This Light and Momentary Marriage, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer reframes how we think about marriage and singleness. Hey, welcome back for another week of teaching here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer of the Summit Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. Doesn't it seem like our culture acts like romantic love is the pinnacle of human existence? From our earliest days, we read about that happily ever after that comes when you meet your soulmate.

But is that really how it works? Today, Pastor J.D. gives us a balanced biblical view of marriage as he continues our new series on relationships called First Love. If you missed the beginning of this sermon, I just wanted to remind you that you can always hear previous broadcasts at our website, jdgreer.com. He titled today's message, This Light and Momentary Marriage, and we're in Ephesians Chapter five.

So let's get started. 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. 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 a higher reality. 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. 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, it's going to make sense.

All right, so write this down. Number one, 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. 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.

Write this down underneath this point. Marriage gone wrong, when your happiness, for example, and your self-worth are dependent on being loved romantically. This is the most widely worshiped false God. We think that romantic love completes us. Here's a second way that 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. 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 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? 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. Singleness is not an inferior state to marriage. Christianity's founder, Jesus, and its lead theologian, St. Paul, were both single their entire lives. And if you are somebody who thinks that in order to have a fulfilled, happy life, you've got to be married, then you are accusing Jesus, who is the most fully alive human person to ever live, that he never was fulfilled, and that's not true. Every time you pray, you pray to a 33-year-old single adult, humanly speaking.

But this is what people believe, especially in the church. Single people get a raw deal sometimes, don't they? Married people are always trying to fix them up as if there were something wrong with them, right?

And we can admit that. My best friend Bruce, who got married relatively later in his life, says he got so sick, he would go back to his home church and to a wedding. He says all these little ladies would come up to him and be like, don't worry, Bruce, you're next, you're next. He said, I got so sick of it, I finally started to go to the funerals, and I'd go to those same ladies and be like, don't worry, you're next, you're next.

He said, that's the only way I could get them shut up. It's just the assumption that something's wrong and we've got to fix this. But Paul says there are some real privileges to being single. I'm going to talk about some of them in a minute, but let me just acknowledge again, just so we're all on the same page, that sometimes in the church we talk as if marriage were a superior state, and if you're single, it's because you're not ready for marriage yet. That's not true.

You want to know how I know it's not true? Some of the most messed up, immature, dysfunctional people I know are married. And if marriage were conditional on becoming the right kind of person, then God definitely got the wrong blessing address when he was sending it out. But we think that, so we say super spiritual, but ridiculous things like this. You've heard this before in the church. As soon as you're satisfied in God alone, he'll bring someone special into your life. As if we earn God's blessings by achieving some spiritual Jedi state, and then when you get there, then God sends a marriage into your life.

No. Or how about this one? The reason you're single is because you're too picky. As though God is frustrated by our narrow parameters, and God needs us to broaden them so that he can bless us.

Or how about this one? Before you can marry somebody wonderful, you must become someone wonderful. As though God grants marriage as a second blessing to the satisfactorily sanctified. Tim Keller, who talks about a number of these phrases, says, listen, under all these statements is the premise that a single life is a second class life. A state of deprivation for people not yet fully formed for marriage. But that's not true. Because marriage is not ultimate. Marriage is temporary. It is a symbol. It is something God gives to some. But it's not the point. Look where Paul talks about this again, verse 29.

This is great. The appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none.

What? What does that verse mean? That's like a favorite verse of people going off to Vegas, right? Like, oh, it's right here in the Bible, let's live like we have no wives.

No, that would contradict everything else the Apostle Paul has said. He helps you see it, verse 30. He goes on. You see, for the present form of this world is passing away. The world is passing away. And along with the world is passing away. Marriage is passing away. Biological families are passing away. They're not ultimate, and they're not permanent.

So watch. He's saying to people who are married, you ought to reflect on the fact that this marriage that you're in, that your biological family you're in, it's just temporary. It's light, and it's momentary, and it's not eternal. It's not eternally significant. Oh, and you single people, you ought to reflect on the fact that that state that you're in right now, that's not permanent or eternal either.

That's just a temporary life thing. That what's ultimate and what's eternal is Christ in the church, not marriage and biological family. Christ and the church are what's permanent and ultimate.

So that leads me to number three. Both marriage and singleness are temporary gifts that God uses for the fulfillment of his purposes. Both marriage and singleness are temporary gifts that God uses for the fulfillment of his purposes.

Look again at verse seven. Each of us has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. Notice that both marriage and singleness in this verse are called gifts. The word he uses for gift, by the way, is the word in Greek, charismatic, where we get the word charismatic, which means literally spiritual gift. Or actually, very literally, it means spiritual empowerment. It is a spiritual empowerment that God gives you at a specific time in your life for the accomplishment of his purposes in or through you, like any other spiritual gift. Like the gift of preaching, the gift of wisdom, the gift of hospitality, the gift of prophecy, whatever you want to do. It's a spiritual gift that God gives you for the fulfillment of his purposes. It might be temporary. It might be a special empowerment for a specific time in your life. For others of you, it might be a calling that lasts the duration of your life.

But listen, you may not see this yet. Listen, singleness is a gift. Maybe God has a special assignment for you that you can only accomplish if you're single. Or maybe you got something you need to complete, like your education or a military assignment, and you can't do it when you're married. Or maybe there are some character things that God could teach you better if you were single than if you were married. Or maybe you're supposed to demonstrate to your unsaved friends that happiness and contentment aren't found in romance.

They're found in God, and you wouldn't be able to do that as effectively if you were married as you can when you're single. Maybe that's why God has given you a temporary time in your life as a spiritual gift, a charisma, because he is empowering you to do something in his kingdom. Singleness is a gift. It may be a gift for a temporary time in your life. It may be something that lasts the duration of your life, but it is a gift.

Marriage is also a gift that God gives to some. We'll return to our teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to tell you about our featured resource this month. We want to help you connect easily and quickly with those you love without adding something else to your plate.

We have a set of conversation cards, which are simply cards with one question or prompt on them to pull out while you're eating dinner or on a long car ride. They're meant to help you and those you're closest with talk about relationships and faith and even rest. Also included is a book of 15 devotionals about those same topics. It comes with your gift to the ministry right now, so give us a call at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgrier.com.

Now let's get back to the conclusion of today's teaching. Here's Pastor JD. You know, I used to read Paul's words in 1st Corinthians 7-7, where he was like, hey, I wish everybody was like me. When I was in college, I would always feel guilty asking for a wife. Well, clearly, Paul thinks that it's better for the kingdom if you're single. So, you know, being single is like varsity and being married is JV.

So if I really want to make a big impact for the kingdom, I should probably quit asking for a wife. But that's not what Paul is saying at all. Look again at verse 7. Each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. The gift is from God.

It's not yours to decide. It's God's to give. It was God's idea. It was God who looked at man and said it's not good that man should be alone. That wasn't man's idea.

Hey, I need a companion. That was God's idea. You know, why? Why is it not good for a man to be alone? Because men do things like they wear black pants or white socks.

They don't understand the need for furniture. A guy, most single guys are DreamPad. And this is why I was single.

Your DreamPad includes a waterbed, a black couch, a TV with PS3 and surround sound. And that's it. That's the ultimate path. When you move as a single guy, it takes you one buddy, a Ford Mustang, bungee cords and 15 minutes. And so God made the woman come along and fix all that. I mean, I'm speaking very, just be charitable. I'm not trying to stereotype. On a more serious note, marriage is a gift that teaches you about the love of God.

It's a ray of the sun. It's how God chooses to meet some of your desires for companionship, affection, affirmation and security. As I'll explain to you later in this series, marriage has taught me more about the gospel than anything else in my life. I learned more about the gospel through marriage than I ever did in seminary. Seminary taught me the doctrines of the gospel and I'm very grateful for that. But it was my marriage that exposed to me my need for grace. It taught me how to show grace. I became much more intimate and in touch with the gospel in the context of my marriage than I ever did in seminary. And of course, it's the arena that God has created for the enjoyment of sexual intimacy.

And it's the arena God created for the propagation of the human race. Sexual desire, as strong as it is, was not your idea. It wasn't an out of control desire. God created you with the strength of that desire.

If you read verse two in chapter seven, at first it looks a little crude, but you've got to get the context. Because of the temptation of sexual immorality, each man should have his own life and each woman her own husband. God created sex and he created marriage as a gift for those of you that can't control that urge. He created marriage as a gift for you to be able to enjoy that.

Which leads me to number four. Both singleness and marriage have their advantages and their drawbacks. Marriage is wonderful, it really is, but it has its drawbacks.

Paul acknowledges this. Verse 33, the married man is anxious about worldly things. How to please his wife and his interests are divided. Single guys, you realize everything changes when you get married.

You realize that, right? Your house changes. As I mentioned before, but when I was single, I could move everything I owned in the trunk of a car.

It would take a Ford F-150 now just to move the pillows that are on top of my bed. That's how my house changes. Your bathtub gets filled with all these products when you get married that you've never heard of. Various kinds of soaps for different parts of the body, scented products, weird looking rock thingies that have holes in it.

I don't even know what that's for. I just know it's like a jungle gym getting into my bathtub, my shower now. My bathroom, when I was single, used to have one bar of soap.

One. I washed everything with it. My hair, my body, my face, the floors if they were dirty.

It was just one thing. Your dress changes when you get married. When I first started the date, by the way, I found out that when I first started the date, my wife, Veronica, and her friends would make fun of me as I would show up in what I was dressed in. After we dated for a few months, we would go to the mall together. We would take out my credit card, and she would advise me on what to buy. We dated a few more months, and then she would go to the mall with my credit card, come home with stuff, and ask me if I liked it. Now that we've been married, stuff just shows up in my closet, and it's just like, this is what you're wearing.

She has told her girlfriends that if they ever see me at the mall by myself, it is a code red to text her immediately because I might be buying clothes for myself, and that is not allowed in our house. So your dress changes. Your schedule changes radically when you're single. You're out running out all the time. You're going to see movies, and you're hiking, and playing golf, and going on road trips.

That changes when you get married. People ask me, I hate this all the time, like, oh, J.D., what are your hobbies? I'm like, what did my hobbies used to be? They used to be rock climbing and skiing.

Now I spend most of my time in the kiddie section of the pool. I don't go rock climbing. I don't play a lot of golf. I don't see movies a lot.

I don't go skiing. Some of you guys are like, well, I'm married, and I still do all that stuff. That's because you're a bad husband, okay?

Somebody had to say it, and I would be that guy. By the way, this is not because Veronica nags me all the time. It's just that my interests are divided. That's what it's said they have to be. I don't go on as many mission trips as I used to when I was single.

I still go on a few, but I don't go on nearly as many as I did when I was single. Why? Because my first mission field, my unreached people group I'm first called to, live in my house, and they're under the age of 10. My interests are divided. Now, don't overread this. I do some of those things.

They just scaled back radically during this chapter. People are like, what are your hobbies? I'm like, oh, yeah, Karis, Ali, Raya, and those are the names of my hobbies. Do you have any pets? Yep.

Karis, Ali, Raya, and I don't need any more mouths to feed in my house. What you do with your money changes. I mean, I used to think, just add a little bit. You just add how much the kids eat. It can't be that much. You just add a wife.

Did you already live in the house? No. Oh, no.

It radically changes. Guys, let me just clear this up too. In case you're one of those guys, you're like, I'm just going to get married so I can have sex.

Let me warn you. It's a lot more expensive than you think. I took the amount that my family adds to my monthly budget, and I divided it by the number of times the average couple has sex. And I figured out, conservatively speaking, each encounter is costing me close to $600. So, dudes, I'm telling you, that is not reason to get married.

Weigh it carefully. Of course, my wife says, Veronica says to me, she's like, you think it's expensive being married to me? Just try to leave me, and you'll see how expensive it will become. So a guy says to me, I want to get married. And my response is, do you really?

Are you ready for your life to change that much? And to the women, he says the exact same thing, verse 34, the unmarried or the persevered woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things. By the way, worldly there doesn't mean sinful. It just means things of the world.

Worldly things, how to please her husband. So you say you want to marry a man? I'm like, really? Do you know what men smell like on a regular basis? You know that he probably not going to have the same appetite you do.

Somehow couples make it out of the dating phase and never realize it. My wife and I did that. And I'm like, I just found that into things you eat with chopsticks. I can't get enough food in my mouth with a couple of oversized toothpicks. It's got to have red meat with it.

And if I could get away with it, I'd have cows in my front yard so we could have meat with every meal. It's just different. It just changes everything. If you get married and have kids, it's going to affect your career, whether you're the husband or wife.

For many of you, it may stymie your career altogether. One of my mentors, he's in the 60s, wrote like 20 some books. I asked him one time, I was like, what's the favorite book you've written? Of all the books, he was my favorite book. It was the one I didn't write when my kids were under the age of five.

That's the favorite book that I've written. It changes things. The freedom of a single person to pursue certain things, both recreational and career-wise is astounding. Now, listen, I don't want to take away from being married. Marriage is my gift. I would not be half the man that I am or the minister that I am if I wasn't a husband and a father.

The things that God has done in my life through these roles are wonderful. But my interests are, by God's design, divided. There are advantages to being single. There are drawbacks to being single. There's advantages to being married. There's drawbacks to being married, which leads me to number five. The answer to should I get married?

I'm going to give you two parts to this. The answer to get married is A, do I have the gift? That's the answer. You're like, how do I know if I have the gift or not?

Good question. Verse nine, for it's better to marry than to be aflame with passion. In other words, if you're not good at virginity, then you should work toward getting married. Are you aflame with passion? You know what aflame with passion means? It means when you look at a girl, guys, you're like, man, she is hot. That's aflame with passion.

It's what a girl feels when she sexually desires a guy. And if he's like, you can't control that, then you ought to ask God for the gift of a spouse so you can have an easier time being holy. Paul, who had the gift of singleness, describes himself like this. Verse 37, look at this. Whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity, having his desire under control, he will do well.

Right? Underline those three phrases, firmly established in his heart, under no necessity, having his desire under control. If those things describe you right now, then you probably have the gift of singleness, at least for the time being, and you ought to take advantage of it. Now, if those phrases don't describe you at all, then you should ask God for a spouse. Reframing how we think about marriage and singleness, this is Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. If you'd like to listen again or share this message with a friend, you can find it free of charge at jdgreer.com. Well, here at Summit Life, our mission is to help you dive deeper into the gospel message every day. In a world that's full of distractions, J.D., our newest resource sets out to meet families today right where they're at, doesn't it?

Yeah, exactly, Molly. We are all so distracted by the news, by the latest app on our phone, by whatever reminders are coming through, by our families going a hundred different directions and various activities. What we want to do is we want to help you connect easily and quickly without adding something else to your plate. We created a set of conversation cards. They're just cards with one question or one prompt on them that will just take the dialogue in some directions that it may not otherwise go. To help you and those you're closest with, talk about faith and rest and what it means to trust God and what it means to love and serve each other. It comes along with a book of 15 devotions that I wrote around those same topics.

It's even got a few parenting devotions thrown in because I know when we talk about rest, a lot of you parents think, is that even a real thing? I'd love to give you a copy of those things. If you will, we'll go to jdgrier.com. We can start that conversation, that relationship with you, and give you this resource and access to a lot of other things as well. Be sure to ask for the devotions for the distracted family, 15 days on relationships, faith and rest, along with the conversation cards when you contact us today. Call 866-335-5220.

Or if it's easier, you can give and request the pair online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Bidevich, so glad that you joined us today. Be sure to tune in Tuesday as we continue our new study of relationships called First Love on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.