What's up? Good morning.
It's nice to see you guys. If we have not yet met, my name
is Cole. I'm going pastor here.
So unfortunately for you, you are stuck with me for the next
45 minutes. So if you've got a Bible, we're
going to jump right into it. We love the Bible here.
Get to chapter 2 of Genesis. If you don't have a Bible, no
pressure will have all the words on the screen for you.
We're only doing 3 verses this morning.
Genesis chapter 2 verses 21 through 23.
Before I dive in, thank you. This this last week and a half
my wife and I took a long vacation to Orange Beach, AL and
it was awesome and we got back late Friday night.
Chloe got sick yesterday and so I am still like I'm still stuck
in vacation brain vacation mode. So I might be off the rails this
morning, but when am I ever on the rails?
So Genesis chapter 2 verses 21 through 23.
Our text this morning is about the first.
I'm excited to preach on it because our text this morning is
on the 1st wedding in human history.
So look, I don't care where you're at.
If you're not married, if you are married, if you're happily
married, if your marriage is trash right now, if you're
divorced, wherever place you are in life right now, it's going to
be something here for you. Because my ultimate goal in this
sermon isn't to give you a couple marriage tips, although I
might give you a few of those. My ultimate goal is for you to
see the glory of Jesus, to understand his love for you, and
to see how awesome He is to you. So I was since I'm preaching on
the 1st wedding ceremony this morning, Yesterday our family
was going on a little walk together and I was just, I was
just thinking about Chloe and IS own wedding ceremony and I was
kind of reliving some of those memories with with Chloe.
It was an absolutely crazy day. We got married outside in
Spencer, IA on the stormiest day of the year.
I'm not talking like rain, I'm talking like crazy
thunderstorms, storms and wind and all of that stuff.
I woke up on my wedding day in a hotel in Spencer.
I ambled on out to the common space to get some coffee.
Ended up chatting it up and becoming best friends with some
random old dude. You know how I do.
And after after the conversation while we were parting ways, he
said, well, hope you don't have any plans outside today.
I was like, no, not Manny. I'm just looking to get married
outside today. And he said, son, good luck out
there. I'm not kidding you.
This I I've got a picture. That's it.
That's what it looked like all day outside of Spencer, IA.
That's not AII took that picture on our wedding day.
And I swear it's sounding, it's going to sound like I'm being
dramatic, but I swear our friends were watching.
The radar claimed that they could literally see the clouds
part around Spencer, IA for the single hour of our wedding
ceremony that day. It was crazy.
So just like the Red Sea man bam.
And so we were like, we live in some of those memories.
And I thought it would be cute since my 6 year old daughter
Della is obsessed with marriage. She talks about it on a daily
basis. And so I thought it'd be cute to
tell my daughter about what it was like to wait for her mother
on the wedding altar. I told her all the all the
details. I remember being nervous,
standing up there, being anxious, sweating bullets,
feeling like forever had flown by.
I remember feeling like, Oh no, did she run away?
Is she not coming? And so I explained to her what
it was like to feel all those feelings and then to see the
doors open up. We had these makeshift outdoor
doors and see Chloe walk down the aisle.
And for all that emotion to overcome me and for me to burst
into tears of joy and for me to weep my eyes out.
And I was telling because I thought it was a sweet story.
And do you know what my 6 year old daughter said to me?
She said if my husband cried on our wedding day, I'd run away
from him too, which is whatever. It's what every guy wants to
hear when he opens up emotionally, right?
I wonder why guys aren't very good at being in touch with
their feelings, right? So I, I thought, like, man,
there's got to be something sweet and kind in that little
something touching in in that heart.
So I asked my daughter, what do you think it would have been
like to be at the wedding ceremony and to see mommy and
daddy get married? And she said it would probably
make me throw up. So I did whatever any good dad
would do, right? I grabbed her mother, pulled her
in close, gave her a big old kiss on the lips.
And she goes, it's even worse. It would make me pass out.
Like, OK, drama queen, OK, It doesn't matter.
Marriage is awesome. It doesn't matter how good, how
healthy your marriage is, every marriage ever is just going to
have those seasons where your marriage makes you want to throw
up, where things get hard, where it feels like, Oh my goodness,
did I marry the wrong person? There was actually a phenomenal
article that went viral in 2016 called Why You Will Marry the
Wrong Person. It's written by a dude named
Elaine Debaton. Dude's not even a Christian, but
it might be the best article on marriage that I've ever read.
Listen to this quote. Here's what he says.
It's one of the things we are most afraid might happen to us.
We go to great lengths to avoid it, and yet we do it all the
same. We marry the wrong person.
Now the good news is that it doesn't matter if we find we
have married the wrong person. We don't need to abandon him or
her. We only need to abandon the
founding romantic idea upon which the Western understanding
of marriage has been based on the last 250 years.
What's that idea? That some perfect being exists
who can meet all our needs and satisfy every yearning.
Now, theologically, of course, you married the right person,
right? If you want to know whether or
not you married the right person, ask yourself one
question. Am I married to them?
Theologically, God's got that person for you if you're
married. Practically though, in terms of
fitness and compatibility, we all marry the wrong person.
We're all sinners, we're all jacked up, we're all screwed up.
And So what do you do when you hit those seasons, man?
What do you do when you hit those seasons and you're like,
Oh my gosh, somebody help me. I married the wrong person.
What do you do in those seasons where your marriage, which is
supposed to be your greatest source of joy, makes you want to
throw up? Why is marriage like that?
Why is it hard? Is there any design behind it
all? And can the book of Genesis help
us at all? The answer to that question is
yes. So if you're able to, go ahead
and stand for the reading of God's Word. 3 verses.
Those of you who grew up in church, you think you know this
story. I don't think you do.
Here are the verses. So the Lord God caused a deep
sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, this is pretty
sneaky, while he slept, God took one of his ribs and closed up
the place with flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from
the man, he made it into a woman and brought her to the man.
And then the man explodes with poetry.
This is Hebrew poetry. The man said This at last is
bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman because she was taken out of
man. There's one central detail that
is the greatest clue in those three verses as to what the
nature and design of marriage truly is.
And I bet if you grew up in the church, you've missed it.
So let me pray and we'll dig in. Heavenly Father, I pray that you
will bless my preaching, help me say things that are helpful.
Anything that's unhelpful, just strike it from from my lips.
But ultimately I feel the pressure to, you know, perform
and that's really unhelpful. So Lord, take that away from me
and let me just authentically and genuinely be in love with
you. And whatever pours out of that,
I pray would just be life to people that they would know and
love Jesus and get this fact that at the center of the
universe is a God loves them. So it's in the precious name of
Jesus that all God's people prayed.
Amen. You can have a seat.
Look, we're doing a slow army crawl all the way through the
book of Genesis. And so we're like 10/11/12
sermons deep. And so if this is your first
Sunday, if you miss those other ones, let's play some ketchup
ball really quickly. Here's what you miss.
God creates the heavens of the earth and the earth by the word
of his mouth. He creates everything by
speaking things into existence. And then God creates Adam, the
man in his own image. And then he gives Adam the job
of working and keeping this Garden of Eden and ultimately
taking the Garden of Eden global, transforming the entire
world into a Garden of Eden. Now this is a, this is a job
that's too big for Adam to be alone.
So God says, OK, it's not good that Adam's alone, so I'll make
a helper fit for him. That's where we wind up today.
And how this is profound. This is so profound.
How does God make woman? How does God make Eve?
And if you've been reading the book of Genesis so far, you've
probably got a really good guess.
God's created everything so far by the power of the word of his
mouth. He speaks boom, creation
explodes into existence. He speaks boom, heavens, earth,
sun, moon, stars. Simple speech is painlessly,
painlessly makes everything explode into creation.
It's a little bit different with Adam.
He scoops up a handful of dust. He goes, breathes his spirit
into Adam and man exists as a living creature.
And so if you're a close reader and I know you are, what you're
thinking when it comes to the creation of woman, Eve is, I
know how God's going to make her.
He's going to speak. Oh, she'll explode into
existence. It's a good guess, but you'd be
wrong. Maybe he's going to do it like
he made Adam scoop another handful of dust up, breathe into
it, and boom, there's a woman. That'd be a really good guess.
It's not how God creates Eve. This is beautiful.
All those other methods, and this is important, All those
other methods of creating Eve would have been pain free, would
have been labor saving, and would have been time saving.
But that's not how God makes Eve Bro, this is beautiful.
God says hey Adam, come here. You're take a little nap son.
Then he puts him down to sleep. I don't know how maybe a right
hook Bam sleeps him sleeper chokehold.
I don't know. That's how I imagine it puts
Adam down and then look what happens in verse 21.
The Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and and while
he slept, God took one of his ribs and closed up its place
with flesh. He doesn't cause a sleep upon
Adam. Did you read the text closely?
Causes a deep sleep. Some translations actually
render it as a death sleep. It's not a literal death for
Adam, but perhaps it's a symbolic death for Adam and then
God Literally performs surgery. Side note, I've done a lot of
weddings and I like to do them a lot.
I think there should be some tradition that imitates this.
Like maybe like some tradition where like the best man is
responsible for like knocking out the groom on the day of the
wedding with like a write up just bam.
And then like when when he wakes up right at his wedding party,
he's like, welcome to marriage bro.
Something like that, right? No, you're right.
That would actually have legal consequences.
So that's assault. So we shouldn't do that.
But still God puts him down, puts him into a deep sleep.
And I want you to notice the pattern here.
Adam goes down into a death sleep or a deep sleep.
Adam's side, it's cut open. Eve is created out of Adam's
side. That's the pattern.
You guys with me. Can we go deeper?
OK, let's go deeper. OK, what in the heck is actually
going on? Are we serious?
We'll look at verse 22. The rib that the Lord God had
taken from the man he made into a woman and then brought her to
the man. She comes out of his side from
his rib. Why?
She's not taken from Adam's head to stand above him as his
superior. She's not taken from Adam's foot
to stand below him as his inferior.
Just taken out of Adam's side, his rib.
Why? To stand next to him as his
companion? This is profound and it gets
even better. Adam see, Adam sees the creation
of Eve and he goes, he goes finally, that's the literal like
look at look at verse 23. Then the man said this at last,
which I love that phrase because it means literally finally, I
love that phrase because Adam's literally been single for one
day in his entire life. It's like, cry me a river, bro.
Not even a single day. And he's like, finally, I've
been waiting my whole life for you, which I guess is true, but
he's actually the first groom to bawl his eyes out at the at the
wedding altar. It's just, I don't know if you
noticed this, but up until this point in the text, Adam hasn't
said a single word. Not, not one, not one yet, not
one that's recorded. And then we see the first
recorded speech in human history, and it's actually a
love poem, right? Which is great because he hasn't
said a word his entire life. Then bro sees a woman for the
first time and all of a sudden he thinks he's Shakespeare,
which is relatable. I get that explodes.
He explodes into poetry because he's never seen anything like
her. And there's also probably some
other relevant textual details that I don't need to go into too
much depth for as to why he explodes into a love poem.
But we'll just suffice it to say that Eve didn't spend a lot of
time stressing out about her wedding dress, right?
You want something way more natural, timeless.
You know what I'm saying, Jay? It's kind of the perfect wedding
ceremony, right? Because like, look at Adam.
Great. I mean, dude didn't even have to
worry about invites or a guest list.
The guest list is entirely exclusive.
Just God, Adam and Eve. It's perfect.
He goes ah at last and he explodes into poetry.
Here's the poem. He says this at last.
This is gooey stop man like this is Shakespearean.
It doesn't feel that way if you don't know Hebrew poetry at
first, but he did this is he's dropping some bars.
He says this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman because she was taken out of
man. This doesn't seem romantic, but
it it really is. But it doesn't seem romantic.
But you also have to keep you got to recognize the fact that
Adam at least didn't mention to the fact that to Eve that she
was his only option. So kudos for him to not
including that in in the poem. But here's why.
Here's why this is so romantic. The other religion stories in
the ancient world did not teach what Adam is saying.
It's actually amazing that Dana brought up Greek mythology this
morning because if you look at all the other ancient Near
Eastern creation stories and creation myths, there's a lot
out there and none of them taught what Adam here is
teaching in the Greek creation story.
For instance, what the creation of woman, you know how it
happens? I don't know if you guys know
this. What happens is humans steal
fire from the gods, take off the gods and then the gods in order
to punish men ends up creating woman.
It's a terrible story. He literally like Zeus literally
in the text. If you read the Greek
mythological text he literally describes women in the creation
myth as quote a beautiful evil and men.
I hope your view of women is more Christian than Greek Pagan.
So where? The reason why this is so
touching of a poem is because the world that Adam lives in,
where this was written, in the ancient world, women were viewed
oftentimes in other religions as made of inferior stuff.
And what Adam is saying is, oh, she's made of the same stuff as
me. Bone of my bone.
Flash of my flash. What's he saying?
He's saying she's me, but other she's saying she's made of the
same substance as me, the same clay, the same stuff, the same
worth, the same value. That's the poem that Adam
recites like Romeo when he first sees Juliet.
And those are our 3 verses this morning.
And that's our text this morning.
You guys ready to pack it in? Yeah.
Can we go deeper? What did we miss?
Did we miss anything in that story?
Here's what you might have missed.
I'm just going to read verses 21 through 23 again.
I want you to see if you notice that pattern.
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon.
The man goes down into a death sleep and while he slept, took
one of his ribs out of his side and closed up its place with
flesh. And the rib that the Lord God
had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to
the man. And then the man says this.
It lasts as bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman because she was taken out of
man. Did you notice the pattern that
I emphasized? Here's the pattern.
You got to see this. Don't sleep on this, OK?
You got to see this. Adam goes down and do a death
sleep. His side is cut open.
Eve is created from the rib that comes out of the side of Adam.
Does that sound familiar to any of you?
OK, if you're not tracking with me, one theologian named Peter
Lighthart, he can get us a little bit closer to a profound
observation. This is the I, I think this is
the thing that even if you know this story well, you missed it.
Here's what Lighthart says. He says what happens is Adam is
put into a state near death, and his body is divided in two.
That's what happens to animals offered on the altar in the Old
Testament. They're slaughtered and their
bodies are cut into two. Adam also is divided into two
pieces, but the final aim is to reunite as one flesh with the
woman made from his rib. What happens is Adam passes
through a figurative death and dismemberment to be glorified.
He dies in order to rise in a new resurrected form that in the
Old Testament that is a sacrifice.
Did you notice that that's the first sacrifice in an entire
book about sacrifices? Here's the point.
Adam and Eve's marriage begins in death, and it ends in death.
Here's the point. Marriage is not sacrificial.
It is literal. Sacrifice comes from a
sacrifice. That's why the Bible says that
marriage is a reflection of the gospel, because the gospel is
the story of the greatest sacrifice ever made.
What it symbolizes, Mike. I got a 2 year old animal.
His name is Jack. And I love him a lot.
Yeah, he's got a lot of big fans in this church.
He's he's crazy. I love him.
He's got my energy. He's got these little Vans shoes
that have flames on them, and I don't know if you guys know the
Vans squiggly pattern. It's got that on them too.
And he loves them. And he's absolutely convinced
that they are his fire truck shoes.
Fire truck shoes. And don't you dare call them
anything else because you're not going to win an argument.
This is the same kid who last night at 8:00 PM got mad at the
sun for going down. I was like, he's like, I don't
like it. I was like, I can't do anything
about that dude. So you're not going to win an
argument with this kid, but he's absolutely convinced that they
are his fire truck shoes. They're not van shoes.
They're not even fireman shoes. They're fire truck shoes.
And the reason why is obvious. The flames are obvious.
But if you know the Vans symbol, it's it's called the the vans
jazz stripe on the shoe. He's convinced that that's a
road for fire trucks. And it's like, sure, man,
whatever gets you to put your shoes on.
But I tried to explain it to him the other week.
I was like, actually, buddy, it's not actually a road for
your fire truck. That was designed by somebody.
And it's called the Vans Jazz stripe.
It's actually supposed to feel, if you look at it's supposed to
feel like the motion that skateboarders experience or
surfers experience when they're surfing, right?
It's supposed to look and feel like motion.
That's what the symbol is there for.
And he said, what's your source? Well, he didn't say that.
He's too. He said no fire truck shoes.
So I was like OK, sure, whatever gets them on your feet, they're
fire truck shoes. And look, it's it's cute when a
2 year old misinterprets symbols because of his own interests.
It's cute. It's less cute when adults
misinterpret symbols because of their own personal interests as
well. There's going to be a moment,
hopefully, where Jack grows up and learns that symbols have
objective meanings because they have intelligent designers.
It's not. It's not actually a road for the
fire truck. The van symbol is a jazz strike
for motion. It's with the symbols there.
It was designed by somebody too many.
Way too many, way too many adults have not grown up and
they still interpret the symbol of marriage according to their
own interests. It's fire truck shoes.
Or marriage exists because he completes me.
Barf. Marriage exists because I'm a
Disney Princess and I deserve my happily ever after.
Or worse. Worse, interpreting the symbol
of marriage according to our consumeristic world that we live
in. Marriage is like anything that I
purchase and consume in our world.
It's like the new iPhone. I like it when it's sparkly and
new and doesn't tick me off. But as soon as there's a new
model on the market, as soon as I become bored of this one, I'll
just throw it away. Way too many adults misinterpret
the symbol of marriage as it exists to complete me.
I enjoy it while I've got it and I'll throw it away when I'm done
with it. The Bible says no, Grow up.
Symbols have meanings because symbols have designers.
God's the designer and the scriptures say that.
The mystery of marriage. This is Ephesians 5.
The mystery of marriage refers to Christ and the Church.
So why is God designed marriage to function the way it does?
Because it's a symbol that when people look at it, it's supposed
to reflect the gospel. OK, what's the gospel?
And the gospel is the story of the greatest sacrifice that's
ever been made. It's the story of Jesus Christ
being crucified on a cross and being put to death for our sins
to take away our crap, take away our mistakes, to cover us in his
righteousness to be forgiven so that we could be made into the
bride of Christ. That's the gospel.
And what these 3 verses all the way back in your Old Testament,
all the way back in the 2nd chapter the Bible is doing, is
it is hinting at you this first wedding ceremony between Adam
and Eve. It's reflecting to you the
gospel in like a million ways, right?
We can do this all day. I'll just give you 3 simple ways
that those 3 verses reflect the gospel.
First, Jesus is also put to death to earn his bride.
Adam goes into a deep sleep to earn his bride.
Jesus goes into a literal death sleep.
He's crucified on a cross, goes 6 feet deep, truly dies.
And when he's resurrected, he obtains the church as his bride.
It's the same story, Dope right? Or #2 Jesus bride is also
created from his side. When Jesus is crucified on a
cross and he dies, a soldier comes up to him, puts a spear in
his side, pulls it out. You ever wonder why that detail
is there? What's going on?
What comes out of Jesus aside blood and water?
Why? Because it's the blood that
covers us in his righteousness and the water that washes away
our sin and makes us into the bride of Christ.
Just like Adam and Eve, the church is also made out of the
rib of Jesus and pours forth from his side.
Is this cool? This is so cool as your Old
Testament right? Or #3 Jesus also loves his bride
apart from her weak works. Notice what did what did Eve do
to earn Adam's love? Nothing.
Not a darn thing. She just woke up.
That's all she did. She just woke up.
She's she hasn't even put makeup on.
She's not. She didn't do her hair yet.
She probably still has morning breath.
She didn't do anything. It's the mere sight.
A sight of her alone. No works that makes Adam explode
with affection. Adam loves Eve apart from her
weird works. He loves her before she does
anything for him. Does that sound like anybody to
you? Exactly the same way that Jesus
loves you. Jesus loves the church, you, his
bride, apart from your works. You can't earn Jesus's love
through works. You can't earn it through trying
to be a really religious person doesn't impress God.
You can't earn it because you don't.
You don't cuss, you don't chew, and you don't date girls who do.
Can't earn it that way. You can't earn it by acting like
Ned Flunders from The Simpsons. None of that stuff impresses
God. You know what impresses God?
The death of Jesus on a cross. And you get that by faith alone.
You can't earn it. Jesus loves us because of grace
alone, just like Adam loves Eve. Guys, this is so massive.
This is so massive, even before the fall, before sin, marriage
in paradise. Get this, in paradise, marriage
still required sacrifice. So of course in a fallen world
with sin, it's like 100 times more true that marriage requires
sacrifice, right? Like cars run on gas, lights run
on electricity, I run on caffeine, human bodies run on
oxygen, marriages run on sacrifice.
That's the gasoline that makes them drive.
Every good marriage you've ever encountered is a living
graveyard. It's a living graveyard that's
filled with millions of little invisible deaths, deaths of
preference, opinions, even dreams.
Every time you see a marriage of 30 years And she still looks at
him with a glimmer in his eyes and the guy still makes her
laugh and they still burn for each other 30 years, then you
know what you're witnessing. You're witnessing like a little,
just a little flower that grew out of a graveyard of a million
deaths. Everyone.
It's a secret sauce to marriage. Everyone is.
And so every marriage is sacrifice, Adam and Eve's, Jesus
and the churches, yours, your future. 1 And so if every
marriage is a sacrifice, it doesn't matter whether you're 60
years or six days and you're going to hit a point where both
spouses think, Oh my gosh, somebody help.
I married the wrong person. So what do you do when you hit
that point in your marriage? I had a list of seven things.
I willed it down for two because I love you guys first.
The first thing you need to do is admit that you married the
wrong person. I don't mean this theologically.
Theologically, if you're married, that's the right person
for you. I mean it practically.
We all practically marry the wrong person.
They frustrate us. They sin against us.
They're not compatible. They take you off.
And why do those actual moments of frustration and sin and
marital hardship happen? They happen because those are
the actual moments where you have to sacrifice.
We got to start to understand as modern people that the fact that
your marriage demands sacrifice is not a defect in the marriage.
Most modern people think that when their marriage puts them in
a spot, but they got to give something up, make a tough
sacrifice, their preference, their time, their opinions,
their money. They freak out and they think,
Oh my God, something's wrong with my marriage.
No, sacrifice is not a bug in the system of marriage.
It's the feature. It's the feature because it's
the only thing that makes you become like Jesus.
Nobody ever drifts into Christ likeness.
It's only through 1,000,000 little sacrificial daily deaths.
And that's what marriage is. When you married, you doubled
the likelihood of getting cancer because if she gets it, you do
too. You doubled the likelihood of an
anxiety disorder because if he gets it, you do too.
It becomes your life. That's what it's like.
If you married, I don't know, say a wrestling coach, you just
double the likelihood of you getting ringworm, if you know
what I'm saying. Tripled, quadrupled.
Chloe's a champ. Say thanks to her the next time
you see her. You double all the possibilities
of human suffering. But also you get to reflect the
beauty and worth of Jesus and the good times also get better.
But this is the pattern. Adam was put into a deep sleep
to obtain his wife. Adam and Eve's marriage begins
and ends in death. Jesus was put into a literal
death to obtain the church. And so I would encourage you to
not think that your marriage is going to be all picking daisies
and beach cruises because not only did you marry the wrong
person, we are all the wrong person to marry.
We're all screwed up and jacked up.
We've got to admit. And that brings me to my second
thing. Admit you marry the wrong person
and then commit to dying to yourself.
And this is how you become the right person every.
This is so important. The the biggest mindset shift
you can make in your marriage is simple.
You have to commit to really believing that your biggest
marriage problem is yourself and not your spouse.
It's massive. This is the biggest mindset
shift you could possibly make. You got to suck it up and be
convinced to treat your own stuff, your own failures, your
own sins more seriously than you treat your spouses.
We usually do the opposite. We treat their sins really
seriously. And then with our sins, we're
like, well, you know, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace,
grace. And of course, there is grace.
But the key here, the key is to treat your own more seriously.
And for a really simple reason. Because because your sins are
the only sins that you have the power to change, right?
And because your sins are the only sins that have the power to
send you to hell, your spouse's sins don't have the power to do
that. And so definitionally your sins,
your weaknesses, your stuff, you should take that more seriously
than your spouse's. And So what ends up happening in
an awesome marriage, you know, like a marriage where like 40
years and they still have fun together, right?
And like this type of marriage where their when their kids are
teenagers like mom and dad's PDA makes them go, you know like
those those awesome marriages that they like radiate with joy.
Those marriages are possible but only happens when both spouses
default reaction. When stuff gets hard is to start
by asking what needs to die in me?
How do my own stupid stuff create this problem?
That's when the magic starts to happen.
There was a researcher named John Gottman and he spent
decades on researching marriages.
He observed not a small sample size, over 3000 couples and he
became notorious for being able to predict whether the marriage
would implode or survive. Check this out Within 15 minutes
of meeting the couple with 96% accuracy. 15 minutes how he
spent the 1st 15 minutes asking the husband, check this out
asking the husband, Hey, tell me about a time when you really had
to work on yourself. And if the husband had an
answer, if he said, you know, I, man, I, I went down this deep
porn addiction. I fought my way out of it or
man, I had this drug addiction and it was brutal.
The withdrawals were terrible, but I got out of it.
Or even like I had this personality thing that I needed
to conform to. Like, whatever it was, if the
husband had something he worked on, he'd predict that marriage
is going to make it. But if the husband said, you
know, I'm just, I'm just not really into working on myself.
He predicted that the marriage would implode.
The results of his research, Statistically speaking, when the
man is not willing to work on himself.
And look, both spouses need to work on themselves.
It's just the statistical likelihood points to the
evidence that men tend to be worse at marriage. 10.
So statistically speaking, when the man is not willing to work
on himself, there is an 81% chance that the marriage will
self destruct. So look, everybody in a
marriage, yes, doubly so. Men.
Men, you don't want to work on yourself, That's fine.
You won't be convinced that all your problems in life is always
somebody else's fault, that's fine.
You don't want to work on yourself?
Fine. You're coward.
You're turd. That's fine.
Jesus loves turds. Don't tweet that.
That sounds bad out of context, you know what I'm saying?
Just don't get married. And if you're like, if you're
one of those dudes who's like, you know, I'm not really into
self improvement or spirituality, that's fine.
But you should. It's better for you to not work
on yourself alone than for you to not work on yourself and drag
a woman or God forbid, kids down into hell with you.
Because if you're hell bent on not changing 81%, statistically
speaking chance that the marriage is going to implode,
you got to be willing to work on yourself to change, grow,
reinvent on all those things require what they all require
sacrifice. In worldly marriages, when the
marriage is bad and something has to die in the marriage,
idiots say you do it. In Christian marriages, when
something has to die, both spouses say me, I'll do it
right. A famous comedian one time said
a good marriage isn't 5050. A good marriage is 6040 with
both spouses trying to be the 60.
It's good advice, but you're married, man.
There's just like there's just got to be this dog in you that
says like I, I, I said till death do us part.
And I said it in front of God and I said it in front of people
and you, my spouse, you're pissing me off.
But we're going to stick to it, not because of my feelings.
But because of God's design and marriage, we'll get help, we'll
get pastor and we'll read books, we'll try shock therapy.
I don't care. Try plastic surgery, whatever it
takes. I'm not going to tell the world
with my marriage that I don't care about the gospel.
That's that's the thing you got to have in you, man.
Like I even think about it when I hit the hit the weights.
It's like if you want to take off your wedding ring when you
go to the gym, that's fine. I would rather my ring finger
get ripped off in a lifting accident than not wear my ring
to the gym. You just got to have this thing
in you. That's like, I'm fighting for
this marriage, right? The difference between marriages
that make it and marriages that don't, right?
With three exceptions of biblical cases for divorce,
adultery, physical abuse, and desertion, those things happen
and those things are valid. But outside of that, the
difference between marriages that make it and those that
don't isn't compatibility. It's not like the ones who made
it, they just had similar personality.
No, it's not compatibility. The difference is that marriages
that make it are filled with two people.
Who says I will not tell the world with my marriage that I
don't care about the gospel. My marriage is about Jesus.
It's not ultimately about my feelings.
It's not about personal fulfillment.
I want to put the glory of Jesus on display.
I want it to be a symbol to the world that shows how much Jesus
loves the world. I want it to be this 3D portrait
of the gospel. I want people to see that Jesus
is awesome and that is everything.
That's you got two people in marriage with that viewpoint,
you can make it, but I saw a meme on Instagram that I
actually liked, which is rare. There it is.
This is marriage. You disagree, Don't get married.
The hands that are being held on the left are getting nailed
together on the right. That's true.
That's what I've been trying to say this entire sermon, man, you
can, you can have an awesome marriage, but you can't drift
and do it. You got to fight for it.
Like like I'm convinced, I'm convinced that more than any
other thing that I do in life, my biggest purpose in life is to
fight for my life's joy and to fight for my marriage.
I know that's true. Like I'm telling you guys, if I
die before Chloe, which seems very likely, let's be honest, if
I die before Chloe and get to heaven, I'm convinced that the
first question Jesus is going to ask me is not hey, how big did
you grow the church? No, he's not going to ask me.
Hey, how many awards did you win?
No, fully convinced that the first question Jesus is going to
ask me when I get to heaven is how's Chloe?
How's my girl, How's my daughter?
Like on my, on my best days, I don't operate in this mode as
much as I should. But on my best days, like when
I'm on sabbatical and have a lot of space and time to think, I've
got this. I have this visual in my head
and it's really vivid. It's, it's a portrait of Chloe
and I's wedding day where we're both together and I can still
see it. We've got a picture of it.
She's in her white dress and I'm blurred out in the background,
which is what makes it a really good picture.
But I'm whispering something in her ear, and that was 10 years
ago. I don't even know what I was
saying. It was probably really funny.
Maybe it was a joke, maybe it was something.
Maybe I was just being goofy. I'm whispering something in her
ear and the face that Chloe is making in that picture on her
wedding dress, the face that she's making, guys, it's like
it's this face that flirts with a massive smile and all out
laughter. And when I'm thinking right,
when I'm in a good space, when I'm in step with the Lord, the
main question I ask myself is how do I get that face?
What's it take to put that face on her?
What's it take? What do I got to be?
What can I do to get that face right?
At wedding ceremonies? I love doing them.
When that moment where the bride is Googling at the groom and the
groom is wide eyed with the bride.
Peter, Megan, you guys know what I'm talking about.
You guys had Googoo eyes for each other just the other month,
rather Googling each other. When people see that on TV
shows, movies, or in real life, everybody feels the same thing.
Thing that everybody feels is God.
I wish somebody would look at me that way.
Everybody feels that way. And if that's the way you feel,
I have really good news for you because that's a symbol of the
gospel. And that means that you do have
somebody that looks at you like that.
That's precisely the way that God looks at you.
That's the gospel. The gospel is the good news that
Jesus is looking at you right now.
That way. He died to take away all your
sins, to cover you in his righteousness.
And you gain that righteousness not by earning it, but by faith
alone. And so right now, like a husband
looks at his wife on their wedding day, Jesus is looking at
you like that. You know he's looking at you.
He's not like, ah, man, I got to put up with that part.
No, he's beaming at you, sparkles in his eyes, foam
finger on your name painted on his chest.
He's a big fan of you, crazy about you.
He loves it you. He's looking at you with tears
in his eyes like a groom on his wedding day.
That is what marriage symbolizes.
That's the design. And does your marriage symbolize
that? Does it?
Because if it doesn't, if your marriage is mediocre, if your
marriage sucks right now, that's OK.
But today's the day. Start today.
Just change today. You can do it.
Just change today. Ask God for faith and strength
and then change today. Renew your love for your spouse.
Do whatever it takes to burn for her again.
Do whatever it takes to burn for him again.
Get a different job if you have to.
Throw away your phone if you have to.
Get new friends if you have to. Get rid of your hobbies if you
have to. Drain your bank account.
Take her on a date if you have to.
I don't care. Just remember, Adam was put into
a deep sleep for Eve. Adam and Eve's marriage begins
in death and it ends in death. Jesus was put to literal death
for the church. So whatever it takes, you
didn't. You didn't think you were going
to get out of your marriage alive, did you?
Now it begins and ends in death. Heavenly Father, I pray for
faith this morning. I think there were some helpful
things in that message, maybe some hard things in that
message. So for the helpful things, just
drive them super deep into our hearts and help that drive us
towards Christ likeness. For the hard things, the things
that landed maybe not well or with too much force or broke us,
just pray for memory of the gospel, the the fact that you
love us apart from any of our works and that all you say and
all you do to us is only done out of love because that's all
you have for those who are in Christ is love.
And so it's in the precious name of Jesus that all God's people
prayed. Amen.