We believe that Scripture presents workable patterns applicable to having a Christian wedding. However, we don't think that Scripture provides a single formula for governing the process of having a wedding. This does not mean that the Bible is silent on the matter. What does the Bible say about weddings, and what can we learn from them as we plan weddings?

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and today we want to talk about the sufficient scripture that would lead us to have Christian weddings. How do you have a Christian wedding? How do you have a wedding of your dreams, not God's nightmares? And so we really want to talk about how to have a Christian wedding.

So hey, Jason. Hey, you proactively plan it to be Christian. There you go. Or else it won't be Christian. Exactly.

And we've got Carlton McLeod with us. Carlton, it's so good to see you. Awesome to be here with you, Scott and Jason. Happy to be here. What a great topic.

Yeah, yeah. Down from Chesapeake at Reformation Church up there. It's just so good to have you. So I wanna talk about different problems, but also I'd like us to get to various images and manifestations of weddings in the Bible. But I want to start out and talk a little bit about the pressures of the wedding industry on Christian weddings?

What are they? Well, I mean, just in my experience now, some 25 years, there seems to be a lot of pressure, particularly on the bride to make the wedding look sound and feel like maybe is the term worldly too strong, but something out of a magazine or something out of a movie or something out of a fairy tale. And I can tell you that even with wonderful Christian people, you know, sitting there with family, sitting there with bride and groom, sitting there with people who in other circumstances love God's word and wanna live by God's word. The wedding is a whole different animal. And so the pressure to conform to some image that we've seen in other places is immense and sometimes affects people and they don't even realize they're being impacted by it.

Yeah, and you've got these wedding magazines, you know, a woman is immersing herself in wedding magazines. She wants to have the designer wedding of her dreams, but those wedding magazines pretty much are gonna lead you to just not think rightly about a wedding. You know, one of the dynamics in play are all the different stakeholders. If this is not a bride and a groom going down to the magistrate to say vows with a couple people on their right hand and a couple people on their left, you have two different families, and boy, they might be very, very different families. I mean, I've started by saying two distinct families but they can be very very different.

They can be very different than the bride and groom who are actually getting married and they can be very different from each other. They have different expectations, and somebody's paying. So the paying stakeholder sort of has voting shares in the matter as well. So I mean, this is tricky. Yeah, so you got commercial pressures, you got family pressures, you have financial pressures, but here's the pressure that should create the whole thing, and it's in Colossians 3.17, and whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through Him.

Amen. So every part of a wedding should have a connection with what God says about weddings. Hey, can we talk about money for a minute? There is no ceiling to the amount of money that can be spent on a wedding. So the question is, should there be a ceiling for Christians?

And this is relative to the amount of money that you have to the type of resources that you have. But all of us, I think, would say we have limited resources, and they're honestly, they're kingdom resources. And so the dollars you spend on the wedding are dollars that won't be spent on kingdom things. You can only spend a dollar one time. And I think especially as church leaders, as our family has been part of weddings, Actually, we've had one of our daughters get married.

One of the things we were very conscious of is to set a pace for the wedding that other people in the church would be able to follow with a clear conscience. One thing I like, one of your weddings, you went to your kids and said, hey, we're gonna give you this much for the wedding, and however much you don't spend, you get to keep. Yep. I thought that was great. That's a great idea.

It was a fixed cost for me. If they went over, they were gonna pay the overage, and if they went under, I was gonna write them a check on the wedding day, and my daughter took that as a personal challenge and we wrote him a little check on the wedding day. It's money for the honeymoon. That's extremely wise. And there doesn't seem to be a correlation between the amount of money you spend on the wedding and marital bliss.

Might be inverse relationship. It might be inverse relationship. You get married for 75K in the last three years. So yeah, doesn't seem to be very wise. But again, it goes back to the pressure that, you know, I had one bride describe it this way, it seems like I've thrown a party for my relatives, basically, and she got into this mode of just wanting to have every little knickknack possible at the reception to impress and kind of please family that she sees maybe once a year or so.

Right, you also have these contradictions that you see from time to time. Thankful I haven't seen very many of them, but you have this beautiful ceremony, God is the center of it, the songs are beautiful, then the reception happens, and it's like you, you stepped out of heaven into another place. And now the DJ is running the show and it's very secular and it's kind of like, where did God go? And I always get the feeling that the wedding ceremony was actually just a ceremony, but the real life is now being displayed. And so now you're really concerned about where this whole thing is going.

It's not a Christian wedding. Yeah, around our head, we call it from the church house to the clubhouse or to the club, because that's the way it can feel like as in a nightclub. And that's the way it can feel. Yeah, I try to instill and keep in mind when I'm sitting with a young couple and I know all these pressures are coming to bear and I ask some of these questions, hey, you know, what are your bridesmaids have on? What does your dress look like?

What do you guys got planned for the reception? And everybody's eyes get big because again, it's the separation that we seem to have in our minds between the ceremony or in what it represents and the reception. I like to make sure people understand Ephesians chapter five, for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and they shall be joined unto his wife and they too shall be one flesh. And Paul says, this is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. And I always try to help the young couple keep in mind that your ceremony and everything you do after, indeed, your entire marriage is a picture of the gospel.

And so, is Christ represented well and is gospel represented well, not only in the ceremony, but also in the reception. So, let's play this out. You have just a wonderful Christ-centered, God-centered ceremony, and your unbelieving relatives and friends that have come might be uncomfortable for all the best reasons, not bad reasons, but I mean, there's a sense that these are holy moments and they're not used to holy moments. And so, they feel one way, but then you get to the reception, and the reception's like every other reception they've ever been to. And you can, There's almost a sense where your unbelieving relatives are exhaling like, oh, hey, they're just like the rest of us.

They were just kidding about this other thing, and we're all on the same page here. And it's really a tragedy from that standpoint, because it's such a lost opportunity to give to our unbelieving relatives and friends a taste of what's good. You know, let's talk about songs for a second. I mean, there are wedding songs in Scripture, Psalm 44, and in Song of Solomon. But I find myself getting concerned about songs when the songs are all sort of about the syrupy love, I can't live without you, you're the most beautiful thing I've ever encountered in my life, you've rescued me.

There's no reflection of the love of Christ. It's really pretty much just about our love. Now when you have a marriage that's based just on your love, it's going to shift, it's gonna fade, the emotions, the infatuation is gonna go away. So it better not be focused on all these fluffy feelings that you have because That's not the heart of love. Yeah.

And we don't even teach marriage counseling like that. I mean, I know you guys don't, but we focus on the covenant. We focus on the covenant that this man and this woman is making before God and that he's very much a part of it. Indeed, he instituted it. And so everything about marriage involves our Lord Jesus and his commandments for us.

And so that should be reflected indeed in the music. I remember getting in so much trouble as a 22 year old because I did not want to have secular music and dancing at my wedding. And back in those days, I went as far as I had my own little cassette tape of music that I put together and relatives and everyone that I can't believe. I mean, what are you some kind of legalist? I just wanted the whole thing to, you know, the music we played quietly in the background and everything to reflect what was happening on that day, which was the Lord giving me this treasure that I had the opportunity to shepherd and steward and love and bless for the rest of my life.

Yeah, you know, The central element, you mentioned a covenant. Central element in a Christian wedding is a covenant. We have a lot of traditions. We have flower girls, we exchange rings. We do things like that.

We have American traditions. I think we just have to ask, are those good traditions? And I think some of them actually really, they're fine, right? They don't contradict anything of the truth of God. But you have to understand, you know, what are the things that are praised in the Bible for a wedding.

Now, I would just, I wanna throw this out there, the indispensable, the exclusive element of a wedding is a covenant. Everything else is sort of art in a way. I tell couples all the time, look, you only need two things. You need a covenant and you need gas to go leave, you need gasoline to get away from the wedding place to go leave and cleave. That's pretty much what we're doing here.

However anybody messes up in the ceremony, walking down the aisle or whatever, it doesn't matter. You're gonna have a covenant and you're gonna go leave in Cleve. So the traditional marriage vows invoke God. I mean, there are vows in the biblical sense of the word where you call God to witness. Often this is the line, before God in this congregation, and then you make your promises.

But we're not in a time of the traditional wedding vows, and so sometimes even that can be lost, that should never be lost. It is really not a vow, a marriage vow in the biblical sense of the word, unless you're calling God to witness this thing. And it's also an opportunity, especially in the day and age in which we live, and the people who will be witnessing this ceremony, to affirm biblical roles of husbands and wives in vows. I'm not saying no other kind of vows are legitimate, but it's an opportunity to affirm what the Bible says about the role of a husband and a role of a wife in the wedding vows? You know, Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like a wedding.

And I think we should take that, that every part of the wedding should be like the kingdom of heaven. Agreed. That's the illustration. This wedding is an illustration of something greater, something more beautiful. Yeah, so almost like we tried to take that part out for the seraphy stuff.

And so we've made it a point to make sure that we have as much scripture packed into those vows and into the wedding as possible. Because you're right, Jason, what an amazing opportunity for people who otherwise may not hear it or certainly may not be living it to see an expression of the gospel and the kingdom of Christ right in the wedding and hopefully even in the ceremony too. Let's talk about wedding garments. Revelation 21 too, you got the people of God in wedding garments. Wedding garments are pictures of salvation.

Does that have anything to do with a Christian wedding? Yeah, what we wear always matters. At a typical wedding, the groom and his groomsmen are wearing more than they would wear to church, and the bride and the bridesmaids are wearing less than they would wear to church. Honestly, sometimes it's things that they would never in a million years wear to church. In a million years, yeah.

So you're talking about modesty of dress for the bride to be careful there. Garments are pictures of the clothing of the righteousness of Christ. So clothing should always have some connection with the righteousness of Christ. But the recent trends really push, like I said, even, and just some encouragement to someone who may be listening to this or watching this, and you're getting married or you're working in a wedding or your child's getting married, the trends will push even, you know, strong believers who love the Lord and believe in God's word into dresses and into garments that they would never put on. And then if you have a series of bridesmaids, you have to work through that.

And normally, the man, like I said, he's going to have more on, but it could be a barrel of fishhooks trying to get the wedding to be with love and encouragement to be modest and representative of the kingdom. Yeah. You know, let's talk about giving away the bride. You know, we have this custom in America, you know, who gives this woman to be married to this man? Why do we do that?

It's because we see it in scripture. We see it in several, we see it in several places. As a matter of fact, what, what an opportunity again to, to demonstrate what God has put in his word where you have his father, who has, you know, protected and taught and covered and raised up this beautiful daughter that was under his protection. And he gets the privilege to walk her down the aisle and put her hand in the hand of another man who is promising before God to do the exact same thing. I love that imagery, yeah.

Me too, oh yeah. Because this father has had a duty to protect this daughter and now he's giving her away. My father-in-law said to me, when I asked him if I could marry Deborah, he said, just so you know, when you marry her, I'm putting her, I'm taking her from my care center into your care center. It's a beautiful picture, but it's because God wants a daughter's protected. That's right.

So you've got giving away the bride. That's a very, very biblical principle. You know, in Psalm 19, you have a picture of the joy of the husband, and the son is actually, the son is compared to a bridegroom coming out of his chamber like a strong man to run his race. So there's this joyful, you know, bridegroom coming out. He's like the son, you know, he's happy.

He's like a strong man. He's gonna get down that aisle, you know. It's really beautiful. Yeah, the wedding day really is the finest hour for the groom. It's because the bride is there and she's looking like a million bucks and it just reflects on him, you know, it's wonderful.

So you got the friends of the bridegroom in Luke 5 34 Can you make the friends of the bride bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? You want happy groomsman That's exactly right that's exactly right that's so good, you know then In Isaiah 62 5 God rejoices over his people as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride. So when you see this bridegroom rejoicing over his bride, she's walking down the aisle. She's so beautiful. That's how God actually looks at his people.

And you know, as you read those verses, Scott, and you know, you may have a couple more, but I think the church needs to be reminded of these things. I'm not sure we do the kind of work we need to do to see the various pictures and lift out the various verses that picture marriage for us, because perhaps if we did, we wouldn't be so quick to allow it to look like something that it that it's not supposed to be. Hey, you know, marriage rates are going down. People are getting married like they used to. But God in Jeremiah 25 says that when people disobey the Lord, he'll take away the voice of the bridegroom.

That picture of God's joy over his people will be taken in figurative ways in a wedding because people won't be getting married. America is becoming a little bit like Sweden. They don't get married anymore in Sweden, hardly at all. And the marriage rates are dropping, cohabitation is way up, and the voice of the bridegroom, the way that we're talking about it, goes out of the land. It's part of just the manifestation of God's joy in the world to have a bridegroom who cannot wait to marry that girl.

Wow, what a difference we're seeing even in young men and their views of marriage. Some of the studies are showing that even they're so pessimistic about perhaps even finding a wife to marry. There's no ceremony for do you want to move in with me until we're tired of being together. You don't rent the community center for that. Yeah, sign my prenuptial agreement.

We'll see how long this lasts. You know, In Jeremiah 33, I'll just read it, 11, 33, 11. The voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of all who will say, Praise the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his mercy endures forever, and of those who will bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord. You know, here you have the voice of the bridegroom, the voice of the bride, and everybody else, they're saying, praise the Lord. That's what should happen at a wedding.

Praise the Lord. Amen. Praise the Lord. It should be such a happy thing. Well, then you got bridesmaids, right, in Matthew 25.

You have 10 virgins. And that's actually used to explain readiness, whether someone actually is regenerate or not, do they have a spirit or not. But he uses this imagery. He says, then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. So what do we make of that?

Is there some conclusion we can make about a Christian wedding from that? Well, you know, take it too far, but perhaps it might speak to the bride being wise with her associations and having godly women in her life who will encourage her towards godliness. Maybe that's one way we could possibly look at it. So here's from Psalm 45, verses 13 through 15. The royal daughter is all glorious within the palace.

Her clothing is woven with gold. She shall be brought to the king in robes of many colors. The virgins, her companions who follow her, shall be brought to you with gladness and rejoicing. They shall be brought, they shall enter the king's palace." I mean, you really have a vision of the friends of the bride rejoicing with the bride being brought to the king. That's right.

Then you have a supper, a marriage supper of the Lamb, wedding supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19. You know, should you have a supper at your wedding? Well, why not? It's reflective of something greater and whatever that might look like. Joel talks about the congregation in Joel 2.16.

He speaks about actually the revealing of the bride in Joel 2 and the groom revealing them to the congregation, almost like where the bride comes out of her dressing room. That's kind of a dramatic thing, you know, people have traditions, oh you can't look at the bride until she's walking out. Here's what it says, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes, let the bridegroom go out from his chamber and the bride from her dressing room. Isn't that great? We see that all the time.

What a joy that is to see the wedding party and, you know, they're getting ready to do all that. Scott, happy time. Scott and Carl, this is a bit of a shift, but most weddings have a slot for a message. When I'm in that slot, I try to go big. What I mean by going big is to paint the picture of Jesus' love for His people.

The temptation is to go small and to look the, you know, groom in the eye and say, you'd be nice to her, to look the bride in the eye and say, you'd be nice to him, you know. But it's an opportunity to go big with who knows what the people who might be sitting out there and have really no sense for how much Jesus loves His people, cares for His people. It's an opportunity to glory in that. Yeah, I love, I just love the bridegroom coming out of His chamber. You know, that reminds me of something.

In your wedding, I did your wedding over 30 years ago, and right before the bride and the bridegroom were going to come out of their chamber, my three-year-old daughter pulled the fire alarm. That's true. Ten minutes before kickoff. She did. She pulled the fire alarm.

And so every, I mean, this church had a fire alarm at eye level of a three-year-old. What were they thinking? So my daughter pulls the fire alarm and everybody's wondering what to do. So I go up to the platform and I grabbed the microphone. I say, everything is fine.

I said, some child pulled the fire alarm. Which was technically true. Probably wasn't a family integrated church then. So the follow up to that story is at her wedding, at Blair's wedding, in the rehearsal, we had the audio man play a fire alarm just as she was going down the aisle. That's great.

Payback. Payback. Happy memories. That was so funny. That was so funny.

You know, we talked a little bit about songs, you know, Psalm 145, Psalm Solomon, Psalm 44. I want to encourage couples to be careful with their songs and have their songs be explicitly God-centered. I don't have a good feeling about songs where you can't tell the difference between the male and the female voices because they're feminized. They're just feminized, fluffy kinds of songs. It's just a preference.

I want songs that just explicitly speak of the greatness of God and his love, which started this whole thing. So let's talk about ministers or justices of the pieces. So you don't find ministers doing weddings in the Bible. You find it's a family affair. So is it wrong for a pastor to do a wedding?

I don't think it's wrong because a couple is bringing in spiritual authorities, relationships, things like that. But what do you make of that? I mean, you don't find priests doing weddings. You don't find elders doing weddings in the Bible. Why?

I'm not completely sure, but I think perhaps it got to be the way that it is because of the nature of the covenant, because it is before God, because it is some of those elements that you mentioned from music and worship to the congregation being gathered. The congregation being gathered. Again, the nature of the institution, I think maybe for a lot, I don't know how it evolved, but perhaps it evolved the way it did. It seems like a minister would be a good person to kind of oversee these elements and make sure and then when you start adding possibly having a supper of some kind or I know some couples and some weddings that have the Lord's table and their different views on that I know but all those things can't tend to go they're looking at the preacher going you know what I'll just give her away you do it you know and then of course in the world we live in too, depending on where your theology is on this, but a lot of times there are documents and things and so forth, and that's involved. So again, perhaps that's part of it.

Okay, so there you have it. Let the weddings roll. Let them be reflections of the beauties of the things we've just talked about. Let Every aspect of that wedding ceremony, every aspect, every song, everything that happens in the reception, glorify Jesus Christ. Amen.

Amen. Amen. So don't let your reception become a function of the world. Undoing everything you've tried to do up to that point. Undoing everything.

That's the most amazing thing to me. And perhaps missing an opportunity to communicate the gospel to unsaved ones. Yeah, amen. Okay, guys, thanks a lot. It was fun.

A lot more to say. Hey, thanks for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up.

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