In the sermon, Scott Brown emphasizes the importance of understanding a marriage as a picture representing Christ's love for the church. He discusses the roles of husbands and wives, where husbands must love their wives as Christ loved the church, and wives must submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ. Brown also highlights the importance of making the early years of marriage happy, as it sets the foundation for the rest of the marriage. Additionally, the sermon addresses the topic of sexuality in marriage, explaining that couples must understand their bodies are not their own and should not deprive each other of affection. Brown encourages couples to navigate the challenges they may face in their sexual relationships with love, understanding, and patience.

Debra and I have been doing marriage conferences for many years, and over and over again we would hear people say, I wish I had heard this 20 years ago. And it was a hardship for them. And we started thinking, we'd like to catch people earlier, younger than that. We'd like to catch people 20 years before. And so I'm so glad that you're here.

It's really, really a delight. Now, let's say you've made some errors, maybe serious errors in your marriage so far, even if you've been married a short period of time, you can make a lot of errors in your marriage. We're here to say that God is a restorer. We're here to say that it's not over. We're here to say that Jesus Christ has paid for every failing.

And that should help you to get through. And I think we're here to say, you know, walk with one another all the way to the golden shore. Walk with one another and grow old together. It's actually very sweet to grow old together. And Deborah and I are kind of experiencing that now.

I want to talk about three things tonight. First, in marriage you're painting a picture. The first is in marriage you're painting a picture. And the second thing I want to say is Make the early years happy years and then make the rest of them happy years after that. And I'm going to take you to a passage of scripture that makes it so plain that that's what you should do.

And then thirdly, I want to say, don't let sex die in your marriage. Don't let sex die in your marriage. So three things. In marriage you're painting a picture. Secondly, make the early years happy years and the rest of them as well.

And then finally, don't let sex die. So this first point that I want to make is that marriage is a picture that you're painting. Marriage was designed by God to be a picture of Christ's love for the church. That's the picture you're painting in your marriage. Open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 5.

Ephesians chapter 5 verse 22. This is a representative text that really speaks of the truth of this idea that marriage is a picture of Christ's love for the church. Ephesians 5, 22. Ephesians 5 will be a passage we'll be going back to over and over again. It's the flagship text on marriage.

It really sums up almost everything that's said about marriage in the Bible. But Ephesians 5 22, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore just as the church is subject to Christ so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.

Let's pray. Oh Lord, Your Word is perfect. It's so helpful. We're so thankful to place ourselves under its wonderful authority. So I pray that you would bless us all now with wisdom from heaven.

Amen. Everybody gets married with expectations. You got married with expectations. You had a picture in your mind. There was something you wanted.

There were things that you expected from marriage. Maybe you feel let down. Maybe you don't. But you did have expectations. And often people get married and they, after a little while, they say, it wasn't supposed to be this way.

I didn't think it would turn out like this. And that's because, you know, people get married for different reasons. Some marry just to satisfy their lust. Others for companionship. Some people get married because they're just swept into a torrent of romantic feelings.

And you can find people who marry for money. There are people who marry for status or for beauty. I heard somebody say that God gave you hormones to trick you into marriage. He does. He does use those.

And you may have ended up at the altar for wrong reasons. But the good news is that God will give you His reasons to heal any of your bad ideas that you had about marriage. So marriage is design. Marriage is God's design. It has a storyline.

Marriage has color and texture to it. It's something that God has designed. And it's a living picture of love incarnate in the same way that Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, loved His church. So in marriage You're painting a picture of Christ's love for the church. And He gave Himself up for her.

And in the hours ahead, we want to try to give you insight from the Word of God to help you paint really well, to paint that picture beautifully, to paint it accurately. And so This question, why marriage is so critical. And to say that marriage is a picture, it points to something greater. Marriage is an earthly picture of something greater. It's a picture of the greatness of the love of Jesus Christ for the Church.

And a husband is not his own. He represents Jesus Christ in the marriage. A wife represents the church. A wife has a role to play, and it's the role of an obedient, adoring church. The husband has a role to play, the role of a loving savior who gives his life for his wife.

Children also have a role to play as well. Children are a picture of obedient Christians, obedient sons and daughters. Marriage is a picture really of the Gospel. And that's why In what we just read in Ephesians 5, you have these words as as, just as. These are probably the most important words in the text.

Six times, we're told that marriage is like something. It's as something. It's just as something. And it is a picture of Jesus Christ loving His church. And so for a husband it means that he doesn't represent himself.

He represents Jesus Christ. He has a role to play. He's not his own. He can't make up his own role. A marriage is not his plaything.

It's God's institution that He loves, that He created. And so a husband submits himself to the role that God created for him. And this is where so much confusion happens in marriages. People think they got married to find themselves. But God didn't design marriage that way.

He designed marriage so that you would represent Him in all that you do. And if you're confused about that, life will be rough. And this really is all about the declaration of the gospel. If you have a husband who doesn't love his wife, as Christ loved the church, you have a husband that's actually representing a false gospel. Because a true gospel states that God loves the world that he gave his only son.

If you find a husband that doesn't love his wife, he's not representing the true gospel. Because our marriages are far greater than just a marriage. They are actually meant to represent something so significant. Jesus Christ nourishes and cherishes His wife. And so a Christian husband has that same responsibility to do that with his wife.

He nourishes her. He cherishes her. He washes her with the washing of water by the word, because that's what Jesus Christ does for his church. So A marriage is a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ. A wife's submission and respect follows that same pattern as well.

Her submission to her husband is evidence that she actually believes the gospel. Her life pictures the church submitting to Jesus Christ. And a woman, a wife, needs to see herself for who she really is. She's a picture of the church. And she's, like her husband, is not his own.

She is not her own either. Because they have a role to play. And God is glorified in a wife's submission. It's a picture that she trusts that God is in control of her life. And she can submit to an imperfect husband Because he's sovereign, because he's good.

So all of this to say, the great deception that marriage is all about becoming who you are is so harmful. Marriage is about becoming what God has designed you to be. And so marriage declares this relationship. And I think that's why there's so much hatred and vitriol against marriage today. Why does the devil hate marriage?

The devil hates marriage because he hates the gospel. He hates the idea that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. He hates the idea that a church would submit to Jesus Christ. And so the devil has always waged war against marriage. He began his war at the first marriage to divide that couple and to teach them to seek their own way rather than his way.

But that's why the devil hates marriage, is because he hates the gospel. And to the extent that you get this straight will be to the extent that you'll be able to be married for the glory of God. A husband needs to understand that his life is not his own. His role is to play a role that he sees in the Word of God. And he doesn't make it up on his own.

And a wife the same way. She's not her own. She has a role to play. A wife can't use any lines in the play that she wants. A wife can't just paint anything she wants in the picture and neither can a husband paint anything he wants.

A husband can't say anything he wants as he's living out this drama of marriage. Because marriage is a little bit like a duet and there are lines that you use with one another. And what God has done with marriage, he's saying, use my lines. Don't use your own lines. It's not your drama.

When God saves a soul, He saves that soul to represent the most wonderful kingdom in the world, the kingdom of God. And so when you know who you are in the story, you will be able to see all of your marriage challenges in a different light. If you know who you are, if you know your role in marriage, you'll always know what to do. A husband can always know what he should do. He asks, what would Jesus Christ do?

What would Jesus Christ say to my wife? To my wife who's fearful? To my wife who's sick? To my wife who's angry? What does Jesus Christ say to His church?

He's full of grace and truth. But a husband just can't use his own lines. And the same thing with a wife. A wife, if she knows who she is, she's a glorious church. She's a church that respects her husband.

It's interesting though in the metaphor, a wife also loves her husband as Christ loved the church. I don't think the metaphors are wooden because Jesus Christ is Lord of all. And so a wife also plays the role of Jesus Christ in a different way than her husband might in that thing. So if you know who you are you'll always know what to do. So that's really the first thing that I want to say tonight.

So understand who you are and you'll know what to do. Okay? So, the next thing that I want to say is to make your early years happy years And then make all the rest of your years happy years. And I'd like you to open your Bibles to Deuteronomy 24, verse 5. Deuteronomy 24 verse 5.

Deuteronomy 24 verse 5. Deuteronomy 24 verse 5 really Deuteronomy 24 verse 5 really speaks of the first year of marriage. And chapter 24 in Deuteronomy brings various laws of God to protect the family. And there's this, the second law here is this law really of happiness. I believe that in the sequence of Deuteronomy, Moses is expounding in the eighth, he's expounding the eighth commandment in this section of Deuteronomy.

And the eighth commandment is, thou shalt not steal. And the first two laws in chapter 24, He's dealing with stealing, I believe. And so here's what it is. When a man has taken a new wife, He shall not go out to war or be charged with any business. He shall be free at home one year and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken.

So this is a law for newlyweds. We've got a few newlyweds in here now. And in this in this law the family has a higher priority than even the state because the husband ought not to go to war. If the state asks him to go to war, he should not go to war because he should stay home and make his wife happy. I think this is such a fantastic law.

During these years, during the months of your marriage and the early years of your marriage, you form patterns. And those patterns can either nourish the future or deprive the future. And God somehow desires that the first year of marriage is a time of nourishment, to set things aright. And what a man does with The first years of his life with his wife have a profound effect on his wife. If he's harsh with her, if he hurts her, if he neglects her, in the early years of marriage, she may have a difficult time with him.

She might have a difficult time even recovering from it. Bitterness can enter in. She may become like the city that Proverbs talked about, harder to win than a strong city. Her heart might become like bars of a castle. It really matters how a husband treats his wife in the early years of their marriage.

And I'm just going to say most of you are in the early years of your marriage. And so this law in Deuteronomy has to do with stealing. The first law in Deuteronomy 24 has to do with how adultery steals from a marriage. And, but this second law, I believe, is about how the state cannot steal from a young married couple by commanding a husband to spend the first year of his marriage with his wife just for one reason to make her happy because it steals the happiness of the wife. The happiness of a wife is prioritized by God.

Husbands should understand that one of the reasons God got them married was to make their wife happy. It's such a remarkable thing. So what should we say about this? I don't believe that this law is something that should just only tell you about the first year of your marriage. I think it should tell you about the first year of your marriage and the rest of the years after it.

Because what follows will be an extension of what started. You know, it's incumbent upon couples to make one another happy. You know, I get up in the morning before my endeavor does, and I'll go over and I'll sit in a chair over in that side of the room and I'll just be reading the Bible. And she comes down, she comes down those stairs every morning and I get up out of my chair And I go and I hug her. And she greets me with such a happy voice every morning.

And like if I call her in the middle of the day and she answers the phone, she sounds like she's 18 years old again. She sounds so happy to talk to me. It isn't, yeah what do you want? My wife never answers the phone like that. It's really, it's like when we first started noticing each other, you know, and she was just so happy to hear my voice.

She's never lost that. You know, I'm just so grateful for that. God has designed husbands and wives to bring happiness to one another. You have a role to play. It's the role of Jesus Christ.

There is no more happifying personality in the world than Jesus Christ and His Spirit. And husbands and wives are designed to mirror that happiness. So cheer your wife up in the first year of your marriage and keep cheering her up for the rest of the years of your marriage. It's a principle. You know, it's easy to get into ruts in a marriage, and they can become a very powerful force.

And I think that this passage has to do with starting off in the right direction. You know I was born in Alaska before it was a state, it was a territory, and at that time there was a sign at the beginning of the Alaska Highway that said, choose your rut carefully, you'll be in it for a long time. This is not a paved road. And it's like that in marriage. Choose your rut carefully because you'll be in it for a long time.

Here God wants to deliver couples from an unhappy life together so that they would actually dedicate themselves to making one another happy in the same way that the Lord Jesus Christ has done for his children. I was driving way out in the middle of nowhere, and it was probably 10 degrees outside. And I found myself in these frozen ruts driving down this country road in this farming community. And the ruts, the ruts were frozen so hard I didn't even have to steer the car. I took my hands off the wheel and drove for about a mile because the frozen ruts kept me there.

And that can happen in a marriage too. You know, breaking out of those ruts is something that I think we have scriptural help for in this time when we're together. You want to treat your wife so that she's thrilled with the mission that you're on and you want to treat your husband like you're thrilled with the mission that he's on as well and it's good of course it should be a mutual and joint mission. And we'll elaborate on that more. The third thing I want to say is don't let sex die in your marriage.

So the first, in marriage you're painting a picture. And you're not the center of the picture and the second is make the early years happy years this is God's design and make all the rest of the years like it and then finally don't don't let sex die in your marriage. Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. 1 Corinthians 7. There's so much confusion about sexuality because of the cultural pornography that we live in and all the other horrific messages that were given about human sexuality.

You're living in a time where the distortion machine on sexuality is running harder than ever. And so God gives us ways to understand how our sexual relationship should be. 1 Corinthians 7, verse 2. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her and likewise also the wife to her husband.

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does, do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. But I say this as a concession, not as a commandment. For I wish that all men were even as I myself, but each one has his own gift from God, one in this manner and one in that. Now, this passage speaks of the will of God for sexual intimacy in your marriage.

And here's the will of God. God desires you to be close. God desires you to be skin close. God desires you to be so close it's breathtaking. And He not only gives you desires for this, but he also gives you precepts and principles and commands to protect it and to guide it in a right direction.

And That's why in the opening chapters of the Bible, the two become one flesh. That has to do with sexuality. In Ephesians 5, the apostle connects sexuality with Christ's love for the church. It's very interesting. It's staggering that this love that a husband would have for his wife is like Christ's love for the church in this matter of intimacy.

It's a radical form of intimacy. And when we think about sexuality, we're always having to navigate different problems. We're dealing with differences, differences between men and women. Most couples, not all, experience differences in desire, differences in frequency, differences in location, differences in timing. And that's just a normal part of dealing with sexuality.

You know, you'll have women who are afraid to touch their husbands because it'll just light them up and they know what that means because there's a difference that they have with one another. But we have so many wrong ideas about sexuality. There are different reality shifts that are necessary to have God glorifying sexual intimacy. Here's the first reality shift. Our bodies are not our own.

Our bodies are not our own. That's really very staggering. The Bible teaches that married couples relinquish authority over their bodies. Of course the husband is the head of the wife, but that's not the end of it. There are ways that husbands submit to their wives, And this is one of the explicit manifestations of that.

So we first have to recognize that our bodies are not our own, but We're designed for mutual affection. So somehow a couple has to decide about mutuality. The second reality shift is a prohibition. Don't deprive. Don't deprive one another.

It means that we're meant to give something. If you don't deprive, it means that you have to open a door. It means that you have to give something that you might actually want to deprive. And what do we give? Well the word that the Apostle uses is the word affection.

We give affection. We don't deprive, but it doesn't stop there. We give affection. And then the third reality shift. Now let me just stop on that for a minute.

Affection, it has to do with a friendly disposition. That's the language the Apostle is using. It's to be well disposed. It's to be well attached and to have good will. So don't deprive, but have a friendly acceptance.

And then reality shift number three, Mutual authority. Mutual authority. I know this can be difficult. This is what God has designed. The authority is not one-sided.

It's mutual authority. And the language that goes like this, the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. That's verse 4 in 1 Corinthians 7. This is real authority.

Each one has rights over the other. But what that means is that each one is triggered to submit to the other. In Christian marriage you have a disposition to submit to one another in matters of sexuality and I and I think it goes to lots of different areas like that. It doesn't mean that one spouse forces the other one. Love isn't like that.

Love doesn't force. Submission in the narratives about marriage is offered. It's freely given. It's not forced. When the Bible says wives submit to your own husbands, that's not the same thing as saying husbands make your wives submit.

Because submission is something given voluntarily and freely. You can't force people to submit. Well, you can for a little while, but it never goes very well. Submission is voluntary. And then the fifth, or I'll just stop right there.

Mutual authority. When you have two people that are submitting to one another it means that they need to learn how to love one another. And that makes it difficult. Couples have to wait for one another. Couples have to have patience with one another in the sexual relationships.

But they are to give affection that is due. In other words, it's owed. You owe your spouse affection. You might not feel like it, but you owe it to them. And I don't know how to unpack all of the difficulties of that And how do you not force but owe at the same time?

We're not really told. But it arises out of a heart of affection, mutual affection. It arises out of the fact that you're not your own. That a husband loves his wife like Christ loved the church, and a wife submits to her husband like a glorious church who respects her husband, where both the husband and wife are walking in concert together. And they agree with one another about how all these things are done.

You know there are physical barriers, hormonal imbalances, infections, all kinds of things that would hinder a sexual relationship. There are other hindrances. Our past may, a past of sexual abuse might make sex really hard for some. Husbands and wives just need to understand that. That's their kettle of fish that they have to deal with in their marriage.

Their wrong views of sex. You know, the Roman Catholic Church really gave the impression that sex was dirty, and it was forbidden on holy days. So in medieval Europe, the Roman Church, they identified three-fourths of the days of the year where sex was forbidden. In other words, you might have wrong views about sex. And there are false teachers about sex.

There are harmful sex therapists. Pornography is the great false teacher. The father of lies would like to disappoint and harm you in your sexual relationship. You know, from time to time when a young man in our church is going to get married, I'll send that young man a letter and I'll say, look, whatever you, if you ever saw anything in pornography, don't do any of that. Because pornography is about taking.

Pornography is about using somebody. That's the polar opposite of Christ loving the church and giving himself for her. So we have to become untethered to our thinking that a pornographic culture has taught us. There are false teachers. You know, learning from porn is, you know, it'll make you a failure at love.

And this is the world that we live in. You may be hindered by guilt and a sense of lack of forgiveness because of your behavior before marriage. So there are there are definitely barriers and difficulties but here's the heart of what I want to try to communicate. Refusing to let sex die in marriage is one way that you declare over and over again that you are married. It's a way for a husband to declare over and over again that he's loving his wife like Christ loved the church.

It's a way that a wife declares over and over again through sexual union that she's a respectful honorable church. She adores her husband. And marriage is designed by God to keep love alive in the world. And you do that together. That's why He brought you together.

So, you're painting a picture, and it's not your picture. It's a picture of Jesus Christ and His Church. And you also have a duty to make one another happy. And you also have a duty not to let sex die in your marriage. So those are the three things I wanted to say tonight.

And we'll just continue to elaborate on many of these same themes going back to Ephesians 5 and other places. But what I'd like to do is just pray, and then Dr. Beekie, you could come up and finish us off tonight. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the wisdom, the beauty, the power of your Son, to keep love alive in the world through a couple, through a husband who loves his wife like Christ loves the Church, for a wife learning how to be an obedient church, to adore her husband.

I pray, Lord, that in this room, you would inflame love in these marriages. And it would spread from one generation to another to restore the old waste places, to rebuild the ruins of a dying culture, where husbands and wives love one another the way that you designed them to love. Amen. Thank you.