How Your Marriage Mirrors Heaven’s Greatest Love Story

Hey, we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith, your hosts of the Marriage After God podcast, where we desire to help you cultivate a marriage that takes us boldly after God’s will together. And in this episode, this final episode of our Jesus series, we’re going to be talking about the eternal marriage in heaven with Christ as the bride of Christ, the Church, and its significance in our marriages.

Alright, well if you guys could take a minute and please subscribe to our channel. You won’t miss an episode, which is awesome. But we also want to encourage you that if you haven’t taken a moment to leave a review or star rating, this really helps get the podcast out there to other listeners, new listeners. And with the reviews, we mention this all the time. We get so encouraged by what you guys share, not just for other people to know how the podcast has impacted you, but just for us knowing that it has impacted you. So double win.

I want to put a little challenge out there. Could we get five reviews in the next five minutes? I’m just kidding. No, but if we got five reviews before the next episode, that’d be so awesome.

Yeah, so we just wanted to encourage you guys to take a moment to do that. Share it with your friend, share it with your family, definitely share it with Married Couples.

Awesome. This episode, by the way, is brought to you by, I dunno if you’ve noticed her shirts. This is an awesome Christian company by a married couple called Walk in Love. We’ve been following them for what, years? Years now, right? Since they first launched their first line, I think. Yeah. You might often see me wearing a shirt that says Choose Joy, but it’s all yellow. And you’ve had that. That’s one of their first shirts that they launched years ago. And I’ve loved this. It’s been my favorite shirt, as you’ve probably seen it a bunch of times on this show.

This is one of their newer designs of Choose Joy, but they have so many options.

This one says Iron Sharp and Zion. This is a really awesome one. They have a lot of men’s shirts, women’s shirts.

Not only do I love their products and their apparel and they have another shop too that you guys can check out for women’s clothing line, but I love following them on Instagram. I think that their marriage just represents so much joy and togetherness and just being able to work on something together like that. They just show so much. And for me, it just highlights how to do kingdom work together. Well,

I feel like we connected with their story and their idea and their business early on because it reminds us a lot of ourselves. They worked together. They started this clothing shop.

They seem so fun. I wish we didn’t live so far apart. I feel like we’d be really good friends. We need to go hang out

With them. But that’s Walk and love.com. You can check out all their products and you can also find them at Walk and Love on Instagram and other social medias. And so why don’t you share the next sponsor?

Yeah, I just wanted to share these really quickly. So Joy Creative Bibles, you can look them up on Instagram at Joy Creative Bibles or joy creative bibles.com to check out what they have to offer. But they have, their Bibles are really cool. These really beautifully engraved, I don’t know if you’re on YouTube, you can see what I’m showing you. I’m try and

Get it closer. It’s hard to see the details,

But we got these two Bibles. One has flowers and is that a scripture or is that a verse?

Yeah, it’s a

Scripture all my life you have been faithful. We took that because it’s one of that’s from a song. It’s one of Edith’s favorite songs and this is engraved Edith Smith and this one has half a lion space on it. And we got that one for Truett and it’s gray leather. We went with ESV, but they have other versions of Bibles that you can do this with and you get to pick, customize it essentially.

It’s a really good way to personalize a Bible for your kids, for your spouse. It’s an awesome gift.

And the kids really loved it when they saw them. They were so excited.

I’ll make a little note. A lot of the old bookstores that used to exist that used to do the, you

Could walk in and do it. Yeah,

They don’t do it anymore. And a lot of those stores don’t exist anymore. So Joy created Bibles. They’ve created a new way to get these personalized bibles. You should check ’em out. Joy Creative bibles dot

Coms are awesome. So just to reiterate, we did say the word sponsor and we are working with them to share this information with you guys, but we wouldn’t share it if we didn’t absolutely love these products and have them. I think I order from Walk-in Love at least three times a year and I buy them for as gifts for friends. These shirts that we’re wearing and then I showed you the Bibles for the kids. I eventually want to have one for every kid. But the other kids, the older kids already had bibles. So when I found it, I was like,

Don’t a couple of our kids not have personalized

Bibles? I think it’s just Wyatt left because all of and Elliot do.

Yeah, we need to get one more personalized and

Then one for this new baby. You didn’t forget, did you?

No kidding. How could I forget?

All right, speaking of baby, I’ll just share a little life update. Some friends of mine, some friends of mine reached out to me and they said, Hey, what are some ideas for a baby shower? We want to celebrate you and the baby and this year or this time this go around. I thought it’d be so fun to do a family barbecue style and have all the kids there. Yeah, because we have,

Will it include a water fight?

No, we’re done with Thatty. No, but it’s funny, our girls always get invited to the baby showers and so they’re usually like brunch style and we get to dress up and then we come home and the boys are like, how was it? And we talk about what we ate and what we did and we’re

Always, we wish we were a part of it. We’re like, why weren’t we there?

I can tell the boys are feeling a little left out. So I thought this time, how fun would it be if all the families were involved, all the kids were involved and all the games were geared towards the kids. So I’m really excited about that. That’s coming up in August.

It only makes sense. We have more kids than adults, so we might as well.

I think the boys will be stoked to be able to

Participate. The kids there. So we’re in the last episode of this series and starting the beginning of this year we kind of decided to do a bunch of series. We did one on words and then we did this one on Jesus and we was this the Prophecy one? This was the Cy?

Yeah,

There was a mixture. It was Prophecy and Jesus. And so we liked doing this topical series

And looking into this next season with the baby coming in the fall, I was trying to think how can we still participate and do the podcast without feeling super overwhelmed? So I thought, what if we broke it up into two smaller series? So instead of eight parts, there’s only four parts or something like that. And so we’re kind of still rolling around ideas with that, but there will be a short break until we come back with the next series after this episode.

Cool. We’ll keep you posted on that. But either way, if you haven’t gone through all of the episodes in this last few series since January, we want to encourage you to go back and listen to them. They have lots of awesome things that we’ve discussed on what the Bible says about a lot of different things.

And our goal with this specific series was that you would share it with your spouse and then it become a talking point. So not necessarily that every episode is directed towards marriage and how we can be better at marriage, not specifically, but that we could have conversations in marriage that matter.

But it’s also stuff that me and you like to talk about. Yeah, we have these discussions. A lot things come up in the news, things come up at church and we like to discuss things that the Bible says and how it pertains to our life, how it pertains to the world. And so we wanted to share that stuff with you guys and that’s why we do what we do.

So with this series, I thought it would be so fun to end on a marriage note. And so we were already talked so much about Jesus in the Old Testament, Jesus in prophecy, his birth end times so much that we’ve covered,

He missed

The last episode. So with this episode today, we wanted to kind of give more perspective into the eternal marriage of Christ and his bride, the church us, and how it relates to our earthly marriage and why it all matters.

So we’re going to start with the idea of marriage in the Bible, what it means, and we’re going to go into the bigger picture of why God even created it and there’s a reason for it. This eternal marriage that we talk about is referred to in Revelation. And so trying to show what God intended and what it points us to and why marriage matters so much. So

We’re going to start with Ephesians 5 22 through 33. And that’s because it gives you a really strong foundation for marriage in scripture. It’s like show,

These are the famous marriage verses

And you hear them all the time, but we can’t do a marriage podcast without utilizing them because they do define the roles in marriage and what we should be doing as husbands and wives and why it matters. But

There’s a very key point at the very end of this in verse 32, we’re going to read that. I want us to focus on highlight because it kind of is the crux of crux, the cross of why we’re talking about these things, of what marriage actually means.

Okay, so 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, husband 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 as 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 in the church, however, let each one of you love his wife, love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

So something really cool about this section is often it’s taught in just the sense of we’re speaking to husbands and wives, but what Paul’s doing when he’s sharing this order, this direction, this command to husbands and wives and how they should operate is not just that he’s speaking to the husband and the wife, but he’s using the role of wife and husband to say something more profound, which is why he says in verse 32, this mystery is profound that I’m saying that it refers to Christ in the church,

Which I love that he calls it a mystery. And I think the

Often marriage feels like a mystery.

Well, I love the with mysteries come, the discovery, right, the uncovering of what that mystery is and why it’s profound. And so we get to study it, we get to observe it, we get to recognize these truths in our own marriage. And so I think it’s crucial for husbands and wives to acknowledge these verses and every other part of the Bible that talks directly to us about marriage.

And what’s amazing about this scripture, like he says, it’s a mystery, but he’s not saying it’s a mystery that can’t be known. He’s actually revealing the truth of marriage and the mystery that it is and what it represents, which is what we’re going to be talking about. And like I’ve said all along, and we’ve been talking about specifically the last eight episodes, seven episodes, is that in much of the places in what God was doing in the Old Testament, what he was commanding the Jews with the festivals, with the laws, with the temple, with all of those things that they were all shadows that are pointing to the substance which is Christ. And Paul just does this exact thing with marriage and marriage. It’s one of the first institutions that God creates. It’s one of the first organizations, it’s one of the first governments God’s creates, which is all the way back in Genesis chapter three I believe.

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And he institutes marriage. And that gets referenced in this section in Ephesians. It says therefore a man shall believe his father and mother. This is what God instituted back in Genesis. And so we see in scripture over and over and over again that marriage represents something much more than what it is as we say in our book, marriage After God, your marriage is an earthly symbol of a heavenly truth. And that’s what we’re talking about today is this heavenly truth that our marriages represent and why we’re married and what it exists for and what message our marriage is giving and what it’s intended to give. So

If you’re already making a list of things that we’ve mentioned in this episode that you want to go check out the shirts, the Bibles add marriage after God to your list because if you haven’t had a chance to read through that book with your spouse, it is so encouraging and it walks you through in more detail what we’re talking about today as far as the picture of marriage, what it represents and the purpose we have here on earth between a husband and a wife and how they can work together for his kingdom. Go check it out.

So I want to reference one thing. I’ve had people ask me this question before, many Christians have this question and I know it because if you Google it, there’s a lot of people have talked about it, a lot of people have written on this and there’s some varying views. But as I’ve always liked to do, we like to go back to the word of God and say, okay, what is it saying? And try and let it speak for itself. But in reference to marriage on earth, our marriage, your marriage, listening, marriage in general, what God intended it for is to be a symbol, is to be a shadow, is to be a reference point, is to be something that is enjoyed, but it’s meant to point to something else. And so I’m going to read something that the Pharisees came to Jesus in Matthew chapter 22 and they had a question for Jesus trying to trap him and they ask him about marriage.

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I’m going to read this section and I’ll show you Jesus’s perspective so that we can separate this idea of elevating marriage where it shouldn’t be and understanding what it is exactly. So Matthew chapter 22, starting in verse 23, it says the same day, that same day Sadducees came to him who say that there is no resurrection. And they ask him a question saying, now this is in reference to the resurrection of the dead. They’re trying to trap Jesus. Teacher Moses said, if a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. They’re referencing an actual law that concave,

Which I mean it makes sense that that law would be in place to be able to take care of family and make sure that things are still going right.

Well, and also make sure that people’s lineages and names don’t die. And so in verse 25, now there were seven brothers among us, the first married and died and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. So to the second, third, down to the seventh. By the way, this is kind of a crazy story, but they’re exaggerating as it gets to a point after them all. The woman died in the resurrection. Therefore of the seven, whose wife will she be?

Now remember it’s it’s legitimate question.

They don’t believe in the resurrection. So they’re using this question to catch Jesus and saying, see, there is no resurrection but Jesus is way smarter than them. He says verse 29, but Jesus answered them, you are wrong. He could leave it there, but he says you are wrong because neither the scriptures nor the power of God. So he’s telling him you don’t know the word of God says, and you don’t know the power of God in the resurrection. They neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven. Now he’s not saying that we’re going to be angels in heaven. He’s saying going to be like the angels as in no need for marriage, no need for earthly human relationships. They are there to serve God. They’re there to worship God. That’s what angels do. And so when Jesus is saying this, he’s saying, you don’t understand what the resurrection’s about. You don’t understand how the resurrection will work. You don’t understand why God gave us marriage. You’re fools. He’s saying you are wrong. The Pharisees are, what Jesus was saying is this marriage that God gave us in Genesis is for us now.

It’s an earthly experience.

It’s an earthly necessity.

Yeah. So many things that happen in marriage that like you said, point us back to God, but there’s so much reliance that we need on the Lord because of our relationships in marriage and the things that we experience in it.

So I want to answer this question of will we be married in heaven? Jesus says, no, not that he doesn’t want marriage in heaven, but there is a marriage going to take place in heaven, but it’s not going to be between man and women or humans. It’s going to be between the church and Christ. That’s what we’re referenced to over and over and over again in the Bible. And so where marriage has a place on earth, the symbol of marriage points us to the purpose in heaven and the eternal purpose of marriage, which could sound sad. And I know there’s a lot of people that’d be like, well, I’m not going to be married. No, we are going to still know our spouses and we’re going to know those we love and we’re going to have understanding connection to them. But in a are different a way deeper

Level and the needs are different and the needs needs will be different because the needs on earth. I mean let’s talk about we

A lot of physical

Needs. Yeah, let’s talk about some of that.

Well we have physical needs of course. So sexual, the necessity of perpetuating the human race got intended it to be within marriage as a government, as an institution to protect that way of being

Again. And that the need for that in heaven, it won’t.

We’re not going to need that. We don’t need that. So God gave marriage on earth to be a healthy image of Christ’s relationship to the church. And there’s things that happen in marriage should happen to marriage that show us that. I’m going to name off some words exclusivity. So Christ in us, he does not want us to have any other gods. We learned that in the first two commandments of the 10 Commandments, faithfulness, purity, family pleasure, permanence. Now earthly permanence means till death, but permanence in heavenly kingdom is eternity. And so this is what marriage represents on earth. But what it symbolizes is all of those things to us in Christ, God’s relationship to us through Jesus. And so that’s what our marriages are meant to teach us and our children. It’s a picture of that.

I love

That. So our marriages on earth are good and necessary. You need them. The world wants to get rid of marriage because that’s a picture that God made that represents something that God wants to represent. They don’t like that. But in heaven it’s not going to be needed like that. We’re not going to need this relationship. Now that sounds sad, but right now we do need it. But in heaven we’re not going to need the same earthly institutions that we have because we have the fulfillment of all of those things in Christ Jesus in the relationship with the Father in heaven for all of eternity.

I think you explained that really well. Yeah. Well we’re going to move into Revelation 19 because this, it even has a title in my Bible it says the marriage separate of the lamb. And so we’re going to talk about

This, which I’m so looking forward to by the way. We’ve been talking about this a lot, but I could just imagine that meal is going to be great.

So I’ll just jump in starting in verse six. Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude like the roar of many waters and the sound of mighty peels of thunder, crying out hallelujah for the Lord our God, the mighty reins let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God.

I love this because this is the culmination of there’s so much destruction in mayhem and chaos, in revelation of God pouring out his wrath on the earth. And then starting in chapter 19, we start seeing what the church has been waiting for since Christ went to heaven.

Yeah, because over the course of reading the New Testament, it talks about the relationship of Christ and his bride. And so now in this we get to see it come together. We get to see it unified. The church

Is celebration this roar of multitudes, which is the entire church from beginning of the creation to the end. All those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ are there singing hallelujah and praising God and praising him because of what Christ has done. And that’s this marriage sep, this culmination, this thing that we’ve been waiting for happens in this moment. We’ve talked about the gallian wedding, we’ve talked about all these things. This is the moment that Jesus comes and gets his church, spends the rest of eternity with them and we get to celebrate with him at a meal, which I think is cool. So

Cool. So just for clarification, the bride groom, the groom is Christ and the bride is the church. So it’s everybody, every believer that’s a part of his body.

We always mention this when it comes to how we relate to each other in the church, the majority of the New Testament is focused on how we treat each other, how we relate to one another, how we love each other, how we walk with each other, how we forgive each other, how we bear with one another. And we always have to remember as Christians that you may dislike another believer, you may have an issue with another believer, but we have a responsibility to recognize who they are, who we are, and know that we’re going to spend eternity with them. And so it would behoove us to not deal with those things to the best of our ability. You may not be able to do it always because the other party may not be interested, but that’s on them and that’s on their walk with God. And God will deal with them by the Holy Spirit. But for us, we have a responsibility. The Bible tells us if you know Jesus says it, if you know you’ve wronged your brother, then lay your sacrifice at the altar. Go to him, go to him. And so over and over and over again, God, through the Holy Spirit is trying to teach his church, Hey, these are eternal relationships, let’s take care of

Them. And the word that keeps coming to my mind is reconciliation. And I think that it’s so important as believers that we pursue reconciliation if you think or fill or have tension in a relationship, I didn’t finish that sentence. If you think or feel that there’s conflict or tension in a relationship, that we should be pursuers of peace, we should be pursuers of people. And even in those very difficult circumstances and relationships, we should be willing to Christ lay down our life for them in love. And like you said, they’re going to be there in eternity. So

I’ve mentioned this in the past, we’ve had a long conversation about forgiveness and reconciliation, how they’re two separate things we should always forgive. We’re commanded to regardless of the other person changing regardless if the relationship’s ever mended, regardless if there’s reconciliation. But reconciliation is also something we should pursue but can’t guarantee reconciliation requires the other party to also change, to repent, to be converted in a different way than how they were behaving. And so reconciliation should be on our hearts, we should pursue that. But the full reconciliation, there is a requirement, there is a condition that the other person changes but forgiveness there is an unconditional thing. I always point that out to the cross. Jesus’ death on the cross guarantees the forgiveness of the whole world. But that does not mean the whole world is going to be reconciled to the Father by believing in what Jesus did. And so there needs to be reconciliation and that takes the responsibility of the party to receive.

The same is true in marriage. You can have tension or conflict or situations in marriage where the relationship is not stable or secure and you can be a pursuer of peace or a pursuer of reconciliation, but it really requires both parties to surrender. Yeah.

So we just want to reiterate that we’re painting this picture that the Bible paints that the husband and the wife are a symbol of Christ in the church

And they t something. It’s a love story that reflects his ultimate love story. Yeah.

God’s intended purpose for marriage is to reflect the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I remember when we were writing marriage after God and you put a sentence in there about what is your marriage preaching. And it was so good because I feel like it’s so important for us to consider our everyday interactions in marriage and how a husband is to his wife and how a wife is to her husband and how outsiders or their children or their family see that. And we’re either preaching a gospel that is of truth and love or we’re preaching something else.

And so we always ask you what gospel is your marriage preaching? And it doesn’t mean it’s going to always be a perfect one, but it’s good to reflect on that, be like, wow, what gospel does our message or does our marriage preach? What message are we showing to the world? And like you mentioned, children, they’re the ones that are going to see it the most. They’re going to see the real message. You might be able to sugarcoat your marriage to outsiders

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For some time, but definitely can’t do it to your kids. They’re going to see the real thing. I wanted to bring something up that Paul brings up in Romans to deepen the purpose behind marriage. And it’s something that Paul used. He used marriage to encourage the early Christians in the church who were primarily Jews. Remember we talked about it last episode. 3000 Jews were converted on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit ascended onto the disciples. And so Romans essentially is the first full manifestation of the gospel of Jesus Christ being given to the church. And a lot of it has to do with the Jews having a new understanding of the truth. And imagine if you’re a Jew following God your whole life, trying to obey his laws your whole life, trying to obey his feasts and festivals and all the things and you’re relating to God through the law because that’s how God commanded you to relate to him, relate to me through the law, keep my commandments and I’ll bless you. And not just you and your family, but your dad and your dad’s dad and your dad’s dad. Dad and all of your generations have been trying to relate to God through the law. Paul talks to the Jews and relates that relationship as a marriage. And he says this, and this is an encouragement to the Jews. He says Romans,

I was going to say tell him where you’re reading from.

Yeah. This is in Romans chapter seven verses one through six. But what’s happening is these Jews are having a really, they have put their faith in Jesus, but they’re struggling because they feel like they’re cheating on God because they’ve always supposed to be one God. And they have this conflict in their hearts of, well, I relate to God this way, but now I have Christ and I’m free in him. And who is this? Am I now cheating on God? Am I worshiping another God? These are legit questions they would have. And this is what Paul says. He says, do you not know brothers for I’m speaking to those who know the law. He’s talking to the Jews that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives. For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives.

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But if her husband dies, she’s released from the law of marriage accordingly, she’ll be called an adulterous if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she’s free from that law. And if she marries another man, she’s not an adulterous. Likewise. So just like the laws God gave on marriage, he’s like, I’m going to give you freedom right now. He says, likewise my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another. And in some translations it says you may marry another because they feel like they’re committing adultery on God. And so Paul’s like, no you’re not. You’ve been set free by Christ’s death and now can freely marry another, this relationship with God through Jesus Christ. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law we’re at work and our members to bear fruit for death.

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But now we are released from the law having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. So he uses marriage to break the Jewish Christians out of this out heart and mind trap of thinking that they’re cheating on God. He’s saying, you’re not cheating on God, that old marriage, you were married to the law. You died in Christ. So you are no longer bound by that marriage. You can marry another because you’ve been raised a new life in Jesus Christ. And so I just thought that was a really beautiful picture of how God intends marriage to be shown not just to the Jews but to the whole world of this idea of how his law and the faithfulness of marriage and also how a marriage is to be dissolved unto death. Do us part only and that happens in Jesus Christ.

Amen. We have a couple of other scriptures that we pulled out for you guys just to encourage you in light of this idea of our marriage with Christ in eternity, but also here on earth and just think about how these scriptures play a role in how we operate in marriage. Second Corinthians 11, two says, for I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. So again, this affirms our relationship with Christ and how the bride is supposed to remember in Revelation 19 that I read prepare herself for him and that is by being pure.

And I love that he uses the word betroth because like we talked about before, this idea of betroth though is we are in that moment married to God and married to Christ that it’s happening

The covenant, it’s contractual, the

But we’re not yet with him forever. And so like Mary and Joseph, they were married but they had not come together yet. And so we’re the Betroth bride of Christ. And one day this wedding feast that we read in Revelation 18 is going to take place and we’ll be with him forever

If we were to extract wisdom from this verse for our earthly marriage here, I would say the biggest thing for me in this verse is purity and how we can have purity within our marriage. And I think that’s a really important virtue to have in the marriage relationship. And it’s a command and it’s a command. But so the question for you today would be, is there an area of your life that you are not being pure, something that you need to let go of and give up so that your marriage can walk in purity?

Amen. John 3 29, the one who has the bride is the bridegroom. First of all, without even finishing this, the one who has the bride is the bridegroom. So if we’re the bride, if we are as the church, we’re the bride of Christ. Christ has us. The one who has the bride is the bridegroom.

It also calls us the body of Christ in another place. So

We are him, he’s with us, he has us all the things. And then he goes on to say, the friend of the bridegroom who stands and hears him rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore the joy is mine, the joy

Of mine.

Therefore this joy of mine is now complete.

And he’s saying, this is

John the

Baptist. He’s saying, I am the friend that is,

He got to witness the bridegroom, come to get the bride. That’s what he was witnessing.

Wasn’t there another section of scripture where he asks through a messenger or another disciple, are you the one to come? Yeah. Are you the one? I just want to make sure my ministry’s on point here. And so it’s cool to see him just reaffirm that in him.

Let me read Mark two.

Mark two 19 through 20. And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them and then they will fast. And that day,

And this is again the Pharisees trying to trick and get at Jesus. And he’s like, why don’t your disciples fast? John’s disciples are our disciples. And he’s like, why would they fast? I’m here, I’m here with them

Right now. I’m present.

And he’s like, I’m going to be gone soon. Then they’re going to for sure fast. He’s like, but right now they’re rejoicing and celebrating with me. And I thought that was beautiful of Christ to point that out and say, why would they burden themselves when there’s going to be plenty of that later,

Which affirms who he is and what doing. And for us today, being in that waiting period, we are called the fast we should be fasting, spiritual,

Disciplining, discip, discipline.

Yes, that’s the word I was looking for. Thank you.

So Christ as the bridegroom. It’s He’s a powerful example to husbands. That’s what Paul uses. He’s like, look at Christ in the church. Husbands emulate that, be like Christ in the church because of his unconditional sacrifice. And this is a story I think I’ve shared in the past episodes probably a long time ago actually. This is a big testimony of ours. When we were at the brink, what was it? Four years in our marriage of wanting to call it quits. We were kind of over it

Earlier when we were talking about hard relationships and being pursuers of reconciliation. I was thinking, man, even in marriage, there’s seasons where a husband and wife may not like each other or might feel like there’s nothing left to give or there’s all kinds of emotions and thoughts and feelings around hardship and hard circumstances and relational tension. And by the fourth year of our marriage, we were there.

We felt like giving up.

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And I remember we were at church and I remember sitting there and I wasn’t even listening to whatever the pastor was talking about. I was just in my own space praying and just angry and bitter and lost. And I just remember feeling the Holy Spirit kind of take me to the Garden of Eden. I didn’t go there physically, but he was revealing it to me and reminding me of what, not the garden of Eden, the garden of Gethsemane, of what Jesus was going through just before he went to the cross. And he pointed out to me using marriage just like Paul does, just like the Bible does to teach the church about Christ on the church. He was using marriage to say, look, Christ was going to the cross for his bride, this bride that many were going to spit on him. Many were going to reject him.

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Many were not going to receive what he was doing for him. And yet he went anyway. He prayed three times that God would take this cup, this cup of death from him that if there be any other way, and three times he said, but not my will be done, your will be done. And so God used that to teach me. He’s like, if Christ was willing to do this for his bride, what are you willing to do? And he pointed out, he’s like, because what Christ went through is nothing what you’re going through, what Christ went through is you can’t compare your struggles, Aaron, with what Christ went through. And he still did it for you. And it broke me. I was like, well, if Christ can do it for me, then I should be able to do it for my bride. And it changed my whole perspective on my marriage and it was like a 180.

It was huge pivotal moment in our relationship.

Everything wasn’t perfect at after that point, but it definitely changed the atmosphere of our marriage, just one half of us.

Well, I was going to share having a perspective shift, you shifting perspective inspired and encouraged me to stop and consider mine. And I was more willing to follow and be in a relationship with someone who was surrendering to Christ regardless of circumstances than someone who continually got harder, harder of heart because of circumstances. So I love that you shared that. And I think that it’s really cool that in that moment God gave you his picture of marriage between Christ and what he did for his bride to save ours. I thought that was really cool

And I think he’s still doing it to this day. Sure. He always reminds me of those things and reminds me of what my marriage doesn’t just mean to our church or to our friends, but to our kids and to each other and to him, I’m like, man, and it causes me to have to reevaluate my life and choices I make and ways of being that I have.

And if we think about Christ and his relationship with the church, it wasn’t just that moment in the garden where he surrendered and said, not my will but yours and still walked through dying on the cross and all of these things. But he’s still interceding for us every single day. Millions of people, everybody. He’s interceding on our behalf and he’s still caring for us and cherishing us and loving us. And I love that about him and his example of what it means to serve in your marriage.

That’s good. So we love this picture. It’s a picture God invented. It’s actually why we started this ministry,

Neither side like the husband’s side, nor the wife. And this picture on earthly marriage or Christ and his bride lacks purpose and intention and design. There is so much to be said about our roles as a husband and wife and what that means for our relationships,

Right? Yep. And like I said, this is why we started this ministry is because God revealed to us what he’s doing in the world, what he’s doing in us, and used our marriage as a tool to change our hearts. And I think he wants to do it for your marriage and every marriage. That’s what he intends. He doesn’t want the picture of marriage to be distorted and destroyed and to be trampled on and rewritten. He wants it to be what he designed it for because it’s the best version of what he’s doing. It’s the gospel.

Totally. There was another verse that I had pulled out just to reaffirm who Christ is and what his role is as her husband. Isaiah 54, 5 says, for your maker is your husband, the Lord of host is his name, and the holy one of Israel is your redeemer and the God of the whole earth he is called. And when I was reading that verse, that word redeemer really stood out to me. And then I thought of the whole story of Ruth, what a beautiful picture of our redeemer and her redeemer and the picture of marriage. And so I just wanted to add a little side note that if you and your husband are looking for something to study together or a devotional, read through the book of Ruth and just talk about the imagery of how Boaz is a type of Christ and Ruth is a type of the church.

Well, and if you look at it, Ruth, just big picture

Going back to what you were talking

About. Her husband dies and she’s alone, but not for long. And then she finds a new husband. There was no adultery. There was no cheating. That was a beautiful story of redemption that this woman who was a widow is now made whole and having a husband and then children and all the things that go along with that. So Ruth is a great story and an awesome example of the picture of Christ and the church

Going back to being united in marriage and how a husband and wife have a call to be united to be one. We talk about this in marriage after God a lot. This idea of oneness in marriage, Colossians three 15 says, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you’re recalled in one body and be thankful. The reason I want to share that with you guys today is because I feel like being one in marriage can be very challenging. Some days are probably easier than others, but it is a call that we have to be united in marriage to be one, to be that whole in Genesis and other parts of the New Testament reaffirms that we should leave our parents and cleave to each other. It requires intentionality. It requires us to understand our purpose and our roles in marriage. And when we do that, we actually are experiencing what it will be like when Christ unites with his bride in that marriage feast. And I think that’s a really beautiful and important aspect of marriage that we should talk about, that we should affirm, that we should encourage other marriages to be seeking after.

And I want to point out, just like this verse in Colossians says that we are one body, even though we’re many members, we’re one body. It doesn’t say we’re becoming one body. We are one body. Same in marriage. You’re not becoming one in marriage. You

Are one.

And I think a lot of marriages, we didn’t understand that. And it’s still hard to reconcile it sometimes, but think that, oh, we’re not one yet. No, no, you all are already one. But what does that oneness look like? What’s it being used for? How’s it being taken care of? Or are you constantly trying to become

Two? Well, going back to what we read in Ephesians, I mean it’s pretty clear that as the husband leads his wife and the wife submits to her husband, he loves and cherishes and she respects. I mean this, you get this picture of what we’re called to do and why it’s important. And the reason I wanted to share that verse in Colossians is because there is peace. The peace of Christ will rule in your hearts and will rule in your marriage when you operate as the Bible teaches. And so the only way we can figure out how that is, is if we’re studying it, if we’re observing it, if we’re applying it. Yeah.

That’s good. So you have a quote here. Did you want to bring that up?

I think so. In marriage after God, in talking about oneness, I put page 51. It talks about the marks of a marriage after God. And so oneness is just one mark. And so if you guys want to dig into that, if you happen to have marriage after God already, you can just do a quick overview of all of that. I just wanted to mention it.

Awesome. Alright.

Oh, I have this note here about Elliot, and I think I’ve shared it on the podcast before, but if I haven’t, oh, it was so rich. When our kids start to understand concepts and then they share ’em in their terms, it makes more sense to me almost than anything else because it’s so simple. But I remember we were doing bible time as a family, and he was probably right around five years old, maybe six. And we were talking about covenant and he said, we were talking about the marriage covenant and what that means. And he said, I kind of see a picture if I were to draw it, a picture of you talking to me, you and dad, and you guys are reaching towards each other and there’s a red string from dad’s heart and a red string from your heart, but when it comes down your arms in the middle, there’s a heart. So

It comes out. And then the red string from

Our hearts makes a heart. And as he’s talking about it, I just see these scribbles on a page that a five-year-old could draw. But I thought, how beautiful that he understands a picture of oneness from such a early age and what it means to be united in a covenant that’s really good. And that’s what we

Get really is very insightful. I know.

But that’s what we get with Christ. When you believe in Christ and you confess that he is your savior, you’re united in that way. What a beautiful picture between Christ and the church. That red string going from his, you could say his heart or even the scars on his hands, which we keep getting brought up in our family because Edith, she’s four and she keeps thinking about it. It’s almost like a heartbreaking thing. She realizes that he died, that

I told the kids once, she’s

Going to have scars on his

Hands, told I said, the only man made thing in heaven will be the scars in Jesus’ hands and feet. And now Edie’s always asking, she’s like, she prays God, will you heal Jesus’s wounds in his hands?

It’s sweet to be able to talk to our kids about these things, but just to recognize that he poured everything out for us. And likewise in marriage, we should be just as willing to walk as he walked and to do that for each other. And when we do, that’s the picture we’re talking about that preaches to the world what his love story is because we can’t do it on our own strength. We can’t sacrifice and surrender all of everything just to make sure the marriage works and is thriving without understanding what Christ did for us. Because there’s humility there and there’s recognition that he’s greater than I.

We want to close out with a scripture from Revelation 21, which is the second to last book, chapter of the Bible. It says, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out from heaven, from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.

Every time I hear that scripture, I feel like I hear a bunch of cheering afterwards. Just a huge crowd going. Yeah, amen. Hallelujah. Let’s do it. I want to,

All the things that it lists at the end of the morning, the crying, the

Pain.

I know we want those to be in the past. No one likes those. We had a pretty hard beginning of the year and we know lots of people go through really hard things, losing people and divorces and hard things. And God, he’s got a solution for that in Jesus Christ. And we get to look forward to a day, an eternal day, that we’re going to be with him forever with him. And it says that he will be with us himself. And that’s something I long for and look forward to.

Same marriage is such a good thing, you guys. It’s designed by God for us to be united and to be one. The Bible directs us in how to be married and what our roles are. We just need to dig in and find them and apply them. This picture that we talked about today, this picture of marriage that we preach as we interact with each other in marriage, shows the world what God has intended from the beginning. And we just want to encourage you that your marriage matters. Your marriage has purpose, and God desires us to enjoy it and appreciate it, just like he wants us to enjoy and appreciate our relationship with him.

And lastly, know what your marriage represents because it changes the whole everything. You think about all the ways you behave. When you start getting an argument, a fight, and your flesh wants to rise up and you think, oh, wait a minute, my marriage represents something here. I represent a picture, an image of Christ. My wife represents a picture, an image of the church and how we relate to each other shares a message.

And then lastly, lastly, as believers and as part of the body, the church, we are expectantly waiting to be united with him for eternity. And what a glorious celebration that will be. And again, going back to Revelation 19, what can we be doing today to get ourselves ready?

Amen. Amen. Okay, I’m going to pray. Lord, thank you so much for marriage, this picture, this symbol that you gave us from nearly day one. You are using to teach us about you. Teach us about your love, for us to share the gospel with us, Scott, and you’ve been doing it ever since. And it makes sense why the world and society wants to tear down this symbol, this image, and rewrite it and change it to their own image and what they want it to mean. And Lord, I just pray that in our marriages that we would represent the true meaning God, that we would use our marriages and see our marriages as messages for your kingdom, messages of your gospel to this world, to our children, specifically to our neighbors, to our friends. Not that we’re going to do it perfectly, not that we can do it perfectly, father God.

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But the more we recognize why you gave us marriage, what our marriage means and represents God, the more we will begin to walk in that and be transformed by that knowledge and truth. So I pray for every listener, every watcher, God, that for their marriage, that you would strengthen them, that you would give them vision and hope and purpose, and that they would recognize that their marriage is meant for more than just happily ever after God. But it’s meant to be a symbol, meant to be a message. It’s meant to share the gospel. So we love you Lord, and we thank you and we look forward to the day to be with you forever and heaven, God, for that wedding feast of the Lamb, God, to see him face to face and to dwell with you forever, God. And so we love you in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. We want to thank you for joining us for this last episode of the Jesus series, the Prophecy Series, and please subscribe. Please leave a review. Remember, we want five reviews before next episode, but we’ll see you next time.