Podcast Preview
I like to think I was blessed with a fairy tale love story. I met my wife, Charis, standing in the registration line in high school. I followed around with her on campus all registration day, asked her to homecoming, and the rest is history. I think God knew I would need her! We dated for 8 years before we got married, but before my Dad would give me his blessing to even propose to her, he wanted me to read a book- it was called “The Meaning of Marriage” by Tim Keller. I recommend it to anyone who would like to read a Biblical perspective on marriage.
Why that book? Because it tells the story of the true meaning of marriage. Just like our text for this Sunday. Now, I want to give you a couple notes for tomorrow, and a couple ways I’d like you to prepare.
Ephesians 5:22-33. This is a difficult text. I’m not preaching on the chosen text because it makes me happy to do so. I wouldn’t even say I’m excited to do it. And that’s weird for me. What I am is determined. Why? On the God side, it’s because I made an oath to him on my ordination day that I would teach all of God’s Word. I am honoring him in doing this. We all do when we preach or receive what he says faithfully. On the congregational, receiving side of this, though, I can add this: often, the most difficult things in life are the very things that are most necessary and saving. This is one of those things.
Why this kind of introductory comment? Read the chosen text from Ephesians. I want you to know what’s coming. I’m guessing you’ll know what will be difficult immediately. Also, I was hoping you could get a sense of my tone and approach on this. I plan to be honest: to God, about this Word, about our life today, and about the questions that I sense you will bring with you to worship – all of it. It is my prayer that, by the end of it, we’ll be wrapped up in the mystery of a God who loves us so.
Ephesians 5:21-33
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[b] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
