Tilton - Osman Wedding 2022

Kootenai Church

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In the warmth of the sun, I believed Circumstance often changes the way that I see

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For the first time, a shadow found me I doubted the sun for the lack of heat

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And I ran, but he ran after me

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He said, remember the signs So I said them each morning and held to them tight

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But at the first chill of the night I gave up his words for the warmth of a fire

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And I traded his love for a lie I said

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I'll never forget I will call out your name through the storm until death

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But the crow came three times as he said And I held tight my tongue just to save my own head

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And I watched from the ground as he fled But oh, you complete your plans with our bro

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Please take a moment to silence your cell phones as we begin the ceremony. Who gives this woman to this man?

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Let's pray. We're very grateful to be part of the lives of Aidan and Trenton, and here to celebrate their commitment to one another, commitment to you,

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Lord. We pray, Lord, that their marriage would be one of happiness and joy and pleasure and contentment, realizing that the trials that are to come will come.

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We pray that those would be for their sanctification, that you would cause them to grow into the image that they're to bear.

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And Lord, most of all and overall, we pray that their marriage would be a reflection of what marriage is intended to be for, and that is the relationship between Christ and the

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Church. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated.

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Friends and family, we are here today to witness a covenant made before God between Trenton Tilton and Aidan Osmond, and this is a solemn and holy moment before God for us and for them.

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I'm going to read from the Word of God from Ephesians chapter 5, verses 22 through 33. This is one of a number of passages that describe the purpose of marriage and what marriage symbolizes.

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Ephesians 5, verse 22, Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ also is the head of the church, he himself being the

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Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

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Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

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So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of his body.

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For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I'm speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

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Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

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Marriage is God's institution. It was God's idea from the very beginning. God blesses this union between a man and a woman.

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His word regulates the conduct and the roles that each is to fulfill in the marriage relationship.

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And this is a picture of Christ and the church and the relationship between Christ and the church.

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Our culture distorts the idea of marriage. Marriage is a holy institution. It's a beautiful institution.

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And culture perverts it and destroys it. That's what the world does to the things that God, the good gifts that God has given to us.

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And the culture and the world does this in a number of different ways. God's institution, his ordinance of marriage, is a beautiful thing.

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It's like a work of art, like a great work of art, like a Picasso or a Rembrandt or a Garfunkel.

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It's a beautiful work of art. And the world takes that, and like a bunch of blind four -year -olds, they finger -paint over top of that, redefine it, re -describe it, reform it, try and make it into our own image.

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And the world ends up corrupting and perverting the very good thing that God has given to us. One of the ways that the world does this is to view marriage as a contract between two people.

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Sometimes it's just seen as a legal contract that you do in the presence of the justice of the peace. Sometimes it's seen as a religious contract that you enter into in a house of worship, like we are here doing this today in front of witnesses.

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But they view it as a contract. And in a contract, each individual enters into it with certain promises that they make to the other party, and they view it as a contract.

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And then if one of the parties in the contract fails to fulfill their responsibilities, then the other person in the contract thinks that they can just get out of it.

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If somebody's failed to fulfill their obligations to the contract, then you can just dissolve the contract. Just get a legal piece of paper that says this is over and we're done with this.

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Another way that the world distorts this is to view marriage as simply a matter of convenience. That it's more convenient for two people to live together, and then you can share the workload, and you can share the bills, and you can share the overhead, and you can share the household responsibilities, and it's very convenient.

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But then things happen in a marriage that makes marriage very inconvenient. Like you get kids.

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That makes everything inconvenient. And then suddenly you have to work around each other's schedules.

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That becomes very inconvenient. And somebody has to work late, or somebody is out late, and that becomes an inconvenience.

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And then they leave their socks on the floor instead of putting it in the hamper. That becomes an inconvenience for the other party.

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But then when everything becomes inconvenient, then the person who is inconvenienced begins to think that they can just simply dissolve this because it's no longer a matter of convenience.

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Now it's inconvenient. And so now that it's inconvenient, we might as well move on to somebody who will make it more convenient than this person is making it.

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That's how the world views marriage. Or they view it as a cultural convention, something that we can define, that we can describe, that we determine what it is.

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And this is the world's way of making man the measure of all truth, saying that we determine what culture should look like, we determine what marriage should look like, we determine how it should be.

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We can have two men be married, or two women be married, or a man and a dog be married, or a man and an inanimate object, or a woman can marry herself.

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These are all perversions of God's good gift. But marriage is not a contract, it's not a matter of convenience, and certainly not a cultural convention.

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Marriage is a covenant. We are here today to witness a covenant before God in the presence of witnesses between a man and a woman.

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It is a holy union between a man and a woman, recognizing God as the center of the relationship. Vows are exchanged before God and witnesses, and we recognize that these parties have certain obligations to one another, obligations that they have by virtue of the covenant that they're entering into.

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These obligations are not just there if they feel like meeting those obligations, they're not obligations that they are just to fulfill if it's convenient, but these are obligations, commitments, vows that they're making before God to one another.

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It's a holy institution. It's also an exclusive union. God's plan is for one man and one woman to become one flesh for one lifetime.

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That is God's design. And you too are committing to one another that you are going to guard, jealously guard, this relationship and this union until death separates you.

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And this is also a mystical union. It is a picture of the relationship that Christ has with his bride, the church.

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The scriptures call the bride of Christ, the church, his bride, and then marriage is given by God as an institution, an ordinance among men by which that relationship between Christ and his people is modeled before a watching world.

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In the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 2, when God created the first man and the first woman, he pronounced everything very good and brought them together, and it was

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God's intention from the beginning that their marriage, that the institution of marriage, this covenant, be a picture of the relationship that Christ has with his redeemed people, the people for whom he has died.

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And this is why husbands are called to love their wives with a sacrificial love and a giving love to lay down their lives if necessary.

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Why? Because Christ laid down his life for his bride, the church. And marriage is a picture of this glorious gospel message.

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We are sinners, and the Bible says that we are dead in our trespasses and sins, that we are born dead in our trespasses and sins, and that we can do nothing to please

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God because we fell in Adam when he rebelled in the garden, and so death has passed on to all of us, and we all die because we have all sinned in Adam and because we all individually sin.

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And the evidence of our sinfulness is all around us. We know that we have broken the law of God by our lying, our blasphemy, our lust, our pride, our rebellion, our immorality, and our impurity.

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This is man's condition, hopeless, helpless, lost, eternally damned, and hopeless and deserving a punishment for our sin.

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We are guilty, and the divine justice demands a payment be made for our sins.

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That's the bad news. And here's the good news, that Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the

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Son of God, stepped into our sin hole, he took upon himself human flesh, and he lived a perfect life in our stead, and he died a perfect life that we were required by the wrath of God and by the justice of God to die.

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Then on the third day, he rose again. The Bible says that he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. It is for our transgressions that he was bruised and crushed.

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It was for our iniquities that he died. And then he rose again, he ascended to the Father's right hand, where he waits currently until the appointed time when he will return as the judge of the living and the dead.

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And when he returns, it will not be to save sinners, it will be to judge those who are impenitent and refuse to bow the knee and accept the grace that he offers this very day.

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In response to that good news, God commands all of us to repent, to turn from our sin, and to trust in Christ the

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Savior who has taken our sins upon himself. And we are to trust in Christ for that salvation. And this bride who has trusted

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Christ, they are the church, they are the bride of Christ, and they are saved through repentance and faith.

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They are the bride, his people, in an eternal and unbreakable, holy, exclusive covenant with him.

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And this covenant of marriage is intended to picture that holy and sacred covenant.

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So in this drama that you are seeing played out here and you see played out in the lives of faithful believers in their marriages, this drama itself is a drama in which the husband plays the role of Christ and the wife plays the role of the church.

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And they act out this covenant with each other as the husband loves his wife and as the wife submits to her husband.

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She is to respect and honor her husband, and he is to lay down his life if necessary to protect and to provide for her.

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And together you will walk in obedience to the commands of the Lord to fulfill these rules. So now

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I have a charge for Trenton, I have a charge for you, Aidan, and then I have a charge for all of us who are here. To Trenton, the commands to you in Scripture are clear.

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You are to love your bride and to cherish her, to serve her, to lead her, to provide for her, to protect her, to seek her highest good, and her spiritual growth and her personal holiness, to sacrifice all things if necessary for her, even your life.

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These commands are not dependent upon your feelings. They are not conditional obligations.

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You are to do this in obedience to Christ for the glory of the Father, the power of the Holy Spirit. Now I'll command myself for just a second.

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Alright, to Aidan. You ready? The commands to you are clear.

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You are to love your husband and to cherish him, to respect and honor your husband, to submit to him as to Christ, to seek his highest good, his spiritual growth, and his personal holiness.

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These are not dependent upon your feelings. They are not conditional obligations that you fulfill only when you feel like it.

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You are to do this in obedience to Christ for the glory of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit. And now a charge to the witnesses, and this is a charge to me as well as everybody else who is seated here.

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What we are seeing formed here is a one -flesh covenant relationship. It is the holiest relationship possible.

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It is the most important relationship possible. And whatever your relationship to Trenton or Aidan has been, to this point it is now a distant second to this relationship they have with each other.

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And you and I need to keep that in mind as we make demands upon their affections, upon their time, upon their resources, upon themselves and their relationship.

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We just all have now become stars that orbit, planets that orbit this central relationship.

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We have no rights to demand things of them that might cause them to sacrifice this relationship.

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We have no right to meddle. We have no right to pry into it. We have no right to do anything at all which might threaten their faithfulness to this covenant relationship.

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And in fact we have an obligation to do the opposite. We have an obligation to do everything that we can as witnesses to this to strengthen them, to fulfill these obligations, to encourage them in the fulfillment of this covenant and to encourage their faithfulness.

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They may need us to pray for them but they do not need us to pry into their lives. They will need our mentoring.

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They will need our encouragement but they will not need us to meddle. And nor do we as family members and I say this as the father of one standing here obviously because I don't cry at everybody's wedding.

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But we have an obligation as family members to make sure that we don't do anything that might make us an enemy of this covenant.

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Because if anybody here or anybody outside of here or anybody that you guys meet from here on out does anything to threaten the faithfulness of this covenant, they should be viewed and they should be treated as an enemy of this relationship and they should be treated as such.

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Because this is now the most important thing that you have in your life. With that in mind, are you ready to say your vows to one another?

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All right. Trenton, you first. I, Trenton Tilton, receive you,

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Aidan Osmond, to be my wife by holy covenant. I receive you as God's gift to me.

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I love you with a love only Christ himself could place within my heart. I promise to love you and give myself for you as Christ gave himself for his bride, the church.

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Trenton Tilton, will you take Aidan Osmond to be your wife by holy covenant to have and to hold from this day forward for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, forsaking all others as long as you both shall live according to God's holy ordinance until death separates you.

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Aidan? I, Aidan Osmond, receive you, Trenton Tilton, to be my husband by holy covenant.

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I receive you as God's gift to me. I love you with a love only

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Christ himself could place within my heart. I promise to lovingly submit to your headship as the church does to Christ.

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Aidan Osmond, will you take Trenton Tilton to be your husband by holy covenant to have and to hold from this day forward for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, forsaking all others as long as you both shall live according to God's holy ordinance until death separates you.

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Trenton, do you have rings to share with one another as a symbol of these vows and this covenant? Trenton, this ring

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I give to you in faith. You say that. You're not giving the ring to me, so you say it to her.

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And as a pledge of my constant love and lasting devotion. It is a symbol of my sacred vows to our

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Lord Jesus Christ and to you. Aidan, this ring

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I give to you in faith and as a pledge of my constant love and lasting devotion. It is a symbol of my sacred vows to our

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Lord Jesus Christ and to you. Will you join me in prayer?

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Our gracious God, we are thankful that we have the privilege and the joy to be here today to celebrate with Trenton and Aidan.

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We are thankful for the holy institution of marriage and for all that it pictures and symbolizes of the salvation that you have given to us in Jesus Christ.

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We thank you that you have sent a savior to redeem sinners who will turn in repentance and faith to you. And we pray that by your grace, this relationship, this covenant here today and this marriage, for the years to come, decades to come, until death separates them, would be a symbol and a token and a reminder of that holy relationship that you have with your bride, the church.

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We thank you, Lord Jesus, for your sacrifice for us and it is our prayer that Trenton would model that sacrifice and that service to Aidan and to the watching world.

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We pray that by your grace, you would strengthen Aidan to model the submission and the love and affection and respect that the church has to have for its savior, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that through all of this, you would be honored and glorified and that you would be continuing to work in their lives, in their hearts, sanctifying them and conforming them to the image of Christ, in whose name we pray.

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Amen. You have made vows to one another before God and these witnesses. You have given to each other a lasting symbol of those vows.

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As an under -shepherd of Jesus Christ, it is my pleasure, my joy, and my honor to pronounce you man and wife.

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What God has established, let no man destroy or defile. Trenton, you may kiss your bride. Hold on, hold on.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I pronounce to you, I'm pleased to present to you, Mr. and Mrs.

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Trenton Tilton. Thank you.

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All right.

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I just have a couple of announcements. The ushers are gonna come forward and dismiss you by row, beginning at the front and working their way to the back.

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We'd ask that you not dismiss into the center aisle but out to the edges. We do need to clear this room entirely out of all people except for the setup crew who's gonna be putting up tables and chairs in here to prepare for the meal that is to follow.

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So as you make your way out there, the wedding party and Trenton and Aiden will be mingling out in the foyer. There are

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Italian sodas at the table that you can stop there and get something to drink. We'd encourage you to make your way into the other rooms of the building, outside into the parking lot.

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It'll take us about 25 to 30 minutes to transform this into a place where we can have dinner.

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And then we'll make an announcement. Everybody can make their way back in here, okay? So will the ushers come forward and begin dismissing the rows?

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Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

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Thank you. Chief, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you.