Marriage | Ephesians 5:22-33

Good morning, Watermark. How are we doing today? Good to see you. I hope your weekend is going well. If this is your first time ever at Watermark, thank you for trusting us with your Sunday morning. I hope this place feels like home very quickly. We are about to jump into the Word of God. We believe God has gone to great lengths to speak to us and that when we open up this book it's like we're opening up God's mouth.

I don't know if you showed up this morning expecting to hear from God, but I believe he wants to speak to your heart. So, I want to give you a moment to pray and ask him to do just that. If you will, pray for yourself and say, "God, would you speak clearly to my heart this morning?" Then would you pray for the people around you, for your friends, for your family, for your kids, and for the other people in this room? Pray that God would speak clearly to them. Then would you pray for me that God would speak clearly through me to you today?

God, thank you that you've given us your Word. We want to hear from you, so may our ears be open and our hearts be receptive to all that you want to say. In Jesus' name, amen.

Several years ago, I had one of my sons skip school, and I took him on a man trip around Texas. We packed a lot into 48 hours. We left College Station and made our way to Glen Rose to go to Dinosaur World, then we came up to Grapevine to go to Bass Pro Shops and Great Wolf Lodge, and then we went over to Arlington for Monster Jam.

I had a goal on the trip. I got this from Jonathan Pokluda. My goal was to tell my son no as few times as possible. My goal was to green-light everything, to say yes to everything. So, when we went to Bass Pro Shops and he asked if we could get some cotton candy, I was like, "Man, we'll probably be the only people who have ever come to Bass Pro Shops and only bought cotton candy, but sure. Yeah, that sounds good. Let's do that."

"Dad, can I have dessert for the fourth time today?"

"Yeah. Absolutely."

"Can we go back to the arcade that's requiring you to take out a second mortgage?"

"Yeah. Sure. Let's do that. Let's go back there."

Then we went to Monster Jam, and I was pretty far in by the end of the night. I mean, I had said yes to the nachos. I had said yes to the tee shirt. I had said yes to the collector's cup. I had said yes to the Dippin' Dots. By the end of the night, we were walking through the parking lot, and I was all out of yeses. Then there was a guy in the parking lot selling neon pinwheels out of a cardboard box, and my son looked at me and was like, "Dad, can I have a neon pinwheel?" and I was like, "Hey, man, we're not going to buy the neon pinwheel."

You would have thought the world just collapsed all on him. He looked at me like, "I don't understand the word that came out of your mouth." His question to me was, "Why not?" As I thought about that man-trip experience, here's the realization I came to. We live in a day and time where Bible-revering Christians are the unwelcomed parent presence introducing the word no to a culture that has grown accustomed to only hearing the word yes.

We live in a day and time where people want to green-light every dream and every desire. We live in a time where you should be whoever you want to be and should most certainly be able to do anything and everything you want to do. Yet, as Bible-revering Christians, there are simply boundaries we can't extend. There are convictions we can't compromise on if we are going to maintain that the Bible is, in fact, the Word of God.

So, what we're going to do over the next few weeks, as a part of this Bible-Revering Church series, is we are just going to speak to certain very important issues in our culture today where there is a resounding yes from the world yet a no from the Scriptures. The goal is to answer the question my son had: "Why not?"

Today, I want to address the issue of marriage, the topic of marriage. There are several reasons we're going to talk about marriage. First, it's Pride Month, and there are churches all over the Metroplex right now that are celebrating Pride Month. I think it's important for us to clarify why we will never be able to celebrate Pride Month.

It's also important to talk about marriage because polyamory is on the rise. Some of you are like, "I don't know what word you just said." Polyamory is the idea that people have multiple partners and all of the partners have given consent to the reality that people have multiple partners. It's on the rise.

But not just that. This summer, Alicia Framis, who is an artist from Spain, is set to marry a hologram. Let me show you a couple of pictures of her reality. She's set to get married this summer. But not just that. The focus of many companies to build lifelike robots has led to a British researcher predicting that by 2050, humans will be able to marry robots in the United States. So, we need to talk about it. You might hear that and be like, "That's crazy! That'll never happen." Just wait.

If you have a Bible, I want to invite you to turn with me to Ephesians, chapter 5, which is the most extensive teaching on marriage in the Scriptures. As you're turning there, let me say a couple of things. First, I know there are a lot of people here who have had very painful, heartbreaking, traumatic experiences around marriage, so just me saying that the message today is about marriage is triggering for you. Let me just say there is no way, in 45 minutes, that I can speak to every single specific situation and scenario in this room.

The second thing I want to say is if you are here today and you are a part of the LGBTQ community, it's very easy for messages like this to feel like a complete rejection of you. I hope you hear me. I'm so glad you're here. I care deeply about you, and my hope is that you would understand that I'm simply trying to communicate what we have a strong conviction is truth. First Corinthians 13 says love rejoices with the truth.

I think the most loving thing I could say to you right now is that we live in a day and time where there is a culture that wants you to believe the truest thing about you is your sexual orientation, that your sexual orientation actually defines all of you. I would say that is unloving to speak that over you, because that's not the truest thing about you, just like the truest thing about me is not that I'm a heterosexual male. That is not the ultimate thing that defines me.

The ultimate thing that defines me is that I'm an image bearer of God, and because of what Christ has accomplished through his death, burial, and resurrection, through faith in Jesus, I have been made a child of God. That is what defines my entire reality…not that I'm married, not that I'm a heterosexual male, but that I am an image bearer of God and a child of God. That is, by far, without a doubt, hands down, the truest thing about me.

So, I want to say to you, if you're a part of the LGBTQ community, "Welcome." I want you to know you are so much more than your sexuality. You are an image bearer of God, which means you have incredible value. God loves you deeply. Jesus Christ came for you to save you, to rescue you, so you, too, through faith in Christ, surrendering your life to him, could be called a child of God.

The reality is you and I are in the same boat. If Christ surrendered perfectly to God and came and died for all of our sin and rose victoriously so that through faith in him we could become a part of the family of God, then you and I are in the same boat. The ultimate goal of the gospel is not heterosexuality; it's holy sexuality. It is where you and I both live fully surrendered not to our desires but to God's desires for us as his children.

I want that for you. I want that for me. I want that for everyone in the room. So, I'm going to say some things that you might hear as a shot against you. It's not. I'm just trying to open up the Word of God and be faithful to what we hold as a conviction to be true from the Word of God, but I want you to know there is deep love for you, that through repentance of sin, just like everyone here, there is grace to be found in Christ for all in this room. Ephesians, chapter 5. I want to read you the whole passage, starting in verse 22.

"Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband."

This passage is loaded. This passage has the potential to solve any space issues we have here at Watermark. Just the opening line, "Wives, submit to your husbands…" We could just camp out there, and we could clear this place out. But let me tell you, everything we talk about today and how you perceive it and how you receive it all hinges on how you view the Bible and where you find final authority.

Let me say that differently. Everything hinges on who or what has final authority in your mind. What do I mean by that? Well, there are a few options. The first group of people are going to be those who view the Bible as the Word of God. You're going to believe God has gone to great lengths to speak to us, and because he has spoken and has put it together in the Scriptures, the Bible has to have final authority on all matters of life. Whatever the Bible says, that is what is true. It's the final authority.

The second group of people are those who respect the Bible but believe the Holy Spirit is the final authority who now gives us fresh understanding and fresh interpretations of the Bible in light of 2024. The reason I said this around the Holy Spirit is simply because it's the Spirit in you that's leading you or guiding you to give you the fresh interpretations that make the most sense in 2024.

Then the third group are those who believe we are the final authority, that the world is the final authority, and the Bible is only helpful and should only be trusted where it's helpful and relevant, and in the places where it's no longer helpful or relevant, in light of how we have progressed and been enlightened, it should be disregarded.

So, just evaluate. Who or what has final authority on what is true for you? If you didn't understand those three groups, let me position it in a different way. The Mavericks have game two tonight. It's very important. The Mavericks are very important to the Ateek family. We are hoping for a different experience tonight than we experienced a few nights ago.

But at some point tonight, there's going to be a foul. There's going to be something that happens, and there's going to be a question. It's going to be challenged, so they're going to go to the instant replay. What you need to figure out is, for you, is the Bible the instant replay? Like, the video, the indisputable evidence. We can look. We can see. "This did happen. This didn't happen." It's the replay video.

Or maybe, for you, the Bible is the ref, where a lot of times the ref is right, and then there are times where the ref gets it wrong. Or maybe, for you, the Bible is the fans. They can be really noisy and often negative, but in the end, it doesn't matter what they say. So, you just need to decide where you land in regard to the Scripture.

As we established last week, here at Watermark we want to take our cues from Jesus Christ. Whatever Jesus Christ thinks about the Bible, that's what we want to think about the Bible. However he treats it is how we're going to treat it here at Watermark. What we established last week is that Jesus Christ viewed the Bible as the Word of God, that God actually spoke and what we have is the Word of God.

Jesus says something in John 10:35 that is paramount. He says the Scriptures cannot be broken. Just those few words mean everything. He says the Scriptures cannot be broken. What does Jesus mean when he says that? He is saying that Jesus believed the Bible couldn't be dissolved, invalidated, stripped of authority, or shown to be in error.

If that's the case; if the Bible is, in fact, the Word of God; if God has spoken, then our responsibility is to make sure we understand what God's intended meaning of every verse and passage is. We don't have the luxury of just reading a verse or passage and making it say whatever we want it to say in light of life in 2024.

So, if that's the case, if that's how we're approaching the Scripture, then our responsibility today is to evaluate what God was communicating to us about marriage in Ephesians, chapter 5. I want to unpack three different things that I think God is communicating to us about marriage through Ephesians, chapter 5.

1. Marriage is prescribed before and after the fall as being between one man and one woman. Let me say that again. Marriage is prescribed before and after the fall of humanity, which happened in Genesis, chapter 3, as being between one man and one woman. Where do I get that from in the text? A couple of things.

First, husbands are referred to six times and wives are mentioned nine times. Clearly, the apostle Paul was under the impression that marriage was between a man and a woman. The real kicker for me is the fact that Paul quotes Genesis 2:24 in verse 31 of Ephesians 5. Look at what he says in verse 31. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."

This is simply a straight quotation out of the second page of the Bible, Genesis, chapter 2, which was the original account of the creation of marriage. By Paul quoting Genesis, chapter 2, Paul is implying that God's original design has not lapsed. It has not been amended. It has not been replaced. It is still in effect.

What's really helpful is when Jesus talks about marriage in Matthew 19, he also quotes Genesis 2 directly as a way of declaring that Jesus himself believed God's original design of a man and a woman coming together in marriage was still in effect. What's really interesting is in Matthew, chapter 19, when Jesus is in a discussion with his opponents about marriage, they are talking to him about an issue about divorce.

Their question to Jesus is, "Why did Moses permit divorce?" and Jesus' answer is so helpful when we're talking about redefining marriage today. He says this in Matthew 19:8: "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." So, do you see Jesus' response? Jesus' response was, "Hey, the reason Moses permitted divorce was because we live in a fallen world, and it's because of your hardened hearts."

What Jesus doesn't do is lean into it and say, "You know what? Moses was right. We do live in a fallen world, so we should just all lean into divorce, and you should divorce for any reason." No. What does Jesus do? He throws it back to Genesis, chapter 2. He says, "…but from the beginning it was not so." That's Jesus' way of saying, "Hey, the best thing we can do is always reach back into the original creation of marriage and pull that out as what is true."

The reason we're even talking about this is 67 percent of Americans in general and 53 percent of Christian Americans are in favor of same-sex marriage. So, 53 percent of Christian Americans are in favor of same-sex marriage, 67 percent of Americans in general. That means the majority of Americans and over half of Christian Americans would hear me talking right now and come to the conclusion that I am living on the wrong side of history.

But here is reality: we are all living on the wrong side of history, because the right side of history is the pre-fall side of history. It's the side where there's no death, no pain, no sexually deviant desires, no abuse, and no abandonment. That's the right side of history. I tell you that just to say the side of history that we find marriage's creation is on the pre-fall side, so our desire should be to uphold that.

I want you to think about this. When did things go terribly wrong for Adam and Eve in the garden? When did sin break into our world? You might hear that and be like, "Well, when they ate the fruit. That's when it happened." Okay. That's true, but what led to them eating the fruit? You might say, "Well, Satan tempted them." That's true too, but it's even more specific than that.

The reason sin entered the world is Adam and Eve actually redefined for themselves what was good and not good. Let me show you that from the text in Genesis, chapter 3. Think about it. God has established for Adam and Eve, "Do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, because if you eat of it, you will die." God tells them, "Hey, eating from that tree is not good. Don't do it. Don't do it or you will die." God spells it out.

Look at what Genesis 3:6 says. "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise…" Do you see it? Something changed. God says, "This is what's good. This is not good. Do you know what's not good? Eating of the tree." Yet we find Adam and Eve redefining what is good. "No, the tree isn't to be avoided; it's to be delighted in. It is good, and we want it." So they took it.

The reason I can't affirm same-sex marriage as God's will is it seems that same-sex marriage has come about by culture redefining what God had established as very good back in the garden. The best thing we can do as Christians is to take our cues from Jesus, and Jesus pointed back to the very beginning, God's original design for marriage.

Paul does the same thing as a way of saying God hasn't changed with the times. In fact, if you were to read this Bible from cover to cover and not just take a verse here or a verse there, do you know what you would see the story of Scripture is doing? The story of Scripture is moving you and me back to what life was like in the garden.

If you were to go and read the end of Revelation, you would see a complete reversal of all of history, culminating not in a garden but now in a city, and it's not you and I married to one another; we are married to Christ himself. He is the groom, we are the bride, and we enjoy him for all of eternity. God is moving us back to the garden as a way that, from start to finish, the entire Bible is saying, "Don't abandon the original design," because God is working off of that for all of history.

Now, this isn't just about same-sex marriage. We have to realize that we're not far away from a growing demand for the legalization of polygamy, AI marriages, and even marriages to robots. What we have to remember is that Satan hates marriage. Why does Satan hate marriage? Because it was God's creation. Satan naturally hates anything that is from God.

So, what is Satan's desire in regard to marriage? It is to distort it and destroy it. Think about it. What would be a success for Satan? If God is saying, "My design for marriage is one man and one woman," what would success be for Satan? To get everyone to believe, "No, it's about two men or two women or a man and two women or a woman and two men or a man and a robot or a woman and a hologram, and it's not just good; it's godly."

You might hear that, and the natural question some of you might ask is, "Does God, then, not want me to be happy?" Here's how I'd respond to that. I would just say the problem with that question is it assumes that romantic love and even marriage are the ultimate sources of happiness in this world, but just look around at all of the people who are married who wish they weren't married.

I would just say this. We, as Christians, have made an idol out of heterosexual marriage. We've idolized it. We've made it actually the climax of the gospel, that the reason Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead was so we could experience heterosexual marriage and finally be fulfilled. That is not the gospel. The gospel is that Christ came to bring us into an eternally satisfying and transforming relationship with himself. We have been made for him.

2. The point of marriage is to point to Christ's love for the church. Did you see it? "Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…" What God is proclaiming through Paul is, "Hey, the whole reason I gave you marriage in the first place is I wanted it to be a very powerful shadow of my love through Christ for my people, the bride of Christ, the church."

The ultimate point of your marriage, if you're married… Don't miss this. If you're married in here, hello. Wake up. This is the point of your marriage. The whole reason God brought the two of you together in the first place is so you could spend every day for the rest of your lives together pointing to and reflecting Christ's love for the church through relentless commitment, unwavering faithfulness, supernatural forgiveness, and daily service. That's why your marriage even exists.

I've illustrated things this way before, but think about what the point of the iPhone is. Why does the iPhone exist? The iPhone exists to put the world at our fingertips. Right? You can connect with anyone in the world through this device. Now, you can live as if this device exists for a different purpose. You can flip it over on the table. You can say, "Man, this thing is an incredible coaster. I do not like rings on the table. Fortunately, I paid $1,000 to prevent that from ever happening."

Or you could say, "You know what? This table is wobbly," and you could take your iPhone and jam it under there and say, "That's perfect. That's why I paid for that device: it levels things in just the right way." You could live as if the iPhone exists for a different purpose, but it doesn't change the fact that the iPhone was created for one specific purpose, and it will be most fully functioning when it is doing what it was designed to do.

Marriage is the exact same way. You can live as if marriage exists for a different reason. You can believe that marriage exists for your satisfaction, for your happiness, or for your companionship, but the reason God gave you marriage was he was giving you a stewardship, which was to live with another sinful human being and reflect his love for a sinful humanity. That's why your marriage exists.

If you're single in here, and you desire to be married, are you clear on the point of marriage? If you desire to be married, that's awesome, but just make sure you know what you're wanting to get into. You're wanting to get into a lifetime of living selflessly and sacrificially so that Christ will be exalted and his love will be displayed through your love for your spouse.

Now, the reason I'm even identifying that Ephesians 5 tells us the point of marriage is to point to Christ's love for the church is because marriage is crumbling today in our world because the driving priority for people is self-fulfillment. Do you know what the number-one reason for divorce was according to different sources? It was a lack of commitment. Why?

Marriage just takes too much work. You have to give too much of yourself to it. It gets in the way. You have a career. You're ambitious. You want to pursue things. You want to enjoy time with your friends. You want to be able to stay up late working. It takes too much. It's too much work trying to figure out life with another person. You're better off being single, so you want to get out of it.

Polyamorous relationships are on the rise. Of adults under the age of 30, 51 percent believe open marriages are acceptable. Why? Because more partners lead to more overall satisfaction, making marriage to just one person a killjoy. Modern monogamy, which many people are probably familiar with, is the idea that marriages and relationships should be considered seasonal, because what you need when you're 20 is not what you're going to need when you're 40.

So, it's good to get married. It's good to be monogamous, but it's just good to have an understanding with one another that the best way you can love and care for one another is to be very attuned to your needs, and when those needs are no longer being met, then love one another enough to let each other go.

And just call it what it is. Make a deal. Like, "Let's do this for 10 years, but then we're going to hit some life stage changes, and this probably isn't going to work that well anymore. You should go find someone who's going to work for your 40s. I'll go do the same, and that's love for one another." Why? It's all about your needs being met.

Listen to what a guy who works in the sex tech industry said. He said, "We're rapidly approaching a point where man and machine merge, where sex can be better and safer outside of real life." See, this is the future. This is what people are feverishly working toward. Through AI and VR and robots, people can customize a partner who caters to their specific needs emotionally and sexually.

Get this. You'll never have to have conflict again. You'll never have to ask forgiveness or extend forgiveness to a partner again. You'll never have to put someone else's interests before your own, because it's about you, and it's about your needs being met. See, the reason marriage is crumbling is the driving priority is self-fulfillment.

So, if you're here today, and you would identify with that and say, "Yeah. Okay. I kind of get that. Marriage is about my happiness. The reason I want to get married is I want to be happy. The reason I want to get out of marriage is I want to be happy. The reason I want to trade in my spouse for another one is I want to be happy," I would just say you're believing a lie that true fulfillment can be found in anyone other than the person of Jesus Christ.

That's why Blaise Pascal famously said, "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ." The most loving thing I can tell you is that you have, first and foremost, been created by Jesus and for Jesus. You've been made for him, hand-in-glove made for him. You will only feel most fully alive when your satisfaction is ultimately found in the only one your soul has been made for: Christ himself.

So, if marriage is crumbling because the driving priority is self-fulfillment, how can we, as Bible-revering Christians, lift up and hold up marriage in our society? What can we do? Well, the text is going to make it clear. The way we can lift up marriage is by living out the point and purpose of marriage, which is to point to Christ's love for the church. How do we do that? Well, the text tells us. Here's my third point that we see from the text.

3. Husbands and wives have differing responsibilities in order to reflect Christ and the church. We've been given different roles and different responsibilities. When you and I fulfill the roles God has given us in marriage, we put Christ's love on display to an unbelieving world, and we show people that marriage is a gift for God that exists solely for his glory.

So, what are the roles in marriage? Wives are to submit to their husbands like the church submits to Christ, and husbands are to love and lead their wives as Christ loves and leads the church. Now, the one that feels most explosive is the role given to wives, so I want to address that second. First, I want to speak to the men to buy myself a little more time. Not really. The reason I'm going to hit it second is because when you understand the role God gives to the husband, it's going to make the wife's role a lot clearer.

So, what's the role God has given to the husband? "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…" The word love there is the Greek word agape, which is a reference to the kind of love that seeks the highest good of the other, even at the price of one's own comfort, safety, and benefit. It is a selfless, sacrificial love. Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church? By dying.

That's how Christ loved us, the church: by laying his life down for us. God himself humbled himself to the point of dying a criminal's death. So, husbands, congratulations. If you've found yourself feeling prideful or so thankful that God made you to be a man so you could be the leader, congratulations.

Do you know what that means? It means God is expecting you to spend the rest of your life laying your life down for your spouse, selflessly, sacrificially, putting her before yourself every single day. Some men think being the head of the family just means being the chief provider and the chief decision-maker. That's not what it means. It means being the chief servant. That's the call for husbands. It's to be the chief servant.

So, men, let me ask you. Is that what you're known for by your spouse and your kids? Would your spouse and your kids say, "Do you know who is the most humble, selfless, sacrificial person I know? It's my dad. It's my husband." That's the responsibility God has given us. The responsibility God has given to men is to lay down our life for our spouse. So, is that what you're known for?

Paul goes on in verse 26 and explains that the reason Jesus Christ gave his life for the church was so he might sanctify her. "…having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." Paul is saying because Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, he has made us clean. He has set us apart. Our lives are forever changed and new all because of Jesus.

Then Paul goes on and says, "In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself." Here's what Paul is telling the husbands. He's saying that you have the job of consistently seeking to cultivate a flourishing wife, a wife who feels deeply cared for and cultivated spiritually and emotionally.

Men, what we need to realize is a day is coming where we are going to stand before God and give an account not for just how well we made decisions or put food on the table or made money for the family; we will give an account for how we laid down our lives and cultivated our spouses as Christ has laid down his life and cultivated his bride.

That is a weighty responsibility which should have you and me on our knees every day, surrendering fully to God, that we would be led by him, that we would hear from him, and that we would be humble before our spouses and our kids, because God cares, and he has put his Spirit inside of us. If we quench the Spirit, we're not going to respond to our spouses or our kids in the way God expects us to.

So, that's what's expected of husbands. When we talk about the husband being the leader of the family, that's what we're talking about: daily, selfless, sacrificial love and service. Now that shines light, then, on the role of the wives. Remember, this isn't something that has been established by society; this has been given by God for a purpose. It has been given so we can reflect Christ's love for the church.

God is just setting us up in the way he wants us to respond to one another so we will most clearly reflect him. So, the husband's responsibility is to lay his life down for his wife, to selflessly love and lead his spouse. What's the wife's role that has been given by God in order to reflect Christ and the church? "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord."

I think it's really important to notice the wording there. It says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands…" It doesn't say, "Women, submit to men." This is not a statement about equality. This is solely a statement about responsibility. My wife is not responsible for submitting to your husband or to men in general. God has made men and women equal, but in the context of marriage and in the church, God has given different roles to different genders.

It says, "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord." That means when you submit to your husband, it's actually an act of worship, and as you do it, it's as if you're submitting to Christ. That is one of the ways God has given you to glorify him. One of the ways you are to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus is simply by submitting to your husband, but it's supposed to be done freely and not forced.

Here's what this means. To submit to your husband is to recognize, welcome, and respond to his Christlike leadership. If the husband is to lay down his life like Christ, then the wife is to submit to her husband, showing the world how to respond to Christ's loving leadership to them. When we do that, and we do it imperfectly, Christ is glorified and Christ's love for his bride is visible.

So, what do we do with this? What's the right response to a message like this? Well, let me just give, hopefully, everyone in this room an action step. First, maybe you're here and you need to seek forgiveness from your spouse. For me, when I was preparing for this, God convicted me. I went to Kat and said, "Hey, look. There are things God is revealing to me that he is convicting me of that there are ways I can better love and lead you and care for you." I just acknowledged that before Kat. Maybe that's what you need to do with your spouse, to acknowledge some ways where you need to grow, where you've not been completely faithful in the role God has called you to.

Secondly, if your marriage needs help… If it's on fire right now, don't just let it burn to the ground. I would strongly encourage you and your spouse to be at re|engage this Wednesday night at 6:30. If you're seriously dating someone or engaged, go through Merge, which is our premarital course, which will make sure you are fully preparing for life in marriage.

If you're against same-sex marriage but you aren't faithfully fulfilling your role in your marriage, then you aren't just against same-sex marriage; you're against your marriage. My encouragement to you is to repent and come back to the Lord. If you're single and desire to be married, then my encouragement to you is to understand the point of marriage and pray that God would move and work in you, that he would cultivate humility, selflessness, and sacrifice in your life now so that when you do step into marriage, it's that much more evident.

Then I'd just say this. We, as a family of God, have a responsibility for those in the LGBTQ community who surrender themselves and their sexuality to Jesus. We have a responsibility to them, that they would find relational intimacy, love, and encouragement from their brothers and sisters in the family of God. That means we move toward our neighbors, our coworkers, and people at the gym who are in the LGBTQ community, inviting them to turn from their sin and turn toward Christ but to find love and relational connection inside the family of God.

Then, finally, for some of you here today, the action step is to surrender your life to Jesus Christ. It's to realize that you have one who has come for you. He is the one who left heaven and came to earth to seek and to save a bride that has lived in perpetual adultery to him. Every single one of us has gone astray. Every single one of us has looked to life and satisfaction in things that cannot give it, and Christ has come to bring us to himself, to be our satisfaction, now and for all of eternity. If you don't know him, would you put your trust in him today? Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, I thank you for your deep love for us, that you lived perfectly surrendered to the Father. You took all of our sin. You conquered it, and then you sent the Spirit so we, too, could live fully surrendered to God. God, I pray that we would be a people who live surrendered to you with our sexuality, that we would live surrendered to you in our marriages, that we would live surrendered to you in our singleness, that our ultimate satisfaction, our ultimate joy, would be found solely in you, Lord Jesus. Have your way.

Thank you for the gift of marriage. God, I pray that we would be a people who don't idolize marriage but do uphold it and do recognize the point of marriage and live for you in our marriages. We love you. In Jesus' name, amen.