God's Laboratories

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Experiencing the beauty and the love of marriage, what I am getting is a taste of the beauty and love of God. That's why God gave it to me, because He wanted me to be able to taste and to feel and to sense His love in a very tangible way. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. So if you were to ask most couples why they got married, they'd probably say something about being in love and making each other happy. Or if they're really open, they might even say something about physical attraction being the key.

And of course, there's nothing wrong with any of those things on their own. But today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer reveals that God actually has a much bigger purpose for our marriages, even more than our own happiness.

So here's Pastor J.D. with a message from Ephesians 5, he titled God's Laboratories. We are nearing the end of this study of Ephesians. And what we saw, how the world that we live in is toxic to the development of Christian virtue. And what we saw is that if we are going to make it spiritually, then we're going to have to fight tooth and nail. We're going to have to swim upstream, which means that we have to strive to learn and understand God's ways. We've got to strive to bring our hearts in line with his purposes.

And then we've got to take active control of our schedules so that we give priority to the things that matter the most. None of these things happen naturally. It certainly doesn't for me. And evidently, it didn't happen naturally for Paul, for the people that Paul was writing to.

And some of you have been wondering, what's wrong with me? None of this happens naturally. It doesn't happen naturally for any of us. That's why Paul says it's a fight. It's a war. And if you are not actively fighting this battle, you are losing this battle.

So you've got to actively fight it. Well, at the end of Ephesians 5, Paul is going to give you another very important principle for spiritual growth. And I actually think it's quite fascinating, one of the most fascinating in all the Bible to me.

It is something that could change your life because it is something that God has put into your life 24-7 to teach you about himself. It's all around you, everywhere. And most of us have no concept that it's even there or the reason that he put it there.

All right? And that is, what is that thing that he is going to use to teach us about God? That is our relationships. Paul takes three very common relationships, relationships that most of you will have be involved in two, if not all three of these.

He takes marriage, he takes the nuclear family, and then he takes work. And he explains that these relationships are like laboratories that God has set up to make you like himself. Laboratories.

We've got a lot of medical people that go here to our church and got a lot of pharmacists or what we refer to around here as legalized drug dealers. And they use laboratories to work on products until you get them right. That's what a lab is for. I call the first sermon that I preach here on Saturday night my lab sermon because what I'm doing is I'm preaching it in a way that's testing out different things to see if they work. And so people on Saturday night know that when I'm in the middle of the sermon they will see me pull out my pen and I will mark something out and be like, I am not saying that tomorrow because that totally flopped. But the whole idea is I'm working on it to create it into the masterpiece that you get to hear on Sunday morning.

Right? Well we, the relationships that you and I are in are laboratories. God's laboratories that he uses to make us into the masterpiece that Ephesians 1 says that he has intended for us. So let me first review a couple of very important truths that we've already learned from Ephesians which undergird what I'm going to tell you today.

These are so important that if you don't remember these or get these you're going to not really understand how I'm going to walk us through these relationships. Here's important principle number one. God's main purpose for us we learned in Ephesians 1 is Christ's likeness. God's main purpose is Christ's likeness. Ephesians 1 12 says that his primary purpose in salvation was to make us into people that would bring him glory. And we would do that by becoming like him in every way.

We would imitate him, we would resemble him, we would in every way be his sons and his daughters loving what he loves, reacting like he reacts, looking like him. That is a process that theologians call sanctification. Now I know sanctification is a big scary religious sounding word but all it really means is making like God.

The process of sanctification is making you like God. Second, we learned that God is sovereign which means that nothing is outside of his control and he uses all things in our lives for that purpose, for that purpose. Ephesians 1 11 says quote, God works all things according to the according to the counsel of his will. To accomplish verse 11 says his purpose in our lives and what was that purpose? Christ's likeness.

What was that purpose? His likeness. So God is using all things in your lives for one purpose. Nothing is outside of his control. He's using all things for one purpose and that purpose is Christ's likeness. Now in chapters 5 and 6 he applies those two truths that he's in control of everything and his purpose is Christ's likeness. He applies those to our relationships and shows us something fascinating and that is that in the most basic of human relationships God is sovereignly at work like a scientist in a laboratory making us like himself. Here's the thesis, God uses our relationships to teach us about himself and to make us like himself. If you don't understand his purpose or you don't understand the breadth of his control you're not going to get that.

So I went over those two truths. When you understand that here's what he's going to show you. God uses our relationships to teach us about himself and to make us like himself. He's going to go through three examples and we're going to spend most of our time on the first one. More important than the actual examples that I'm going to give you is the principle behind these examples and that principle again is that God is using our relationships to teach us about himself and to make us like himself.

Enough intro, let's get into the first one. Mowage, mowage, all right. 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. Verse 25, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her in the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies because he who loves his wife is really loving himself for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes it and cherishes it just as Christ does the church because we are members of his body. Therefore, verse 31, a man shall leave his father and mother this is a quote from Genesis 2 verse 25 leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound Paul says because I am saying that this actually refers to Christ and the church. In other words God gave marriage to teach us about his love for us y'all it's not even that God looked at marriage after he had made it and thought man that's a great example of how you know I love people so let me like use this as an analogy to help them under that's not how it went down God actually gave us something for the sole intention of let me use this to teach them about my love for them God made it God designed it marriage to teach us about himself now you say how at least three ways how is it that marriage teaches us about God three ways I'm going to give you let's start with the most fun and then we'll work our ways to the most painful okay number one number one in the delights of marriage we get a taste of the beauty of God verse 32 tells us that C.S. Lewis said about 50 years ago and an analogy I use here quite a bit he said that marriage to him was like a ray of sunshine that shined upon his face that when the ray hits your face you don't just focus on the ray you look back up along the ray to the source he said that's the way marriage is to me it is a ray of the sunshine of God's love all he was doing was really summarizing what Jonathan Edwards had said 400 years ago when Jonathan Edwards says that marriage is the ray God's love is the sun marriage is the symbol God's love is the reality marriage is the stream God's love is the ocean and in experiencing the beauty and the love of marriage what I am getting is a taste of the beauty and love of God it's like I gave it to me because he wanted me to be able to taste and to feel and to sense his love in a very tangible way it is the love of God that is pictured in marriage that makes marriage so beautiful it's why so many people cry in weddings this is why you may not know it even in fact a lot of people don't realize this because a lot of people have no interest in God at all but marriages are beautiful to them because whether they realize it or not what they're experiencing in that moment is a little picture of God's love God's type of love and that's what makes it beautiful marriage pictures a love that every human being was created for it is a love where two human beings become one literally sexually there is a a fusion of bodies it is a love that is exclusive because because she is completely mine and I am completely hers it is a love that is unconditional every human being as I've explained to you before every human being has the desire to be known and loved right we want to be known and loved you can't have one without the other and and have real love because if you're known but not loved that's rejection right somebody really knows you and doesn't love you they've rejected you but if somebody loves you and doesn't really know you that's just superficiality and so we have a desire as human beings to be known and loved but that leaves us with a dilemma doesn't it because when people actually know us they don't want to love us because we human beings have what we call the porcupines dilemma right you know porcupines need love too porcupines want to be close they want to snuggle they want a spoon like a 25 000 poisonous quills and so what does a porcupine do when it's time to get up close to another porcupine it's like I can't get you close without lacerating you human beings have that same issue marriage is a picture of being known and loved because I know you I know your flaws I know your weaknesses and I love you and it is beautiful that is shadowed in marriage but the reality that it points to is beyond itself to the love of God and I know we got people here that you're like I'm not really interested in God but yeah there's something about marriage that moves you that's why it is whispering in your heart and calling out to you for a love that you were created for you're listening to Summit Life with JD Greer if you're new to this ministry head over to jdgreer.com to see all of the free resources available to you we hope that we can become a trusted source of spiritual encouragement to you through these valuable tools and this daily teaching now before we continue with the rest of today's program I wanted to share with you another way to stay connected with Pastor JD and hopefully deepen your understanding of God's word have you checked out the Ask the Pastor podcast yet it's a great resource where Pastor JD answers your questions on all sorts of topics from theology to Christian life and relationships and right now we're in a summer series recapping some of our most listened to episodes so it's a great time to jump in you can access it online at jdgreer.com slash podcasts or download it from your favorite podcast app or watch us on YouTube by searching for j.d.greer stay informed on all of the hot topics and grow in your faith by tuning into the Ask the Pastor podcast today and now let's get back to our teaching once again here's Pastor JD you should let marriage teach you about God's love but you cannot let marriage replace God's love in your life you cannot look to someone else to do what only God can do when you look to someone in the place of God they will disappoint you the way I explain this a lot in premarital counseling as I say here you got a guy who is floating in a sea of loneliness and insecurity and despair he's just drowning in his own you know kind of insecurities and along by hallelujah Jehovah Jireh along by flows a five-foot-two blonde-headed life preserver oh salvation from my insecurity and he grabs a hold of her and he sucks the life out of her because she was not designed to rescue him from that ocean I can say this as a happily married man who married way over his head nobody really argues about that that lonely insecure obsessive single people become lonely insecure obsessive married people because problems like loneliness insecurity and all those things are never cured by another human being they're cured by God if you cannot be happy as a single person you will not be happy as a married person so you might as well give it up all right you do not need a relationship with a perfect man you need a relationship with a gracious God that's what you're looking for here is number two number two in the roles of marriage we get a picture of the image of God and the roles of marriage we get we get roles in marriage we get a picture of the image of God now warning this is deep and highly controversial okay fools rush in here we go what we learn from Genesis is that man and woman are both created in the image of God but differently and this is what Paul is reminding them of in this passage that they are different on purpose to reveal different aspects of the image of God when God looked at man in the garden of Eden and he said man is alone that is not good he didn't fix that problem by creating somebody exactly like the man because that would have been not good not good okay twice not good so what he did is he created something that complemented the man that completed what was left out each of the man and woman is created differently to reveal a complementary aspect of the image of God and when the two come together in marriage you get a fuller picture of the image of God than you do when one is alone verse 23 look at that says the husband plays the role of the head of the wife like Christ is the head of the church and is himself its savior which means he is to lead her like God leads his people and in leading her she gets to experience what God's leadership is like like a ray of the sun she gets to experience something of God in his leadership and you the man get to experience what it's like to love and to lead like God when you study Genesis you find that there are at least four ways that man was clearly designated to be the leader in that relationship all right go back to you don't have to go but turn back to Genesis 2 let me just walk you back through it Genesis 2 the first thing you see is that he was to be a leader in provision that before woman was ever created man has a job in the garden he's working and she is brought into that relationship where he is working and and producing fruit from the gardens in other words he has a job girls are you hearing this he can't hold down a job he's a bad student stay away from him you don't want to be living with him in his mama's basement sleeping on star trek sheets when you're 40 i always think sometimes when i say things different people will get up walk out you know and i always wonder like does this mean they're mad at what i said i don't think anybody would walk out during that moment right there just feel like oh i'm mad about that but i'm gonna wait for a minute um number two he leads spiritually he leads spiritually when the woman is created the man already has a relationship to God and she is brought into it you ever notice that the commands given about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had already been given to man and evidently the man was supposed to tell her what those commands were and to lead her in obeying them the man is to lead the woman spiritually paul reminds them of that here verse 26 he says to the husband it's your role husband to help your wife live faultless before God i have to lead my family in a way that doesn't lead my wife to materialism or self-sufficiency or pride or apathy or gossip God holds me responsible for that yo when i first got married i thought i was supposed to have no secrets in my marriage and that's true but i thought that what that meant was i was just supposed to tell my wife everything i thought about everybody i mean hey you know we're married this is the one place where the no gossiping rule doesn't apply and just being honest about my feelings but here's the problem right that didn't change the fact that i was revealing a genuine lack of love for other people and a genuine pride which is never okay and even worse i was leading and causing my wife to think bad thoughts about others as i gossiped about them to her i have to answer to God for that i have to help protect her heart and shepherd her heart it's like tony evans the african-american preacher says spiritual headship is God telling the woman to duck so he can punch the man God holds me responsible for the spiritual temperature in my family number three we see that he led in romance he led in romance the first human words recorded in the bible where that of the man composing a love poem about his wife Genesis 2 26 the man says after woman is created this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh you say well that doesn't sound that romantic he's seen a naked woman for the first time ever cut him some slack okay he didn't have time to come up with several revisions of that poem but in hebrew it is clear this is poetry it is a song better yet is a love song girls he is supposed to take the lead in relationships you're like what is it wrong for a girl to ask a guy out well put it this way if he doesn't have the spine to ask you out he's probably not going to lead in romance the rest of your life fair so if a guy isn't man enough to ask my daughter out i don't expect he's going to be man enough to lead her spiritually either number four in sacrifice in sacrifice here in efeasians you see that he is the lover like christ loves the church which is not in any way a domineering let me control you and use you kind of leadership but the kind of leadership that puts her needs above his own the kind of leadership that comes not to be served but to serve like jesus the kind of leadership that is the first to forgive and the first to absorb wrongdoing and the first to respond with grace we'll come back to that but the point is in these four ways husband this is what you should hear your wife learns about god from you and you are supposed to learn to be like god as you love her and lead her we want men to lead at this church that's what we want you go back to you go back to genesis you find that the mess we got ourselves in came from man not leading spiritually i know that when you begin to lead in your homes men you will find that the whole temperature of everything changes we want you to lead spiritually so some of you need to stop being deadbeats and be the leaders that god designed you to be wife wife what is your role you are to play the role of the church how is the woman like the church y'all ready for this i need some encouragement verse 24 the wife is like the church in that she submits you're like uh-uh no he didn't yes he did okay and i checked him to make sure this podium is bulletproof she submits which means a she surrenders her ambitions to his she surrenders her ambitions to his see how verse 23 says the man is the head it says that she in the same way ceases to be the head of her own life that means she ceases to build her own kingdom and yields herself to building her husband's and her family's kingdom no this is my wife my wife she is a man she's is my wife my wife she is in many ways smarter than me she graduated about a better university she had a higher sat score but she has given up any visions of her own kingdom to live for my kingdom and to live for the kingdom of my family let me make this clear because i don't want to over speak the bible is not against women in careers but it is against those who do so at the expense of their families marriage shows us the beauty of god and the roles we have in marriage show us the image of god a new perspective from pastor jd greer today on summit life so jd we're really excited to make this latest resource the second book in our gospel flip book series available to our supporters but tell us what's so special about it yeah you know have you ever been reading a book of the bible and just wondered first of all they're saying things i don't quite understand and then i don't know how to place this in my life sometimes what you need and this is what you you know it really is what i try to do as a pastor is to to set the context what it meant then and then translate that to what it means now this gospel flip book series what it helps you do is it helps bridge the gap on some of that that knowledge so what we did is we took um the letters to the galatians the ephigians the philippians and the colossians and we just came up with a reading plan kind of just a way to think of it as an interactive study bible or think it was your own personal molly sitting there right beside your you know on your quiet time just saying this is what you should get out of this okay it's the second one of these and so if you enjoyed the one last time or you didn't get the one last time i think you'll love this when you become a supporter of our ministry it's just a way i would give you saying thank you to you plus all kinds of special you know insight inside looks that you get so just go to jdgrier.com and you can uh find out more about it to receive your copy we simply ask that you make a donation of 35 or more to support this ministry and if you missed the first gospel flip book covering matthew mark luke and john we'd love to send it to you with an additional donation to give call us at 866-335-5220 or visit our website at jdgrier.com we are grateful for every gift we receive and appreciate your support in helping us reach more people with the message of god's love thank you for partnering with us in this important work i'm molly vidovich i'm so glad you joined us today we'll see you tomorrow for the second half of today's teaching called god's laboratories that's thursday on summit life with jd greer today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries