People enter into marriage with various expectations and pursuing different purposes. Many of these are motivated by selfishness, with spouses seeking their own fulfillment and satisfaction as their greatest goal. But selfish purposes in marriage only end in disappointment and pain. Marriage was created by God and for God. Once we understand God's purposes for marriage, and pursue them above our own, then we can have true God-honoring marriages.

So the first is Genesis chapter 2 verses 21 through 25. And here you find the matter of oneness in marriage and the matter of oneness that God creates in husband and wife. The two shall become one flesh. And then the second passage is in Genesis chapter 3 verses 7 through 10. And here we find that the very first manifestation of the fall, the very first negative effect of the fall was an effect on marriage where after the fall Adam and Eve were naked and they were ashamed.

The fall has had a dramatic effect on marriage. Every marriage problem can be traced to a problem resulting from the fall and our sinfulness. If you've ever counseled yourself or counseled others on marriage, maybe it occurred to you that every single issue that you deal with when there's a problem in marriage, it's traced back to sin. You have to understand where the sin is or you'll never really heal a marriage. And then the third passage of scripture is Ephesians 5, 1-33.

You'll hear this passage referred to many times. This is the most comprehensive statement in the Bible about marriage and it draws everything that's said about marriage in this one very dense and for an extensive passage. This speaks of husbands and wives. But what you find in Ephesians 5, 1 through 33, in particular 22 through 33, is what it looks like when the Holy Spirit is filling the husband and the wife. It really is a picture of the power of the Holy Spirit.

The whole argument in Ephesians 5 is what does it look like when you're filled with the Holy Spirit? And the Apostle Paul begins in verse 18 that when you are filled with this 18 and 19, when you're filled with the Spirit, it changes the way that you relate with people in the church. You begin to speak to one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs. You're the way that you talk to one another is completely transformed. And you actually in the church, you submit to each other.

It transforms the whole way that you relate to each other. And then And then it extends into marriage. When a wife is filled with the Holy Spirit, she's submissive. When a husband is filled with the Holy Spirit, he loves his wife and he gives himself up for her. And then After that, he speaks about children, what it looks like when children are filled with the Holy Spirit.

They submit to their parents. And then it speaks about what happens in the workplace when a person is filled with the Holy Spirit. He honors the authorities and he actually obeys his boss. So these are various manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the passages the passage we'll be focusing in on speaks of what it looks like in a marriage. That's Ephesians 5.

Then in 1st Peter 3 verses 1 through 6, you see many things there, but you see really the role of humility in a marriage and how the husband honors his wife and how a wife submits to her husband and she demonstrates the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. That's how she relates to him. That's how he changes. And in this passage, it makes it very clear that rather than manipulation, a wife uses the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit to have an effect on her husband. And then the next passage is Hebrews 13 verses 4 through 6 where The writer of Hebrews says that the marriage bed ought to be undefiled.

Let the marriage bed be undefiled. And this has to do with the purity in marriage. And everyone is aware of the assaults of the devil to bring impurity into the thinking of husbands and wives. And then the next passage is 1 Corinthians, chapter 7. And here we have the principle of honor and submission.

And here we learn that the wife doesn't have authority over her own body. And we also learn that the husband doesn't have authority over his own body either. That a wife actually has authority over her husband's body and it goes the other way as well. And so you have this principle of yielding to one another. And then the next passage of Scripture is Malachi chapter 2, particularly verse 14, and this is the whole principle that marriage is a covenant, that it's not emotion-driven, it's covenant-driven.

It's bound together by covenant And that takes care of the flux and flow of emotions in a marriage, which will happen. And God establishes marriages not on simple emotion and romance, but actual covenant. And the next passage of scripture is in Song of Solomon verse 11. And this really has to do with joy in marriage. There's much implied in the passages of Scripture about marriage regarding joy.

And in this passage, it speaks of the wedding day, the day of the gladness of his heart. So those are, you know, some basic theological stopping points that I think you'll hear threads of this being pulled in our time together and the hours that are ahead. Now, God has given marriage as a picture of something greater and that is true of everything in nature. God has planted in nature hundreds, thousands of pictures. They all point to the glory of God.

Marriage is just one of those things that God designed to point to something greater. Bread points to something greater than just something on your plate. Light points to something greater than just a light bulb or a sun. A tree points to something far greater. A lamb, it points to something far greater.

You know John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Why lambs? Why did God create lambs? Because they're good to eat. Well they actually are good to eat, but that wasn't the primary reason he created lambs.

He created lambs to point to something greater. That's true of everything in nature and marriages are of the exact same category. They are designed by God to point to something greater. They are designed by God to testify to something. Your marriage doesn't stand alone for itself.

Your marriage was designed to glorify something else. Now when most of us got married we pretty much thought this was about us and our joy and our happiness and our pleasure and you know we were gonna get we were gonna get the person and the stuff of our dreams It was really pretty much about us and most most of us probably didn't really realize what we were getting into. We were getting into something of such greater magnitude than we ever dreamed. And then the Bible comes and straightens us out. But God designed marriage to testify to the good news of Jesus Christ.

And so a marriage is not about you. A marriage is about Christ. And that's why the Apostle Paul, when he said, the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. In other words, marriage and the very act of sexual intimacy has been designed to testify to Christ and his church.

That is why God created marriage. And in fact marriage doesn't exist for all eternity. Jesus said that in heaven there's no marriage, neither is there giving in marriage. Because marriage is a picture of something greater. It's a picture of Christ in the church and the intimacy that you have.

There are two aspects of that picture. And the first aspect of that picture is a husband. And in Ephesians chapter 5, a husband represents Jesus Christ. And he demonstrates the love of Jesus Christ. He's charged to actually be a bearer of the love and the wisdom and the care of Jesus Christ toward his wife.

Which means that a husband is not his own. His life is not his own. He thought when he got married, it was about him, but it wasn't really about him. God did not design it primarily for him. God, Marriage is a blessing, but it's designed for something greater than personal blessing.

And so the first player character in this picture that's being painted is a husband who testifies to the love of Christ for his church. And then there's another personality in the picture, and that is a wife, and she testifies to a glorious and obedient church. Her life is not her own either. She has a duty to live in such a way that she's demonstrating what an obedient, respectful, humble church is. So a wife is not her own.

The worst thing a wife can think about her marriage is that she needs to find herself. The worst thing a husband can think when he gets married is that marriage is designed to be for his own benefit. Those are two terrible errors that most of us have embraced and we, you know, we have to get over that. So if a wife doesn't know who she is, she'll never know how to deal with the challenges that marriage brings her. If a husband doesn't know who he is, he'll never know how to deal with the challenges that come.

You know when a wife becomes discouraged or maybe angry. If he doesn't understand that his role is to be like Jesus Christ to his wife, He'll always abuse her in some way or think wrongly of her. And the same way with a wife, if a wife doesn't understand that her life is not her own, that she's in a heavenly drama and she has a role to play. And there are lines, she has her lines that have been given to her by God, just as her husband has been given lines. They're the lines of Jesus Christ and the lines of a wife are the lines of a of a humble and submissive and honoring church.

So we have to understand that marriage is a picture. And while marriage is such a blessing, and it's more than that, It's a representation of heaven. And so, this really I think takes us back to even what it means to be a Christian. When you became a Christian you said, not my will but thy me done. When you became a Christian you said, I am so sick and tired of my sins.

I don't want to go my own way anymore. The my way is not right. My way only causes problems. So when you become a Christian you say, Lord let your will be done. Let your kingdom come.

Because my kingdom, my will stinks. Right? That's the essence of the Christian life and the essence of married life is very much the same where a husband says, I'm not my own. My will is not the rule. And a wife says the very same thing.

And that's really the gateway for all healing in marriage and all happiness in marriage. And it comes down to the answer to this question. Do you know who you are? Are you playing the role that God designed for you? Or are you trying to play someone else?

And So marriage is a picture of the glory of God and the demonstration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So with that as sort of a foundation, I want us to focus on the matter of sexual intimacy in marriage as part of this picture that you're painting. And there are few things in this world that are as corrupted in the common culture than matters of sexual intimacy. The devil's been making a heyday on sexual matters from the very, very beginning and he obviously is not done yet. I mean we actually live in a generation where there are people actually asking themselves whether they are male or female even though it's actually obvious what they are.

This is the level of confusion, the sexual confusion of our day. It's gone so far beyond anything we dreamed. But let's be very clear, this is just another step in the sexual deviation that the devil has designed to destroy love in the world. But sexual intimacy is a critical battleground in all of our lives and it's one of the great strategic targets of the devil. And because, Why?

Because sexual intimacy declares Christ's intimacy with his people. Sexual intimacy is a picture of what it means to have Jesus Christ and the reality of Jesus Christ in your life. And so the devil has sexual intimacy in his crosshairs. Now I'd like to just talk about this corruption from a couple of different angles and I want to make it very clear that the devil has both clouded and stupidified God's purpose for sexual intimacy. And I want to really lean on the word stupidified.

The devil will make you stupid and he has completely stupidified everything regarding sexual intimacy because the devil promotes a version of sexual intimacy that is so shallow, that is so misleading, and it's so reductionistic. He reduces this to an animal and biological drive to fulfill oneself. And he trivializes it by making it about one thing, about personal pleasure. The devil has stupidity-fied sexual intimacy by making it primarily, strictly, and maybe exclusively about personal pleasure. And this is the whole point of pornography.

It's hyper personal. It's all about you. It's getting. It's about using. It's about having something for yourself.

That's what pornography is really all about. And it is an essential stupidification of God's intention for sexual intimacy. And this is why we have terms like sexual abuse. It's because of this stupidity that the devil is working to accomplish. And so he even so corrupts sexual intimacy that it would be used for abuse.

And even people pretend that somehow abuse has some positive value. So the devil, He not only trivializes sexual intimacy, but he perverts it and he destroys its beauty and he twists and corrupts and disfigures it so that it is just focused on the self. And that's why I say it's a stupidification. And, you know, men and women raised on pornography will always struggle with sexual intimacy because their minds have become so confused and actually stupidified. And they think that the function is for their own pleasure and so that if they don't get what they want they become dissatisfied and they may seek it elsewhere, further corrupting themselves and dulling their conscience so much that sexual intimacy has very little pleasure to it anymore.

You actually find in this culture of pornography there are actual statistical analyses going on today that say that people who are engaging in pornography have less and less and less real physical intimacy. That's what's happening. You actually lose the thing that you have idolized. Because you've so stupidified it, you've reduced it to something so narrow that it was never really primarily created for. It's a piece of it.

Yes, it is a piece. But it's it's it's it's so severely. Reductionistic that when you follow it to its conclusion, a partner is not needed. And it's even come to the place where people are thinking a robot is OK. A robot would be just fine, thank you.

This is the result of this stupidification that the devil works in our minds. And this is what's so insidious about pornography and this is why it's so destructive to marriage. Now because pornography is all about taking, now you know I've had the privilege of counseling you know many young men before they get married And what I tell them, I tell them the same thing, I'm like a broken record, and I say this, if you've seen anything in pornography, do not do that on your wedding night. Get that out of your mind. What you saw there has nothing to do with God's design.

Because God's design is that you give, not take. That's God's design. When Christ loved the Church, He gave Himself for her. Okay? And In Christianity you give, in pornography you take.

Pornography is all about personal satisfaction. And that's why it's so destructive against love. And so the Lord Jesus Christ says, therefore serve one another. The devil says go get what you can. Okay.

You know many of you have young men, They're in such danger in this culture. And untold devastation is ahead of them if they can't get free. So, this is one kind of reductionism. And when it comes to the devil it's a stupidityfication. Now there's another kind of reductionism regarding sexual intimacy and I'm going to call it the reductionism of the Roman Catholic Church, where sexual intimacy is even further stripped of its beauty because the Roman Church has reduced sexuality into functionality.

Like it is exclusively for the procreation of children, but there's something unclean about sexual intimacy in the doctrine of the Roman Church regarding marriage and sexuality. So much so that the Roman Church has established over 200 days of abstinence in the calendar. Now when the Protestant Reformation broke out, the reformers said that is, those are doctrines of demons. That's what they said, that's what Luther and Calvin said. They said these days of abstinence are complete inventions of a corrupt church.

They're adding things that God did not add. They're taking something out of 1 Corinthians 7 and making it mean what it didn't mean. So the Roman Church also has trivialized sexuality by reducing it to functionality. It's just reduced to functionality. So the devil has both religious ways to corrupt and trivialize sexuality and he also has pagan ways.

In paganism you do whatever you want to whomever you want. In the Roman Church it's just a function to have babies. So that's that's the picture that we have but on the other hand the Bible gives us a rich and diverse and a complex vision of sexuality. Of sexuality. There's no reductionism in Christianity.

And so rather than a reductionistic and a stupidified simplistic view of sexuality, in the Bible sexuality is a brilliant array. It's like a multifaceted diamond. And how do you even talk about it? Well, It's demonstrated by Christ's love for His church. It's that broad.

It's that massive. It's that beautiful. It's that distinct. It has a thousand facets to the diamond. All of the character of Christ is loaded in.

Christ's love for the church, every part of his love, every way that he loved his church is loaded into this. It is so non-reductionistic, it's complex, it's beautiful, it's richly arrayed with all kinds of things. It's a treasure and first of all, you know the Bible actually says that sex is good. That's not what the Roman Church said. And the Bible actually says that sexual intimacy is created for something far more than your own pleasure.

You know, one of the ways that we see this, particularly in terms of the Roman Catholic reductionistic principle of sexuality, is in 1 Corinthians 7, we learn that God is not in favor of sex-starved marriages. He's not in favor of that at all. He says, don't deprive one another except for prayer and fasting. That's it. Not 200 days of abstinence.

Okay. And he says a husband doesn't have authority over his own body and a wife doesn't either. So God declares war against sex-starved marriages on the one hand but then he explains the loving-kindness and the giving that he calls for in sexual intimacy. And that is really summarized in Ephesians 5, verses 31 and 32, which is really the heart of everything I'm really trying to say. The most fundamental matter in understanding sexuality between a husband and wife is this.

For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh that's sexual union this is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the church And it is a little bit disturbing to our minds to think that Christ's relationship with us is supposed to be demonstrated in our sexual relationship with one another. That's exactly what the Apostle Paul is saying. He's connecting the physical act of sexual union with Christ's love for the church. So that opens up sexual intimacy to a vast array of things that goes far beyond paganism and religion. Okay, so I'd like to speak, I'd like to give various illustrations.

I've written down 20 of them. I don't know if we'll get to all of them. When we start getting toward the end I'll probably start going a lot faster, but you'll get the idea, okay? You'll get the idea. In fact, you're probably going to at some point you're going to say, stop, I get it, okay?

But I'm going to probably keep going, all right? Okay, the first is that the sexual union points to the exclusivity that there is in Christ. It points to the exclusivity there is in Christ. The sexual union distinguishes your relationship with your spouse apart from every other relationship. So when you're married it actually becomes a crime for you to engage in sexual intimacy in any other relationship.

When you get married it changes every relationship in your life. Okay And you've entered into an exclusive relationship and sexual intimacy is a picture of the exclusivity that we have with Christ. When you turn to Christ, you leave your former idols, you repent of dead works, you seek Him and Him only. And He is the only one you do things with. That's Christianity.

You look to Him for everything. It's exclusive. The ways of this world have now become a dim shadow that you're trying to escape. And Jesus Christ is the one you're pursuing. You're saying, oh, how I love your law.

You are saying, I don't want the laws of this world any longer. It's an exclusive relationship. In fact, without a declaration of that, a true heartfelt declaration of that exclusivity, you cannot be a Christian. You are born again, you have a new life, the power of sin is broken, it is exclusive. So the sexual union bears witness to the exclusivity that there is in Christ.

Secondly, it bears witness to the intimacy that we have in Christ. There are various places we could go for that. John 17, Matthew 7, Isaiah 29, Genesis 16, Hosea 2. The matter of intimacy I think can be understood by using a word that's in the Bible and that is the word to know. To know is to have intimacy.

When it's when the Bible says that Adam knew Eve it meant that there was an intimacy that was very special and to know is the most common word for intimacy and it speaks of knowledge of that person and in fact the Lord Jesus Christ will say to some religious people, I never knew you. I never knew you. And he says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. And so the sexual union points to the intimacy that we have in Jesus Christ. And you know when you withdraw your sexuality from your spouse, you're setting yourself on a trajectory of distance, not knowing.

Not intimacy, but pulling back the other way. And pulling back the other way contradicts the love of Jesus Christ and knowing him and the intimacy that is there. The third, it testifies to the openness we have with Christ. And you know when Adam and Eve sinned, something happened to their openness and they were ashamed And they covered themselves. And this sense of nakedness, you know, caused, was a manifestation of that distance.

But In the sexual union, there's an openness like no other kind of openness. You're completely exposed to one another. That's the very same kind of openness that a person has with Jesus Christ. Everything is open. There's no place that he cannot go.

Many years ago I read a book called My Heart, Christ's Home. It was a neat little book. And the author pictures your life like a home and there are various rooms. And the owner of the house is leading Christ through these rooms, but there are certain rooms he's not sure he wants Christ to go in. But the Christian says, no Lord, go in every room.

I need you in every room of my life. Complete openness is the heart of a Christian. And the sexual union is a manifestation of the openness that we have in Jesus Christ. Number four, the joy that we experience in Jesus Christ. And you have these words in the Bible, like joy inexpressible.

You have the parables of Jesus, a man finds a field and he sells everything for the joy. There's a pearl of great price. John the Apostle says, I write these things that your joy might be complete. It's the joy of the gospel. And The sexual union also testifies to that joy that we have in Jesus Christ.

And then, next, there's the union that we have in Jesus Christ. And I distinguish intimacy with union here, just for the sake of giving various aspects of things that may sound the same. But in the Bible it's very clear that there is a union with Jesus Christ. And that union, that sexual union is actually a picture of Christ in the church. But in John 17, you have this language where Jesus is praying to his father and he says that they may all be one as you father are in me and I in you that they may also be one in us.

You have this I in them and thou in me kind of a relationship. There is this inextricable intertwining. You're actually, He is actually in you. In Ephesians chapter one, you have these words, in Him, in Him, in Him. We are in Him and He is in us.

And the sexual union bears witness to something greater, the union that we have with Jesus Christ. Then there is the access that we have in Jesus Christ next. We have this spoken of in 1st Corinthians 7, 1 through 5 and other places where you find that the husband and the wife are commanded not to withhold physical intimacy with one another, but to give one another access. And this is a fundamental element of salvation, is access to God. And that in Jesus Christ you can enter into the presence of God boldly.

You have access to him. And this access that one has in the sexual union is just a picture of something greater. And you know, in heaven we'll have an access to God that we didn't know here, but while we're here we can enter boldly into His presence, into the presence of a compassionate and a faithful high priest. We have access to Him. We can speak to Him.

You know, when our church gathers on Wednesday nights to pray, it always amazes me, first of all, how me first of all how how how unimportant we are and yet God actually hears us we We can actually tell him our fears. We can tell him our needs. We have access to him by Jesus Christ. It's astonishing. We don't deserve this access.

You know, And I think when we come into prayer, you know, sometimes when you come into prayer, you're just sort of, you're just like half dead spiritually, you know. You don't really feel like praying. You don't even know. You just sort of wander in, but you have access because a way has been made by another. And then next, it bears witness to the covenant that we have in Christ.

Malachi makes it clear that a wife is a companion by covenant. And when a husband and wife come together sexually, you just might consider it this possibility that you're renewing your covenant. You know, people have an impulse to sort of renew their marriage covenant. I don't know if you've ever done that. I've known several people who've done that.

They've actually kind of redid their covenant. Not because they've broken it, but they just wanted to sort of renew the covenant. You find that in the Bible. There's certain places in the Bible where the covenant is kind of renewed and it's repeated, you know, and it's possible that the sexual union is like a renewal of the Covenant. When you come together you're actually not just coming together for your own pleasure, you're actually saying we're married like we're married forever okay and we're gonna do it again and then we're gonna do it again and we're gonna reenact the Covenant over and over again.

It bears witness to a covenant. Do you see you're probably tired of this already but there are so many facets to the love of Jesus Christ to His church, the intimacy, the access, the, you know, all these things. Well, let's keep going. We could speak about the holiness that we have in Christ, how holiness is separation from everything else. It's special.

Holiness is something different and special. That's what the sexual union really is. Every... It's holy. No one else is involved.

It is exclusively focused. We could talk about the unity we have with Christ. We could talk about the compassion that we experience in Christ, that the sexual union also typifies. We could talk about the help that we have in Christ in the sexual union. The Bible says that a woman is a helper.

I don't think that's a mistake. I don't think that just means that she cooks meals, okay? It's broad. It has to do with so many aspects of help. And I believe it absolutely includes a sexual relationship.

It's a way that a wife helps her husband. We could talk about the closeness that we have in Christ. Theologians, like Matthew Henry and some in particular, the Puritan theologians, they made a big deal about the rib, you know, a woman being made from the rib, that she was made out of, you know, something very close to the heart of man, you know. And the whole idea is closeness. And the husband, you know, she is inside of her husband.

In fact, the word woman is Isha, which means of his own, which means made from man. Literally from inside of man she's made and then the man actually goes inside of her. There's this being inside of one another that you find in these images of the gospel. And it's not a mistake, it's not a fluke, it's not a coincidence that the sexual union is just like that. God makes everything for a purpose.

Everything testifies to his glory. And particularly the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We could talk about the delight that we have in Jesus Christ. We could talk about the acceptance and the receiving that we have in Christ. As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God.

We could talk about the transformation that we have in Christ. The Bible says that when you behold the face of Jesus you're being transformed from glory to glory into his image. You know I heard somebody say a while back that human beings are the only mammals that have sexual intimacy face to face. They're the only mammals that do that. Why is that?

Is there a reason for that? Is that just like God just forgot about something and He just made it that way for some other functional reason? Everything declares the glory of God. Everything. You have the sacrifice of Christ, which bears witness to the sexual union, and you have the danger of separation from Christ.

The danger of separating from one another sexually. It's a danger. Now you get the idea, right? Now if you've lost the physical oneness, then you've got to know that it is just a symptom. It's symptomatic of distance and you ought to honestly identify the source of the distance.

Why is there distance? And I'll just submit sort of simplistically. There are two reasons for distance. One would be, I'm just going to call it medical physical. And husbands and wives go through seasons of life where there might be pain or some Something that might really hinder what has been the normal sexual union.

Husbands and wives have to figure that out if there's a medical issue. And love and tenderness and mercy and understanding has to be applied to that. We know that God is against sex starved marriages, but husbands and wives sometimes have to work through medical things that are going on, that are real. And it's actually quite common. It's quite common.

Now the other reason that there is deprivation or distance is because of sin. Hardness of heart, various manifestations of sin. If there's distance, then a couple must understand where is the sin. And the only way to restore sexual intimacy is to deal with the sin. Does that sound too simplistic?

Well, that's what I believe. Now, also if you've lost, if you've lost the physical oneness, then it will perpetuate the distance. And if you've lost intimacy because of sin, then it means that there is a distance between you and Jesus Christ, which is far more serious. It's the most serious thing. Distance and sexuality is almost always related to distance from Jesus Christ.

From Jesus Christ. And so, couples should carefully weigh what's causing the distance, Because God is against sex-starved marriages. God is against these reductionistic, stupidified sexual experiences. He has something so far more beautiful than we can imagine. So don't deprive one another.

It's a sign that you're married and it's a sign that you believe the gospel and all of the love and the mercy and tenderness and patience and kindness and gentleness and self-control that the gospel calls for. That the gospel calls for. I want to close with two, three theologians just to make sure you don't think I've lost my mind. Okay? I'm gonna start with Jonathan Edwards in his work, The Excellency of Christ.

He says, And would you have him nearer to you than to be the same nature, united to you by spiritual union, so close as to be fitly represented by the union of the wife to the husband, of the branch to the vine, of the member to the head, yea so as to be one spirit. For so He will be united to you if you accept Him." And in this section He is speaking of the sexual union. And then Charles Spurgeon, our marriage union with our husband or wife cannot be more clear, more sure, more matter of fact than our oneness with Christ and our enjoyment of that oneness. Joy, joy, joy of whom we love is ours. And then Thomas Shepard who had a profound influence on Jonathan Edwards, Edwards quoted him all the time, more than anyone else, as he preached apparently.

And Thomas Shepard, the English Puritan, said it like this. And I know this is going to be embarrassing language, okay, but there's a reason that we're uncomfortable with this. And it's because of the reductionistic stupidification that's happened to us. But I'll read it even though it might seem embarrassing. And I want to read it carefully and just recognizing that there may be some nuances to this that aren't perfectly understood by us or maybe not even best stated by Thomas Shepard, but here's how he says it.

"'Consider he makes love to thee. "'Not one soul that hears me this day, "'but the Lord Jesus is a suitor unto, "'and now that ye would be espoused to him, he came into his own and they received him not. Whatever the secret purpose of Christ is, I regard it not. He makes love to all. Tis fervent, vehement, earnest love.

The Lord longs for this, pleads for this. Take thy soul to the bride chamber, for there to be with him forever and ever." So all this to say that Marriage is a picture of something greater. And everything in marriage is a picture of something greater. And the sexual union is absolutely a picture of something greater. And somehow, by God's grace, we could be delivered from this reductionistic, stupid view that the devil has foisted upon us and that we would see our sexual union as richly arrayed as the love of Jesus Christ toward us.

Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord, we pray that you would help us to learn how to love from you, from your son who has pledged his intimacy, who's made a covenant with us, who rejoices over his church with singing, who delights in his inheritance. Oh, Lord, we pray that you would give us your love so that we might be able to express it to one another. That our lives would be caught up in the eternal things of heaven. In the things that are of true value of this multifaceted diamond of Your love and that You would help us, Lord, in our marriages and in our sexual intimacy.

To be found expressing Your love and recognizing that we're not our own. Amen.