, let's talk about what this means for our eyes, for purity of vision. The Bible often talks about this, this fullness of the union between Christ and the church and the enjoyment of that as the beatific vision.

Well, sorry, the Bible doesn't. This is more of a theological phrase, but the Bible talks about us seeing

God, right? Or us seeing Christ. Beatific means blessed, right?

Like the beatitudes, blessed are the peacemakers, et cetera. So beatific vision is the blessed vision of God.

The Bible's clear that we can't see God, and yet at the same time, it does talk about us fully experiencing him as strongly as it would be with the sense of sight when we see

Christ. Yeah, 1 John 3, 2. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it is not yet made known what we will be.

We know that if he will be revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him even as he is.

All right, so that sight of him will be transformative. It will be the full enjoyment of him.

It will be, though we enjoy this union now, we don't have the full experience of him that we will have there.

One important aspect is that because this is reserved for us for that time, we should not attempt to have that vision now, right?

And that's essentially what idolatry is, right? Idolatry is I want to experience God. He seems too far, too distant from me.

I'm going to create something that I can see with my own eyes, that I can touch with my own hands and experience here. Right, and so if you've never considered this,

I know some of you have heard me talk about this before, but I really do consider images of Christ to be pornographic, right?

Like not sexually alluring, but given that the Bible talks about the union between Christ and the church as being a marriage, that to have this kind of sight of him with images that are not truly him prior to this time when it is appropriate to see him and enjoy him fully is it's very analogous to what pornography is in this life, right?

It is laying your eyes on something that is not for you at this time because that union has not yet been established.

All right, so obviously the application to marriage here is in purity of eyes, that you should not be, obviously you should not be looking at any nakedness beforehand, but that includes the nakedness of the one that you are engaged or betrothed to even.

Yeah, there's a special temptation with there. You know, it feels, a lot of people think of the commitment as already being established sufficiently that it would be appropriate.

Just now that you're going to be together forever, those boundaries aren't as important anymore.

No, those boundaries are still supposed to be there. Job 31 .1, I made a covenant with my eyes. How should

I look on a virgin? All right, any questions? Okay, let's keep moving on just to intimacy in general, more broadly considered.

Okay, so 1 John 3 .2, I read that a moment ago. It reports that beatific vision will make us like him, right, when we see him, we'll be like him.

Similarly, spousal intimacy is an important way of building unity, togetherness, and even similarity in thought and mind.

And by intimacy, I'm referring to more than just sexual intercourse. I'm referring to a manner of interaction that's not shared with others, that is transparent and vulnerable.

And so, yeah, while husband and wife, when they talk to each other, they shouldn't just say everything on their mind in the sense of like, you know, if you have like bitter thoughts or evil thoughts, you don't just like spill those out everywhere.

At the same time, and you don't break confidence with those who you owe confidence to, husband and wife should speak transparently with one another, and it's something that you should grow in.

And being vulnerable like that means learning to communicate well. That sort of transparency is something that most people only experience within themselves, right?

You're the one who's most intimate with your own thoughts and concerns and desires and dreams, et cetera. And if you only have experience cogitating those in your own mind, not actually putting words to them, it can be difficult to be intimate with a spouse.

And so you might wonder, well, how do you learn to communicate your deepest thoughts? Some people do that by like journaling or writing poetry, right?

And this is why poets are considered romantic, right? It's because they're expressing those intimate thoughts.

However, one simple way is just to cultivate this, is to speak your prayers out loud and to be intimate with God.

He knows you more deeply than your spouse will ever know you. You should, and the more

I've thought about this, the more I realize I really do withhold myself. It is really a temptation to withhold yourself, even in prayer, and to not express the fullness of yourself or your concerns or your weaknesses to God, to want to somehow withhold that from him as though you could and so you can develop an ability to communicate well intimately by praying with God with the fullness of self -disclosure.

Yes? So, in some ways, it gives full vent to his anger.

Sure. But why then holds himself back, like, I guess, are we too, because, again, there's a lot of thoughts that we have that are sinful.

Right. Are we to give, share those with the

Lord, knowing that, again, some of these thoughts, like, I, you know, I've yelled at the

Lord in my prayers, but I also know that that's not proper, but there is a transparency in that.

What are your thoughts? Yeah, so I think, first of all, we have a lot of good examples in the Psalms of people being very unsettled and uncertain and angry, right, and so those give us good models, first of all.

Secondly, you should certainly confess those emotions to God and you can do that in a way that is not giving vent to them, but actually actively fighting against them, right, and so I think that's the way to approach it is to confess them in a way that is tamping them down as opposed to giving vent to them in a way that's fueling the fire and putting more oxygen on it.

All right, so now, beyond broad intimacy, let's talk about sexual intercourse. The Bible speaks of the final gathering of the church with Christ as a marriage consummation.

Ephesians 5, 31 says, for this reason will a man leave his father and mother and will join with his wife and the two will become one flesh.

This mystery is great, but I speak in regard of Christ and the church. So Paul speaks of this as a mystery, so we don't know what that final consummation consists of.

We don't know what that experience of being fully united to Christ will, or yeah, I should hesitate to say fully united because there's a sense in which we are united, but we don't get to experience the full blessings of that union here in this life.

So yeah, if the church's union will be complete, then it will be finalized in a way that is more profound than the nature of the union we currently enjoy with him.

It's a mystery, we don't know what it'll be like, just as wonderful and marvelous as sex is compared to just other kinds of communication with your spouse.

This is what we have something much greater in store for us, okay?

So for a marriage to be a true marriage, there must be that fullness of the union.

This analogy between Christ and church and consummation and that union reinforces, just as it says in Ephesians five, that there needs to be a becoming of one flesh.

It needs to begin the marriage post -betrothal, and it's something that continues so long as health permits.

Now, this is contrary to most of the doctrine taught by the early reformers, okay?

Go read Calvin, read a bunch of the early reformers, and a lot of them were actually opposed to the idea that you needed sexual intercourse in order to form a marriage.

Now, does anybody know why that is? But I think there's a reason for that blind, I do think this is a blind spot, and I think there's a reason for the blind spot.

There was a piece of Romish theology they were holding onto, something that a lot of them believed that Rome taught regarding Mary.

Anybody know? Perpetual virginity. Yeah, you read Calvin, you read a lot of the others, right? And they believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Yet Mary was married to Joseph, right? And so they believed that Mary and Joseph were married all their life without any intent to ever come together in sexual union, right?

And so if you believe that, you are going to say that yes, a true marriage is possible, apart from what the

Bible describes as being one flesh. Now, I don't know why they held onto that so tightly.

The Bible's pretty clear that Jesus had other brothers and sisters. Mark 3, 31, and there came, and there come his mother and his brothers, and standing outside, they sent to him, calling him.

And a multitude were sitting about him, and they said to him, behold, your mother and your brethren without seek for you, right?

So his mother and his brothers are there for him. Mark 6, 3, is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon?

Are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended in him. We also have this in John 7.

John 7, 1 says, and after these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Judea, because the

Jews sought to kill him. Now the feast of the Jews, the feast of tabernacles, was at hand. His brethren therefore said to him, depart from here and go into Judea.

That your disciples also may behold your works, which you do. For no man does anything in secret, and himself seeks to be known openly.

If you do these things, show yourself to the world. For even his brothers did not believe in him. So this is saying his own family was doubtful, right?

His own brothers. Acts 1, 14, these all with one accord continued steadfastly in prayer with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

Galatians 1, 9, but I saw none of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother. Okay, so a lot of passages talking about, and these are not just talking about spiritual brothers.

You know, these are talking about physical brothers. He had physical brothers. Mary with Joseph had other sons.

And so sexual intercourse, the way the Bible describes it, is part of the essence of being one flesh.

First Corinthians 6, 16 says, or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute is one body? For the two, he says, will become one flesh.

So it's not just the, a lot of people would be happy with the covenant being that which makes them one flesh.

But with a prostitute, there actually is no covenant, and it's still saying that that is becoming one flesh. Right, so it is necessary for there to be some intention for sexual intercourse in order for there to be a husband and wife.

There are people who get married by law without any intent for this, right? Either for the sake of immigration status or maybe some family status or some other thing, right?

It's very, very frequent, but that does not make it a true marriage apart from there being, yeah, apart from there being an intent to join together, to join together as one flesh.

Now, there are a lot of people, now, I mentioned the Reformers rejected this because of their view of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

There are a lot of modern -day evangelical authors who would reject this for other reasons, and honestly,

I think those reasons are primarily just a view of marriage that sees it as kind of a, like something they wouldn't want to withhold from anyone as being a way of self -fulfillment and expression, et cetera.

And so they want to make marriage possible even for those who are not able to, are not able to consummate the marriage, and I think that's a poor motivation for doing theology, right, well, a poor motivation for arriving at these conclusions.

Marriage is not merely there for enjoyment and self -expression, et cetera, right?

The Bible explains that the purposes of marriage are mutual help between husband and wife, increase of legitimate offspring, and prevention of uncleanness, and so you have purposes in marriage that require that that one fleshness of marriage really be a part of marriage and not just something that's optional for a couple coming together, right?

Because it's something where people need this for self -expression, et cetera, right? Like the other things about understanding what marriage is really isn't important, it's just like the enjoyment and the self -expression.

That's basically all it is. Right, yeah. Because that's all it is. Right, yeah.

Okay, any questions there, yes? That's a good question.

What I would say is that as long as the intent is there, that that is a real joining together.

But yeah, there's a reason why it's still called consummation, it hasn't been fully brought together. There is something that's special that's happening on the wedding night.

Yeah, so those, yeah, what is the essence of the covenant? The essence of the covenant is to be one flesh.

Right, or is to, yeah, intend to be one flesh. And so I'm still married to my wife at all times, right?

Like someone's still married to their wife at all times. Not just, it's not just a status that only exists in the marriage bed, it exists elsewhere too.

But it comes with that commitment, right? And so that is why, you know, we usually talk about there being two ways, two justifications for divorce, right, abandonment or adultery, right?

Those are transgressions of that, right? One is a refusal to be one flesh. The other is becoming one flesh with another, right?

So either sin by omission or commission against the nature of the covenant.

All right, we may not, oh no, we'll have time to finish here.

Okay, yeah, we've got this. Yes. Sure. Marriage existed long before the church, it existed long before the government.

It's not a government ordinance, it's not a church ordinance, it's a creation ordinance. So you could get married without any church, without any government, it would still be legitimate, yeah.

Now, it's good for the government to acknowledge it because in upholding justice, it's important for them to recognize the reality of marriage and two, it's good for the church to recognize it too, to both assist in the health of that marriage as well as yet navigating other spiritual conflicts, et cetera, it's good for both those parts to recognize marriage, but they are not the ones who make the marriage legitimate.

All right, let's talk about, okay, so that was talking about, primarily about consummation itself, right, like that initial act of sex.

Let's talk about continued sexual intercourse too. This sexual union is supposed to continue throughout marriage as long as it is physically feasible, basically.

First Corinthians 7 -4 says, let the husband render to the wife her due and likewise also the wife to the husband.

The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband and likewise also the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife.

All right, so what does this look like, this continued, yeah, this continuing of being one flesh?

Obviously, this is gonna differ from couple to couple and from season of life to season of life. However, there are at least two situations the

Bible talks about that justify a couple not coming together and I believe these give us reason to make a few observations about the frequency that is appropriate that would not be abandonment, right?

Like, for example, if this is true that the husband and wife owe each other these marital rights, like at what point can you say that you're being abandoned and you've been, they're not giving marital rights, right?

If it's, oh, well, we come together in the marriage bed once every 10 years, is that, you know, is that, well, it's still happening, right, what's the frequency?

Okay, so there's two situations where the Bible justifies a couple not coming together. The first is right there in 1

Corinthians 7. Do not deprive each other except by consent for a season that you may give yourselves to prayer and may be together again that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self -control.

But this I say by way of concession, not of commandment. Okay, so you have fasting as being a legitimate reason for, yeah, for not coming together as husband and wife.

Now, it's also the case that in the New Testament the pattern and acts is to celebrate the

Lord's Supper weekly, which means that in normal circumstances, the longest that one can fast today, if they're at a church who's following that pattern, would be one week because you would be breaking that fast at the

Lord's Supper. Now, obviously, there are churches that don't do it that way and there are some times where it would be appropriate to fast on the

Lord's Day every Sunday that, you know, the seven Sundays that we didn't meet during COVID.

I fasted every one of those because I was, you know, desperate for the church to return together. But barring those extreme situations, normally the longest one would be fasting who's part of regular church life would be a week.

Okay, so that gives justification for a week -long staying apart.

And then in Leviticus 18, it has, in the

Old Testament purity laws, and I'm not making comments about the application of these laws today, just observing what God has in mind for times where there would be a justified time apart.

And you shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness, so long as she is impaired by her uncleanness. So once again, this is implying a separation for roughly the duration of a week.

So the point is that it's not just up in the air and there are no boundaries. There are indications that a healthy marriage would at least have that kind of weekly cadence to it.

And yeah, some kind of rough minimum. Like I said, there's not a, this is not something where there's such a firm statement, but this is not something that's just up in the air so that, like I said, a wife could reject her husband for 10 years at a time and say that she's still being faithful.

Okay, so a lot of people find themselves in a situation where their spouse refuses to give them their conjugal rights as it describes in 1

Corinthians 7. Yes? Yes, yeah, correct.

So I said I'm not making application for today, Old Testament purity laws. I haven't really come to conclusions on a lot of that.

But what we do see is even in the Old Testament, couples coming together, even though there are those marital rights, that doesn't mean every single day you have, that it's granted to you that your spouse would have to sleep with you if you require it, right?

Rather, there are provisions for week -long periods where that would not be the case. So just trying to, and using that to determine whether or not there would be some kind of minimum frequency and seeing that as sort of an indicator of it.

All right, and like I said, different seasons of life, different things, obviously, as a couple gets to the later years of their life, things are gonna look very different, but we're just talking about normal circumstances.

Or a husband gets put in prison, obviously, different, we're just talking about normal circumstances here.

Okay, yeah, a lot of people find themselves in a situation where their spouse is neglecting them, right, and refusing to give them their marital rights.

A lot of people feel that they have no recourse, that they're just stuck in a loveless marriage. I'm in a number of social media groups on marriage, and it's like Christian marriage groups, and it's really surprising just how common this is, you know, where people are, especially husbands, neglected by their wives, and they don't know what to do, and they feel like they're just stuck in this marriage without any recourse, and there's so much in our culture that normalizes this.

I remember my grandparents, I think it was my grandparents, I had some relative who would watch

Everybody Loves Raymond, and that's like a recurring joke in the show, is the wife's rejection of the husband, she refuses to sleep with him, and it's normalized in a lot of ways, and a lot of people think, oh yeah, that's just what marriage is, you know, it's got its hardships, including the husband being constantly rejected.

However, there are two fairly plain courses of action. The first one is, for the

Christian, we have a process to address sin in Matthew 18, right? This is something that is very clearly said.

First Corinthians seven very clearly describes what is owed between husband and wife, and Matthew 18 describes what you do about sin, right?

You approach the person individually, if after a time they do not repent, you go and you bring one or two witnesses to address this, and then if they do not hear those one or two, you take it to the whole church.

A lot of people are afraid of doing this because it's embarrassing, other people are afraid of doing this because they think it will damage their marriage, but given that trajectory of a marriage, right, if something is happening like that, and you feel like you're stuck in a loveless marriage, or something like that, it's really the only formula for saving it, like this is what

Christ has given us to address this, is Matthew 18. Now, outside the church, or for the

Christian couple who's gotten to this point where it's not resulted in repentance and excommunication, yeah, if we understand what marriage is, right, that marriage is this commitment to be one flesh, then you realize that these two situations, we think of them as being like a list of concrete rules, right, adultery or abandonment, these are the things that justify.

These are actually just categories of things, right, one is becoming one flesh with another, the other is a refusal to be one flesh, right, it's sins of omission against the covenant, or sins of commission against the covenant, and if that is the case, and there is a spouse who is refusing to live as a married couple with their spouse, this does fall under the category of abandonment, this is a refusal to abide by the substance of the covenant,

I believe this would be legitimate grounds for divorce. So, yeah, abandonment is not just the spouse disappeared and we don't know where they are anymore, right, it's someone who obstinately and finally refuses to fulfill marital duties.

So, yeah, there is recourse for this kind of thing, it's not something that just has to be, now, obviously, there are gonna be hard times in marriage and you will have to endure them with patience, you will have to trust

Christ, but this is not something where you're just stuck forever if you're going to abide by scripture.

All right, any questions on that? That's probably a new one for some people, yes.

Yes, I'm primarily talking about 1 Corinthians 7, there are certainly other ways, right, so, for example, a question often comes up about abuse, you know, if a husband abuses his wife, is that grounds for divorce?

A lot of people will say no because, because, you know, they're thinking of it as this neat little rule book, oh, you have abandonment, you have this, but if his role in being one flesh is not to hate his own flesh, but to love his own flesh,

Ephesians 5 says, and what he is doing is rejecting the essence of that covenant to love his own flesh and repeatedly beating her, you know, fully and obstinately and finally, refusing to uphold that covenant, that would likewise be grounds.

So we shouldn't look at the New Testament stipulations about marriage as this exhaustive set of rules.

What we should recognize is that, and Jesus said this too, basically, to the Pharisees, is he said from the beginning it was not so.

In other words, like everything you need is right there in the first two chapters of Genesis. If you understand what the nature of the covenant is and you understand what a covenant is, that gives you all the tools you need to navigate what would be appropriate, what would be a breaking of the covenant.

So when we have examples given in the New Testament of what breaking the covenant are, those aren't an exhaustive list of what breaking the covenant is.

These are just small bits of clarification. They're not the whole picture. The whole picture was given in summary form in Genesis one and two.

Yes, right?

Yeah, I guess what I'm pointing out here is because it is not such a concrete, oh, this specific thing or this specific thing, each situation would need to be looked at a little more closely.

So I couldn't necessarily make a judgment from afar. But I'm saying that abandonment is basically any kind of final, obstinate refusal to uphold the essence of the covenant, which is to be one flesh.

And that includes more than just sexual union. It also includes loving one's flesh, right, as just like it says in Ephesians five, no man hates his own flesh.

Right. Yeah, so that would be part of it, right, is like an obstinate refusal to submit could.

Now, like I said, this is not something where I'm, you could imagine me saying something much more strongly than I am, like one little sin and then, you know, you're justified in throwing the whole marriage away.

I'm definitely not saying that, right. I'm just saying that, once again, final and obstinate refusal to uphold the covenant is grounds for breaking the covenant.

And that's really all there is to it as far as like the broad consideration.

Now, specifically, how do you discern whether or not someone has fully and finally and obstinately refused to uphold the covenant?

That can be harder depending on the situation to decide and I'm not trying to, yeah,

I'm not trying to justify any kind of petty divorce because someone doesn't want to put up with difficulty.

Yes. You're suggesting that Jesus' highling that is the only example of a transgression of the covenant.

Yeah, but then he says he causes her to commit adultery. Like, basically, he puts her in a point of temptation.

Right, but that's not, but yeah, the idea is being if she has committed adultery, then he's not the one causing her to commit adultery.

I think that's all that Jesus is saying in that context. Okay, anything else?

All right, let's go ahead and pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us this wonderful gift of marriage that speaks of the even greater gift of the union between Christ and the church.

I pray that you would help us to honor your son both as a church and in our own individual marriages.