The sermon 'Get the Picture Right' by Scott Brown discusses the sacred nature of marriage and its function as a representation of Christ's relationship with the church. Marriage is described as a sacred space created by God for His glory, where the roles of husband and wife are divinely ordained. The sermon emphasizes that marriage is not about individual happiness but about fulfilling God's purposes and manifesting the love of God. Ephesians 5 is highlighted as a key biblical passage that outlines the roles and responsibilities within marriage, comparing the husband's love to Christ's love for the church and the wife's submission to the church's obedience to Christ. The sermon warns against adopting a consumerist or self-centered view of marriage and encourages couples to see their relationship as a picture they are painting, reflecting the gospel. Marriage is portrayed as a duet, with each partner playing a complementary role defined by God, aiming to glorify Him.

Well, tonight I want to begin with just some basic things about marriage. And I want to talk about what I'm going to call two of the most freeing opportunities that your marriage has. And the first is that marriage is a sacred space. It's something that God set aside for his own glory. And it is sacred.

And then the second is the picture of marriage. And these two are so helpful to understand our marriages. But I think we should recognize the fact of marriage that God is the creator of all things. It was God who created a man and a woman. It was God who created marriage.

And God is infinitely wise, and God is infinitely all-knowing. And there is no imperfection in God. This is the God that created your marriage. And thankfully, you know, God reveals himself in his word about how to conduct ourselves. And that's really what we'll be focusing in on, what does the Bible tell us about being married.

But you know, who's here tonight? I know many of you, I'm so thankful to have lots of the young couples from our church here tonight. But I realize that there's really no generic marriage here in this room. Some of you are doing really well. Some of you just want to be encouraged in your marriage to sweeten what you have.

And, but whenever, whenever we do these things, there's almost always somebody in the room who's on a last ditch effort. And, you know, many times, you know, Deborah and I have talked with couples who they were, this was kind of their last stop. And maybe that's you, maybe you feel trapped, Maybe you've fallen into resignation or cynicism. Maybe there's somebody who's ready to quit. I hope not because we're here to convince you not to quit because God did this with you for His own glory.

And the question that often people are in that place put to themselves is why is this so hard? And how long can I stay in a marriage like this? And one of the big problems in our whole culture when it comes to almost anything is that it has become so fashionable and it's actually very deceptive to always be asking how do I feel about these things. The most disastrous question is, is this thing making me happy? And that really is a trail that leads to the destruction of a marriage.

It's really the consumerist view of marriage that asks, you know, what am I getting out of this? It's the therapeutic view. It's really an ideological scam that ruins so many things in our lives. When it comes to marriage, you're not a consumer, you're a builder, you're a creator, you're filling something up with the love of God. And so you're not really a consumer, but we live in the middle of a society that is just afflicted with a neurotic temperature taking about everything.

And it's an invitation to a disaster. But if you're married, you're doing one of the most important things you'll ever do in the world because it really is a sacred thing that God created. And I hope that you will see your particular marriage as something very sacred, something of God, something that needs to be cherished, because in a marriage, you're always creating a little kingdom, And it's a kingdom of love. And you know, you're shaping a whole world. If you have children, that world continues to expand.

But you're shaping this little world that exists in the midst of your local church and it exists in the midst of your friends and your businesses. A Marriage is really at the center of all society. Everything comes from a relationship between a man and a woman. And that's how sacred marriage is. So I want you to open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter five.

I want you to find verse 22. Ephesians five is the flagship text, it's the summary text on marriage in the Bible. It draws together so many of the threads of truth about marriage. And we're gonna visit and revisit Ephesians five until we're done actually tomorrow night. Verse twenty-two 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 loved the church and gave himself for her." So in these four verses, four times you encounter a comparison that's being made as, just as. So a comparison between Christ and his church and your marriage is being made as, as also, just as. So you have this comparison. And the comparison is really one of the central things we need to understand about a marriage, is that your marriage is a comparison.

Your marriage is a picture. Now, let's talk about this matter about marriage being a sacred space. It's sacred because Jesus Christ created it, and it's sacred because Jesus Christ is the head over a marriage. And so the proposition goes like this, Christ is head of the church and he's head over all things and he must be head over my marriage. In other words, he is the one that we are calibrating from in our marriages.

Colossians 1.17 says that he has the preeminence, He has the first place in everything, Colossians 1, 17. And he is before all things, and in him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. So when two people get married, they have consecrated themselves to the institution that God created. It's the institution that he rules by his own word.

And so a marriage must be consecrated. To consecrate is really to dedicate, it's to set apart, it's to hallow something. And God made your marriage to be something that is set apart for clean things, for true things, for things that represent the love of God. And so marriage is sacred space. I'll say it a different way.

It's God's holy institution. When you got married, you entered into God's institution. You entered into something that belonged to Him. When you got married, you passed from a state of singleness into another state of being, And it's the state of marriage. You entered into an institution.

You could illustrate it like this. When you go into the White House, you don't get to act any way you want. There are rules. If you dine with the Queen of England, you don't get to hold your fork any way you want. Years ago, we gathered a bunch of our grandchildren together and we had we were doing a table manners and etiquette with all of our grandchildren and so we were showing them videos of eating with the Queen of England it was hilarious and it was it was really fun but here's the deal If you're dining with the Queen of England, you must hold your teacup in a particular way.

Everything is laid out very formally before you go, and you've got to behave that way. When you dine with the Queen of England, you don't get to do what you want to do because you entered somebody else's kingdom and that kingdom is governed by particular rules. And marriage is like that. Malachi calls it God's holy institution. And in a way, when you get married, you're sort of, as you enter into marriage, You are the outsider in God's institution.

You are in His space. You are in His sacred space. And because marriage belongs to Him. And you know, when you enter into the White House, you enter respectfully, you proceed quietly, you don't get to crawl on the furniture, you don't get to go around and open up the drawers in the White House, you don't get to rifle through the house because you're in someone else's institution. And marriage is like that.

And the problem with marriage though, is that everybody enters into God's institution with a mixture of bad baggage, bad manners, selfish motives, wrong ideas about marriage, about sex, about relationships, about talking with one another, all kinds of wrong ideas got downloaded into our souls and worldly ideas and dull consciences and wrong thoughts about manhood, wrong thoughts about womanhood. You know, all of these things have entered into us when we enter into the institution of marriage. But it's really critical to understand that when you enter into marriage, you entered into something that God created for His own glory. And He has designed it so that you would live by his rules. And when you do, the love of God gets manifested.

So marriage is sacred space. And secondly, marriage is an earthly picture of the greatest thing that ever happened on this planet. And that is that God sent his son to sacrifice himself for his church. And so, and marriage is a picture. That's what Ephesians 5 makes very, very clear.

Marriage is as Christ's relationship with the church. That's the most fundamental thing. And what that means is that when you get married, you begin painting a picture of something. And all of us have been painting pictures. Are there things in the pictures that we've been painting that tell us that we're off course?

Have we painted some ugly pictures? Or are we painting the picture of Christ and His church? And this is the great mystery. Now, One of the problems with marriage is that we often feel let down in our marriages. And most often it's because we were looking for something from our marriage that God did not intend for our marriage.

It's really important that we resolve in our minds what God intended for our marriage. Remember, this is His institution. What does He want? And often our disappointments in marriage, they just reflect the confusion that we have about marriage, that we're derailed by our sinful passions, by our backgrounds, by our idolatry, And we have expectations. And some of those expectations are false.

And often our idols are really the chief designers of our marriages, not the love of Jesus Christ and all of what that means. So often, often the desire to have a better marriage is really about our personal selfishness. We want a better marriage but we really want it for ourselves. We don't want it so that particularly we're glorifying God. And you know your marriage becomes a picture of fulfilling your needs and conforming to your personality and pandering to your love language or you know coddling something that shouldn't be coddled.

So marriages can just become an obsession with self. That's why it's so critical to understand that your marriage is the painting of a picture. And the picture you're painting is the love of Jesus Christ in his church. And this is God's design for marriage. And This earthly relationship is a picture that we're always painting.

And I want us all to just consider what kind of picture we've been painting. Are there parts of this picture that need to be erased and painted over again. What you have in Ephesians 5 is a representative relationship. The husband represents the love of Christ, and the wife represents respect and obedience of the church. In Ephesians 5, the husband is a picture of Christ, and the wife is a picture of the church.

Now, the whole family is designed for the same picture. The husband represents Christ, the wife represents the church, and the children actually represent an obedient church, because children obey your parents. When you have these three things working in a marriage, you've got a picture of the gospel. So this passage is the most comprehensive in the Bible. Okay, but when it comes to a husband, a husband doesn't represent himself in the marriage.

A husband is not his own. He cannot make up his own role. Marriage is not his institution. It's God's institution. And God governs his institutions by his word.

Just the same way that He governs the church by His Word, He also governs marriage by His Word. So, a man must be becoming like Christ to paint those pictures of Christ in the church. And in the same way, a wife doesn't represent herself in the marriage. She doesn't make up her own role. She's not finding herself in her marriage.

Her role is actually defined for her. Her role is given to her by God and she's not writing her own script. She's given a script that God wrote for her. And she doesn't make up her own lines. She doesn't get to say anything she wants to say.

Just like a husband doesn't get to say anything he wants to say. This is very contrary to our culture that we've grown up in. And a wife's submission to her husband is evidence that she actually believes the gospel, that her life pictures the church submitting to Christ. And so this is how a wife's submission is a picture of the power of the gospel. Her obedience is a type, it's an illustration.

And in this passage, a wife submits to her own husband in everything and she respects him. That's the last statement in Ephesians 5, it's in verse 33. So God is glorified in a wife's submission and God is glorified in a husband's Christlikeness. So that's the idea. So the question is, what is your marriage saying?

Marriage was made to say something. And I think that's why The devil is always going after everybody's marriage because a marriage is a picture of the gospel. That's why the devil hates marriage. That's why there is so much effort in the media and everywhere else in our culture to destroy marriages, Because marriage is a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So in marriage, we have roles that we did not design.

And we live together just as Christ loved the church. And we speak lines that we did not write. So to the extent that you get that straight, you'll be able to be married for the glory of God. And you'll be able to paint beautiful pictures in your marriage, and that's what God wants you to do. You're telling a story, and you're telling it to one another, and you're telling it to your kids, and you're telling it to your church, and you're telling it to everyone that looks on.

And marriage is probably easily likened to a duet where two people are singing, the husband and wife, they sing their part in the song. And that part has been created by Jesus Christ. So at any given moment, you're either representing Christ as a husband or the church as a wife. So that's the fundamental principle of marriage. That it is a picture and you are painting a picture.

And I hope that our time together will help us all to paint better. And maybe there's some ugly pictures that need to be painted over. That's okay. God is a Redeemer, and He can redeem all those bad pictures that God painted. You know, marriage isn't a selfie.

It's really, it's a reflection of Jesus Christ. So, these two things, I think these are very freeing. They help you understand what it means to be married. And one is that marriage is a sacred space. It's a sacred institution that you enter into in God's terms.

And secondly, that marriage is a picture. And what's wonderful about this is you don't have to make up the story. It's already been written for you in the Word of God. So that's what we're going to be dealing with in this whole time together. So let's pray.

Lord, Lord, thank you for creating things that are good, that you do all things well, that your wisdom is infinite, and you made a man and a woman to come together to represent the most beautiful thing that ever happened on this planet and Lord I pray that you would just give us all understanding about how we could paint well paint better than we ever had before to demonstrate the majesty of Jesus Christ, and that his preeminence would be seen in all that we do as husbands and wives. Amen.