The sermon discusses the priorities and purposes of marriage and emphasizes the importance of viewing marriage as a means of sanctification. It highlights the role of husbands and wives as ambassadors of reconciliation and ministers of grace to one another. The speaker encourages couples to anchor their marriage in the gospel and cultivate a Gospel-saturated home. The sermon also addresses the significance of valuing and understanding one's spouse and using words that cultivate beauty and order. It concludes with the reminder to never give up and to always remember the purpose and calling of marriage.

Well, Wendy and I are privileged to be here. I want to state at the beginning that like your marriages, our marriage is a work ever in progress. For 35 years, we've constantly been learning how to love one another better, serve one another better. And so I know that we have a whole range of marriages represented here. Everything from four weeks to 42 years and things in between.

And some of you came to the conference here to be encouraged, some of you came because your marriage is suffering. So there are a whole range of reasons why you're here. And this will be one of the most exhausting day and a halfs that you've ever spent probably. It's just the nature of having session after session after session. And you can approach this type of a format in one of two mindsets.

Either it's something that you're getting through and you're looking to the end of tomorrow, or it's something that you're going to immerse yourself in and really be encouraged and learn from it. I would suggest the other one because the first one's too painful, first of all. But the second one is there's a lot of information that's gonna be given to you over the next several times together. We're gonna talk, like Scott said, about everything from the priorities and purposes of marriage to working through conflict in marriage and some other special topics. And I'm excited about what we're going to discuss together.

And I want you to get the most that you can out of it You know it's common at weddings to hear a message about how the couple should take this love that exists between them and turn it into a lasting and a healthy relationship and the assumption is that the Love at the moment between the marrying couple is the type of love that will last. And when it doesn't or when it's severely challenged, the couple wonders if they have fallen out of love. What happened to us? So a question I have for you, I'm going to have a lot of questions as we go together. I really hope that you will be thinking through them as you listen, Maybe tonight as you talk together, maybe on the way home after this weekend.

First question of all of the ones that I'm going to ask you is, why did you get married? Was it attraction between you and your spouse? Was it the desire to have and form a family? Were you lonely, feeling incomplete? Those are common reasons why people get married.

And they're not wrong in themselves, but if they constitute the sole reason or the principal reason why you got married and are still married, you'll face the possibility that you're missing the real purpose of marriage. What's more, these reasons do create misguided and unrealistic expectations that when they're not realized or when they're challenged, they lead to resentment, bitterness, depression, sometimes even divorce. So God takes this most comprehensive demanding relationship, which is marriage, and he sticks it right in the middle of his most important process, which is sanctification. And at first thought that might seem crazy because we ought to be sanctified first, right? So that we can get married as a fully sanctified person and we can chill a little bit and not have to worry about being married to a sinner.

But that's not the way it works. We do want life to be comfortable or at least consistent and predictable and when we get married, it just doesn't happen that way. So instead, God puts this relationship, marriage, that none of us have the character for, that none of us can pull off, into which we all bring weakness, we all bring failure. He puts it right in the middle of this process of making us more like Christ and he does that on purpose. He makes it even more challenging by placing before us what Scott and I will talk about tonight, tomorrow, the commission to imitate this relationship between Christ and the church, and it's an impossible task.

Can we just say that from the very beginning? It's an impossible task. What does the world say when they hear that the divorce rate for Christian marriages is greater than 50 percent? What do they see when husbands and wives are fighting for control and dominance in marriage? What do they see when spouses fail to be faithful to one another and when professing Christian wives and husbands act like they can hardly stand one another and struggle to find things that they enjoy about their relationship, what does the world think?

It sees a reflection of modern marriage, doesn't it? It sees the devil set up blueprints for relationships. They don't see Christ. They don't see a great mystery. They don't see the picture that you introduced that you're going to talk about more tomorrow.

And I was not thinking myself about these profound things when I got married. As a young man, I was running track, college, I wanted to marry a believer but I also had a laundry list of things that I wanted and really desired in a wife. Athleticism, beauty, friendliness, intelligence, why not just make the list long, right? And I was not thinking that my marriage would be about glorifying God. I was concerned about fulfilling myself.

And I am going to assume this evening that each of you has arrived at the point where your initial expectations have been challenged. I'm assuming that. Where you've seen failures, you've seen victories, and that you desire to move to the next step. And I'm not going to be, like I said at the beginning, naive and think that there aren't a few of you couples that are facing some significant struggles coming into this time together. But my desire is to be an encouragement to you.

My desire is to challenge you. I want you to know that Wendy and I have been there and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. So before I say anything else I'd like you to each write down an answer to this question. At the end of your marriage what do you hope to see? You can write a few different things if you'd like.

There's not a right answer. I would, though, like you to write down what you actually think and not what you necessarily believe would be the expected answer, particularly after just listening to Scott. So what is it that you think you want to see at the end of your marriage? And I ask that question Because I think it reveals our priorities and our purposes right now. For example, some of you might have put, I hope to see that.

I hope to see a large, happy family with lots of grandchildren. And that answer might reveal the high value that you put upon family and relationships. You might have been more abstract and said that you want to see a godly illustration of God's love for the church. Those are all good answers. And maybe some of you just said, I hope we're still married.

And by the way, if you did say that, I hope we're still married, That's actually a more profound answer than it may seem, because that hope likely in the face of what is currently a difficult marriage is a commitment to the sacred covenant nature of marriage. Most other people in the world don't have a till death do us part mentality. So whatever you did put down, I would like you to add the following to your paper. I would like you to say, I want to see at the end of my marriage that I have been used by God as a minister of grace towards my spouse, and that our marriage has been used by God to evangelize the nations. I want to see at the end of my marriage that I have been used by God as a minister of grace towards my spouse and that our marriage has been used to evangelize the nations.

Now, you may be thinking, first of all, I'd never think about my marriage in that kind of scope. Evangelize the nations. It just seems so beyond what I'm wrestling with right now. But I want you to realize being a holy example to the world is the reason God called Abraham and set him and his descendants apart from the rest of mankind. God said in Exodus 19 that if Israel would obey his voice and keep his covenant, then they would be his holy possession among what?

All the peoples. A kingdom of priests, a holy nation. And to play out her role as God's priestly nation, Israel had to be separate, sanctified, and different from the surrounding nations. And you are called out from the world to be different with regard to your marriage. Now hold that thought for a moment.

Second Corinthians five, Paul says that for an individual believer, the best possible thing, and I'm going to explain why I'm going to what seems like a whole jump over here, the best possible thing is to be absent from the body and be present with the Lord. You've probably heard that passage before. Why does he say that he would rather remain on earth? I'll let him answer that from Philippians 1.23 where he says, I'm hard pressed between remaining with you and having a desire to depart to be with Christ, which is far better. So he gives kind of an objective statement there, right?

Far better be with Christ. Nevertheless, to remain in the flesh, anyone know the rest of this verse? Is more needful for you. That's what he says. More needful for you.

And being confident of this, I know that I shall remain and will continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith that your rejoicing for me may be more abundant in Jesus Christ by my coming to you again." So what he says is to remain in the flesh is more needful for, not himself, but for others. What that tells me is, and when I ask what others, well it's everyone that God's brings into my life. It's my spouse, it's my children, it's my fellow church members, it's my neighbors, it's the nations. And this is what I want to communicate to you tonight more than anything else you are alive Right now because God intends that you should spend your life in the service of others You're no different than Paul You can objectively say wow to be in the presence of God right now for eternity future is far better, and yet it is more needful that I remain for you. You are not a slave of calendars.

You are not a slave of calendars. You are not a slave of busyness and the various idols that you've put into your life to distract you from the Lord. You are a prized soldier fighting for the kingdom of God, and marriage is one of your greatest possible weapons. If your main view of marriage centers around earthly romantic ideals or family goals, as important as they are, you would be missing the bigger point. Your Marriage is needful for the salvation of the lost and the glory of God.

Your marriage, your life is supposed to be oriented towards other people. Otherwise, it would be better just to be at home with the Lord. And so friends, there's so much at stake. There's too much at stake Your marriage must be Consecrated your marriage must be a godly relationship and a testimony. It cannot remain a war zone Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 5 if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old is gone. The new has come. We are Christ's ambassadors as though God is making his appeal through us. And so Paul says that the nature of Christ's work was to restore or reconcile the lost to God. And so as a child of God, you've become his ambassador.

And that's an awesome responsibility. And you cannot be a good ambassador Preaching about the reconciliation, the end of war with God and spiritual death, if your marriage is marked by animosity and unfaithfulness, because if your marriage contradicts that message, you will sabotage the very goal of your life. It's that important. You've probably heard these things before and it may sound general and spiritual and abstract. How does being an ambassador of reconciliation play out in the middle of a war zone of five children under the age of 10 all fighting with one another?

Is it being a referee? Is it just surviving the chaos? Let me ask you this, what is an ambassador? What are you reconciling? An ambassador is a representative sent with a commission or a message to give to a person, group or nation.

Ben Franklin, for example, was an ambassador to France for the United States. He was sent to represent the U.S. Interests. You are God's ambassador to your spouse, to your children, to the world. You represent his interests and his kingdom and your message is the gospel and how you can bring reconciliation with God and with others.

Scott will speak more about Ephesians 5 tomorrow. I want to briefly introduce it tonight. Because Ephesians 5 reminds us of this calling of husbands to love their wives as Christ loves his bride, the church. And many men have that sacrificing part down. They'll work hard on behalf of their families, all weak in order to provide for their families and call that love.

But men, while your love must be sacrificial, it must also have a purpose and a direction. That's where the concept of an ambassador or a minister of grace comes in. God has placed you in this marriage with a purpose and that purpose is to seek the betterment and sanctification of your wife. And that's why Paul reminds us that while Christ sacrificed for his bride, he gave up his prerogatives, he died on the cross, He did so in order that, can't miss that clause, he did in order that he might present the church blameless to God. So if you operate from the perspective that you're a minister of grace meant towards your wives then your attitude will be I am responsible before God to love my wife sacrificially so that in order that she will become mature in Christ.

Do you hear the purpose and the direction and the end goal of your love? Dan Allender in his book Intimidalli writes, we must see our spouses in the light of what they are meant to become without turning bitter or complacent about who they are. Let me say that once more. We must see our spouses in the light of what they are meant to become without turning bitter or complacent about who they are. Is that not what Christ does with the church?

It requires a radical commitment to love our spouses as they are while longing for them to be what they are not yet. I agree with that statement, and I think it's part of the key to a successful marriage. The foundation of a biblical marriage must be the recognition that God has called a man and a woman to be a minister of grace to one another so that he, the Lord, may be glorified and that they might be sanctified. And when we get caught up in these earthly routines of eat and work and sleep, when we start basing our motivation to work on our marriage upon how we're feeling. When we grow tired or bitter or discontent or we get cynical when we live our lives with a self-centered mentality, chances are that we have not built this foundation and we aren't thinking of our marriages this way.

So getting back to you men, if you've been called to love your wife so that they will become mature in Christ, do you know what the strengths and weaknesses are of your wife? Are you praying for her daily? Are you seeking to wash her in the Word even as Christ washes the church? Are you developing in your mind a plan for how you may encourage growth in your wife? Are you developing your own understanding of God's words so that you can be prepared to make wise decisions and answer questions?

Have you taken full responsibility for the emotional, physical, spiritual condition of your household? So that you will not blame your past or your wife or your circumstances or society for any of your family's failures. All of this is what is meant by love your wife. Love has a direction, has a purpose. Biblical love's purpose is the edification and sanctification of others, and you remain on this earth to be others-oriented.

Of course, only God can produce the loveliness that's described in Ephesians or in 1 Peter and other passages, and I'm not meaning to remove all responsibility from your wives, from you ladies, as you certainly are accountable before God. But the fact is that God has appointed you husbands to be one of the instruments through which he blesses your wives. And one last comment as an intro to what you're going to talk about tomorrow. Women, I would ask you this question. I know you're mostly going to focus on this, so I'm only going to ask them a brief question.

What's that? Go as far as I want? Why do you think that God asks wives to submit to their husbands? Is it just because someone needs to be in charge? Is it just because you got the short end of the rib and you get to imitate the church while your husband gets to imitate Christ?

Is it just the providential circumstance of having two X chromosomes instead of an X and a Y? In the first chapters of Genesis, we read how everything that God made was good. There was only one thing that was not good, and that was that man was alone. And when we hear Genesis say that It's not that Adam should be alone. We automatically think, poor Adam.

What a lonely guy. But Adam was not lonely. At least that's not what the verse indicates. He had this companionship with the Lord every day, right? The verse says that he was alone and that there was something about that particular situation that was not good.

He needed help, and so God created Eve to come alongside Adam to assist him in their calling to oversee God's creation. This idea of a help meet, Scott will bring it, he'll flesh it out more tomorrow. But it's one in which one surrounds another with help. And our society takes such a negative view towards leadership of men in marriage. It assumes that men leading their homes make women become passive doormats or stepped on by tyrannical husbands.

And that's not at all what the Bible means by help me To be help me just to surround one's husband with help It's not a passive role. It's an active rule It means that you wives are so effective so consumed with purpose that in all directions and all things you help your husbands lead the family, help them in their work, help them in their own spiritual growth and maturity because they could not do it alone. They couldn't do it without you. It is true some men look at their wives as secretaries that wife might be a help but she is not a help me nor is a wife a help me who dominates and rules her marriage a help need is a counterpart to her husband, and there is such an intimacy that is developed between them that there is a greater unity with the two standing face to face and together than could be accomplished with one alone. I've often told couples at weddings that wives balk at being called helpers because in their minds it implies a triviality or a lack of importance and yet who in Scripture is described as a helper?

The Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me? Jesus' name for the Holy Spirit is what? Helper. Wives, do you know what your husband needs?

Here's the practical aspect of it. Do you know what your husband needs? As I said, the term help me has the concept of surrounding with help. And Wendy is the greatest help to me when she anticipates what I need because of my weaknesses. Do you know your husband's strengths and weaknesses?

Are you praying for him daily? Are you anticipating where those weaknesses or the challenges that he faces are going to make him ineffective? And are you rushing before, behind, and alongside of him to shore that up? Are you giving him good counsel? I'll leave the rest of Ephesians 5 to Scott and go back to you men.

Some of your wives have forgotten their identity as a daughter of God. They've lost sight of God's high calling. Place yourself in your wife's shoes for a moment. Fact is that however wonderful your marriage is, when children are waking you up repeatedly before 5 a.m., when every night is spent figuring out what to make for dinner, when mornings are spent shoveling laundry into the dryer and remembering the days when you actually had time to fold them, it's difficult to remember the passion that brought you and your spouse together. And when your weekends are not spent holding hands over candle at dinner but instead faring four children from one church event to another, it's difficult to Remember the importance of appreciating your husband, or indeed to find the time to remember to be kind, or to pay attention to others, or to make each other feel loved.

Marriage can easily become pots and pans. Once you get to your 30s and 40s, the kids are grown or nearly grown, it's common to struggle with identity, be frustrated with not being needed or even desired in the ways that you once were. It's easy to feel lonely or lost, unappreciated. It's easy to forget who you are and to wonder how you got here. But men, your wife is a woman like no other.

Each person uniquely reflects God's glory, but as a husband, it is your privilege to enjoy the reflection of God's glory in your wife. And it's your honor to further enhance the power and beauty of that glory in her. No one else on the face of the earth has the same access or opportunity both to enjoy and to shape her glory. So the question I have for you is, do you see your wife that way? What do you need to do to start seeing differently?

And women, I would ask you the same thing. When we see ourselves as ministers of grace to our spouse and desire to see God's glory better reflected in him or her. We live less for easy peace and far more for life enhancing godly change. And when we see that God has kept us here right now in this moment, in this marriage for the great purpose of God in redeeming and sanctifying my spouse, only then can I see what a privilege I have been given to take this person, this image bearer, to enhance the reflection of God's glory in him or her, your spouse is not an object to serve your needs and desires he or she is a king or a queen, a priest, an heir, a child of God? No one else on the face of the earth has the same access or opportunity to influence him or her like you do.

And I doubt that either one of you perfectly reflects God's glory. And if we recognize we're both sinners, because of that fact, expect that conflict will happen, we can avoid thinking that somehow there's something uniquely wrong with our marriage. But a marriage is no better than the vision that we have for one another, the willingness that we have to sacrifice to see these things happen. And here's the thing, The paradox of all of this is that the more we seek for ourselves, the less we get. And the more that we seek for others, the more others oriented we become, the more we receive for ourselves.

It's just the way of God's kingdom, always has been, and always will be. So how do you get to this point? Let me give you some applications to put into practice, okay? Number one, commit that everything that you say, do, and decide with regard to your marriage and family will be centered upon the gospel. It doesn't make sense to talk about what we've been saying, what I've been saying about being a minister of grace if you're not anchored on the gospel.

By having a gospel saturated home, both of you will constantly be exposed to the Word of God and be reoriented away from the world's narrative. We really need to see this as war friends. Every time that your wife, that your children, or whatever men go out into the world, they are being, the world is attempting to script and re-script them to its own narrative. And it's only the Bible, not your amazing wisdom, but the Bible, God's wisdom, that cuts through defensiveness, deceit, pretense, busyness, restores vitality and joy. So you need to be willing to struggle rather than demand quick fixes.

I don't know how much your home right now is saturated with the gospel. Maybe your home is saturated with routines. Maybe your home is saturated with just surviving day to day, heat, sleep, work, all the various things that we need to do, and you've kind of compartmentalized the gospel into little times maybe during a training moment or a devotion around the table at night. But for all other observations of people that would come up and look at your home, what would they come away with as they describe it? Would they say, this home is saturated with the gospel of God?

Or would they say, well, this home just looks like the neighbor's home, just down the street? Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, hunger for righteousness, thirst for righteousness. When he uses the analogy of hunger and thirst, he's pointing to the activities that go to our daily routine, the very foundations of life. What he's saying is, righteousness is as important as the food and water that you eat and drink. Every day that needs to be our attitudes too.

We need to believe that without it we would die. We cannot have our families be spiritually malnourished because they are not eating and drinking regular balanced meals of God's Word. That's why God loves to even make the analogy of reading and taking in God's Word. It's like eating. Ezekiel 3, right?

Eat this scroll. It's sweet. Internalize the Word of God. Psalm 34. Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Take it in, assimilate it into the tissues of your life. Application two, know your spouse. This follows from what I said earlier about our love being directional, having an angle, presenting our wife blameless before the Lord. Now that we're anchored in the Word, now that we have a Gospel saturated home, we need to study our spouse in the light of that Word. What do they need?

What is his or her giftedness? What are their burdens, their potential, their passions? Have you ever asked those questions before? Or has it been a long time since you did? Learn what it means to draw him or her out to live for the glory of God.

Number three, use the results of that to begin to think about, what do I need to do, especially you men, what do I need to do to encourage my wife to love the Lord? What do I need to do as a wife to help my husband to grow to be more like Christ? Constantly stir one another to good deeds. Think about asking your spouse questions like, how is it that you are doing and loving and serving the kingdom of God? Do you ever have questions like that, that you ask your spouse?

How are you doing loving the Lord? How do you feel like you, do you feel like you've been growing? Do you feel like there are things that are holding you back? What's your current challenges? What's the biggest obstacles that you find to serving the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength right now.

What is your greatest passion? What do you want? And we need to be able to share with one another, to encourage one another in our labors, to dream over how this calling of God, how our life and how our home and how our marriage could actually become this place where we evangelize the nations because the testimony coming out of this consecrated home is so powerful, so bright, so influential that everybody takes notice. Talk about the church being a city, a light on the hill, that home is a light on that street, in that neighborhood, in that community. Application four, commit that every word you speak will cultivate beauty in order.

The very beauty in order that you hope to cultivate can be destroyed by unkind, heartless, uncaring attitudes and words. Choose your words as if you were choosing an instrument of death. You know, sarcasm means a rending of the flesh. Any of you struggle with sarcasm? Mocking.

Mocking is, in Psalm 1, one of the three areas of the sinners that trying to pull the believer in the wrong direction. Are we men or women that are too easily known by crass humor or sarcasm or mockery? Words of life. God spoke the very universe into being by his word. Words influence, they have power.

We know what James talks about, right? About how we can set a forest on fire with the tongue. Solomon says in Proverbs 18, death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruits. We also hear some more from the Psalms and Proverbs. The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom and his tongue speaks justice.

The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. The tongue of the wise brings healing. Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." Don't we want that to be our words? You know, in James 3, you don't get any techniques. You're not going to see like 10 communication strategies for an effective marriage.

Instead, what he does is he invites you to sense the horror of the damage that you can do if you don't bridle your tongue. He tells you to sit out in the burned out fire forest and see the death and destruction that resulted from one word, one match. And he wants you to know what's at stake. Application five, understand that the paradox of the gospel is that God rules through serving and that glory is often most produced through suffering. Boy, talk about an advanced lesson, right?

We may spend our entire life learning that one. But God's greatest glory came in dying on behalf of his people. As Philippians 2 reminds us, have this mind among yourself, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, took on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." And then what? Humbling himself, even to the point of death on a cross. And so what does Jesus do?

He shows us that even the creator of the universe serves. In fact, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, unless I serve you, you cannot be clean. And then Romans talks about how even after he did all of that in death, how much more in his life will he continue to serve us, right? So God is serving us every moment. He's the creator of the universe.

Cannot you men as leaders of your home be servants? Such an important question. Number six, work to value how God is uniquely knitting you and your spouse into an undefeatable team. The world, like I said, daily rescripts us to its narrative. A man returns home after a long tiring day of meetings or work, feeling like the last thing he wants to do is talk about it.

Or a woman secretly resents her husband being out in the world while she's stuck at home with the kids and housework. She does want to hear about it. She wants to tell him about it. Chaos enters the relationship, begins To unravel the passion and purpose of the marriage, the alternative though, is a husband and wife who value each other's calling, who see the bigger purpose, see the bigger priorities of the marriage. See one another as two halves of a team.

They share together, they plot their lives together, They see how each one's unique contribution to this family, this marriage, this world is going to bring about greater glory, greater beauty, greater order, and reflect the gospel. And Last, don't give up. Perhaps when you look at your marriage against the biblical standards that I've been talking about, you realize how much there is that needs to change. That's inevitably something that happens. This type of an exhortation at the beginning of a time together can be either very uplifting to remind us of what God has in store for us, or it can be, I'm like a thousand miles away from that.

I thought I was going to learn some techniques but I'm just realizing I just have everything backwards and upside down. In fact there are days when you say to yourself, who is this man or who is this woman I married? I don't understand him or her at all. And we're having even a difficult time getting along. You realize that you've let yourself be consumed with work, with your own interests, because trying to fight with your wife for the leadership of the home or trying to come to agreement with her on what is best for the family simply seems impossible or too much work.

And some of you wives may be thinking about how you've had to run the home. The thought of your husband making wrong or self-centered decisions drives you to try to minimize the damage. Maybe he's already caused you heart ache and perhaps as a result you've been trying to steer your husband on a better path through criticism or stubbornness, withholding of intimacy, arguing any number of tactics. Maybe you've gotten to the point where you just want to be left alone to your duties and your husband to his duties. Is that what you want?

Maybe you're saying, it's not what I want, but I don't know about my spouse, and I feel like we can't make it work unless we both want it. Friends, let me exhort you tonight, do not fall into these deadly patterns and remember your calling. Fix your eyes upon the vision that God has set for you, the picture that Scott talked about earlier that I've been expanding upon and have the faith that God placed you here and kept you here for a reason. There are no accidents. Do you believe in the providence and the sovereignty of God, God does not make mistakes.

Let me tell you about a poem that I read. It's always dangerous when people say, I want to read you a poem. But this is a good one. The old man took her tired hand to hold for one last time. The years had finally pressed her to her final breaths of life.

Their wrinkled hands and warm embrace brought back the long-gone years. The memories of their happy times and those dissolved in tears. The old man saw in her ill frame the girl that stole his heart. He saw in her that gracious gaze that filled their home with warmth. His mind turned back to lighter days when she did make her mark.

The children, her love reared for them, her single heart for God. He also felt the weight of grace that marked her many years, how she had loved him patiently when he did cause those tears. The old man said, My dear, the time was cruelly short to me. How can I say goodbye to you and let your passing be? How can I ever say farewell or ever let you part?

You are to me a precious thing, the joy of my old heart. And as his eyes began to well, she reached to touch his face, and then her quivering voice began to give one final grace. This is the day the Lord has made, the one he's brought to pass. This day was written in his book before my first was passed. The Lord has granted us to spend together all these years.

He's also granted all the joy and even all our tears. In truth, this is a glorious day. We owe him. Owe him so much thanks. Dear, we made it.

By him we did. Yes, we made it by his grace. O Father, grant that we may see our days as at their end. O let us know the weight of grace in every year we spend. Now What I like about that poem, beyond its sentiment, is that last part, the Lord has granted us to spend together all these years.

He's granted the joy, He's granted the tears. In truth, this is a glorious day. We owe him all so many thanks, we made it. We made it. By his grace.

I think there's a sense of purpose in that poem. That's why I like it. As profound as a friendship may be between a husband and wife and as deep may be the memories of years of family some of you have been accumulating and you know you remember the time when we first met and how we got married and the time that we spent together and the children that we raised and you're just you're building all of this profundity and nostalgia and so on that makes up a life together. The greatest beauty is seen in the sustaining work of God who not only uses a couple to display to the world Christ's relationship to the church, but also does something in them, through them, and to one another. He intends to sanctify you.

He intends through your daily dying to yourself to serve one another, to help you turn to him for strength. He wants to remind you that he's sufficient. I said earlier, it's impossible, it is, but not with the Holy Spirit in your home, not with the Lord behind you. So when I read the words, dear, we made it, there's a sense of destination. We made it.

We didn't just endure for decades. How sad if that was the testimony we just endured. We made it. It's not saying we survived one another. There's a sense of arrival.

And the wife says, in truth, this is a glorious day. Why? Because she anticipates being with the Lord. What she knew all along was better, to be present with the Lord. Right?

She knows that eternity future is always in sight within our present. In fact, this future, friends, gives meaning to the present. It makes it worth the effort. Makes it worth the fight. So the comment, dear, we made it is about saying ideally, we lived out our marriage always remembering that God has a purpose.

And our goal is always to recognize His hand, His grace, His strength, and our calling. And friends, that's the foundation of a strong marriage. If we want to talk about priorities and purposes, it's that. To get to that perspective as quickly as we can by the grace of God and to be filled with His strength to live it out. Can I pray for us?

Lord, I do thank You for Your grace. I thank You for Your strength that You offer us through Your Holy Spirit. Father, we want to have marriages that are strong, healthy, vibrant, God-glorifying marriages. We want to be the light on the hill, the street, the neighborhood, community. We want to be used by you to be ministers of grace to our spouse.

And Father, there are some here that have had a dry spell. There are some here that have been struggling with that perspective. Father, I pray that you would encourage homes. I pray that you would encourage marriages tonight and tomorrow. And Lord, there are other marriages here that are for the most part healthy, some of them just starting excited in the newness of what you have before them, and as they hear some of these words, maybe some of it's foreign, maybe some of it's scary.

And Lord God, I just pray that we all would encourage one another, be vulnerable this weekend to speak into each other's lives, to exhort one another to righteousness, because Lord, what you've set before us is something so much bigger than our marriage or families. It is intended to evangelize this world. So I pray that we would see that mighty calling. It's in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you.