This Light and Momentary Marriage

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Could you go through life without a happy marriage and still feel happy and fulfilled? Because if the answer is no, then marriage has probably become an idol to you.

I don't mean do you want to be married, because that's a God-given desire, but I mean, is it so significant to you that you don't see how life would be worth living without it? Welcome back to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian, J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Today we're launching a new teaching series here on the program called First Love. We will be dealing with some common pitfalls and struggles in relationships, whether those are romantic relationships, friendships, or anything else. And today we're kicking it all off by getting a biblical perspective on the purpose of marriage.

And that's a lot different than what our culture usually portrays in songs and movies. If you missed any of the messages from earlier this week from our teaching series, Rest in Distraction, you can find them online anytime at jdgreer.com. But for now, it's time to get started with a message that pastor J.D. titled This Light and Momentary Marriage. Today we are launching out on a new six-week series called First Love, Building Gospel-Centered Relationships. The one area, whether you are a Christian or not, the one area that provides simultaneously the most joy in your life and the most heartache is relationships. And that's going to be true whether you are single or whether you are married. Our whole study over the next six weeks is going to come out of Ephesians 5, verses 22 through 32. All the messages are going to come out of there. And we're going to be considering a lot of things that relate to romance and to marriage and what the Bible says about those.

But let me make this very clear. This is not exactly a marriage series. We're going to learn a lot of principles about ourselves that apply to all relationships, only one of which is marriage. You see, here is what I have found after being a pastor for 10 or so years and married for 13 years is that there aren't really that many married people issues. There are individual people issues that just get worse in marriage. Marriage doesn't really create problems. Marriage usually just reveals them. And I know that some of you don't really want to admit that, but it's true. The majority of problems that marriage specifically creates are relatively minor.

You know, what end of squeeze the toothpaste out of and whether or not you make the bed in the morning, that kind of stuff. What makes these issues major are problems in us that would be there whether we were married or single. And marriage is the arena in which these problems come out. So, see, regardless of whether you're single, whether you're single and content, whether you're single and seeking, whether you're engaged, whether you're happily married, whether unhappily married, single again, hoping to soon be single again, whatever your marital status is at the time, this series is going to have a lot in it for you because it's going to shine a window into your soul.

So, this first week today, we're going to ask the question, what exactly are you looking for when you yearn for love and romance? Then we're going to deal with expectations that we bring to romance and things that we carry into marriage. And we're also going to discuss what God's plan is for singleness. 65% of the adults listening to me right now are single in our church.

I found that out this week. And that's not counting high school students, not counting kids. 65% of the adults that come to our church are single. So, we're going to talk about what God's plan is for that during this stage of your life. That's today, week two. We're going to look at one huge principle, one principle that if we got it, this one principle, I'm going to give you one question you could ask in all of your relationships that would fundamentally transform all of them, including marriage.

Week number three is going to be all about principles of communication because you know that relationships live or die and your ability to communicate. I was having dinner the other night with one of our elders. And after you get to know somebody pretty well, they kind of let their guard down.

You can really see what their family's like. And him and his wife are having this discussion at the dinner table. And it turns out that she had miscalculated their budget for the month and she had overspent the account and she had bounced a check.

And you know how frustrating that is. And he looks at her and he said, sweetheart, I just don't understand how God could have made you so beautiful and so stupid at the same time. And she said, God made me beautiful so that you would fall in love with me and stupid so I would fall in love with you. So we're going to learn about how to communicate that way. That's week three. Week four, we're going to look at conflict and forgiveness.

I got some great recent stories about how Veronica has really wronged me and how I've forgiven her that I'm going to share with you. And so you want to make sure that you're there that week. Week five, I'm going to talk about principles of decision-making and what that looks like specifically in relationships. And week six, we're going to tie all these things together and we're going to talk about building intimacy in a relationship. Now, I'm trying to encourage my wife, Veronica, to join me up here for some of this, but she has been really stubborn and hard-hearted about it.

So maybe if you see her, if you give her a little encouragement, maybe she will get up here and join me for those sometime in the future here. Okay, Ephesians 5. Hopefully by now you've had a chance to find it there in your Bible. As I mentioned, all the messages are going to come out of this, but we're going to look today just to the last two verses, verses 31 and 32, where Paul sums up all the things he's been teaching on relationships. And this message is titled, This Light and Momentary Marriage.

All right, verse 31. Therefore, Paul says, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery of marriage is profound because I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Paul, in these two verses, explains to us that marriage was given to us not as an end in itself, it was given to us as a sign of something higher. It wasn't that God looked at marriage and thought, wow, that could be a great analogy for what I've got going over here. No, no, God actually created marriage for the intention of giving us a tangible demonstration of a different relationship, a higher reality, and that is, according to Paul, Christ's relationship to his church.

C.S. Lewis, reflecting on this verse, described marriage like a ray of sunshine. When the ray hits your face, it warms your face. You look back up along the ray and you can see the sun from which it emanates.

He said, that's what marriage is. It's a ray of God's goodness, but it's never to be an end in itself. It's supposed to teach you about the goodness of the sun from which it emanates.

There are millions of the sun's rays. Only one of them is marriage. And C.S. Lewis said, what you should never do is you should never, ever, ever mistake the thing that symbolizes God's love for God's love. You should never replace in your heart the thing that God gave us to point us to himself.

You should never let that replace God in your heart. So here's number one, and you should write this down. This is deep. It's pretty radical. And unless you get this, nothing else from here on out is going to make sense.

So write this down. Number one, marriage is not ultimate. It is a sign and a shadow of a higher reality. Marriage is not ultimate.

It is a sign and a shadow of a higher reality. Christ, Paul says, is the source of all love and joy. He is the son. The love that you were created for is not the love of another human being. The love that you were created for is Christ's love. And the church, he says, is the ultimate eternal family. According to Scripture, listen to this, according to Scripture, relationships in Christ are more permanent and more precious than even your relationships in your families.

Will you let me blow your mind for a minute? It's going to sound like I'm going to be dogging on marriage here for the next few minutes, but hang with me, all right? I'm going to give you several verses.

I'll put them on the screen here so you don't have to try to turn to them. Matthew 22, 30, in the resurrection, Jesus said, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they're like the angels in heaven who evidently are single and not married. In heaven, I will not be married to my wife. I'm not really sure what it's like up there, but it will not be like the relationship that we have here. I've often thought, like, what's it going to be like when I see her in heaven? Is it going to be like I kind of give her a wink, like, hey, remember? Is that what it's going to be like? I don't know. And sometimes, to be honest with you, I'm tempted to let that make me sad, but I know that whatever God has for us there will be better than what we have here.

If anything, we'll be closer there than we are here. I'm not really sure how it works, but the point is Jesus said that marriage is not eternal and marriage is not ultimate. In the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Matthew chapter 12, when his own mother and brothers, watch this, asked to see him. When Mary, his biological mother, and his half brothers, who were Mary's other sons, when they asked to see him, Jesus said, who is my mother and who are my brothers? And then stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, here are my mother and my brothers.

Wow. John Piper, who preached here a couple of weeks ago, said this about that verse. Jesus here is turning everything around. Yes, of course, Jesus loved his mother and his brothers, but those are only temporary relationships. His focus was on those whom he called out for himself. He was calling out a new family where single people in Christ, or people who are not really in biological families, are full-fledged family members on par with all the others, bearing fruit for God and becoming mothers and fathers of the eternal kind. His mother and his brothers, he said, are those who obey his word. That's his real family. That's his ultimate family.

That's the eternal family. Luke chapter 11. Jesus is speaking to a group and a woman yells back at him from the audience. Evidently, in those days, it's a little bit like it is today in some cultures that when the preacher's preaching, somebody wants to say something back. I like that.

I think it's great. But here's what the woman yells back. Luke 11, 27, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breast at which you nursed, which has to be one of the weirdest things ever said back from somebody in the audience. I'm all about you saying, amen, get on it, preacher, or something like that, but do not say, blessed are the breast at which you nursed. By the way, I still remember this verse from the King James Version from when I was a kid. Blessed is the womb that bore thee and the paps which gave thee suck. I am still traumatized by hearing that as an eight-year-old.

I'm not going to lie to you. Whenever somebody is like, hey, the King James Version is the only version you should read, I'm just like, Luke 11, 27, you explain that to me and then we'll talk, all right? Jesus turned and he said to this woman, blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.

Wow. Those who obey the Word of God are more blessed than the mother of God to Jesus. This is Summit Life with Pastor Jiddy Greer. We'll get right back to today's teaching in just a moment, but first let me tell you about our latest resource created exclusively for our Summit Life listeners. It's a 15-day devotional for all of us who live distracted lives, and it covers the topics of relationships, faith, rest, and even parenting. You know, daily devotions offer a chance to dig deeper into scripture and can help you get in the habit of regular Bible reading. Maybe this resource is a group study, something that you can share with those closest to you.

In fact, the conversation cards that come with it are perfect for a group study setting. Well, whatever that looks like for you, we would like to encourage you to reserve your copy today by calling 866-335-5220 or visit us online at jdgreer.com. Thanks for being with us today. Now let's get back to the final moments of today's message. Here's Pastor Jiddy.

Mark 10. Jesus said, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold. Stop. Oh, what he means there obviously is in heaven one day it's going to be so much better because you followed him. Is that what he means? That it's all metaphorical? It's all about heaven?

No. You will not receive a hundredfold now at this time. Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life. He is saying, you catch this? That you're going to get it now.

How are you going to get that? That's the church. The only way that verse is true is got to be the church. What do you say? Listen, this is radical.

It is revolutionary. We must renounce the primacy of our natural relationships and follow Jesus into the fellowship of the people of God, whether we are single or married. John Piper says, take a deep breath and reorder your entire world.

Marriage is temporary and it will finally give way to the relationship to which it was pointing all along Christ and the church. The way that a picture is no longer needed when you finally see face to face. A picture is what you use when somebody's not in your presence. You look at them because you miss them.

But when they're in your presence, you don't pull out the picture and look at it, you look at them. He said that marriage was given to us as a sign of something better, something more ultimate, something eternal. And it will finally give way and will put away the picture and will experience the thing that the picture represented. Marriage only gives you a sign and a foretaste of the future kingdom of God. Now I do not want to dismiss the importance of the sign. It's one of the very best of all God's gifts to us and it is an indispensable part of the created order.

But listen, this is so crucial. Listen, life goes wrong when you make the symbol ultimate. Life goes desperately wrong when you take one of God's good gifts and you let it begin to replace God. Where the thing that is the symbol replaces in your heart the thing that it symbolizes.

Write this down underneath this point. Marriage gone wrong when your happiness, for example, and your self-worth are dependent on being loved romantically. When you think that marriage or good romance is the one indispensable key to being happy and so you feel like you couldn't live without marriage. You feel like there's no way I could be happy. I could have a fulfilled life if I'm not in good romance and I'm not in a good marriage. This is the most widely accepted myth in our culture.

This is the most widely worshiped false God. We think that romantic love completes us. And yes, I realize a bunch of you just thought of that heart-touching scene in Jerry Maguire or maybe vomit-inducing scene depending on your personality where Tom Cruise looks at Renee Zellweger and says, you complete me.

Right? And that's what we think. I am incomplete until you love me and I'm everything I am because you love me. Cue Celine Dion. You can hear it in our songs. When I think of illustrations of this, I go back to my high school days. I am a child of the 80s and everybody knows that music was at its pinnacle in the 1980s.

I'm sorry I don't know more relevant music today, but that's just what I think about. You know our love was meant to be the kind of love that lasts forever. And I want you to hear with me from tonight until the end of time. You should know everywhere I go. You're always on my mind, in my heart, in my soul.

What is it now? You're the meaning in my life. You're the inspiration. You bring feeling to my life.

You're the inspiration. I want to have you near me. I want to have you hear me say it.

No one needs you more than I need you. Right? I know you college students totally checked out there, but that's one of those songs that spans the ages. We all know that song. Right?

Now, I could quote from one that's more recent than that, but they all say the same thing, don't they? Right? You're the meaning in my life. I'm nothing without you. You're the meaning in my life. I'm nothing without you. And everything in my life, my life begins when I met you, and my life found its fullness when I met you.

You're everything to me. I was reading an interview recently with Matt Dillon, the actor, and he said, people in Hollywood are relationship junkies. And I thought, that's really good.

It was really good. You get a high off a relationship, like a drug that lasts, by the way, they say for about 18 months, because that's how long psychologists say infatuation lasts. You get a high for about 18 months, and then you go off of it, and then you get another hit from another one. In fact, I think Kesha has a song that literally says that, because you love, you love, you love is my drug. Am I making that up?

Have I not heard that at the mall? Because you love, you love, you love is my, isn't that right? Yes, it is a drug.

It's like all drugs. It doesn't work, because you weren't created to be completed by the love of another human being. You were created to be completed by the love of Christ.

And when the thing that symbolizes the ultimate thing, replaces the ultimate thing, it's when a good thing becomes a God thing and turns into a bad thing. That's why I tell you, the way I've said it to you before is like this, lonely, insecure, unhappy, single people become lonely, insecure, unhappy, married people. The drug of a new relationship fixes it for a short time, but then it wears off and just leaves you craving more. Problems like loneliness and insecurity and unhappiness are not cured by another human's companionship.

They are cured by the love of Christ. And so Gary Thomas says it like this, marriage does not solve emptiness, it exposes it. If somebody can't live without you, he or she will never be happy living with you either. You were not designed to meet the deep soul needs of another human being. You were supposed to reflect it. You were supposed to be a ray of the sunshine, but you were not the sun. And when a good thing becomes a God thing, it destroys you.

That's how an idol works. You ever drive through West Virginia and you see these old bridges that will have a little sign on them that's like no more than two tons. And what it means is you can drive your car across this, but don't drive your Mack truck.

If you drive your Mack truck, you're not going to hold it. I've told couples that I have in the past done their marital counseling or done their wedding back when I used to do a lot of those. I would tell them, if you would let me, this is what I will do on your wedding day.

I've never had one take me up on this. I will take a Sharpie and I'm going to write on your forehead a little sign like one of the ones on those bridges. And what it will say is, warning will not support the weight of your soul. So that as your spouse goes into this wedding ceremony, they will realize that while you can be an incredible blessing to them, the deepest needs of your soul are never going to be met by another human being. Those things are only going to be met by God. And if you try to put the weight of your soul on that person, you will destroy them because they were never designed to do it. They were never designed to do it.

They were not designed to be the ultimate thing. Christ and the church are the ultimate thing. Life goes wrong when something God intended to point you to Him starts to compete with Him in your heart.

So Gary Thomas's counsel, and this is good, you take this to the bank. You got to marry somebody with a solid core, somebody who does not depend on you for those ultimate things, somebody who is happy and fulfilled in Jesus. Because if they're not happy and fulfilled in Jesus, and if they're thinking that you're the meaning in their life, and you're the inspiration, you're never going to be able to sustain that, and they're going to drain you dry. Here's a second way this marriage goes wrong under this one. When you make marriage the measure of a significant life, when you make marriage the measure of a significant life, we have this assumption that the man or woman who does not leave or have a permanent family has left no real lasting mark in the world.

They're incomplete. They die alone and insignificant. Now you guys know me. I am into family.

I have a big one. But according to Scripture, ultimate family is not biological. According to Scripture, ultimate family is ecclesiological, which means the church.

It's not produced. Ultimate family is not produced by procreation. Ultimate family is produced by spirit regeneration. Disciples of Jesus are the offspring they endure forever. Thus, a life that does not produce biological offspring is not a failed life. A life that does not make disciples of Jesus is a failed life. You want to know who's sterile in God's book?

It's not the people that don't leave kids behind. It's the people that don't produce disciples of Jesus because that's the real family. That's the eternal family. Now, of course, it's great when your natural family are also part of the permanent eternal family. My wife is my first pastoral responsibility. I get that.

My kids are my first mission field. But my biological family is just temporary. The church is eternal. So you would never say to somebody in an ultimate sense, you complete me. No, Christ and the church complete you.

A gift of God, no matter how good, should never replace in your heart the thing that symbolizes. So here's my question for you, just to be honest. Could you be single your whole life and not feel devastated? Could you go through life without a happy marriage and still feel happy and fulfilled? Because if the answer is no, then marriage has probably become an idol to you. I don't mean do you want to be married, because that's a God-given desire. I'll show you that in a minute.

But I mean is it so significant to you that you don't see how life would be worth living without it? Where you say, I don't see how life could be happy or fulfilled if I didn't have good and satisfying romance. So let's leave there, and let's go to 1 Corinthians 7, where Paul, go back three books. If you've got your Bible, flip over three books to the left, or three or four books, and you'll find the book of 1 Corinthians. Paul wrote both Ephesians and 1 Corinthians. So he is going to take the concept that he's got here in Ephesians 5, and he's going to apply it in 1 Corinthians 7 to a church that's made up of a lot of single people. You see the city of Corinth that he's writing to, the Corinthians. Corinth was one of the fastest growing cities in the ancient world. Had a lot of single people moving into it to try to start.

It was a great place to get a new job. 1 Corinthians 7. Paul says, regarding marriage, I wish that all were as I myself am. Now, merrily speaking, what was Paul? Do you know this? He was single. That's right. But each of us has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. Here's number two.

Write this down. Singleness is not an inferior state to marriage. Maybe you waited to the very end for that word from the Lord. Be encouraged, and be sure to join us next time for the conclusion of this message here on Summit Life. Well, as Pastor JD showed us today, relationships aren't actually about us and our happiness. In the end, they're about advancing the gospel. You know, it's not enough to simply go through the motions of Christianity. Most people in church know how to act the part, but there's no real life in their faith. Our newest resource is focused on helping you and your closest community dialogue about your faith.

For whatever reason, talking about our faith with our family or closest friends can be awkward at times. So in addition to the book of 15 devotionals, we'll also include a set of conversation cards. These are simple cards to keep at the dinner table or around the kitchen island that have a question or a prompt on them to kickstart dialogue around important topics. We'll send you both resources as our way of saying thanks for your financial gift of $35 or more to support this ministry. Your gift to Summit Life opens the door for listeners all across the country and around the world, helping them dive deeper into the gospel message through this program and all of our free online resources. Join this mission today when you give by calling 866-335-5220 or go online to give and request your copies of the pair of resources at jdgrier.com. We will see you here again next time on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.