Tommy Branagh:
Proverbs 18:22 (NIV)
He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.
Liang:
Proverbs 19:14 (NIV)
Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.
Proverbs 12:4 (NIV)
A wife of noble character is her husband’s crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones.
Tommy Branagh:
Proverbs 27:15–16 (NIV)
15 A quarrelsome wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm; 16 restraining her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand.
Liang:
Proverbs 24:3–4 (NIV)
3 By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; 4 through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Bart Garrett:
Thank you, guys. I’m glad you chuckled a little at those proverbs. And it’s given me three things to say off the cuff, which I was not really planning to say until just now. But firstly, if I haven’t met you, I’m Bart Garrett, the lead pastor here. Delighted to have you with us. I’m going to address why all of those proverbs are pointed toward the wives in a minute, because they apply to the husbands as well. So I’m just going to get that out of the way. There are quarrelsome husbands in this room, I can assure you.
Secondly, if you’re tuning in online, I want to especially welcome you. And I just wanted to say again, off the cuff, we have a couple hundred people online with us every week, which is super exciting, and it is a lifeline for some people who are unable to be here in physical presence. However, some of you kind of tune in for a few weeks to see who we are and what we do as a church, and that’s great as well. And let me just say, there’s no substitute to find your way here eventually. We would love to have you in person. You’re more than welcome.
And then thirdly, off the cuff, it’s so fitting. I’m talking about marriage today because we sang a song, “Shout to the Lord,” which was played at our wedding 27 years ago. So the total blast from the past. So that was great. Yeah, you can clap for that song or for us or whatever.
So we’re in this series entitled Undivided, and we’re looking at what it means to not have a life of distraction. And so I have a question for you this morning. How many tabs are open in your browser window right now? So if you’re like me, it’s 27, it’s 32. I end up opening another window. I open another window after that. Each one demands my attention. And this illustrates our being distracted, unfocused. Our attention gets divided.
And we’ve been saying over these couple weeks in this series that there is some compartmentalization and partitioning in life that’s necessary. Sometimes you just can’t bring your work home with you. You can’t bring your home to work with you. Yet this series is about becoming or being undivided whole persons. And we looked at that a couple weeks ago, being undivided in the heart and soul. And then Davana last week talked about being undivided in friendships and family. And today I turn our attention to relationships and marriage.
And we see this best accomplished when we see life as a gift. That’s why we do this every year, a stewardship series, not an ownership series. And so in our Judeo Christian origin story, there are these beautiful, beautiful verbs. As God is creating the world, it’s God gave, God gave, God gave. And then that turn of events in Genesis 3, that proverbial tree where our forebears said that we can do life without God, how did that start? When they took the forbidden fruit, taking life into our own hands, we had this heart posture shift. We could receive life as a gift, or we take life as a right.
And then the questions ensue: Can I trust God? Is God really good? Is God holding out on me? And at WCPC, we think not. And we’re spending two months together searching for stewardship, wisdom, if you will, not on the socials, not on the feeds, not on the outlets, but in the ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, the Book of Proverbs.
And a couple weeks ago, I made an important distinction for us between information, knowledge and wisdom. So information would be Apple Maps, Google Maps, learning where to drive. Knowledge would be knowing the way. Wisdom would be: if you have a pothole in the right lane of the exit ramp going to your home as we do, you always move over into the left lane. So wisdom is this applying knowledge to life. You could say that information fills our feed, knowledge fills our brain, but wisdom fills our life.
And so as we turn to the book of Proverbs, we’re turning not to promises, but to maxims, these little phrases that are designed to be ruminated in community. So we encourage you to be in a community group here, to be around a fire pit in the backyard, to be having conversations about how these proverbs make us wise. And as you do more and more, I think you’ll grow into someone who can be fully who you are wherever you are, to be fully present in one place, to be an undivided whole self. That’s the goal, to be aware and attuned to the purposes and the people right in front of you.
And so today this message is for you. If you’re 15 or 16 or 25 or 26 or 47 or 48 or 77 or 78, we’re going to talk about relationships and marriages. And this is distinct from last week’s friends and family, because I’m talking about the romantic type, the life partner type, not the swipe left just friends type, but the swipe right. Is there any interest here? Type.
So I have one necessary explainer, especially as we chat about relationships and marriages. And this is what I said at the top here. This is a paternalistic book written in a patriarchal culture. So it is written to a beloved son by a loving father offering wisdom to his son on relationships and marriage. And so we will necessarily this morning expand the cultural categories and we’ll apply these proverbs to sons and daughters, men and women, husbands and wives, in our guiding True North.
Proverb for our time today is the one you heard from chapter 24: By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established through knowledge. Its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures. And to build a home full of rare and beautiful treasures like wisdom takes time. It’s not a rushed construction project. And I would add, there are a lot of messes made along the way. There’s some demolition projects, there’s some renovation projects.
And let me just say to some of you this morning, it’s not too late. It’s never too late. That’s the problem with regret. It can devour our past, but we cannot let it eat our future. And some of us need to hear that this morning.
So three questions I want to ask of these selected proverbs. Here they are. Number one, what are dating relationships for? Number two, what are marriages for? And number three, what does the world’s best marriage look like?
And as we dive in, whenever I teach on marriage in a room this size, there are people who are single who desperately want to be married. There are some married people who desperately want to be single. There are widows and widowers here who are missing their life partners. There are divorces in various stages. There are grenades that have detonated in people’s lives. And I want to simply acknowledge that, that in this room there is unmet desire, there is lingering grief, there’s even trauma.
And a lot of you in this room may not need a sermon as much as you need a hug. And we do have resources and we do want to help you as a church. But in the context of a short teaching, these three questions.
Firstly, what are dating relationships for? Well, we are the loneliest people that there have ever been, says a best selling book entitled The Lonely Generation. And it’s about the Gen Z generation. But I think it’s a mirror for all of us really. Loneliness abounds. And I’m not just speaking to people who might be single. Some of the loneliest places on the planet are joyless marriages.
And if you go back to our Judeo Christian origin story, you would find 10 times the benediction as God is creating. It is good, it is good, it is good, it is good. And then you turn to Genesis 2:18 and you get the first malediction. It is not good that a man should be alone. And before we drive the marriage bus into this compact parking space of a verse, this is firstly not about marriage, it’s about companionship. That we are created with a need for companionship. And in a harsh, cruel and unkind world, the need intensifies. And so we long for it, we search for it. That’s often what dating is all about.
So Proverbs 18: He who finds a wife—again, cultural adjustment here—he who finds a spouse finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord. That verb finds literally means to search with intent, to pursue with purpose. For our purposes today, I think it might describe dating. He who finds a spouse, a lifelong companion, finds what is good. It’s a beautiful Hebrew term, tov, which means finds what’s best, beautiful, what is beneficial, what is a benediction, finds the divine grace of God. And we see this again not as ownership, but as stewardship. This is not a prize earned like a trophy wife. This is a gift received.
So teenagers in the room, 20 somethings, maybe 30 somethings. You have been given mixed messages in our culture and our society because on the one hand, you hear things like marriage is too traditional, it’s too conventional, it’s no longer necessary. But on the other hand, you watch the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, Love is Blind, Married at First Sight, The Proposal. And if they’re not about marriage, they are at the very least about a long term love that can last a lifetime. Even Temptation Island, which is truly an evil show, is premised upon finding a relationship that’s sturdy enough to endure lustful temptations of lesser relationships.
So I’m offering this observation with empathy because you’re stuck in this tension of marriage no longer matters, and I must find a love that lasts a lifetime. So how do we do this? Well, a couple principles on dating. Here they are. One, dating relationships are ultimately for a marriage that lasts a lifetime. And number two, marital relationships that last a lifetime are more about character and companionship than chemistry and attraction. So let me say a word about each.
Dating relationships are ultimately for a marriage that lasts a lifetime. Now, am I saying that every single date is in service to this highest aim? I mean, can’t you just date for fun? And honestly, I’m not prepared to answer that. Dating is a cultural practice today. Scripture doesn’t really speak to it directly, but this is what I can say. Dating is not a neutral activity. It’s a practice that forms and shapes your heart.
And so the longer you date someone, if that relationship isn’t ultimately for marriage that lasts a lifetime, then what you do is you start playing games with your heart and you start playing games with the heart of the person you’re dating. And in God designed relationships, emotional, physical and spiritual intimacy grow concurrently with one another. And so, for instance, if you’re in a dating relationship and it’s only about physical connection and the emotional and spiritual connection isn’t there, then the relationship is kind of like driving a cybertruck across a bridge made of shoestrings. It will crash and it’s only a matter of time.
So number two, marital relationships that last a lifetime are more about character and companionship than about chemistry and attraction. Now, are chemistry and attraction important? Sure they are. But are they most important? No way. Look at Proverbs 31. A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. Or in Proverbs 12:4, a wife—and again, for our purposes, a spouse—of noble character is her spouse’s crown, but a disgraceful spouse is the decay in the bones. So there is character over chemistry.
So I have presided over a lot of weddings and you often hear the love chapter, First Corinthians 13. As Paul writes it, love is patient, love is kind. Love doesn’t envy, it doesn’t boast, it isn’t proud, it doesn’t dishonor others. It’s not self seeking, it’s not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs. So your goal when character matters is to do well with your name in those blanks. To be able to say, Jessica is patient, Jessica is kind. Jessica doesn’t envy or boast. She isn’t proud, she doesn’t dishonor others. She’s not self seeking, Jessica’s not easily angered. She keeps no record of wrongs. Your goal is to have the character that belongs in that blank. And your aim is to find someone who’s doing well with their name in those blanks.
So there’s character over chemistry and there’s companionship over attraction. So John Gottman, who’s kind of the resident expert on marriage, not a Christian guy, but writes very deeply and very beautifully on marriage today, he says, long term, happy, content couples are friends first and foremost.
So sometimes I say, when I’m presiding over weddings, I say to the groom, look at how gorgeous your bride is today. Isn’t she beautiful? And then to the bride I say, look at your groom. I mean, he cleans up pretty well, right? But to both of them I say, so look back at these pictures because this is the best you will ever look. But your love is not premised on what you look like right now, but on who you are right now, who you are becoming, who she’s becoming, who he’s becoming. And if you fall in love with someone’s face or their figure, you better hold onto that picture. But if you fall in love with someone’s character who’s seeking after God, there’s a pretty good chance that it’s going to grow more and more beautiful and you’re going to find deep companionship.
You know, when the father writes to his son in chapter 27, a quarrelsome wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm—that we all laughed at—restraining her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand. I don’t suppose the son then said to his dad, yeah, but she’s hot. I mean, I’m around a lot of people in their 40s and their 50s and a lot of folks have confided in me as their pastor, and I’ve never heard someone say, all my spouse wants to do is bicker and fight all the time. But at least they’re hot. Nope.
So to the second question. What then are marriages for? I’ve officiated many weddings and I’ve always thought that word officiated is a funny word because it sounds like a football game. So there’s one rehearsal where I literally restrained a mom from attacking a stepmom, which I guess is a 15 yard penalty for unnecessary roughness. There’s another rehearsal where the bride actually walked out of the rehearsal, which I suppose is a five yard penalty for illegal motion.
But there was one time before the wedding ceremony itself, the bride was so nervous, she was in the back and she was just nervous about all that she needed to remember to go through the ceremony. She felt fine about the marriage. And I came to her and I said, look, it’s not hard. You’re going to do fine. In just a minute you’re going to walk down the aisle, then you’re going to step up to the altar and then we’re going to sing a hymn and then I’ll take it from here. So remember, it’s easy. You’re going to walk down the aisle, you step up to the altar, then we’ll sing a hymn and I’ll take it from there. You could hear her walking down the aisle. She was saying, I’ll alter him, I’ll alter him, I will alter him.
So see, one thing that marriage is for is this. You will change more than you think you will and they will change less than you think they should. So what if marriage is mostly to change you? Or Gary Thomas said even more in Sacred Marriage, he asked the question, what if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy? But not just to make us holy. Because in culture and society today that is longing for models of good and healthy marriages, even so much more than that.
I’ve told this story before, but it’s like going to a concert of your favorite band. So Katie and I go to see Mumford and Sons. We buy really inexpensive, like nosebleed seats. We’re listening to Marcus Mumford. He gets to the last song and he looks up in the lights. He says, are Bart and Katie here tonight? Sheepishly, we wave our hands. Oh, Bart and Katie, good to see you. Would you come down here, sing this last song with me? Now did that happen? Proverbially so it did. But it’s this beautiful picture, isn’t it?
See the living God who created you, who knows every single person in this room, from their pinky toe to the split end of one of their hairs that God says, hey, with your marriage, if you’re married, with your marriage, would you sing the song of my relationship to my people? And God’s relationship to us is one of self sacrificial love. Through Jesus we see this extravagant pursuit of healing and wholeness for all people. In fact, the best marriages are places where healing from the past and wholeness in the present and hope for the future are possible. And that sounds beautiful, and it is, but it can be so hard.
In fact, what often draws couples together can eventually drive them apart. Because in a broken world, we hunger for healing from harm, and it draws us together with other people. We say, if I can be with this person, then I can escape my past or my sadness or my hurt. And we get together and it feels good.
And then life happens. And this is why the hardest work of marriage is to explore how heartache and hurt and even trauma, capital T or lowercase t, were the grounds of how you first fit together. But then you learn how the marriage is designed to better equip you to have God be the one who heals you because your spouse, or anyone for that matter, cannot do so. So a great marriage is two people searching for healing and realizing they can’t ultimately provide it for one another. They can find it in God. That’s when spouses become co conspirators in this scandal that we call grace—God’s gift of healing to us.
So in this moment, I had a lot of thoughts on seasons of marriage. I’ve been very reflective of late. On Friday, I turned 25 for the second time. And so I’m devoting most of our Preacher P.S.—we have a second podcast where we kind of riff on the sermon and have a conversation starter—so I’m devoting most of the Preacher P.S. today to some seasons of marriage because I think there’s a through line that could be very important for us. I don’t have time to say it here because we only have a couple minutes, but suffice it to say, as we close, the key ingredient, the Elmer’s glue for love that lasts a lifetime, that’s present through all seasons is forgiveness, giving it and receiving it.
So Tim Keller, late mentor and model for me, says, in the end, your marriage will either become a deep friendship or a bitter truce. The power of the gospel is what makes the first possible. And what is the gospel? The gospel is the good news that God, through Jesus, forgave you. So what is marriage for? It’s to make you more holy. It’s to make you more the person that you were meant to be. And it’s to sing the song of God’s loving relationship with God’s people, wrought through God’s forgiveness.
So in our last minute here, what then does the world’s best marriage look like? Well, the metaphor for God’s love of humanity that traverses all the way through Jewish and Christian scripture is that of a married couple. Christ is called the groom. The church is called the bride. Paul, as he writes to the early churches, says, for Christ loved his church so much that he gave himself up for her. So what does the best marriage look like? It’s these two spouses sharing an undivided devotion in and for one another. And this is the chief reason that marriage is not the ultimate calling in life. Receiving the love of God through Christ and learning how to love like Jesus is.
So if you’re in this room and you’re single, if the church ever makes you feel bad or lousy or less than for being single, then call us out on it, because that’s not the ultimate aim. Marriage is not the ultimate aim.
Married people, as we close, a question for you. It’s a rhetorical one. What was the best day of your life? It’s a rhetorical question. You answer, one, two, three, and one spouse says, our wedding day. And simultaneously the other spouse says, when we won the national championship. Oh, wait. Oh, wait, sorry. And a fight ensues. Right? One spouse needs to learn what the right answer is, for sure. But the reason the answers vary is because every Christian wedding points to the true, best day of your life, when you came to know the everlasting love of God through Christ. This is what we sing about. This is why the Psalms say, because your love is greater than life, O God, my lips will praise you. It’s why the Lumineers sing, hey ho, I belong with you, you belong with me. It’s why the Song of Solomon sings, for I am my beloved’s and he is mine.
Let’s pray together as we come to this table. God, always a lot of guilt and shame in a room full of broken people, muddling through broken relationships, longings, desires, unmet healing, trauma in every sense of the word. But God, would we not run away from you or the church in the midst of our brokenness? But would we run towards this table and Jesus receive your grace? None of us will ever have a perfect marriage, which is why forgiveness is the Elmer’s glue. Would you allow us to seek forgiveness, to extend forgiveness, and mostly to find that deep healing of your forgiveness? It’s in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit. We pray. Amen.
